Transparency News 5/7/15
Thursday, May 7, 2015
State and Local Stories
After a 15-minute closed session, the Richmond Electoral Board voted Wednesday morning to reappoint longtime General Registrar J. Kirk Showalter to another four-year term overseeing elections in the city. No concerns were raised publicly about Showalter’s performance, and she and her staff were praised by the board for taking swift action to replace hundreds of touchscreen voting machines after the model was deemed insecure by the State Board of Elections. But questions were raised about transparency in the reappointment process. Georgina Cannon, co-chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia’s volunteer Voter Protection Council, told the board her group felt there were “serious problems” with the limited public notice and the lack of information posted online about Showalter’s pending reappointment. C. Starlet Stevens, the chairwoman of the three-person electoral board, said meeting notices had been posted on the second floor of City Hall and in the registrar’s office on the first floor. Stevens said the local electoral board is not legally required to post online notices for its meetings. Showalter said she has limited control over the city website, but she asked the board if it would like her to attempt to publish meeting notices online. Board member Cecelia A.B. Dabney said it could cause trouble for the board if an emergency meeting had to be called and no notice was posted on the website. “So let’s just leave it as it’s been done for 20 years,” Dabney said. “And that’s the way it is.”
Times-Dispatch
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued the Fairfax County Police Department Monday, asking a Fairfax court to order the police to stop the “passive” collection of data from automated license plate readers that photograph thousands of cars per day and record their location. The suit came after Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed two bills on Friday which would have allowed Virginia police to keep the license plate data for only seven days, and which defined license plates as “personal information.” Virginia already has a “Data Act” law which prohibits government from gathering personal information on citizens unless the need has been established in advance, and in 2013 then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) issued an opinion to the state police that maintaining a data base of license plate photos violated that act. The state police now purge the data after 24 hours.
Washington Post
Hampton will pay more than $300,000 to the federal government and whistleblower Elizabeth Greene to settle a federal lawsuit claiming the city improperly used benefits granted to nonprofit organizations while mailing materials advertising the arts. Greene, an artist and former city employee, filed the lawsuit in 2013 claiming the Hampton Arts Commission used a nonprofit status to mail thousands of printed items — including the quarterly Diversions publication — using the discounted mailing rate issued by the U.S. Postal Service. Government agencies pay a higher rate than nonprofits. Such a charge is punishable under the False Claims Act, which was created to provide financial incentives for whistleblowers who provide information about attempts to defraud the federal government. Greene's attorney David Pearline said the city's settlement pays double the amount federal prosecutors believe the city saved by using the nonprofit discount. "What makes this case extraordinary is that it's not a contractor (accused of defrauding the federal government) but it's another government," he said. "Based on my understanding, this hasn't happened in Hampton Roads before."
Daily Press
A nearly final draft of this story from last week, about GOP legislators using legislative and attorney-client privileges to keep emails from becoming evidence in an ongoing redistricting lawsuit, initially included this from House Minority Leader David Toscano: “What do they have to hide?” House Democratic Leader David Toscano asked Thursday. If the maps were drawn fairly, and Republicans discussed it, “let’s see what they’ve been saying to each other,” Toscano said. Then I noticed Toscano's name on a list of 29 legislators asked in the case to waive their privilege and release documents, and he wasn't one of the four who waived. Suddeny, his concerns for openness did not seem so quoteable.In a follow-up call this week, Toscano said he believes the House clerk reached out to him about emails, and he said he didn't have any relevant to the case. As a member of the minority party in the House of Delegates, Toscano probably wouldn't have been privy to Republican map-making convsersations that are at issue in this case. "If I so-called invoked legislative privilege, it's only a technicality," Toscano said this week. "I don't have any documents related to this."
