Transparency News 6/9/15
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Virginia Coalition for Open Government View this email in your browser
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
State and Local Stories
The FOIA Council Meetings and Records Subcommittees and the Proprietary Records Work Group will meet June 17 and 18.
Virginia lawmakers hear the clock ticking on decisions about who will run the state’s vast information technology system after the scheduled expiration of a more than $2 billion contract with Northrop Grumman in mid-2019. Those decisions include whether to extend the contract, rebid the services for another outside provider, or return to the state serving itself — at a significant cost. “Making key decisions in the next 18 months will reduce the overall risk to the commonwealth,” said Eric Link, executive director of legal and legislative services for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.
Times-Dispatch
Smithfield Supervisor Al Casteen said a lack of transparency and an uncritical following of county staff by the board has frustrated him enough to drive him off the Board of Supervisors. He hasn't filed for re-election and will leave the seat he's held for two terms at the end of the year. "I'm just at the point where the frustrations of the job have overwhelmed the rewards," Casteen said. "I think the board now has kind of evolved into more or less following an awful lot (more) of the lead from staff than in the past," Casteen said. "In the past, the board was way more involved in the details, maybe than it should have been. Now, we're not as involved as we probably should be."
Daily Press
A former Franklin County General District Court employee is slated to go to trial next month on charges of embezzling public funds. Jennifer Nicole Phillips, 31, of Rocky Mount was indicted in January on three felony counts: forgery, embezzling more than $200, and committing embezzlement as an officer of the state and county. A judge from Roanoke will be brought in to hear the case at a bench trial in Franklin County Circuit Court scheduled for July 27, and Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Doucette has been appointed as special prosecutor. According to the indictments against her, the incidents are believed to have occurred in March 2014. Doucette said this week that the charges involved about $2,000 in cash and $2,000 in checks reported missing to Virginia State Police, but he declined to discuss the circumstances under which investigators believe the money was taken.
Roanoke Times
National Stories
When high-level federal employees break the rules, their misconduct is often swept from public view so agencies can avoid embarrassment. Some employees are then allowed to quietly retire rather than have to face the consequences of their actions. For the public, the secrecy smacks of poor accountability in government. At the Department of Justice last week, Inspector General Michael Horowitz took a step toward removing the cloak of secrecy around employee misconduct with a new policy: His office will post summaries of investigations on its Web site. In an e-mail to congressional staff, chief of staff and senior counsel Jay Lerner described the change as an “effort to provide greater transparency about investigative findings”
Washington Post
When she testified at a hearing last month in favor of making police body-worn camera videos accessible to the public, the District’s chief open government advocate, Traci Hughes, suggested the police department’s reasoning for limiting access to the footage was flawed. While Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier has said that editing the footage to make necessary redactions would be too labor-intensive for her department — and, as a result, no videos should be released to the public — Ms. Hughes noted that low-cost video-editing technology is so prevalent that the Metropolitan Police Department “will be hard-pressed to assert it does not have access to the very same technology.” telling Ms. Hughes that if she thinks it is so easy to redact the videos, she can do it herself. That was the suggestion made by Chief Lanier in a letter she wrote at the end of May to Ms. Hughes, the director of the District's Office of Open Government, offering to draft an agreement that would “vest your office the authority to review, redact and release” body-worn camera video in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Washington Times
A coalition of media organizations led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press prevailed yesterday in an effort to unseal documents related to the sentencing of retired general David H. Petraeus, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In April, Petraeus pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to one misdemeanor charge related to sharing classified information with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine. Although Petraeus's sentencing proceedings were public, his Sentencing Memorandum, which argued that the court should impose a sentence without prison time, was filed under seal pursuant to a local criminal rule. That rule requires parties to file under seal documents "which incorporate or refer to a defendant's pre-sentence report." In addition, dozens of public figures and officials sent letters to Magistrate Judge David C. Keesler urging him to impose a lenient sentence. Those letters were also unavailable to the public until today. The Statement of Reasons in support of the judgment was filed under seal as well.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Editorials/Columns
When she left Suffolk to take the Richmond job, Selena Cuffee-Glenn left Peanut City with a full wallet: A check covering about 337 days of accrued and unused vacation - well more than a year of working days. That amounted to $239,696.38, according to reporting by The Suffolk News-Herald, though taxes took a bite. If Cuffee-Glenn had been fired, that check would've nicely covered her job search and allowed her time to recover from the trauma of a political battle. But Cuffee-Glenn simply left Suffolk for a better job, as happens in every workplace all the time. For most folks, such an exit means giving two weeks notice, getting congratulations from colleagues and a cake and a check for a few weeks of unused vacation. Not almost a quarter-million dollars. The Suffolk arrangement was so unusual - and so golden for the former city manager - that trade groups went into hiding when asked to talk about it. Cuffee-Glenn had no comment. Professors didn't answer emails. Managers in other cities scoffed jealously at the idea; and none could identify another well-run municipality with a similar arrangement. (That includes Richmond, by the way.) The plain fact is Suffolk's City Council, in a quest to avoid making an expensive and embarrassing misstep, made an even more expensive and embarrassing one. Cuffee-Glenn got what she was entitled to and bears no blame in this. That belongs entirely to the eight members of the City Council in 2008 and 2009 who approved this deal.
