Transparency News 5/14/15
Thursday, May 14, 2015
State and Local Stories
The Daily Press in Newport News, which was recently awarded the Virginia Press Association's First Amendment Award, continues its push for transparency in government. Dave Ress, a reporter with the Daily Press, on Tuesday during a meeting of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council's Meetings Subcommittee suggested narrowing the open meeting exemption to discuss personnel matters. Ress proposed that the law be changed to say that discussions involving the job performance of or any disciplinary action against a chief executive officer of local governments and school divisions must be conducted in public. He said that currently, the only accountability for these highly-compensated, contract employees is happening in closed sessions. Roger Wiley, an attorney who represented local governments, was against such a change in the law. "If you require public bodies to evaluate their employees in public, you will ensure that no candid evaluation ever takes place," said Wiley, who noted that local government is comfortable with the ambiguity of the current law. "You will completely destroy the effectiveness of any evaluation because people will not discuss criticisms in public."
Virginia’s E-Press
The Hampton School Board voted unanimously to approve West Point Public Schools Superintendent Jeffery O. Smith as the new Hampton City Schools superintendent Wednesday evening at Jones Middle School. The School Board voted to approve Smith's appointment and then voted separately to approve his contract. HCS spokeswoman Diana Gulotta said the Daily Press would need to make a formal request for the contract, which is public information.
Daily Press
Norfolk residents will be able to comment on the School Board's search for a new superintendent at a series of public hearings, at a pair of informal chats, and through a survey. But the public will not meet any of the candidates for the job until one signs a contract with the division, School Board members decided during a work session Wednesday. Board members cited concerns about attracting highly qualified candidates in deciding to keep the search confidential. "We can't afford to have any qualified candidates feel like they can't come because of the confidentiality issue," board member Rodney Jordan said.
Virginian-Pilot
The new rail safety regulations announced one day after the anniversary of Lynchburg’s train derailment will kill an emergency order that required railroads to proactively disclose information about Bakken oil traffic. The emergency order, handed down last year in the wake of the local derailment, required railroads to notify states where trains packed with 1 million or more gallons of this highly volatile shale oil pass through. The notice had to include estimates of the frequency of shipments and details on the route used. In Virginia, where state officials made the information public, the requirement revealed CSX was hauling large trains of Bakken crude across 26 localities multiple times per week. Under the new federal rail regulations announced this month, the emergency order requiring these disclosures will be scrapped at the end of March 2016. It will be replaced by a requirement that railroads provide emergency responders with a contact person who can field requests for information about the routing of high-hazard trains hauling Bakken oil, ethanol and other Class 3 flammable liquids.
News & Advance
The question of whether Leesburg Town Council should continue the practice of starting its meetings with a prayer resulted Monday night in one change to the current procedure—no longer will the audience be asked to stand during the invocation. Council members requested the policy review in March after receiving an email from a resident who felt the invocation, which occurs at the start of meetings before the Pledge of Allegiance, supported one religion. Town Attorney Barbara Notar gave a presentation on the legal precedents and advised that the council’s practices conformed with the law. “If we thought there was a problem, we would have came to you sooner,” Notar said.
Leesburg Today
If you want to record video, audio, or take photographs during any of the Quantico Town Council’s public meetings, you now must first ask the council for permission. The governing board of the tiny town inside the boundary of Quantico Marine Corps Base voted four to one on April 9 for the mandate. Here’s the exact motion as read before it was approved: “The town council meetings may not be videotaped, photographed, or audio taped without expressed approval of the town council.” Virginia law states anyone may attend, videotape, audio record or photograph a public meeting. There are some exceptions to the rule — un-courteous things like flash photography or jamming microphones in the faces of council members are usually frowned upon. On an audio recording of the April 9 meeting obtained from Quantico Town Municipal Offices (each meeting is audio-recorded for records purposes), it was clear some council members were more worried about what would happen with videos of meetings after the meeting ended. “How do I know you what you are going to do with it?” asked Town Councilman Rusty Kuhns. “I have no control over what they do with it.”