Daily Press
After crafting an application, interviewing candidates and holding a public hearing, the city School Board can see the finish line for selecting an interim member. No public comments were made on either of the two candidates at Tuesday’s hearing, and the board will announce its selection next week. Per state code, once a seat becomes vacant, the board has 45 days to select an interim member to fill the seat until a special election can be held. Whoever wins the seat in the Nov. 3 special election will serve until December 2016, when Fleming’s term was due to end.
Daily News Record
David Masters of Fredericksburg was shot and killed by Fairfax County police Officer David Scott Ziants on Nov. 13, 2009, as Masters drove on Route 1 in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County. Masters was unarmed and had ripped some flowers out of a planter in front of a business, which led to the police pursuit. On Wednesday, the Fairfax police released the dash cam video from Ziants’s car. The actual shooting is not visible, but the sounds of the shots can be heard (at 1:49), followed by another officer apparently telling Ziants, “What are you doing? Hold up! Whoa! Hold up! The —- you doing dude? Come on.” Fairfax police did not explain why they chose today, more than five years later, to release the video. In March, the police rejected a freedom of information act request from The Washington Post to allow a review of the investigative file in the case, also without explanation. In Virginia, law enforcement agencies may release, or withhold, any investigative information under state public information law, indefinitely. In a statement accompanying the release, Fairfax police Chief Edwin C. Roessler said: “In an effort to continue with increasing our transparency and the public trust, I have exercised my discretion under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by authorizing the release of the in-car video from the criminal investigation into the officer-involved shooting of David Masters that occurred in the Mount Vernon District on Friday, November 13, 2009. Based on several requests, the video was provided to the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission and is posted here. In reaching my decision to release the in-car video, I considered the following factors: the local criminal investigation has been completed; the U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation has been completed; and there is no pending or threatened civil litigation.”
Washington Post
Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright plans to meet in private with Sheriff Bill Watson and some staff today to discuss cutting $1 million from Watson's budget. Two council members say that meeting should be open to the public. Councilman Bill Moody said he has asked Del. Johnny Joannou, D-Portsmouth, to seek an opinion from Attorney General Mark Herring's office about the meeting, scheduled for 2 p.m. at City Hall. Moody first asked interim City Attorney Cheran Cordell whether the meeting was open to the public. "It is my opinion that the one-on-one meeting of any Council member with an individual to discuss city business is not contrary to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act," she wrote and cited state open meetings law.
Virginian-Pilot
A recent ruling against sectarian public prayer in North Carolina could strengthen the American Civil Liberties Union’s case against the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. The ACLU of Virginia, on behalf of county resident Barbara Hudson, filed a notice of supplemental authority Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Danville following Monday’s ruling against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina. The notice is in opposition to the county’s motion to dissolve and/or modify a judge’s permanent injunction against its practice of holding board-led sectarian Christian prayers at the start of meetings. A U.S. District Court judge in the Middle District of North Carolina issued a permanent injunction against the county commission’s practice of opening meetings with prayers led by a commissioner on a rotating basis. In Pittsylvania County, a supervisor led prayers at the start of the board’s meetings.
Register & Bee
Members of the Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce will hear from Fred Wydner, Pittsylvania’s agribusiness development director, about the poultry industry Wednesday. But some county residents accused Wydner of being a lobbyist for local agribusiness interests. One of those residents distributed a letter at Monday’s board of supervisors meeting. To the county administrator and chair of the board of supervisors, though, Wydner is doing his job promoting what is today Pittsylvania County’s top industry. The letter from a half-dozen county residents says Wydner is an “unregistered lobbyist” and “has a serious conflict of interest” as the county’s director of agribusiness development. Among the many businesses and industries in the county, one has its own lobbyist, the letter claims.
Register & Bee
National Stories
Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Ensuring an Informed Citizenry: Examining the Administration’s Efforts to Improve Open Government.” Read his full testimony.