Virginian-Pilot
It’s a measure of how deeply our privacy has been eroded that Washington’s new surveillance bill is being hailed as a victory. Indeed, it is a victory. But an incomplete one. The new law will curtail the National Security Agency’s program of collecting masses of data from Americans’ normal cellphone communications. The NSA said it did not automatically snare personal information, but the vast scope of the once secret program unnerved many Americans — from civil libertarians to lawmakers to average Joes and Janes. Congress has now moved to ensure that most data collection from phone communications must be handled on a case-by-case basis. That will require the NSA to justify its excursions into our phone records. Another victory was gained in the new law’s requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declassify its major decisions, or at least provide a summary if details are deemed dangerous to the national interest.
Daily Progress
No sooner had Americans managed to secure the right of liberty, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, in reining in the National Security Agency — however marginal such security might be — than we were confronted with a similar threat from yet another source. This time it’s the FBI that’s been surveilling us in ways potentially hazardous to our constitutional rights. The Associated Press reported last week that the FBI has been flying planes loaded with surveillance equipment over several American cities — including Washington, D.C., and locations in Virginia: Arlington, Fairfax, Garrisonville, Springfield. The planes have been listed as belonging to fictitious companies. Aerial surveillance is nothing new. But several new twists make these flights dangerous to the privacy of innocent Americans:
Daily Progress
Virginia Coalition for Open Government View this email in your browser
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
State and Local Stories
The FOIA Council Meetings and Records Subcommittees and the Proprietary Records Work Group will meet June 17 and 18.
- The Meetings Subcommittee will meet at 1:00 PM on Wednesday, June 17, 2015.
- The Records Subcommittee will meet at 10:00 AM on Thursday, June 18, 2015.
- The Proprietary Records Work Group will meet at Thursday, 1:30 PM on June 18, 2015.
Virginia lawmakers hear the clock ticking on decisions about who will run the state’s vast information technology system after the scheduled expiration of a more than $2 billion contract with Northrop Grumman in mid-2019. Those decisions include whether to extend the contract, rebid the services for another outside provider, or return to the state serving itself — at a significant cost. “Making key decisions in the next 18 months will reduce the overall risk to the commonwealth,” said Eric Link, executive director of legal and legislative services for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.
Times-Dispatch
Smithfield Supervisor Al Casteen said a lack of transparency and an uncritical following of county staff by the board has frustrated him enough to drive him off the Board of Supervisors. He hasn't filed for re-election and will leave the seat he's held for two terms at the end of the year. "I'm just at the point where the frustrations of the job have overwhelmed the rewards," Casteen said. "I think the board now has kind of evolved into more or less following an awful lot (more) of the lead from staff than in the past," Casteen said. "In the past, the board was way more involved in the details, maybe than it should have been. Now, we're not as involved as we probably should be."
Daily Press
A former Franklin County General District Court employee is slated to go to trial next month on charges of embezzling public funds. Jennifer Nicole Phillips, 31, of Rocky Mount was indicted in January on three felony counts: forgery, embezzling more than $200, and committing embezzlement as an officer of the state and county. A judge from Roanoke will be brought in to hear the case at a bench trial in Franklin County Circuit Court scheduled for July 27, and Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Doucette has been appointed as special prosecutor. According to the indictments against her, the incidents are believed to have occurred in March 2014. Doucette said this week that the charges involved about $2,000 in cash and $2,000 in checks reported missing to Virginia State Police, but he declined to discuss the circumstances under which investigators believe the money was taken.
