Transparency News 7/11/13

 

Thursday, July 11, 2013
 
State and Local Stories

 

A lawsuit filed by a man who was arrested after stripping to his running shorts at a Richmond International Airport checkpoint to protest security procedures has been settled. Aaron Tobey of Charlottesville had claimed airport police and Transportation Security Administration officers violated his free-speech rights. Tobey was detained in December 2010 after partially disrobing to display the text of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment on his chest. The amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. The Rutherford Institute, which represented Tobey, said Wednesday that the settlement reached last month called for Richmond airport police to take part in a two-hour training course on the First and Fourth amendment rights of passengers and others, using materials provided by the institute’s attorneys. Airport officials also agreed to review rules affecting free speech.
Times-Dispatch

A growing number of Virginia leaders want tighter gift rules for themselves in response to avalanching allegations about tens of thousands of dollars' worth of freebies that donors gave Gov. Bob McDonnell and his family.
Virginian-Pilot

The second-highest ranking official at state Alcoholic Beverage Control was among those who questioned agents’ actions in the arrest of a University of Virginia student wrongly suspected of buying beer while underage. "What say you of the way these agents handled [the] situation and why so many in one spot please,” ABC Commissioner Sandra C. Canada wrote in a June 28 email to Shawn Walker, director of the agency’s bureau of law enforcement. “Looks really bad and lawsuit material." That message was among 234 pages of agency emails released Wednesday by ABC in response to an open-records request regarding the case of Elizabeth Daly. The emails provide further details about Daly’s April 11 run-in with a half-dozen ABC agents, a prosecutor’s decision to drop the charges and the agency’s scramble to respond amid a torrent of public outcry over the story after it broke June 28.
Daily Progress

Madison County is off the hook on paying a chief deputy and longtime Sheriff’s Office employee almost $200,000 in accrued leave time, officials said Wednesday. Madison supervisors in the spring set aside $200,000 in a contingency fund in case the county was liable for the payout. But officials have determined that the employee is exempt. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act defines exempt employees as generally salaried, making more than $23,600 annually and regularly supervising more than two employees. Sheriff’s Office records show the employee in question is the chief deputy, who is paid $68,900 annually. That employee had accrued more than 5,600 hours in comp time, officials said.
Daily Progress

Suspicious activity that has left a former Amherst County treasurer accused of mishandling public money was the result of separate incidents over a period of several years involving more than $30,000, according to the special prosecutor appointed to the case. Evelyn Bowling Martin, 59, was arrested June 11 and charged with two counts of embezzlement and one count of money laundering.During Martin’s tenure, the treasurer’s office faced other troubles. In 2011, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality threatened the county with a daily fine of $32,500 if the county’s monthly financial reports were not reconciled in a timely manner. At that point, the county was six months behind. Also, a Dec. 13, 2011 memorandum to the county from Robison, Farmer, Cox Associates, the firm in possession of an unreleased turnover audit, states the general checking account reconciliation for June 30, 2011 “differed from amounts recorded in the accounting system by $9,028.”
New Era Progress

Loudoun’s largest data center operator is expanding again. Gov. Bob McDonnell today announced that Digital Realty Trust, Inc. plans to invest at least $150 million by 2015 to expand and upgrade its Loudoun data center facilities and to create at least 50 new jobs—the minimum criteria required to qualify for the state sales and use tax exemption on its computer equipment.
Leesburg Today

Middletown Town Council lost another member this week. Councilwoman Donna M.G. Gray resigned Monday, Town Clerk Becky Layman said Wednesday. Gray submitted a letter that stated the resignation took effect immediately, Layman said. Gray gave no reason in the letter for her resignation. Gray did not appear at the Town Council's regular meeting Monday night. She was not able to be reached for comment Wednesday. Gray's resignation comes days after Councilman Clarence C. "Trip" Chewning III stepped down from his seat. Chewning resigned effective for "personal health reasons" after serving about a year on council.
Northern Virginia Daily

A longtime feud between Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors members Marshall Ecker and Coy Harville boiled over this week. Ecker, the board’s chairman, filed a Freedom of In-formation Act request to receive transcripts from a heated discussion with Harville during last week’s meeting in Chatham.
Star-Tribune

On July 9, Greater Tappahannock Supervisor and Chairman E. Stanley Langford provided the “Official Statement for Essex County Board of Supervisors” in regards to an ongoing investigation. The statement reads as such: “An investigation by the State Police was initiated when the County Administrator [Reese Peck] noted possible discrepancies in leave records in a department outside the County Administration offices.
Northern Neck News

Virginia police arrested libertarian activist and former marine Adam Kokesh on Tuesday night after he posted a video of himself loading a shotgun in Washington D.C.’s Freedom Plaza on July 4. In a statement, a spokesperson for Kokesh said U.S. Park Police and local police raided his Herndon, Va., home around at around 8 p.m., using “a battering ram to knock in the door after two knocks, and did not announce that they had a warrant.”
Politico
 