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The case of Steve Donohue v. the City of North Augusta, South Carolina,, Mayor Lark Jones and the North Augusta City Council went before the state’s highest court with the issues of proving blight in a Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, district, and Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, violations coming under question from the five Supreme Court Justices. James Mosteller, attorney for the plaintiff, called for Project Jackson to be scrapped due to the violations of FOIA. “If the people would have known that the executive sessions were about Project Jackson, they would have stayed at the meetings to have their voices heard,” he said. “The violations of FOIA should lead to a nullification of the project.” “We’ll have to see what the court’s order is, but if they uphold the TIF amendment and do not rule that the FOIA issues somehow make the TIF statute a nullity, then we go forward,” said Belton Ziegler, lead attorney for the city. “If the court does rule that the TIF amendment was not proper, then the process is very simple – the City will have to take a few months and go through the whole process again. They’ll have another set of hearings and notices. That will also mean more expense and more delay in getting these great amenities for the people of North Augusta.”
North Augusta Star
When is a gun not just a gun? When it’s also constitutionally protected free speech. That is the legal argument being made by Cody Wilson, a Texas man who gained attention two years ago by posting what are believed to be the world’s first online instructions for how to build a 3-D printable gun. Mr. Wilson’s files for what he called the Liberator, a single-shot pistol mostly made of plastic, were partly a statement about freedom in the digital age and partly a provocation — and provoke they did. A few days after the plans for the Liberator were put online, the State Department ordered Mr. Wilson to remove them, threatening him with jail time and million-dollar fines for having possibly broken rules that govern the export of military data. Now, with a high-powered legal team behind it, Mr. Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, has filed suit against the State Department, claiming that its efforts to stop him from publishing his plans, which are no more than computer code, amount to a prior restraint on free speech. The 25-page suit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Austin, Tex., is an innovative and apparently unprecedented effort to use the First Amendment in support of the Second.
New York Times
A Defense Department audit has found that a number of Pentagon employees used their government credit cards to gamble and pay for “adult entertainment” — findings that are expected to lead department officials to issue stern new warnings. The audit of “Government Travel Charge Transactions” by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, which is to be made public in coming weeks, found that both civilian and military employees used the credit cards at casinos and for escort services and other adult activities — in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Politico
State and Local Stories
After a 15-minute closed session, the Richmond Electoral Board voted Wednesday morning to reappoint longtime General Registrar J. Kirk Showalter to another four-year term overseeing elections in the city. No concerns were raised publicly about Showalter’s performance, and she and her staff were praised by the board for taking swift action to replace hundreds of touchscreen voting machines after the model was deemed insecure by the State Board of Elections. But questions were raised about transparency in the reappointment process. Georgina Cannon, co-chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia’s volunteer Voter Protection Council, told the board her group felt there were “serious problems” with the limited public notice and the lack of information posted online about Showalter’s pending reappointment. C. Starlet Stevens, the chairwoman of the three-person electoral board, said meeting notices had been posted on the second floor of City Hall and in the registrar’s office on the first floor. Stevens said the local electoral board is not legally required to post online notices for its meetings. Showalter said she has limited control over the city website, but she asked the board if it would like her to attempt to publish meeting notices online. Board member Cecelia A.B. Dabney said it could cause trouble for the board if an emergency meeting had to be called and no notice was posted on the website. “So let’s just leave it as it’s been done for 20 years,” Dabney said. “And that’s the way it is.”
Times-Dispatch
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued the Fairfax County Police Department Monday, asking a Fairfax court to order the police to stop the “passive” collection of data from automated license plate readers that photograph thousands of cars per day and record their location. The suit came after Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed two bills on Friday which would have allowed Virginia police to keep the license plate data for only seven days, and which defined license plates as “personal information.” Virginia already has a “Data Act” law which prohibits government from gathering personal information on citizens unless the need has been established in advance, and in 2013 then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) issued an opinion to the state police that maintaining a data base of license plate photos violated that act. The state police now purge the data after 24 hours.
