Transparency News 5/9/16

State and Local Stories

The Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition (DPMC) sent a Petition for Writ of Mandamus and Injunctive Relief to Angela Navarro, Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources, and David Paylor, Director of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on Thursday to compel the state to provide information about regulatory reviews of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) proposals. The Petition, prepared for filing in the Virginia Circuit Court in Richmond, describes how State officials have violated duties under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Copies of the Petition are being served on the State in advance of Court filing, in accordance with Virginia law.
Augusta Free Press

A woman’s public claim that Portsmouth police deleted video she recorded of a controversial May 2 arrest at the London Oaks apartments is false, police Chief Tonya Chapman said Friday. Chapman called a meeting with reporters to answer questions and show a police body camera video that included no footage of an officer taking the woman’s phone. In fact, the video shows the woman holding her phone the entire time she spoke with the officer, Chapman said. An apartment complex surveillance video proves that the woman didn’t record the arrest – just the aftermath, police said.
Virginian-Pilot



National Stories
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An official tasked with improving the operation of the Freedom of Information Act across the Obama Administration is resigning after less than a year on the job, several sources briefed on the move told POLITICO. James Holzer took over last August as director of the Office of Government Information Services, which serves as an ombudsman between federal agencies and FOIA requesters. The office also conducts audits of agencies' FOIA operations and proposes ways to streamline those processes. Two sources said Holzer is returning to a position at the Department of Homeland Security, where he worked before joining OGIS, a part of the National Archives.
Politico

Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero last week rebuffed requests to formally designate the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation practices a “federal record” that must be preserved. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy had urged the Archivist to exercise his authority to certify that the Senate report is a federal record. “We believe that Congress has made it clear that the National Archives has a responsibility — as the nation’s record keeper — to advise other parts of the United States government of their legal duty to preserve documents like the Senate Report under the Federal Records Act, the Presidential Records Act, and other statutes,” Senators Feinstein and Leahy wrote in an April 13 letter. “NARA has refrained from interceding in this matter because the issue is the subject of ongoing litigation,” Ferriero wrote in an April 29 reply to Senators Feinstein and Leahy, referring to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU for access to the report. “As is routine with respect to any issue that is being litigated, we have coordinated with litigation counsel at DOJ handling the pending court case.”
Federation of American Scientists

One of the biggest databases of leaked documents has just hit the internet, and what lies within is a massive and complicated web of corporate ownership that spans the globe. The Panama Papers contain more than 2.5 million files, analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 112 reporters across 58 countries. Sunday’s data dump is just part of the picture, detailing the relationships between individuals, companies and offshore entities.
CNET News

Handing over 145 boxes full of of pennies and nickels, Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez has paid a $4,000 fine by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for publicly lying about his businesses dealings with a convicted jeweler. Hernandez paid the fine in coins Wednesday at a bank in downtown Miami where the county has an account. The money was to be transferred to the ethics commission to fulfill an agreement negotiated in early April.
Miami Herald


Editorials/Columns

In the face of new trends, mainly technological and economic, local newsrooms have reduced staffing significantly. There is less institutional and community knowledge available to understand the complexities and context of what the media is covering. And the media resources are simply no longer deep enough to keep up with the broader issues. In that vacuum, suspicion abounds. One result is the steady reporting of the day-to-day business of municipal governance has been replaced with short cuts and a preference for gossipy news. The initials FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) have become a verb. Reporters FOIA emails, texts and anything written. News stories about local government tend to the emotional side of our humanity rather than to the civic side. Many media prefer to call their work today watchdog journalism. The original idea behind the Freedom of Information Act and other similar open government regulations was that the citizenry should know what is going on in government and have access to the same information being used to make public policy and practice decisions. Over time FOIA legislation has been amended and amended so that it is more a tool of reporters for finding minutiae than a helpful instrument in developing good public policy.
Jim Oliver, Virginian-Pilot

The dismaying story of how Jamycheal Mitchell, arrested for stealing $5 worth of snacks, wound up dying in a Portsmouth jail has taken yet another dark turn. Officials at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail allowed video from outside his cell that might have shed light on how he was treated to be overwritten — despite a request from the lawyer representing his family that it be preserved. Jail officials say the video showed nothing untoward. But since they are the only ones who saw it, we will all just have to take their word for that. Not many people will be willing to do so. Nor should they be — not after an internal investigation of jail employees by jail employees found that jail employees did nothing wrong. The truth is that someone clearly did do something wrong, either through willful action or through negligence. A young man doesn’t just starve to death in a jail cell in a matter of weeks without someone acting in gross dereliction of duty.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Compounding tragedy upon tragedy, a state health agency says it cannot successfully investigate the horrific case of a man who starved to death in a Hampton Roads jail last year. The death itself was chillingly appalling: Jamycheal Mitchell, who may have been mentally ill, essentially starved to death, covered in his own waste, while officials of several different agencies apparently forgot all about him. But the reason the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services says it cannot complete its investigation is also chilling: It was stonewalled by the agencies it sought to interview.
Daily Progress