Transparency News 6/11/15
Transparency News is brought to you by the
Virginia Coalition for Open Government
View this email in your browser Thursday, June 11, 2015
State and Local Stories
Virginia's General Assembly districts, already under attack from a federal lawsuit, will face a new challenge in coming months: A lawsuit in the state courts questioning their fitness under the state constitution. The federal challenge alleges that the assembly's Republican majority packed minority voters into a handful of districts to dilute their strength – and boost GOP fortunes – in neighboring ones. This new suit will focus instead on the idea of compactness. Virginia's constitution says that "every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory." The state's current House and Senate maps don't meet that criteria, according to Brian Cannon, an attorney and executive director of OneVirginia2021. This group has been pushing in recent year's for independent redistricting reforms, with a goal of implementing them before the next round of redistricting: 2021, following the next U.S. Census. Between now and the end of August, the group will take that fight to the state courts, Cannon said. Wyatt Durrette, the former House delegate and Republican gubernatorial candidate, will handle the suit.
Daily Press
In an unusual move, the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors agreed to continue a Wednesday public hearing until another meeting in August. Wednesday’s hearing featured a special-use permit request by Shenandoah Properties #2 LLC — a sister company of Dynamic Aviation — for an airport support facility at 7487 Kiser Road in Mount Crawford. The facility, a remodeled dairy barn, would serve as a shipping and receiving center for the company’s Bridgewater airport 1.2 miles away. But the barn has already been converted and the facility is in operation, despite the lack of permits required prior to work being done. District 4 Supervisor Bill Kyger, who represents Bridgewater and Mount Crawford, called the public hearing to recess until 6 p.m. Aug. 26, when it would be reopened for more comments. Kyger said the move would allow him to meet with people who live near the facility and provide an opportunity for the board to visit the site. “Rarely is it done that we continue the public hearing process, and we do that in this particular case because we want to make sure we’re making the right decision for everybody,” he said. Kyger said he has questions that need answering.
Daily News Record
Nearly three months after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission visited Lovingston for a public scoping meeting regarding the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline on March 18, many speakers are saying there are holes in the transcripts. Comments made at scoping meetings, speakers are told, will become part of the official record that FERC weighs when considering whether to approve a project. Joanna Salidis, president of Friends of Nelson, said many of the opposition groups are upset after reading over the transcript of what they intended to convey to FERC, saying the message is so “garbled” that it is “literally incomprehensible.” A stenographer records the meetings, FERC spokesperson Tamara Young-Allen said, and the unedited comments become part of the formal record of the commission proceeding on the project. The transcription service is provided by a contractor, she said. The transcripts are read by FERC staff and placed in the record. They then can be viewed publicly online at the FERC Online eLibrary. Young-Allen said the transcripts are used to help prepare the environmental analysis for projects.
Nelson County Times
The Fairfax County Police Department plans to begin pilot testing body-worn cameras this fall as department and county leaders try to decide whether to invest in the technology. The Seattle, Washington, police department at one point had to put their body camera program on hold because of the impact of FOIA requests, and Washington, D.C., is considering exempting body camera footage from FOIA requests because of the time involved in processing the footage. “Body-worn cameras capture pretty much every police interaction,” Blakely said, not just activity related to a crime that would be subject to FOIA. Seattle ultimately ended up hiring a programmer on a trial basis last month to release blurred versions of all of its videos on YouTube, according to media reports. That means someone would need to edit the videos, blurring out faces of bystanders, victims witnesses or others who are captured on the video. Roessler said the department wants to be very deliberative about implementing body cameras to avoid the potential pitfalls of jumping on the bandwagon too early, as happened the first time the department tried to start using dashboard cameras.
Fairfax Times
National Stories
On Wednesday, May 28, the Maine legislature’s most powerful committee — the one that effectively controls the state’s $6 billion budget — was scheduled to meet in Room 228 in the statehouse. The printed calendar posted outside the large chamber said the meeting of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee would start at 1 p.m., but the more up-to-date electronic calendar in the lobby said the meeting would begin at 1:30. But at 1 and at 1:30 the chamber was empty except for a gaggle of middle school students who were getting a lecture on how their state government works. Just after 1:30, they filed out, but no committee members filed in. Some appropriations committee members were bypassing the public chamber in which their meetings are traditionally held and going through a private door that leads to a suite of small rooms.