Washington Post
Hampton will pay more than $300,000 to the federal government and whistleblower Elizabeth Greene to settle a federal lawsuit claiming the city improperly used benefits granted to nonprofit organizations while mailing materials advertising the arts. Greene, an artist and former city employee, filed the lawsuit in 2013 claiming the Hampton Arts Commission used a nonprofit status to mail thousands of printed items — including the quarterly Diversions publication — using the discounted mailing rate issued by the U.S. Postal Service. Government agencies pay a higher rate than nonprofits. Such a charge is punishable under the False Claims Act, which was created to provide financial incentives for whistleblowers who provide information about attempts to defraud the federal government. Greene's attorney David Pearline said the city's settlement pays double the amount federal prosecutors believe the city saved by using the nonprofit discount. "What makes this case extraordinary is that it's not a contractor (accused of defrauding the federal government) but it's another government," he said. "Based on my understanding, this hasn't happened in Hampton Roads before."
Daily Press
A nearly final draft of this story from last week, about GOP legislators using legislative and attorney-client privileges to keep emails from becoming evidence in an ongoing redistricting lawsuit, initially included this from House Minority Leader David Toscano: “What do they have to hide?” House Democratic Leader David Toscano asked Thursday. If the maps were drawn fairly, and Republicans discussed it, “let’s see what they’ve been saying to each other,” Toscano said. Then I noticed Toscano's name on a list of 29 legislators asked in the case to waive their privilege and release documents, and he wasn't one of the four who waived. Suddeny, his concerns for openness did not seem so quoteable.In a follow-up call this week, Toscano said he believes the House clerk reached out to him about emails, and he said he didn't have any relevant to the case. As a member of the minority party in the House of Delegates, Toscano probably wouldn't have been privy to Republican map-making convsersations that are at issue in this case. "If I so-called invoked legislative privilege, it's only a technicality," Toscano said this week. "I don't have any documents related to this."
Daily Press
After crafting an application, interviewing candidates and holding a public hearing, the city School Board can see the finish line for selecting an interim member. No public comments were made on either of the two candidates at Tuesday’s hearing, and the board will announce its selection next week. Per state code, once a seat becomes vacant, the board has 45 days to select an interim member to fill the seat until a special election can be held. Whoever wins the seat in the Nov. 3 special election will serve until December 2016, when Fleming’s term was due to end.
Daily News Record
David Masters of Fredericksburg was shot and killed by Fairfax County police Officer David Scott Ziants on Nov. 13, 2009, as Masters drove on Route 1 in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County. Masters was unarmed and had ripped some flowers out of a planter in front of a business, which led to the police pursuit. On Wednesday, the Fairfax police released the dash cam video from Ziants’s car. The actual shooting is not visible, but the sounds of the shots can be heard (at 1:49), followed by another officer apparently telling Ziants, “What are you doing? Hold up! Whoa! Hold up! The —- you doing dude? Come on.” Fairfax police did not explain why they chose today, more than five years later, to release the video. In March, the police rejected a freedom of information act request from The Washington Post to allow a review of the investigative file in the case, also without explanation. In Virginia, law enforcement agencies may release, or withhold, any investigative information under state public information law, indefinitely. In a statement accompanying the release, Fairfax police Chief Edwin C. Roessler said: “In an effort to continue with increasing our transparency and the public trust, I have exercised my discretion under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by authorizing the release of the in-car video from the criminal investigation into the officer-involved shooting of David Masters that occurred in the Mount Vernon District on Friday, November 13, 2009. Based on several requests, the video was provided to the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission and is posted here. In reaching my decision to release the in-car video, I considered the following factors: the local criminal investigation has been completed; the U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation has been completed; and there is no pending or threatened civil litigation.”
Washington Post
Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright plans to meet in private with Sheriff Bill Watson and some staff today to discuss cutting $1 million from Watson's budget. Two council members say that meeting should be open to the public. Councilman Bill Moody said he has asked Del. Johnny Joannou, D-Portsmouth, to seek an opinion from Attorney General Mark Herring's office about the meeting, scheduled for 2 p.m. at City Hall. Moody first asked interim City Attorney Cheran Cordell whether the meeting was open to the public. "It is my opinion that the one-on-one meeting of any Council member with an individual to discuss city business is not contrary to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act," she wrote and cited state open meetings law.
