Transparency News 7/11/14 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Friday, July 11, 2014

State and Local Stories

Loudoun County is drafting a request for proposals for the county to contract a federal lobbyist to manage federal legislation that can affect Loudoun County. County staff estimates that hiring a federal lobbying firm to a full-service contract to manage the county’s federal affairs will cost approximately $108,000 to $168,000 in local tax funds per year.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

The 2011 ban on “earmarks,” or the inclusion of money for specific local projects in broader bills, has prompted a shift away from states paying Washington-based lobbyists to advocate for them. Now, more state lawmakers and other state officials are combining forces to advocate for themselves. A bipartisan group of seven state legislators from Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia also are lobbying on Capitol Hill today to push for the bill’s passage, according to Mick Bullock, NCSL spokesman. “Never underestimate the power of a one-on-one meeting with your elected officials, especially a meeting in Washington, D.C.,” Bullock said.
Governing

National Stories

A judge on Thursday gave the Internal Revenue Service until Aug. 10 to explain under oath how it lost emails that Republicans are seeking as part of their investigation into accusations that the agency targeted conservative groups. The emails belonged to Lois Lerner, a former I.R.S. official at the center of the investigation, and the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, assigned a federal magistrate to assist in finding the missing records. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group.
New York Times

Within America’s 50 state capitol buildings, 1,592 journalists inform the public about the actions and issues of state government, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Of those statehouse reporters, nearly half (741) are assigned there full time. While that averages out to 15 full-time reporters per state, the actual number varies widely—from a high of 53 in Texas to just two in South Dakota. The remaining 851 statehouse reporters cover the beat less than full time. Major findings of this study include: (1) Less than a third of U.S. newspapers assign any kind of reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. (2) Fully 86% of local TV news stations do not assign even one reporter—full time or part time—to the statehouse. (3) About one-in-six (16%) of all the reporters in statehouses work for nontraditional outlets, such as digital-only sites and nonprofit organizations. (4) Students account for 14% (223 in all) of the overall statehouse reporting corps. (5) Wire services assign a total of 139 staffers to statehouses, representing 9% of all the reporters at the capitol buildings. (6) Two indicators of the size of a statehouse press corps are the population of the state and the length of its legislative sessions.
Pew Research Journalism Project

Editorials/Columns

Henry Marsh is not the only delegate to prosper from unseemly maneuverings. This month Dels. Robert Brink and Algie Howell Jr. also received appointments to well-paying state jobs after retiring from the House. This flunks the smell test. It treats ascension to lofty positions not as the result of hard labor in a full-time career but as a reward for political loyalty. Marsh, Brink and Howell (and all others who have done the same thing) were not state employees but members of a distinguished institution that brags about its status as a body of citizen legislators. The practice may be legal but remains ethically suspect. It is wrong. And the solution is to remove legislative experience from calculations for pensions. In other words, senators and delegates would not be vested in the state retirement program based on their years in the Assembly. Marsh’s accomplishments speak for themselves. His retirement and the retirements of his colleagues speak poorly of Virginia. Welcome to New Jersey.
Times-Dispatch