Pine Tree Watchdog
James H. Billington, a leading Russia scholar in 1987 when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be the 13th librarian of Congress, will step down from his post on Jan. 1 after nearly three decades leading the world’s largest library, officials announced Wednesday. The move comes after Dr. Billington, who turned 86 on June 1, presided over a series of management and technology failures at the library that were documented in more than a dozen reports by government watchdog agencies. In a 2013 audit, the library’s inspector general warned that millions of items, some from as far back as the 1980s, remained piled in overflowing buildings and warehouses, virtually lost to the world. In addition, just a small fraction of its 24 million books are available to read online, 200 years after Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation for a vast national library by selling Congress his personal collection of books after the War of 1812.
New York Times
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's administration secretly diverted nearly $27 million in public money to off-budget accounts that paid for a $1.35 million trade junket tab, bloated advertising contracts, and a deal with a federally subsidized tourism venture backed by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Herald investigation has found. The maneuver to fatten the hidden "trust" accounts with millions from state quasi-public agencies allowed Patrick to skirt the state Legislature and evade state budget cutbacks during the recession, the Herald found. Records show that from 2011 to 2014, Patrick and his traveling entourage rang up a $535,558 hotel tab, $332,193 in airfare, $305,976 for limos and transportation and $175,000 in other costs. All told, it came to $1.35 million. The total cost of Patrick's overseas trips, including a $225,000 visit to China in 2007 -- before the trust accounts were created -- cost $1,573,949, according to records from the state's Housing and Economic Development office, which oversaw the accounts.
Governing
Government records stolen in a sweeping data breach that was reported last week are popping up for sale on the so-called "darknet," according to a tech firm that monitors the private online network used by criminals and creeps throughout the world. Credentials to log into the Office of Personnel Management are being offered just days after the announcement the agency's records, including extremely personal information of 4.1 million federal government employees dating back to the 1980s, had been compromised, said Chris Roberts, founder and CTO of the Colorado-based OneWorldLabs (OWL), a search engine that checks the darknet daily for data that could compromise security for its corporate and government clients, including government IDs and passwords.
Fox News
When Tulsa, Okla., launches its new 311 service later this month, the three-digit hotline will be just one component of what officials have dubbed as the “Customer Care Center.” Similar to many retail companies, the Customer Care Center will now let people request city services, ask questions and file complaints in a variety of ways. Besides talking with agents over the phone, people will also be able to chat with agents over the Internet, use social media to interact with the center and track the status of their requests online and via email. 311 services began in the 1980s as a way to reduce the number of nonemergency 911 calls. Today, more than 300 cities have a 311 call system. But call centers aren’t cheap. It costs an average of $3.40 to answer a call, with some cities paying as much as $4 or $5 per call, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. At the height of the recession, some fiscally stressed cities -- including New Orleans and Detroit -- decided the costs were too high and shut down their 311 centers. But advances in call center technology, known as "customer relationship management software," have created new options for contacting city hall while also automating how requests are handled. Sophisticated scripts do a better job of capturing relevant information, and routing software makes sure the request goes to the right department and then electronically follows it until the job is completed.
Governing
The House Intelligence Committee inserted language in the pending intelligence authorization bill that would bar access by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to classified information pertaining to covert action. "Nothing in the statute authorizing the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be construed to allow that Board to gain access to information the executive branch deems to be related to covert action," according to the new Committee report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2016 (section 306), published yesterday. To the extent that covert action is employed against terrorism and is therefore within the scope of PCLOB's charter, the House Committee action would preclude PCLOB oversight of the implications of such covert actions for privacy and civil liberties.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
Open government supporters may have just found two new allies. They happen to be mobile apps. Two new digital innovations – Meerkat and Periscope – could help to reduce citizen barriers to accessing information and events, making them the latest tool for furthering public participation in civic affairs. States should not only strengthen requirements for transparency in public meetings, but clarify the rights of citizens to record and broadcast their own video.
James Toscano, The Conversation
In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press from government interference. The New York Times and other newspapers interpret this to mean their editors are in a better position than Congress or an agency of government to decide what information, if published, would seriously damage national security. Do Times editors consider the Identities Protection Act unconstitutional because it prohibits their editors from deciding themselves whether to “out” these CIA officers? Nevertheless, personal freedom, including press freedom, will continue to be debated. Americans need to weigh carefully the relationship between their constitutional rights and the urgent need for the best intelligence, which requires secrecy, in order to ensure a continuation of those rights.
Donald Nuechterlein, Times-Dispatch
New congressional and state House and Senate district boundaries are drawn every 10 years after the census is conducted. The Republicans in the legislature today aren’t doing anything the Democrats didn’t do for years when they were the majority party in the General Assembly. But when district lines are drawn to favor one party, competitive district races disappear and incumbents are protected. That also applies to state House and Senate seats. All 140 seats are up for election in November, but competitive races are rare. In the House races, two-thirds of the districts will have just one candidate. In the Senate, nearly half of the candidates will be unopposed.