Virginian-Pilot
A recent ruling against sectarian public prayer in North Carolina could strengthen the American Civil Liberties Union’s case against the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. The ACLU of Virginia, on behalf of county resident Barbara Hudson, filed a notice of supplemental authority Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Danville following Monday’s ruling against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina. The notice is in opposition to the county’s motion to dissolve and/or modify a judge’s permanent injunction against its practice of holding board-led sectarian Christian prayers at the start of meetings. A U.S. District Court judge in the Middle District of North Carolina issued a permanent injunction against the county commission’s practice of opening meetings with prayers led by a commissioner on a rotating basis. In Pittsylvania County, a supervisor led prayers at the start of the board’s meetings.
Register & Bee
Members of the Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce will hear from Fred Wydner, Pittsylvania’s agribusiness development director, about the poultry industry Wednesday. But some county residents accused Wydner of being a lobbyist for local agribusiness interests. One of those residents distributed a letter at Monday’s board of supervisors meeting. To the county administrator and chair of the board of supervisors, though, Wydner is doing his job promoting what is today Pittsylvania County’s top industry. The letter from a half-dozen county residents says Wydner is an “unregistered lobbyist” and “has a serious conflict of interest” as the county’s director of agribusiness development. Among the many businesses and industries in the county, one has its own lobbyist, the letter claims.
Register & Bee
National Stories
Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Ensuring an Informed Citizenry: Examining the Administration’s Efforts to Improve Open Government.” Read his full testimony.
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The case of Steve Donohue v. the City of North Augusta, South Carolina,, Mayor Lark Jones and the North Augusta City Council went before the state’s highest court with the issues of proving blight in a Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, district, and Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, violations coming under question from the five Supreme Court Justices. James Mosteller, attorney for the plaintiff, called for Project Jackson to be scrapped due to the violations of FOIA. “If the people would have known that the executive sessions were about Project Jackson, they would have stayed at the meetings to have their voices heard,” he said. “The violations of FOIA should lead to a nullification of the project.” “We’ll have to see what the court’s order is, but if they uphold the TIF amendment and do not rule that the FOIA issues somehow make the TIF statute a nullity, then we go forward,” said Belton Ziegler, lead attorney for the city. “If the court does rule that the TIF amendment was not proper, then the process is very simple – the City will have to take a few months and go through the whole process again. They’ll have another set of hearings and notices. That will also mean more expense and more delay in getting these great amenities for the people of North Augusta.”
North Augusta Star
When is a gun not just a gun? When it’s also constitutionally protected free speech. That is the legal argument being made by Cody Wilson, a Texas man who gained attention two years ago by posting what are believed to be the world’s first online instructions for how to build a 3-D printable gun. Mr. Wilson’s files for what he called the Liberator, a single-shot pistol mostly made of plastic, were partly a statement about freedom in the digital age and partly a provocation — and provoke they did. A few days after the plans for the Liberator were put online, the State Department ordered Mr. Wilson to remove them, threatening him with jail time and million-dollar fines for having possibly broken rules that govern the export of military data. Now, with a high-powered legal team behind it, Mr. Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, has filed suit against the State Department, claiming that its efforts to stop him from publishing his plans, which are no more than computer code, amount to a prior restraint on free speech. The 25-page suit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Austin, Tex., is an innovative and apparently unprecedented effort to use the First Amendment in support of the Second.
New York Times
A Defense Department audit has found that a number of Pentagon employees used their government credit cards to gamble and pay for “adult entertainment” — findings that are expected to lead department officials to issue stern new warnings. The audit of “Government Travel Charge Transactions” by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, which is to be made public in coming weeks, found that both civilian and military employees used the credit cards at casinos and for escort services and other adult activities — in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Politico
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