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Monday
April 9, 2018
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state & local news stories
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 "He said that some parts would not be a risk to release because they have already been made public."
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Washington region residents have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to D.C., state and local governments, including Fairfax County, in hopes of discovering the breadth of incentives being offered to Amazon in hopes of landing the web and retail giant's second headquarters. The FOIA requests were submitted by members of the D.C. Metro chapter of Democratic Socialists of America in conjunction with the anti-Amazon HQ2 ObviouslyNotDC campaign. The group has now launched a partner website, NoVaSaysNo.com.
Fairfax Times
Virginia State Police have 30 days to release a redacted copy of its Aug. 12 operational plan to two freelance journalists after a Charlottesville judge decided some of the information would not risk the safety of police or the public. Reporters Jackson Landers and Natalie Jacobsen — represented pro bono by attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — sued the city of Charlottesville, state police and the Office of the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security for access to city and state police plans from the Unite the Right rally. On March 30, Moore sent a letter to the attorneys in the case that said he believed “that redaction is not only allowed, but that the Respondents [state police] must disclose any non-offending information, and redact what they think still requires confidentiality, and that the State Police Operative Plan should not be considered as a whole or protected in its entirety.” Moore wrote that he would prefer that state police decide what part of the plan, if released, would present a risk to safety and security. He said that some parts would not be a risk to release because they have already been made public in the Governor’s Task Force on Public Safety Preparedness and Response to Civil Unrest, the review of the 2017 protest events in Charlottesville by Hunton & Williams and the recently released city police plan.
The Daily Progress
The town of Abingdon spent about $3,200 to send four Abingdon Town Council members to Richmond to attend an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hearing in February, according to the town’s expenditure account status document and itemized hotel bills. The Bristol Herald Courier obtained the Town Council’s Richmond travel expenses, including hotel stay, meals and mileage reimbursement, through the Freedom of Information Act. Mayor Cathy Lowe, Vice Mayor Rick Humphreys, Councilwoman Cindy Patterson and Councilman Wayne Craig stayed in the Marriott on East Broad Street in Richmond from Feb. 19-21, according to each itemized Marriott bill. Councilman Bob Howard did not travel to Richmond. During the March Town Council meeting, Lowe confirmed that the council members attended a hearing at the EEOC office in Richmond. “I’m going to tread very carefully here ... four of the five Town Council members went to Richmond to attend an EEOC hearing. All of us signed a confidentiality agreement that was required by the EEOC … that is really all any of us can really say to the public,” Lowe said during the meeting.
Bristol Herald Courier
The former executive director of Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport is seeking to amend his pending defamation lawsuit to add the Daily Press as a defendant. Ken Spirito — who led the airport for eight years before being fired last May — sued the Peninsula Airport Commission and several past and present employees in January. He said the employees and a commissioner defamed him when they exchanged text messages in early 2017 about airport document shredding. Spirito asserts that the text messages gave “the false implication” that he was shredding evidence related to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s then-pending audit centered on a $5 million loan guarantee to People Express Airlines in 2014.
Daily Press
Thousands of people have been fined in the months since Virginia, for the first time, imposed penalties on people who drive too slowly in the left lane or commit other related traffic violations, data obtained through a public records request show.
WTOP
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stories of national interest
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A private company that sells surveillance technology to law enforcement is telling police departments that they are being targeted and attacked by transparency groups that request public records. Vigilant Solutions, the country’s largest vendor of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), has accused the non-profit groups Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Muckrock of running a campaign in order to evoke fear (and ultimately donations), in a letter sent to law enforcement agencies across the country.
