Transparency News 6/20/16

State and Local Stories

The text messages between the new assistant principal at Landstown High School and the 17-year-old student began innocuously enough. Jacob Miller, who had recently been promoted to the job, opened the conversation by asking the teen about his college plans and goals. He said he became a teacher because he preferred to work with students rather than adults. He told the boy he could get him a job someday if he pursued a career in education. Soon, though, the tone of the messages shifted, according to state records. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, The Virginian-Pilot obtained details about the case from a petition to revoke Miller’s professional teaching license that the school division sent the state Department of Education. The petition included a copy of the text message conversation between Miller and the student.
Virginian-Pilot

America has yet to elect a black president, according to most York County School Division government and history textbooks. That's because the division is using 13-year-old textbooks to teach K-5 history. The 7th and 8th grade history textbooks and the textbooks used in high school world history, United States history and government are all 10 years old. Most of the division's textbooks have been in use for half a decade or more, according to records obtained by the Daily Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. The records track the division's textbook adoptions, broken down by subject for elementary school, middle school and high school. The only books that have been replaced in the last three fiscal years are elementary school science and English textbooks, and high school math analysis, Advanced Placement (AP) United States history, AP European history, AP environmental science, AP biology and world language. The more than 30 other subjects remaining on the list all have textbooks that are at least six years old.
Daily Press

State Sen. Bryce Reeves, R–Spotsylvania County, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday for any communication between the governor’s office and Hillary Clinton’s campaign team on the topic of restoring voting rights to ex-felons. In a letter to Gov. Terry McAuliffe asking for the records, Reeves wrote that he was concerned the governor had “rushed” to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 former felons at the request of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign.
Free Lance-Star

The City of Virginia Beach has worked out agreements to recoup money from overpayments for utilities and cable television. Employees discovered in February that the city had paid $144,000 worth of electric bills for an office on Little Neck Road that it stopped renting 20 years ago. Since then, the account has been transferred to the company that manages the building, Palms Associates. An attorney for Palms Associates hand-delivered a check for $35,820 to the city on Tuesday, said Auditor Lyndon Remias. Legally, the city can only recoup up to three years of the mistaken payments, he said, but the check covers about five years.
Virginian-Pilot

Rockingham County Clerk of Court Chaz Haywood is continuing to save history, one page at a time. The Virginia Court Clerks’ Association recently awarded $13,940 to the Rockingham County Circuit Court from the Circuit Court Records Preservation Program to preserve three county record books. The program is funded through a $1.50 fee included with the cost of recording land transactions and judgment in circuit courts. Haywood received funds to preserve two court minutes books dating from 1797 to 1802 and Overseers of the Poor records from 1787 to 1867. He will work with Dallas-based Kofile Inc., which specializes in restoration and has an office in Greensboro, N.C. The records will be sent to the company and disassembled by hand. Each page will be scanned, cleaned, acidified and placed in plastic sleeves.
Daily News Record


National Stories
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An expert on New York's Freedom of Information Law is saying the City of Buffalo has more to gain in complying with a Freedom of Information Law request than a defendant has to lose in a federal civil rights case. This assessment comes in the same week the Buffalo News reported that the City of Buffalo Police Department denied a Freedom of Information request for the release of videos said to show a city jail attendant attacking a handcuffed inmate.  Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda is refusing to release the videos at this time, in compliance with a request from U.S. Attorney William Hochul to ensure Jaskula receives a fair trial. “In consideration of how much the public already knows, it’s difficult for me to envision how disclosure would either interfere with an investigation or deprive a person of a right to a fair trial, which ordinarily would be the case,” said Robert Freeman, Executive Director of the New York State Committee on Open Government.
WBFO


Editorials/Columns

This newspaper roundly criticized Ms. Dragas and her cohorts for deliberately avoiding an open discussion regarding a matter of such importance to the university, the community, the commonwealth. Imagine our surprise, then, when Ms. Dragas became the champion in another battle — this time standing up for freedom of information. When the Board of Visitors began to discuss “managing” internal conflict and dissent (read that as “concealing” conflict and dissent), it was she who stood up for the value of openness. She argued that the board should always put the public’s best interests first. Implicit in that philosophy is the understanding that the public must be informed about the deliberations of the governing body of its premier university. One-sided votes or public relations announcements are not useful to members of the public seeking to understand decisions from the university — decisions that affect their tax dollars. Ms. Dragas said any policy muzzling dissenting members would be “anti-Jeffersonian” and “antithetical to the nature of [this] institution.” She was absolutely right.
Daily Progress