Free Lance-Star
Virginia Coalition for Open Government
View this email in your browser Thursday, June 11, 2015
State and Local Stories
Virginia's General Assembly districts, already under attack from a federal lawsuit, will face a new challenge in coming months: A lawsuit in the state courts questioning their fitness under the state constitution. The federal challenge alleges that the assembly's Republican majority packed minority voters into a handful of districts to dilute their strength – and boost GOP fortunes – in neighboring ones. This new suit will focus instead on the idea of compactness. Virginia's constitution says that "every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory." The state's current House and Senate maps don't meet that criteria, according to Brian Cannon, an attorney and executive director of OneVirginia2021. This group has been pushing in recent year's for independent redistricting reforms, with a goal of implementing them before the next round of redistricting: 2021, following the next U.S. Census. Between now and the end of August, the group will take that fight to the state courts, Cannon said. Wyatt Durrette, the former House delegate and Republican gubernatorial candidate, will handle the suit.
Daily Press
In an unusual move, the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors agreed to continue a Wednesday public hearing until another meeting in August. Wednesday’s hearing featured a special-use permit request by Shenandoah Properties #2 LLC — a sister company of Dynamic Aviation — for an airport support facility at 7487 Kiser Road in Mount Crawford. The facility, a remodeled dairy barn, would serve as a shipping and receiving center for the company’s Bridgewater airport 1.2 miles away. But the barn has already been converted and the facility is in operation, despite the lack of permits required prior to work being done. District 4 Supervisor Bill Kyger, who represents Bridgewater and Mount Crawford, called the public hearing to recess until 6 p.m. Aug. 26, when it would be reopened for more comments. Kyger said the move would allow him to meet with people who live near the facility and provide an opportunity for the board to visit the site. “Rarely is it done that we continue the public hearing process, and we do that in this particular case because we want to make sure we’re making the right decision for everybody,” he said. Kyger said he has questions that need answering.
Daily News Record
Nearly three months after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission visited Lovingston for a public scoping meeting regarding the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline on March 18, many speakers are saying there are holes in the transcripts. Comments made at scoping meetings, speakers are told, will become part of the official record that FERC weighs when considering whether to approve a project. Joanna Salidis, president of Friends of Nelson, said many of the opposition groups are upset after reading over the transcript of what they intended to convey to FERC, saying the message is so “garbled” that it is “literally incomprehensible.” A stenographer records the meetings, FERC spokesperson Tamara Young-Allen said, and the unedited comments become part of the formal record of the commission proceeding on the project. The transcription service is provided by a contractor, she said. The transcripts are read by FERC staff and placed in the record. They then can be viewed publicly online at the FERC Online eLibrary. Young-Allen said the transcripts are used to help prepare the environmental analysis for projects.
Nelson County Times
The Fairfax County Police Department plans to begin pilot testing body-worn cameras this fall as department and county leaders try to decide whether to invest in the technology. The Seattle, Washington, police department at one point had to put their body camera program on hold because of the impact of FOIA requests, and Washington, D.C., is considering exempting body camera footage from FOIA requests because of the time involved in processing the footage. “Body-worn cameras capture pretty much every police interaction,” Blakely said, not just activity related to a crime that would be subject to FOIA. Seattle ultimately ended up hiring a programmer on a trial basis last month to release blurred versions of all of its videos on YouTube, according to media reports. That means someone would need to edit the videos, blurring out faces of bystanders, victims witnesses or others who are captured on the video. Roessler said the department wants to be very deliberative about implementing body cameras to avoid the potential pitfalls of jumping on the bandwagon too early, as happened the first time the department tried to start using dashboard cameras.
Fairfax Times
National Stories
On Wednesday, May 28, the Maine legislature’s most powerful committee — the one that effectively controls the state’s $6 billion budget — was scheduled to meet in Room 228 in the statehouse. The printed calendar posted outside the large chamber said the meeting of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee would start at 1 p.m., but the more up-to-date electronic calendar in the lobby said the meeting would begin at 1:30. But at 1 and at 1:30 the chamber was empty except for a gaggle of middle school students who were getting a lecture on how their state government works. Just after 1:30, they filed out, but no committee members filed in. Some appropriations committee members were bypassing the public chamber in which their meetings are traditionally held and going through a private door that leads to a suite of small rooms.
Pine Tree Watchdog
James H. Billington, a leading Russia scholar in 1987 when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be the 13th librarian of Congress, will step down from his post on Jan. 1 after nearly three decades leading the world’s largest library, officials announced Wednesday. The move comes after Dr. Billington, who turned 86 on June 1, presided over a series of management and technology failures at the library that were documented in more than a dozen reports by government watchdog agencies. In a 2013 audit, the library’s inspector general warned that millions of items, some from as far back as the 1980s, remained piled in overflowing buildings and warehouses, virtually lost to the world. In addition, just a small fraction of its 24 million books are available to read online, 200 years after Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation for a vast national library by selling Congress his personal collection of books after the War of 1812.