Motherboard
After an Upstate (South Carolina) solicitor directed authorities to withhold names of officers involved in shootings — unless they’re criminally charged — law enforcement officials and prosecutors in the Lowcountry say they have no plans to adopt such restrictions. The decision by 13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins to protect officers' identities is among his guidelines for how law enforcement in Greenville and Pickens counties handle officer-involved shootings, The Greenville News reported this week. Police deserve the same rights to privacy as regular citizens, he reasoned, saying officers have been threatened after their names were released. In the greater Charleston area, where agencies typically release names of officers within a few days of a shooting, authorities questioned whether such a policy would hold up under the state's open records laws designed to give citizens access to public information. At a time when officer-involved shootings and excessive force complaints are being scrutinized across the nation, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said he expected Wilkins' policy to be looked at "under a microscope." "I appreciate the position he’s taken, but I think the final analysis probably turns on the question of what the Freedom of Information Act says on this issue," said Cannon, who added that his office addresses what information to release on a case-by-case basis.
The Post and Courier
In December, the day before the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its net neutrality rules, the agency’s chairman, Ajit Pai, appeared in a video for conservative news website The Daily Caller. The video was a riff on the “Harlem Shake” videos that had become popular on the internet, and showed Pai downplaying the impact that undoing net neutrality rules would have on the internet and people's’ lives. The origins of the video, however, weren’t entirely clear. Whose idea was it? Who wrote the script? Did the other FCC commissioners know about it? So Muckrock, a nonprofit organization that helps request and analyze government documents, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC four months ago for agency emails about the video, a request that would seem relatively innocuous. The request was denied this week. The organization is now appealing the denial and considering a lawsuit.
NBC News
The New York Post has settled a landmark lawsuit charging that the city Department of Education routinely violated the state Freedom of Information Law. Under the settlement, the DOE not only turned over public records it had withheld for up to 20 months, but agreed to reform what The Post called a “pattern and practice” of endless delays and stonewalling. After lengthy negotiations with Post lawyers, the DOE agreed to revise its FOIL rules to halt the indefinite postponements — and stick to reasonable deadlines. New guidelines were approved in November.
New York Post
Citing a growing threat that terrorists will use drones for surveillance or as weapons, the Trump administration is asking Congress to give the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice the power to track, reroute or destroy the devices, according to a copy of the legislative proposal obtained by The Washington Post. The legislation would free safety and security officials from those agencies, and their contractors, from laws against intercepting electronic communications that officials say have hamstrung their ability to protect sensitive facilities from increasingly cheap and powerful unmanned aircraft, which already number in the millions. It would also give wide discretion to those working for the government, outside observers said. The full picture of which facilities would fall under the new authorities remains unclear. Those facilities would be subject to what the proposed legislation calls a “risk-based assessment” as well as regulations and guidance that would be shielded from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Washington Post
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 "...accused the non-profit groups of running a campaign in order to evoke fear (and ultimately donations)."
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editorials & columns
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 "He’s concerned about perceptions that the council itself needed to do better listening to all sides."
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How fitting that state Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Montross, launched the first meeting of the Freedom of Information Advisory Council this year by speaking about the first words of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. While we’ve disagreed — forcefully — over one of Sen. Stuart’s past stands on FOIA issue, we’ve also always known he shares our passionate commitment to Virginia’s tradition of democracy and to accountability in government. We heard that commitment again after his suggestion that FOIA Council members take a moment to read and reflect on the preamble. That’s because the senator went on to say he’s concerned about perceptions that the council itself needed to do better listening to all sides when matters of Freedom of Information policy are up for discussion. And because he said he wanted to ensure that the advisory opinions of the Council issues are really helpful to the Virginians who ask for guidance.
Daily Press
Whatever is going on inside the Pittsylvania County Department of Social Services, Supervisor Ron Scearce and his fellow members of the Board of Supervisors are exactly right in pushing for an open, transparent examination of the agency. On April 3, the social services board convened a public meeting in Chatham to discuss the controversy and soon went behind closed doors for hours to hear from a dozen people. In the open portion of the meeting, board members heard from several supporters and employees of the social services department. They described a near-ideal work environment, far different from the picture presented by the Board of Supervisors and former agency employees. But in the closed portion of the meeting, when many former employees addressed the board, what members heard obviously troubled them. Board member Andrea Jackson, for example, responded with a strong “Yes” when the R&B’s Simkiss asked her afterward whether she was surprised by what she had heard.
Register & Bee
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