Roanoke Times
National Stories
When high-level federal employees break the rules, their misconduct is often swept from public view so agencies can avoid embarrassment. Some employees are then allowed to quietly retire rather than have to face the consequences of their actions. For the public, the secrecy smacks of poor accountability in government. At the Department of Justice last week, Inspector General Michael Horowitz took a step toward removing the cloak of secrecy around employee misconduct with a new policy: His office will post summaries of investigations on its Web site. In an e-mail to congressional staff, chief of staff and senior counsel Jay Lerner described the change as an “effort to provide greater transparency about investigative findings”
Washington Post
When she testified at a hearing last month in favor of making police body-worn camera videos accessible to the public, the District’s chief open government advocate, Traci Hughes, suggested the police department’s reasoning for limiting access to the footage was flawed. While Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier has said that editing the footage to make necessary redactions would be too labor-intensive for her department — and, as a result, no videos should be released to the public — Ms. Hughes noted that low-cost video-editing technology is so prevalent that the Metropolitan Police Department “will be hard-pressed to assert it does not have access to the very same technology.” telling Ms. Hughes that if she thinks it is so easy to redact the videos, she can do it herself. That was the suggestion made by Chief Lanier in a letter she wrote at the end of May to Ms. Hughes, the director of the District's Office of Open Government, offering to draft an agreement that would “vest your office the authority to review, redact and release” body-worn camera video in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Washington Times
A coalition of media organizations led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press prevailed yesterday in an effort to unseal documents related to the sentencing of retired general David H. Petraeus, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In April, Petraeus pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to one misdemeanor charge related to sharing classified information with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine. Although Petraeus's sentencing proceedings were public, his Sentencing Memorandum, which argued that the court should impose a sentence without prison time, was filed under seal pursuant to a local criminal rule. That rule requires parties to file under seal documents "which incorporate or refer to a defendant's pre-sentence report." In addition, dozens of public figures and officials sent letters to Magistrate Judge David C. Keesler urging him to impose a lenient sentence. Those letters were also unavailable to the public until today. The Statement of Reasons in support of the judgment was filed under seal as well.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Editorials/Columns
When she left Suffolk to take the Richmond job, Selena Cuffee-Glenn left Peanut City with a full wallet: A check covering about 337 days of accrued and unused vacation - well more than a year of working days. That amounted to $239,696.38, according to reporting by The Suffolk News-Herald, though taxes took a bite. If Cuffee-Glenn had been fired, that check would've nicely covered her job search and allowed her time to recover from the trauma of a political battle. But Cuffee-Glenn simply left Suffolk for a better job, as happens in every workplace all the time. For most folks, such an exit means giving two weeks notice, getting congratulations from colleagues and a cake and a check for a few weeks of unused vacation. Not almost a quarter-million dollars. The Suffolk arrangement was so unusual - and so golden for the former city manager - that trade groups went into hiding when asked to talk about it. Cuffee-Glenn had no comment. Professors didn't answer emails. Managers in other cities scoffed jealously at the idea; and none could identify another well-run municipality with a similar arrangement. (That includes Richmond, by the way.) The plain fact is Suffolk's City Council, in a quest to avoid making an expensive and embarrassing misstep, made an even more expensive and embarrassing one. Cuffee-Glenn got what she was entitled to and bears no blame in this. That belongs entirely to the eight members of the City Council in 2008 and 2009 who approved this deal.
Virginian-Pilot
It’s a measure of how deeply our privacy has been eroded that Washington’s new surveillance bill is being hailed as a victory. Indeed, it is a victory. But an incomplete one. The new law will curtail the National Security Agency’s program of collecting masses of data from Americans’ normal cellphone communications. The NSA said it did not automatically snare personal information, but the vast scope of the once secret program unnerved many Americans — from civil libertarians to lawmakers to average Joes and Janes. Congress has now moved to ensure that most data collection from phone communications must be handled on a case-by-case basis. That will require the NSA to justify its excursions into our phone records. Another victory was gained in the new law’s requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declassify its major decisions, or at least provide a summary if details are deemed dangerous to the national interest.
Daily Progress
No sooner had Americans managed to secure the right of liberty, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, in reining in the National Security Agency — however marginal such security might be — than we were confronted with a similar threat from yet another source. This time it’s the FBI that’s been surveilling us in ways potentially hazardous to our constitutional rights. The Associated Press reported last week that the FBI has been flying planes loaded with surveillance equipment over several American cities — including Washington, D.C., and locations in Virginia: Arlington, Fairfax, Garrisonville, Springfield. The planes have been listed as belonging to fictitious companies. Aerial surveillance is nothing new. But several new twists make these flights dangerous to the privacy of innocent Americans:
Daily Progress
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