Tuesday, June 23, 2015
State and Local Stories
NOTE: According to reporter Hawes Spencer, Attorney General Mark Herring will post the promised responses to the Save Sweet Briar FOIA requests online on Wednesday. The delay thus far, according to Spencer, is the product of “technology problems.”
John Atkinson figured 37 years as Virginia Beach treasurer gave him the credibility, the light-rail price tag gave him the anger, and his private checkbook gave him the right to air his feelings in a public way. And if anybody doesn't like it, well, that's just the way it goes. "I had a story to tell, and this was the only way I could get it out to everyone at once," Atkinson said of a half-page advertisement in Sunday's Beacon, a community news section that goes to Virginia Beach readers of The Virginian-Pilot. The ad called for residents to rally against the proposed 3-mile light-rail extension to Town Center. Final approval is at least a year away, but the council added $20 million to this year's budget to keep the project alive. "There is really no organized opposition to this," Atkinson said Monday. "I've been in this business a long time, and the only thing that's going to get Council to take notice is if you show up with a large carton of ballots. That's what I'm hoping to do." In his newspaper ad, Atkinson – who made no mention of his elected position – said the city could provide bus service for much cheaper and suggested that for the same money, the city could give each of the 1,100 riders a $50,000 car. "I could have set up a website, but I wanted to make it difficult for people to respond. It will show their commitment. We'll find out."
Virginian-Pilot
Virginia state leaders are considering ways to open up a government that's notorious for concealing documents and information. The process will include examining each and every exemption of the state's Freedom of Information Act. Want to get the police report for a crime that happened on your block? Forget about it. That's a secret document shielded from view, even after the case is closed. How about the email sent by a university president? Nope. Internal memos from your state senator? Those are secret too. Megan Rhyne at the Virginia Coalition for Open Government says hundreds of public employees have exemptions that conceals their working papers and correspondence.
WAMU
Scores of people asked for more time to comment. Their ranks included residents, local officials, federal and state legislators and environmental and conservation groups. Most also asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold at least one more public scoping meeting in Virginia to solicit input for a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline. But FERC Chairman Norman Bay has nixed those possibilities in letters dated June 18, two days after the scoping deadline passed. Bay said the commission would not extend beyond June 16 the formal scoping period for the 42-inch-diameter, 300-mile natural gas pipeline. Bay’s stance also ruled out additional public scoping meetings.
Roanoke Times
Harrisonburg residents can weigh in at a public hearing tonight on how members of the School Board should be elected. City Council will accept comments on the matter during a hearing at its 7 p.m. meeting in the council chambers, 409 S. Main St. Comments should focus on how city code should be amended — if at all — to govern the method of electing members of the School Board. Mary-Hope Vass, spokeswoman for the city, could not confirm when council might vote on the issue. She said it could be tonight or at another meeting. The School Board election process came under fire earlier this year when it was discovered that one of its members, Dany Fleming, lived in a different district than the one he represented.
Daily News Record
A former Abingdon assistant town manager pleaded guilty Monday to making more than $76,400 in personal purchases using a town credit card. William Garrett Jackson, 38, formerly of Abingdon, pleaded guilty to one count of theft from a program receiving federal funds. He made those purchases between August 2007 and July 2014 with a credit card linked to a federal program. His plea came during an afternoon hearing in U.S. District Court. ackson, appearing with his attorney, Randall Eads, admitted his guilt to Judge James P. Jones, waived his right to a trial and agreed to terms of the plea. “Mr. Jackson made hundreds of purchases of goods and services for personal use — not approved by the town of Abingdon. Those unauthorized purchases totaled $76,440,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin James said during the hearing. Those purchases included vacations in Virginia and other states, a Netflix account, paying his personal cell phone bill, groceries, meals, electronics and gifts for friends and family, James told the judge. Jackson claimed them as “legitimate business expenses” and provided false records of the purchases, James said.
