Transparency News 4/30/18

Monday
April 30, 2018

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state & local news stories

“Some financial gift agreements accepted by the school ‘fall short of the standards of academic independence.”‘

The FOIA Council’s subcommittee on records announced its summer meetings. All will be held in House Committee Room 300A at the Pocahontas Building. Each has a specific focus:

Meeting1: Monday May 21, 2018 at 1:30 PM
Studying HB 1329 (Tran) on data collection and sharing with federal agencies, and SB 730 (DeSteph) excluding certain General Assembly member social media accounts.

Meeting 2: Wednesday June 27, 2018 at 10:00 AM
Studying HB 904 (Robinson) on trade secrets.

Meeting 3: Wednesday August 8 at 1:00 PM
Studying HB 504 (Mullin), HB 664 (Kilgore), HB 957 (Yancey), HB 958 (Yancey), HB 959 (Yancey), and SB 876 (Mason), all having to do with custody, transfer or redaction of records.

The proposed agenda for the first meeting is attached. Further information about the work of the Subcommittees is available at
http://foiacouncil.dls.virginia.gov/subcom_mtgs/2018/subcom18.htm.

Virginia State Police won’t release video of a traffic stop involving a Washington Redskins wide receiver who said a state trooper asked if he was a gang member or drug dealer. Paul Richardson Jr.’s tweets about the questions he was asked during a Tuesday traffic stop prompted an internal review by state police. Richardson just signed a $40 million five-year contract with the Redskins and was driving a new Mercedes when pulled over. He is African-American. The department said Friday that it was declining a public records request by The Associated Press for video taken from the trooper’s in-car camera. Spokeswoman Corinne Geller said the department has the discretion to release the video under state law but has chosen not to.
NBC Washington

A George Mason University student group’s lawsuit against the public George Mason University and its independent, private foundation tasked with attracting private donations on its behalf needed only a one-day trial, but the case’s outcome could potentially have major ramifications for all private entities that support public institutions. If and when the judge gets around to a making a ruling, that is. Here’s what happened:
Fairfax County Times

The president of George Mason University said Friday that some financial gift agreements accepted by the school “fall short of the standards of academic independence” and raise questions about donor influence at the public institution. The disclosure by George Mason President Ángel Cabrera came as a student organization sued seeking greater transparency regarding the school’s ties to private donors, including the prominent and controversial financial backer Charles Koch. The email from Cabrera does not directly name the gift agreements that were troubling, but a George Mason spokesman confirmed that the note was related to funding from the Charles Koch Foundation, among other donors. The release of the documents and the disclosure from Cabrera come amid a legal effort by Transparent GMU, which has sued the George Mason University Foundation. The case explores whether the organization is a public body.
The Washington Post
 

stories of national interest

A few years ago, Steve Ballmer began to take an interest in the world of government data. The former Microsoft CEO — whose estimated net worth is just shy of $38 billion — and his wife Connie wanted to be more deeply involved in public-sector philanthropy, and Ballmer wanted to know what government did with the money it raised. Where did it go, who did it serve and what outcomes did it get? He quickly discovered that such basic questions were hard to answer. So Ballmer set out to change that. The result of his efforts is USAFacts, a comprehensive website that Freakonomics Radio called “a sort of fiscal colonoscopy of the American government.” The initiative includes economists and researchers and partners like the Penn Wharton Budget Model from the University of Pennsylvania, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Lynchburg College
Governing

The use of FOIA has dramatically increased in the first year of the Trump administration. Requests for government records, including letters, speeches, notes about meetings, appointment calendars, memoranda and emails rose to a record-setting 823,000 in Fiscal Year 2017, an increase of over 30,000 in one combative year. Government efforts to withhold records and government censorship (known as “redaction”) rose even faster. According to a recent Associated Press report, 78 percent of all citizen and press requests for records resulted in documents that were censored (often heavily), or no documents produced at all. In almost one-third of government-wide cases of internal agency appeals due to denials or partial responses (FOIA requires such administrative appeals before a lawsuit) agencies backed down and found the files.
The Baltimore Sun

West Virginia student journalists are still being given the runaround when they request arrest and incident reports that are considered public information under West Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, the state’s Sunshine Law. While the Morgantown police no longer keep arrest and incident reports bound in a paper docket, copies of the electronic documents should be available to anyone who requests them, according to Patrick McGinley, a professor of law at West Virginia University and an expert on the state’s Freedom of Information Act.  This spring, students trying to obtain such electronic reports were told they had to get the public records they wanted from the magistrate or circuit courts, even though the police are bound by law to provide copies of arrest and incident reports to journalists and ordinary citizens. Other students were told they would be charged for a copy of one or two arrest reports, even though West Virginia FOIA law stipulates that copies should be free as long as they don’t take up extra “man-hours.” The law also allows government agencies to waive copying costs when the requests come from legitimate members of the press.
Charleston Gazette-Mail
 

“USAFacts, a comprehensive website that Freakonomics Radio called ‘a sort of fiscal colonoscopy of the American government.’”

editorials & columns

We’re noticing a pattern among Abingdon Town Council candidates, and we’re not surprised by what it means. It’s a glaring fact that transparency in Abingdon government has gone missing. While it’s not news, it’s also a fact that some members of the current Town Council have denied both the existence of and any responsibility for transparency. But now that reinitiating open government ranks among the top concerns for every Town Council candidate, this observation is more common knowledge than conjecture: The integrity of Abingdon’s government has corroded.
Bristol Herald Courier