Transparency News 6/23/14

Monday, June 23, 2014

State and Local Stories

Between two and five CSX tanker trains loaded with 1 million gallons or more of flammable crude oil cross Virginia’s midsection weekly, taking a west-to-east route to a Yorktown refinery, state records show. No railroad has previously revealed its oil shipping volumes and routes in the state. But the U.S. Department of Transportation last month told the nation’s railroads that ship flammable Bakken crude oil to notify states of oil-filled trains moving within their borders as a safety precaution, effective this month. The first notice, received by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management about June 4, was made public Friday in response to a public records request.
News & Advance

The members of the Richmond School Board would have cried uncle, if only they’d had the energy. After 18 months of pushing hard, working late and generally ignoring the clock, if one existed at all, they finally hit the wall last week. Two of the nine members made a public call for shorter, more efficient meetings and, in an oddly demure moment for the group, no one argued the point. “I don’t want to be deciding the fate of someone at 2 a.m., based on the fact that I want to go home,” said Derik Jones of the 8th District, one of the members who called for an overhaul of how the board conducts its business. “That’s not fair to the employee, it’s not fair to the public, and it’s not fair to ourselves.” One of the sticking points in Richmond has been the amount of time that members are allowed to talk about a given topic. Gray suggested cutting the time from 10 minutes per topic to five and, in a move unknown on the School Board, enforcing the limit. “I think that’s one of things we all have to learn, that we don’t win every time,” he said. “When you don’t win, you have to accept it and move on. You can’t allow a single person to keep us all there all night because they didn’t win.”
Times-Dispatch

Wednesday's report by Williamsburg-James City County Schools exploring the feasibility of housing an International Baccalaureate program in the James Blair annex appears to have reached a conclusion before it was written. Emails obtained by the Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that Superintendent Steven Constantino told senior administrators in a May 6 email, "I need the facts and rationale to shut this down. Please get together and finalize a rationale why having a 150 member IB middle school is not what we need." The final four-page report, titled "Repurposing of the James Blair Annex," was released to the School Board May 27, along with a note from Constantino saying "we are not releasing this report publicly at this time." It was released June 18 to representatives of the City of Williamsburg and James City County and the media.
Virginia Gazette

The group tasked with finding a place in greater Williamsburg where a new school could be built will meet Monday behind closed doors. That group, the seven-member Site Selection Committee, was appointed in May to advise the county administrator on matters of real estate for school construction. According to a June 19 email from assistant county administrator Adam Kinsman, the meetings are not open to the public or the press under the rules of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act. "Because this is a staff committee formed by the county administrator to advise the county administrator, it is not subject to FOIA," Kinsman explained in the email. "Even if it were subject to FOIA, the committee would conduct its business in closed session because it will be considering the acquisition of real property." Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said in an email to the Gazette that the Site Selection Committee's plan to meet in closed session is legal, but not necessarily the best idea.
Virginia Gazette

Outraged citizens who want to rid the county of current Halifax County School Superintendent Dr. Merle Herndon have planted very clear messages in their front yards from Volens to Halifax. The signs, some painted red and others painted green, bluntly say “Fire Merle Herndon” and have been strategically placed on lawns along the route Herndon travels from her home in Naruna to central office in Halifax. Responsible for the signage and behind the superintendent ouster campaign is a citizen, who when contacted for comment, asked not to be identified and refused to speak on the record to a Gazette-Virginian reporter.
Gazette Virginian

Tuesday's Portsmouth City Council meeting will begin - for the first time - with a blessing in Sanskrit, spoken by a Hindu statesman from Nevada. After Rajan Zed reads from the ancient scriptures, he will translate the prayer into English. City Clerk Debra White researched City Council minutes."From the looks of it, we have not had a Hindu prayer," she said. Zed describes himself as a global Hindu and interfaith leader. In July 2007, Zed received national media attention after three people shouted protests as he gave the first-ever Hindu prayer for the U.S. Senate. Since then, he has offered prayers for local, state and federal government groups to raise awareness and educate others about the Hindu faith.
Virginian-Pilot