Herald Courier
National Stories
Citing a federal law that has been on the books for 21 years, the Arkansas State Police began earlier this month withholding nearly all personal information from vehicle crash reports available to the public. The agency contends the 1994 Drivers Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits personal information from motor vehicle reports from being made public, also covers police crash reports. New reporting software makes it reasonable for the department to begin complying with the law, spokesman Bill Sadler said. Before, manually redacting the information on thousands of crash reports was too much of an administrative burden. The new policy means the only personal information available on state police crash reports are the names and hometowns of fatalities. All other information, including the names of other drivers and passengers, is withheld.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
As the 2016 presidential campaign gets into gear, one of the biggest debates so far has been about the debates. For some Democrats, such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, there aren’t enough planned. For lesser-known Republicans, the polling criteria could make it difficult for them to even get on the stage. Now advocates for third-party groups are making the case that the election laws are rigged to make it impossible for candidates who are not Republicans or Democrats to ever get elected. The advocates, which include Level the Playing Field, the Green Party of the United States and the Libertarian National Committee, filed a lawsuit Monday against the Federal Election Commission, accusing the agency of failing to fairly regulate the debate process.
New York Times
The Supreme Court battled modern technology again Monday and, as usual, the court won. A CNN intern violated court rules by using a GoPro camera strapped to his chest to record inside the court’s Public Information Office. CNN quickly apologized since recording devices aren’t just barred from the court itself but also both its press room and Public Information Office next door. “We profusely apologize to the court,” CNN said. The court doesn’t allow TV cameras despite years of calls to do so. The justices tend to be split on the matter but are swimming against a modern tide. Cameras are increasingly common in courts worldwide and in the U.S., notably in all 50 states, where some form of audio or video coverage is allowed.
Poynter
Editorials/Columns
The U.S. Supreme Court continues to draw the lines for free speech roughly where they ought to be drawn. Last week, it ruled that government can limit what goes on a license plate — but cannot impose different sets of rules for private signs based solely on their content. The first case upheld a Texas decision to deny specialty plates to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. As Justice Stephen Breyer said, license plates are essentially government IDs, and thus a form of government speech — and the government has the authority to decide what it will or will not say. People who want to express their opinions on their cars remain free to do so by other means, such as bumper stickers. While that seems logical, it leaves open the alarming possibility of state governments giving their imprimatur to some causes at the expense of others, such as by approving anti-abortion specialty plates but not pro-abortion rights ones (or vice versa). It would be better if states got out of the vanity-plate business altogether.
Times-Dispatch
The façade of the U.S. Supreme Court building features four words which encapsulate the principal expectation of the American legal system: Equal justice under law. As a nation, we believe that each citizen, regardless of wealth, race, power or pedigree, deserves fairness in a courtroom. But ensuring that the court system upholds that ideal is a challenge, especially when judicial records cannot be easily obtained. In Virginia, there is no formal mechanism for reviewing the performance of the state courts. There is no institution that looks for patterns in how justice is meted out. If systematic bias exists in Virginia's legal system, there is no way to identify it and root it out. That is why access to a record maintained by the Virginia Supreme Court's Office of the Executive Secretary is so important. We're in this fight so that all Virginians can clear view of our justice system. That's why we expect to win, and why we encourage you to let your legislators, your circuit court clerks and Attorney General Mark Herring know that you agree with us.
Daily Press
By now, officials from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have said no to extending the comment periods for both the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Part of their argument is understandable. They came to multiple locations in the Shenandoah Valley, listened to and recorded arguments both for and against the projects. What good will one more trip do? Actually, it would do a lot of good, because when you make mistakes, you need to correct them. The transcripts are hard to read, especially if you’ve been to any of these meetings. The transcripts have opponents of the pipelines speaking in a type of nonsense language, which is clearly a mistake. Reporters at the meetings, who recorded the arguments, can play back the conversations and see a different presentation. If something is going into the federal record as a reason people are for or against a pipeline, then it needs to be their own words. Agree or disagree with the statements made, they should be entered in as is. And when that doesn’t happen, as is the case with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline meetings, then there needs to be another event, allowing people to clarify what they meant.
News Virginian