Transparency News 7/1/14
State and Local Stories
The current version of FOIA, effective 2014-15, is on VCOG’s website. (Note: there may be a future change to minor wording and numbering related to 2.2-3705.3(7))
VCOG website
Hundreds of new laws take effect Tuesday, and you probably won't notice most of them. But one would have caught just about everyone's attention if it hadn't gone into effect: The new state budget. It directs $96 billion in state and federal funding during the next two years. With Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the legislature's Republican majority at odds over Medicaid expansion, there was some concern they wouldn't pass a budget in time for the July 1 start of the state's new fiscal year. That would have put hundreds of thousands of state and local paychecks in doubt.
Daily Press
It's only fitting G.W. Mitchell's photograph will be displayed prominently in the Culpeper County Treasurer's office. Mitchell served as treasurer of Culpeper County from 1930 to 1970, winning 10 four-year terms to continue to serve the community that he loved. Recently, his son Bill and grandson Scott Mitchell came across an old photo of G.W. in the treasurer's office, then located in the front of the Culpeper County Courthouse. On Thursday, the Mitchell family presented the photograph to current county treasurer David DeJarnette.DeJarnette held up an old file at the luncheon, showing the county's budget from 1931. Weathered and beginning to yellow, the county's records are impeccably typed out on Mitchell's beloved typewriter. "My father would appreciate the way you're keeping the records," Bill Mitchell said. "It's no longer records in the cloud, you actually have them physically here."
Star-Exponent
National Stories
Nationwide, citizen participation in local government remains abysmally low. The National Research Center, a firm that conducts citizen surveys for more than 200 communities, compiled data for Governing shedding light on the types of residents who are most active. Overall, only 19 percent of Americans recently surveyed contacted their local elected officials over a 12-month period, while about a quarter reported attending a public meeting. In many city halls, extremists on either side of an issue dominate public hearings. Those who do show up at the sparsely attended meetings are often the same cast of characters week after week. But some public officials have found ways to reach a much wider segment of residents.Governing
The positive communication through social media tools during such crises as Superstorm Sandy and the Boston Marathon bombing have been well documented, but the real story is how social media is beginning to infuse (some might say “subsume”) the day-to-day lives of public officials. Social media may be a perfect way to bypass the not-always-reliable or malleable mainstream press. It offers a government or public official a way to connect quickly and directly with citizens and gauge the pulse of the populace. It is the ultimate in government transparency. Which is why the future of public-sector communication lies in clouds and ether -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and their ilk.Public officials had not only better get used to it, they’d better get good at it.
Governing
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn took the advice of good-government groups and vetoed a bill that would place extra burdens, and in some instances costs of up to $100, on people filing Freedom of Information Act requests. House Bill 3796 cleared the General Assembly by wide margins in the rushed last days of the spring session. It would allow governments to identify certain requests as "voluminous," delaying them and charging between $20 and $100 for electronic data. Quinn vetoed the bill Friday, stating that it penalized those "seeking to learn more about their government." His veto message was not posted to the General Assembly's website as of early Friday evening.
Northwest Herald
Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy? The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a "trade secret." The Red Cross' "trade secret" argument has persuaded the state to redact some material, though it's not clear yet how much since the documents haven't yet been released. As we've reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.
ProPublica
Government agencies that cite a particular reason for refusing a Sunshine Law request cannot cite other exemptions after being sued, a Missouri judge ruled last week. The Monday ruling in Cole County Court came in a case of a Missouri prisoner, Allaeddin Qandah, against the state Department of Corrections. Qandah, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, claimed a Missouri DOC employee intentionally damaged his Quran during a cell search. After filing the lawsuit, the ACLU requested certain documents pertaining to Qandah. The DOC denied the request, citing a federal regulation. The ACLU claimed there were 14 documents that both parties agreed were responsive to the Sunshine Law request. But the DOC changed its position in its First Amended Answer, citing three more reasons for denial.
Courthouse News Service
Just four years ago, the Supreme Court issued a hesitant and muddled decision in a privacy case, saying it was best to move slowly when ruling on an “emerging technology before its role in society has become clear.” The cutting-edge innovation in the case: pagers. That decision, and the occasional oddball question from the bench, earned the justices a reputation as doddering technophobes. But the final weeks of the court’s current term left a different impression. In major decisions on software patents, smartphones and Internet streaming, the justices seemed savvy. Now there is a new challenge looming on the docket for the term that starts in October, one that will require the court to consider how the First Amendment applies to social media.
New York Times
During last Monday’s congressional hearing into the Internal Revenue Service’s loss of emails, Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, offered what on first glance seemed a simple solution to archiving agency email: “I went on Amazon and found you could buy a terabyte hard drive for $59. Buy two of them, so $120.” If only it were that easy. Two large-capacity hard drives would indeed have provided the storage the I.R.S. office needed, but Mr. Farenthold’s proposal obscures the other obstacles the I.R.S. and other government agencies face. Federal agencies are hampered both by outdated and expensive computing infrastructure and by regulations that won’t require modern storage and retrieval techniques until the end of 2016 at the earliest.
New York Times
A Florida judge on Monday ruled against a libel lawsuit brought by acquitted killer George Zimmerman against NBC Universal, saying the network did not maliciously seek to portray him as a racist when it edited a phone call he made to police before shooting an unarmed black teenager. Florida Circuit Court Judge Debra Nelson said Zimmerman has no right to money from NBC, according to court documents. "Because Zimmerman is unable to demonstrate that the editing choices at issue resulted in a materially false change in the meaning of what he actually said, he cannot pursue his defamation claims," Nelson, who also presided over Zimmerman's murder trial last year, wrote in her summary judgment.
Reuters