Former Virginia state senator Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) has hired a veteran former federal prosecutor to represent him as investigators probe the circumstances of his abrupt departure from the state legislature, the attorney said Friday. Thomas J. Bondurant Jr., now in private practice in Roanoke with the Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore law firm, said he first talked with Puckett on Thursday about the matter. He declined to say whether Puckett had spoken with federal investigators or had been served with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury.
Washington Post

National Stories

Department of Veterans Affairs administrators knew two years ago that employees throughout the Southwest were manipulating data on doctor appointments and failed to stop the practice despite a national directive, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic through a Freedom of Information Act request. A 2012 audit by the VA's Southwest Health Care Network found that facilities in Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas chronically violated department policy and created inaccurate data on patient wait times via a host of tactics.
USA Today

Amid the discord and dysfunction in the nation's capital comes this curiosity: a more united Supreme Court. For the first time under Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court will complete its term June 30 with more than half the cases decided unanimously. Just five years ago, fewer than one-third of the cases carried that distinction. One reason for the Kumbaya quotient: less-controversial cases. The current term does not include anything as divisive as last year's same-sex marriage, voting rights and affirmative action cases. Nor does it have a marquee case, such as the 2012 showdown over President Obama's health-care law. Another factor could be afoot as well: Roberts has strived for agreement among the justices whenever possible, often by steering the court toward narrow rather than sweeping verdicts.
USA Today

U.S. Supreme Court justices traveled the globe, spoke at symposia on bankruptcy and baseball and collectively held assets in the tens of millions of dollars, according to annual financial disclosure reports released Friday and obtained by the Coalition for Court Transparency. The coalition is an alliance of media and legal organizations — including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — that advocates for a more open and accountable Supreme Court.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A bill rushed through the closing days of the Illinois General Assembly's spring session is drawing the ire of a good-government group that contends it will restrict the ability of citizens to get information about their governments. Supporters, though, said the bill is a way to help municipalities deal with a comparative handful of people who file excessive requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, tying up employees who could better be used doing other work. “It was intended to fix maybe an unintended consequence of people abusing the FOIA,” said Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, who drafted the bill. “It's not intended to hide information from people.”
State Journal-Register

The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service refused to apologize to Congress Friday for losing e-mails related to its targeting of conservative groups, saying it's still attempting to recover the data and it's too soon to know how many e-mails are missing. "I don't think an apology is owed," Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways and Means Committee. "Every e-mail has been preserved that we have."
USA Today
 

Editorials/Columns

Looks like the curious case of Norfolk's no-show worker will forever remain a mystery. Like the Loch Ness Monster or the Bermuda Triangle. No trial. No revelations. No explanations. Just one reeking, costly conundrum. A situation so bizarre, with incompetence so exquisite and a tolerance for waste so audacious, that it shocks the sensibilities. Almost four years after we first learned of it. The best excuse offered this week for the Community Services Board worker who was paid for 12 years without doing a lick of work was this: "The file got lost." C'mon.
Kerry Dougherty, Virginian-Pilot

The S.C. Supreme Court decided last week that government bodies don’t have to let you know what they’re planning to do. The court ruled that bodies like school boards, county councils and city councils can hold regular meetings without ever issuing an agenda, and if they do issue an agenda, they can change it on the fly and depart from it at will. What that means is that if the members of such a body want to take up an important, controversial issue, such as an unpopular tax increase, they never have to let anyone know that they’re going to discuss it. They can simply bring it up at a regular meeting and deal with it. Pesky citizens, who may have wanted to be heard on the issue, won’t find out about it until it’s too late.
Spartanburg Herald Journal

We don’t want to be guilty of overkill, but considering the content of Sunday's Commentary front — police wantonly killing pets, the Department of Homeland Security behaving like overbearing overlords — news concerning illegal use of surveillance data in Florida seems apropos. According to Wired magazine (“Emails Show Feds Asking Florida Cops to Deceive Judges,” June 19, online), federal and state authorities have been colluding to circumvent constitutional privacy protections. The deception appears to be twofold. If the government is secure in its belief that it is doing nothing wrong in using the technology — why did it tell police to lie about it to judges? And why did the Marshals Service seize other emails from local police to prevent the ACLU from seeing them?
Daily Progress