Potomac Local
Teachers, doctors or neighbors who suspect a child is being abused and call a hotline expect that a caseworker will investigate and rescue the minor from harm. Or look into it and decide the suspicion was mistaken. But in scores of cases during at least six months last year in Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro, that didn't happen. Call after call went unanswered and stacked up on an automated answering system at Child Protective Services. The caseworker who monitored the message line had left the agency in April. The team's new rotation approach to checking daytime voice mails quickly fell apart, the agency's director admitted during a News Leader investigation. A CPS staffer in the Verona office did discover more than 200 ignored voice mails in October. They'd been stored unheard for months, messages freighted with stomach-churning urgency, the kind that propels someone to call a hotline. The messages could have been combed through, and an overworked CPS team could have admitted the mistake and called in help. But Child Protective Services didn't do that. Instead, according to an official account reconstructed by the News Leader and documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, they listened to a few calls and erased the rest.
News Leader
National Stories
The House voted by a wide margin Wednesday to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records and replace it with a system to search the data held by telephone companies on a case-by-case basis. The 338-to-88 vote set the stage for a Senate showdown just weeks before the Patriot Act provisions authorizing the program are due to expire.
Fox News
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) will continue to be barred from releasing its reports to the public, the House Appropriations Committee said yesterday in its report on legislative branch appropriations for the coming year. "The bill contains language which provides that no funds in the Congressional Research Service can be used to publish or prepare material to be issued by the Library of Congress unless approved by the appropriate committees," the House report said. Because Congress prohibits CRS from publishing its own reports, most CRS reports are only available to the public from non-governmental organizations that take the initiative to gather and publish them. Many such reports can be found in a collection that is maintained and regularly updated on the Federation of American Scientists website.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
We have said before that some of the most important debates in government are over individual privacy. And what we have is a demonstrable record of abuse by the NSA as it willfully tramples on the rights of citizens without cause or evidence of crime. It is shameful that lawmakers are unwilling to address that — or, in the case of Sens. McConnell and Burr, deliberately enable it for another five years. There is little question that a strong national defense must include a strong national intelligence apparatus. The actionable data compiled by the NSA seems to be significant, and it is important that the United States does not cut off the agency at its knees. But it should be citizens, through their elected officials, who determine where the boundary is. We believe that the bulk surveillance of Americans should be off-limits and we call on Congress to see that the NSA comes to heel.
Daily Press
State and Local Stories
The Daily Press in Newport News, which was recently awarded the Virginia Press Association's First Amendment Award, continues its push for transparency in government. Dave Ress, a reporter with the Daily Press, on Tuesday during a meeting of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council's Meetings Subcommittee suggested narrowing the open meeting exemption to discuss personnel matters. Ress proposed that the law be changed to say that discussions involving the job performance of or any disciplinary action against a chief executive officer of local governments and school divisions must be conducted in public. He said that currently, the only accountability for these highly-compensated, contract employees is happening in closed sessions. Roger Wiley, an attorney who represented local governments, was against such a change in the law. "If you require public bodies to evaluate their employees in public, you will ensure that no candid evaluation ever takes place," said Wiley, who noted that local government is comfortable with the ambiguity of the current law. "You will completely destroy the effectiveness of any evaluation because people will not discuss criticisms in public."
Virginia’s E-Press
The Hampton School Board voted unanimously to approve West Point Public Schools Superintendent Jeffery O. Smith as the new Hampton City Schools superintendent Wednesday evening at Jones Middle School. The School Board voted to approve Smith's appointment and then voted separately to approve his contract. HCS spokeswoman Diana Gulotta said the Daily Press would need to make a formal request for the contract, which is public information.
Daily Press
Norfolk residents will be able to comment on the School Board's search for a new superintendent at a series of public hearings, at a pair of informal chats, and through a survey. But the public will not meet any of the candidates for the job until one signs a contract with the division, School Board members decided during a work session Wednesday. Board members cited concerns about attracting highly qualified candidates in deciding to keep the search confidential. "We can't afford to have any qualified candidates feel like they can't come because of the confidentiality issue," board member Rodney Jordan said.
