Transparency News 4/30/15
Thursday, April 30, 2015
State and Local Stories
Loudoun's Circuit Court declared Loudoun schools not in violation of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act on April 29. Loudoun's School Board and school and IT staff were called to court last week when Lansdowne parent, Brian Davison, filed a Writ of Mandamus claiming Loudoun County Public Schools deliberately withheld information from the public and failed to fulfill multiple of his FOIA requests within the five day period mandated by law. Judge Jeanette Irby of the Loudoun Circuit Court ruled in each accusation that the school district was not in violation of the laws. According to state FOIA law, a public body is not required to fulfill a FOIA request if the documentation doesn't exist, nor are they required to create the document. Irby believes Loudoun schools are sincere in saying they don't have the documents. She further declared that some of Davison's requests did not qualify as FOIA requests in the way they were formatted, thus Loudoun schools were not in violation of the laws.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
Records and data from Virginia school divisions can be difficult to get — even under public records requests — putting school leaders and parents in conflict with each other about what should be released and what should be withheld. Starting on July 1, all school divisions across Virginia will be required disclose all of their budgets line by line. That's because of a new bill recently signed into law after a parent in Henrico County was upset he could not get line-item budgets for all school systems in the commonwealth. And he's not alone. "One thing I have seen is that when people ask for aggregate data about things," says Megan Rhyne of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "You know, how many students are doing X, Y or Z, and they will withhold the entire amount because you may be able to identify a particular student through the release of this information."
WAMU
A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to reinstate a lawsuit by a former Marine who was involuntarily held for psychiatric evaluation after posting threatening anti-government messages on Facebook. Brandon Raub claimed that Michael Campbell, the Chesterfield County mental health screener who recommended his detention, violated his free-speech rights and the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson dismissed the lawsuit, and a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that ruling. Federal and local authorities investigated in 2012 after another Marine veteran contacted the FBI about Raub's increasingly ominous Facebook rants. One message said: "Sharpen my axe; I'm here to sever heads." Raub was interviewed by police and by Campbell, who recommended that he be held for mental health evaluation. A circuit court judge ordered Raub's release a week later. In his lawsuit, Raub contended that his detention was based on political statements about 9/11 conspiracies and an impending revolution. The appeals court said that argument ignores other factors that led to Campbell's recommendation, including his observations of Raub's demeanor and the other veteran's belief that Raub should be taken seriously.
News & Advance
National Stories
The State Department has about three weeks to propose a date by which it will release tens of thousands of work-related emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent or received on her personal account, a federal judge said in an order issued Tuesday. Clinton's former agency has pledged to use Freedom of Information Act procedures to process for release about 55,000 pages of emails the former secretary turned over in December after a State Department official asked four former secretaries to return copies of any official records they had. Clinton has since declared her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. State officials have said the email review process would take several months, except for one batch of Benghazi- and Libya-related messages slated to be released sooner. However, State has so far declined to promise any specific date or even month for release of the smaller or larger batch of emails.
Politico
You can find more than books at the Baltimore public library, as all branches remained open and fully staffed in the wake of protests and riots that have rocked the city. With a state of emergency declared and schools closed citywide Tuesday morning, the Enoch Pratt Free Library chose to stay open, providing a hub of comfort and community to all Baltimore neighborhoods, including the ones most affected by the mayhem. “It’s at times like this that the community needs us,” library Director of Communications Roswell Encina told MTV News. “That’s what the library has always been there for, from crises like this to a recession to the aftermath of severe weather. The library has been there. It happened in Ferguson; it’s happening here.”
Governing
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states may prevent judicial candidates from personally asking for campaign contributions. The high court determined that such laws do not violate the First Amendment’s free speech protections. Thirty of the 39 states that hold elections for judges also ban them from asking for campaign contributions directly. “Judges are not politicians, even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot. And a state’s decision to elect its judiciary does not compel it to treat judicial candidates like campaigners for political office,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who sided with the court’s liberal members in the case.
Governing
Following arguments from prisoners, prisoner rights groups, and members of the media, a judge yesterday struck down the Pennsylvania Revictimization Relief Act as unconstitutionally restricting the speech of prisoners as well as media that carry their messages. The act allowed victims of personal injury crimes to bring civil actions against the perpetrators for “conduct which perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim,” defined as including “conduct which causes a temporary or permanent state of mental anguish.” Chief Judge Christopher Conner of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, granted requests asking for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the act is a content-based regulation of speech unjustified by compelling government interests, is impermissibly vague, and is substantially overbroad, all in violation of the U.S. Constitution. “The First Amendment does not evanesce at the prison gate, and its enduring guarantee of freedom of speech subsumes the right to expressive conduct that some may find offensive,” Judge Conner wrote.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Editorials/Columns
Of the three branches of state government, the judicial branch should be the most forthcoming. Not only does it exercise the greatest power over the state’s residents, its employees face little of the electoral, political, business or economic pressures that induce government officials to hide potentially compromising information. Unlike the courts, the FOIA council lacks much power to impose its will. Let’s hope its public airing of the Supreme Court’s indefensible policy prompts rapid change.
Times-Dispatch
There are those who believe that government is not transparent enough. I am one of those. The workings of government should be open for the public to see and understand how and why policy exists unless there is a compelling reason that such information would risk the safety of innocent citizens, do harm to economic development possibilities, or similar sensitive situations. There are those, however, who use such code words as transparency and ethics only when it suits their agenda. Other times they are quite willing to look the other way and miss blatant lapses of both. Recently a number of organizations, most recognized as being closely associated with the Democrat candidates and the Democrat Party, banded together in a project they call Transparency Virginia. Such organizations as the Virginia chapter of the National Organization of Women, the Poverty Law Center, Virginia ACLU, Virginia Organizing, and a dozen others anointed themselves arbitrators of transparency in the Virginia General Assembly. Why do the organizations listed above suddenly find practices of years past unacceptable now that the committees are chaired by Republicans, when they never raised these issues when Democrats chaired all the committees? It will be interesting how these same groups respond to Hillary Clinton’s very un-transparent money-raising activities.
Sen. Frank Ruff, Star-Tribune