National Stories

The legal watchdog Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents revealing the Community Relations Service, a unit of the Department of Justice, was deployed to Sanford, Fla., following the death of Trayvon Martin to help organize rallies against George Zimmerman. According to the documents, from March 25 to March 27, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, Fla., to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
Washington Times

The Detroit Free Press is suing for the official U.S. Marshals Service mugshot of the city's corruption-tarred ex-mayor—and to overturn a new Justice Department policy that critics say ignores a federal appeals court ruling the newspaper obtained in 1996 declaring federal mugshots to be public. The lawsuit filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Detroit (and posted here) seeks the mugshots of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father Bernard Kilpatrick, and friend Bobby Ferguson. The newspaper requested the photos under the Freedom of Information Act in February of this year.
Politico

How much are your private conversations worth to the government? Turns out, it can be a lot, depending on the technology. In the era of intense government surveillance and secret court orders, a murky multimillion-dollar market has emerged. Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but with little public scrutiny, surveillance fees charged in secret by technology and phone companies can vary wildly.
Politico

The Iowa Department of Human Services’ Medicaid director says the agency isn’t ready to take a position on increased public disclosure of Medicaid spending by nursing homes. Advocates for Iowa seniors want DHS to demand more detailed information from Iowa nursing homes about how they spend the money they collect from Medicaid, the program that pays for health care for the needy. The advocates argue that the Medicaid cost reports the homes file with the state each year should be revised to specify precisely how much money is spent on trade-association dues and on legal fees associated with patient-care lawsuits and state fines.
Des Moines Register

Editorials/Columns

Roanoke Times: The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to speak freely in a public forum, but it does not entitle them to government assistance in getting their message out. In other words, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals does not have a constitutional right to string banners between the columns of the state Capitol declaring foie gras a noxious nosh. Code Pink does not have the right to slather the White House in sangria splash nail polish. And the Federal Communications Commission is not obligated to carve out air time for everyone who feels inspired to host his own talk show. Four federal judges have explained this distinction to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Virginia Division, in clear terms. The organization’s leaders should read and heed the court rulings and give up their quest to hang Confederate flags from Lexington’s taxpayer-funded light poles.

Times-Dispatch: McDonnell’s administration boasts accomplishments. McDonnell eased the process for the restoration of voting rights for certain felons who have completed their sentences and repaid their debt to society. He promoted accountability for schools that consistently fail to meet academic benchmarks. And he secured Virginia’s most ambitious transportation package since 1986. McDonnell rates as a consequential governor. The flood has the potential to overwhelm his reputation. We would not have thought it possible. This is tragedy.

Daily Progress: This isn’t a singular issue arising from a few scant, chaotic minutes in a darkened parking lot. It’s a cultural phenomenon, something engrained in the very fabric of how the public’s business is carried out in modern Virginia. It’s how university presidents get ousted, then reinstated by so-called leaders who awaken one day to the notion that bulls in china shops don’t get things done. They break things. Virginia’s heritage dating to Jefferson is that of a place where decorum is valued, and part of its value is in the idea of respect for others and a belief not simply in getting things done but getting things done in the right way. That heritage has been trampled in recent years by people in power who care nothing for it. Many in the state’s electorate are poised to enter the fall in search of an answer to an open question, akin to God asking, “Whom shall I send?” Only this time, there’s no one to answer the call.

Register & Bee: Trish Post is putting up a fight. The owner of Shhh… Intimacy on a New Level is fighting Pittsylvania County’s plans to close down her business. That business sells adult sex toys and lingerie. It used to sell pornographic DVDs, until Post voluntarily pulled that inventory from her shelves. The larger question to ask here is whether the county has gotten itself into another no-win legal battle. It’s one thing to say that we want the government to do certain things or to prevent certain things from being done, but quite another convincing a judge that the government’s actions were legal. Pittsylvania County has already lost one of those fights, and it may be gearing up for another losing fight.

Roanoke Times: The General Assembly is not due to redraw districts again until 2021. Senate Republicans tried earlier this year to force a vast rewrite of district boundaries through the legislature, but House Speaker Bill Howell derailed the scheme by ruling it out of order. The need for redistricting reform has not waned. But some advocates worry there are fewer voices demanding change. That’s why Charlottesville attorney Leigh Middleditch, a co-founder of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia, is working to reassemble and expand a coalition of civic, business and political leaders to mount a campaign for a transparent, bipartisan redistricting process. If reforms require an amendment to the state constitution, advocates could have three or more years of work ahead of them.

Kathleen Parker, Roanoke Times: As a courtroom junkie since my early reporting days, it is at great personal sacrifice that I suggest the following: It may be time to get television cameras out of the courtroom. Or at least, judges might be encouraged to exclude electronic media from high-profile trials. The excessive coverage and commentary we’ve watched in recent years may be good theater but bad for justice. Most recently, we’ve been witness to the carnival trial of George Zimmerman, charged in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. We’ve seen the families; we’ve met neighbors and friends; and we’ve heard the screaming on the recorded 911 call.