Virginian-Pilot
The new rail safety regulations announced one day after the anniversary of Lynchburg’s train derailment will kill an emergency order that required railroads to proactively disclose information about Bakken oil traffic. The emergency order, handed down last year in the wake of the local derailment, required railroads to notify states where trains packed with 1 million or more gallons of this highly volatile shale oil pass through. The notice had to include estimates of the frequency of shipments and details on the route used. In Virginia, where state officials made the information public, the requirement revealed CSX was hauling large trains of Bakken crude across 26 localities multiple times per week. Under the new federal rail regulations announced this month, the emergency order requiring these disclosures will be scrapped at the end of March 2016. It will be replaced by a requirement that railroads provide emergency responders with a contact person who can field requests for information about the routing of high-hazard trains hauling Bakken oil, ethanol and other Class 3 flammable liquids.
News & Advance
The question of whether Leesburg Town Council should continue the practice of starting its meetings with a prayer resulted Monday night in one change to the current procedure—no longer will the audience be asked to stand during the invocation. Council members requested the policy review in March after receiving an email from a resident who felt the invocation, which occurs at the start of meetings before the Pledge of Allegiance, supported one religion. Town Attorney Barbara Notar gave a presentation on the legal precedents and advised that the council’s practices conformed with the law. “If we thought there was a problem, we would have came to you sooner,” Notar said.
Leesburg Today
If you want to record video, audio, or take photographs during any of the Quantico Town Council’s public meetings, you now must first ask the council for permission. The governing board of the tiny town inside the boundary of Quantico Marine Corps Base voted four to one on April 9 for the mandate. Here’s the exact motion as read before it was approved: “The town council meetings may not be videotaped, photographed, or audio taped without expressed approval of the town council.” Virginia law states anyone may attend, videotape, audio record or photograph a public meeting. There are some exceptions to the rule — un-courteous things like flash photography or jamming microphones in the faces of council members are usually frowned upon. On an audio recording of the April 9 meeting obtained from Quantico Town Municipal Offices (each meeting is audio-recorded for records purposes), it was clear some council members were more worried about what would happen with videos of meetings after the meeting ended. “How do I know you what you are going to do with it?” asked Town Councilman Rusty Kuhns. “I have no control over what they do with it.”
Potomac Local
Teachers, doctors or neighbors who suspect a child is being abused and call a hotline expect that a caseworker will investigate and rescue the minor from harm. Or look into it and decide the suspicion was mistaken. But in scores of cases during at least six months last year in Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro, that didn't happen. Call after call went unanswered and stacked up on an automated answering system at Child Protective Services. The caseworker who monitored the message line had left the agency in April. The team's new rotation approach to checking daytime voice mails quickly fell apart, the agency's director admitted during a News Leader investigation. A CPS staffer in the Verona office did discover more than 200 ignored voice mails in October. They'd been stored unheard for months, messages freighted with stomach-churning urgency, the kind that propels someone to call a hotline. The messages could have been combed through, and an overworked CPS team could have admitted the mistake and called in help. But Child Protective Services didn't do that. Instead, according to an official account reconstructed by the News Leader and documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, they listened to a few calls and erased the rest.
News Leader
National Stories
The House voted by a wide margin Wednesday to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records and replace it with a system to search the data held by telephone companies on a case-by-case basis. The 338-to-88 vote set the stage for a Senate showdown just weeks before the Patriot Act provisions authorizing the program are due to expire.
Fox News
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) will continue to be barred from releasing its reports to the public, the House Appropriations Committee said yesterday in its report on legislative branch appropriations for the coming year. "The bill contains language which provides that no funds in the Congressional Research Service can be used to publish or prepare material to be issued by the Library of Congress unless approved by the appropriate committees," the House report said. Because Congress prohibits CRS from publishing its own reports, most CRS reports are only available to the public from non-governmental organizations that take the initiative to gather and publish them. Many such reports can be found in a collection that is maintained and regularly updated on the Federation of American Scientists website.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
We have said before that some of the most important debates in government are over individual privacy. And what we have is a demonstrable record of abuse by the NSA as it willfully tramples on the rights of citizens without cause or evidence of crime. It is shameful that lawmakers are unwilling to address that — or, in the case of Sens. McConnell and Burr, deliberately enable it for another five years. There is little question that a strong national defense must include a strong national intelligence apparatus. The actionable data compiled by the NSA seems to be significant, and it is important that the United States does not cut off the agency at its knees. But it should be citizens, through their elected officials, who determine where the boundary is. We believe that the bulk surveillance of Americans should be off-limits and we call on Congress to see that the NSA comes to heel.
Daily Press
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