Transparency News, 5/3/21

Wanda Roberts, a District 3 constituent of Black’s who is active with the group Concerned Citizens of Charles City County (C5), said she was surprised to receive text messages on Tuesday saying Black had resigned. She said she was unable to view most of the board meeting because of the technical problems. Roberts said she’s had trouble receiving records from the county in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and Black told her to update him on the problems. She said the county charged her $189.27 for a FOIA request related to county records about one of the proposed gas plants. That included billing her for four hours of time for a county employee to sit in the room on March 26 while people from the C5 group looked at public records. The county charged for an hourly rate of $23.99 for the employee’s time. Johnson, the county administrator, said she wanted to have a county employee in the room to assist with copies or questions the citizens had. “Those are public documents, but we just want to make sure that they weren’t compromised,” she said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Circuit Court judge on Friday denied a prosecution request to revoke the bond for a Newport News police officer charged in a 2019 slaying. After a hearing closed to the press and public, Judge Margaret Poles Spencer ruled that Sgt. Albin Trevor Pearson could remain out of jail pending trial. In a sealed motion in March, special prosecutors from Suffolk — handling the case after Newport News prosecutors recused themselves — asked that Pearson be jailed as he awaited trial. The prosecution did not file any public documents outlining the reason for that request. Earlier this week, Spencer granted the prosecution’s request earlier to bar the press and public from Friday’s hearing — saying “pre-trial publicity” could make it more difficult to seat an impartial jury. The Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot have challenged that ruling, contending the news organizations’ First Amendment rights — and the public’s right of access to court hearings — were violated by the ban.
Daily Press
 

 

 

The Pasquotank County sheriff said he hopes a fact-checking website can help the public “cut through the deception and falsehoods”surrounding the Andrew Brown Jr. case. On Thursday, Sheriff Tommy Wooten released the names of the deputies involved in the case in an effort to be transparent. In an accompanying statement, Wooten said a fact-checking page on the county’s website was published to help dispel rumors and falsehoods “advanced by out of town agitators and social media instigators.” “Some people are purposefully spreading false information and others are being reckless. Either way, the truth matters. This page of our website will contain links to all the official county statements and public documents being released on this matter,” the page states.
WAVY

A bill to reduce the cost of making copies of government documents under the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act survived a close vote in the Planning and Development Committee Friday despite concerns about its fiscal impact on towns.  The bill caps the fees government entities can charge for copying most public documents at 15 cents a page and prohibits them from charging someone to copy records using a cell phone or camera.  Under current law, per-page copying fees vary by agency, but generally fall between 25 cents and 50 cents per page. During a public hearing last month, Mike Savino, president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, submitted written testimony supporting the change. Savino said access to public records should be considered one of the functions of government deemed to be an expense shared by society. “There is no cash box at the entrance of a public high school, no bill is prepared after firefighters extinguish a house fire, no charge to call 911 or use a library card,” Savino wrote. “Government transparency and accountability are likewise at the heart of our democracy. And there cannot be government accountability without barrier-free access to the records of government.”
CT News Junkie

As body-worn cameras have become more commonplace, and public pressure on officials to take police accountability more seriously has mounted, so too have demands to quickly release the footage of violent or fatal encounters between law enforcement officers and citizens. A video can mean the difference between drawing attention or dying in obscurity. But it is not always that easy. While more police chiefs and mayors have recently made ad hoc decisions to quickly release videos of high-profile incidents, activists and lawmakers in some states are pushing for faster public access. That has made the question of timing an important and unsettled new frontier of policymaking as the use of body cameras among law enforcement in the United States becomes the rule rather than the exception.
The New York Times