New York Times
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's administration secretly diverted nearly $27 million in public money to off-budget accounts that paid for a $1.35 million trade junket tab, bloated advertising contracts, and a deal with a federally subsidized tourism venture backed by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Herald investigation has found. The maneuver to fatten the hidden "trust" accounts with millions from state quasi-public agencies allowed Patrick to skirt the state Legislature and evade state budget cutbacks during the recession, the Herald found. Records show that from 2011 to 2014, Patrick and his traveling entourage rang up a $535,558 hotel tab, $332,193 in airfare, $305,976 for limos and transportation and $175,000 in other costs. All told, it came to $1.35 million. The total cost of Patrick's overseas trips, including a $225,000 visit to China in 2007 -- before the trust accounts were created -- cost $1,573,949, according to records from the state's Housing and Economic Development office, which oversaw the accounts.
Governing
Government records stolen in a sweeping data breach that was reported last week are popping up for sale on the so-called "darknet," according to a tech firm that monitors the private online network used by criminals and creeps throughout the world. Credentials to log into the Office of Personnel Management are being offered just days after the announcement the agency's records, including extremely personal information of 4.1 million federal government employees dating back to the 1980s, had been compromised, said Chris Roberts, founder and CTO of the Colorado-based OneWorldLabs (OWL), a search engine that checks the darknet daily for data that could compromise security for its corporate and government clients, including government IDs and passwords.
Fox News
When Tulsa, Okla., launches its new 311 service later this month, the three-digit hotline will be just one component of what officials have dubbed as the “Customer Care Center.” Similar to many retail companies, the Customer Care Center will now let people request city services, ask questions and file complaints in a variety of ways. Besides talking with agents over the phone, people will also be able to chat with agents over the Internet, use social media to interact with the center and track the status of their requests online and via email. 311 services began in the 1980s as a way to reduce the number of nonemergency 911 calls. Today, more than 300 cities have a 311 call system. But call centers aren’t cheap. It costs an average of $3.40 to answer a call, with some cities paying as much as $4 or $5 per call, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. At the height of the recession, some fiscally stressed cities -- including New Orleans and Detroit -- decided the costs were too high and shut down their 311 centers. But advances in call center technology, known as "customer relationship management software," have created new options for contacting city hall while also automating how requests are handled. Sophisticated scripts do a better job of capturing relevant information, and routing software makes sure the request goes to the right department and then electronically follows it until the job is completed.
Governing
The House Intelligence Committee inserted language in the pending intelligence authorization bill that would bar access by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to classified information pertaining to covert action. "Nothing in the statute authorizing the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be construed to allow that Board to gain access to information the executive branch deems to be related to covert action," according to the new Committee report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2016 (section 306), published yesterday. To the extent that covert action is employed against terrorism and is therefore within the scope of PCLOB's charter, the House Committee action would preclude PCLOB oversight of the implications of such covert actions for privacy and civil liberties.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
Open government supporters may have just found two new allies. They happen to be mobile apps. Two new digital innovations – Meerkat and Periscope – could help to reduce citizen barriers to accessing information and events, making them the latest tool for furthering public participation in civic affairs. States should not only strengthen requirements for transparency in public meetings, but clarify the rights of citizens to record and broadcast their own video.
James Toscano, The Conversation
In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press from government interference. The New York Times and other newspapers interpret this to mean their editors are in a better position than Congress or an agency of government to decide what information, if published, would seriously damage national security. Do Times editors consider the Identities Protection Act unconstitutional because it prohibits their editors from deciding themselves whether to “out” these CIA officers? Nevertheless, personal freedom, including press freedom, will continue to be debated. Americans need to weigh carefully the relationship between their constitutional rights and the urgent need for the best intelligence, which requires secrecy, in order to ensure a continuation of those rights.
Donald Nuechterlein, Times-Dispatch
New congressional and state House and Senate district boundaries are drawn every 10 years after the census is conducted. The Republicans in the legislature today aren’t doing anything the Democrats didn’t do for years when they were the majority party in the General Assembly. But when district lines are drawn to favor one party, competitive district races disappear and incumbents are protected. That also applies to state House and Senate seats. All 140 seats are up for election in November, but competitive races are rare. In the House races, two-thirds of the districts will have just one candidate. In the Senate, nearly half of the candidates will be unopposed.
Free Lance-Star
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