Transparency News 7/13/15

Monday, July 13, 2015

State and Local Stories


About halfway through a line-by-line review of Virginia's public records and open meeting laws, there's no consensus on whether the law's biggest exemptions should be tightened in favor of more public access.After working for more than a year, two subcommittees combing through Freedom of Information Act exemptions have recommended a handful of changes. One would free up the subscriber list for a wildlife magazine published by the state's Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Another would eliminate an open-meetings exemption for local government crime commissions, because the review didn't turn up a single local crime commission in existence. But bigger discussions are queued up. Virginia Press Association Executive Director Ginger Stanley said she sees hope for some changes, if not the major ones some open-government advocates have pushed.
Daily Press

Unlike the departure of Botetourt County’s most recent school superintendent, the search for his replacement will be less public. By the time Tony Brads accepted a job as the new superintendent of Culpeper County’s school system in May, word was out in Botetourt that he was looking for a new job. That’s because school officials in Culpeper announced the names of their three finalists two weeks before they decided to hire Brads. As the Botetourt County School Board begins a search to replace Brads, its members are leaning toward a more private hiring process. Candidates might not apply for a job if they thought their identities would get back to their current employers and home communities, opponents of naming finalists say.
Roanoke Times

Citing communication problems, Norfolk School Board members withdrew support for the current "one voice" policy, which designates the chairman to speak for the board. The Norfolk board is the only one in South Hampton Roads with such a policy. The board discussed revisions at its annual retreat this weekend. Members said they want to build trust with people in the community who have criticized them for a perceived lack of communication after financial, safety and building controversies in the past school year. Norfolk board members often rebuff media requests for comment and sometimes don't publicly address concerns raised by speakers at board meetings. Speakers at public meetings also criticized former Superintendent Samuel King for limited communication, and some board members said they weren't fully informed of controversies until after The Pilot reported them. The board terminated King's contract in March and is searching for a new superintendent.
Virginian-Pilot

Nearly a dozen of the poll workers who staff the voting precincts in Botetourt County say they will stay home this November to protest a recent decision by the county’s electoral board not to reappoint the registrar who trained them. “As well run as elections have been in Botetourt County, how could Phyllis Booze not be reappointed?” Gail Bolt wrote in a July 4 letter to the electoral board informing them of her resignation as the chief poll worker for the Amsterdam precinct. “I feel the Electoral Board has made an egregious error and our county will suffer as a result,” Bolt wrote. With about 175 precinct workers on the county’s roster, the resignations of a dozen or so should not jeopardize the integrity of the elections, according to electoral board vice chairman William “Buck” Heartwell. “There is no reason to think that the election won’t be well -run and efficient,” he said.
Roanoke Times

The politicians piled in by the dozens to say it would create chaos to let stand a Virginia jury's finding that former Gov. Bob McDonnell was corrupt — a stance that shows they may be out of touch with voters' views on ethics, political scientists say. The jury's finding "would wreak havoc on the public life of Virginia" unless overturned, six former Virginia attorneys general from both parties, four of whom were elected, warned the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. "There is a very strong disconnection between what the Virginia public thinks is over the line and illegal and what the political class thinks is acceptable behavior on the part of public officials," said Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University.
Daily Press

Frank Goodpasture’s resignation from the BVU Authority board — 10 days after he was appointed to the post — has raised another round of public questions about the utility’s purchasing procedures. Goodpasture himself sparked some of the questions, because he did not want the business he owns, Goodpasture Motor Co., to be prohibited from selling trucks to the authority due to his presence on the board. However, current board Chairman Jim Clifton is employed by another major vendor for the authority, Crabtree Buick-GMC in Bristol, Virginia, and that firm has sold a number of vehicles to BVU after obtaining the GMC franchise from Goodpasture in 2008. Since that time, BVU has done more than $467,000 worth of business with the dealership — including purchasing 11 vehicles and service work. And, in some cases, Clifton, as an employee of the dealership, has signed the bid documents. BVU CEO Don Bowman, who took over in November, said in the wake of Goodpasture’s questions, he has reviewed the purchasing procedures and state laws and doesn’t see a problem.
Herald Courier

The Center for Digital Government (CDG) and the National Association of Counties (NACo) have announced the 2015 Digital Counties Survey winners. The annual survey recognizes leading examples of counties using technology to improve services and boost efficiencies. Here’s a look at this year’s first-place winners: Fairfax County, Va.’s open data portal creates transparency for citizens. The website’s budget pages include a glossary of all budget-related terms and acronyms and a training video to view the county’s operations and how tax dollars are spent. Chesterfield County, Va., created strategic planning documents such as Blueprint Chesterfield and the Information Technology Investment Model to align the county’s goals with the technology solutions, supporting county operations and creating cost savings.
Government Technology


National Stories
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With little public fanfare, seven federal agencies have announced a controversial trial program of publishing documents responsive to most Freedom of Information Act requests online. Under the program, known as a “Release-to-One is Release-to-All” policy, any member of the public will presumably have access to the result of almost any FOIA request. Few other details were released in a brief announcement posted on several agency websites. It remains to be seen whether there will be a delay between sending responsive documents to the requester and posting them for the general public, or whether requesters will simply be sent a link to a public website that already hosts the documents. The Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice is soliciting feedback from the public during the pilot program to determine the feasibility of implementing such a policy across the federal government. The announcement says that the results of the trial program will be made available to the public.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have been ordered to give depositions in a civil case investigating the pair’s growing email scandal.  Mrs. Clinton will giver her deposition on the morning of July 28 in Washington, and Mr. Clinton will give his the following morning, according to copies of the notices of deposition reviewed by The Washington Times. 
Washington Times

The spoils of hacking the U.S. government became clearer: more than 21 million Social Security numbers, 1.1 million fingerprint records, and 19.7 million forms with data like someone’s mental-health history, the White House said. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management in early June disclosed that it had lost 4.2 million personnel records as part of at least two cyberattacks in 2014.
The Wall Street Journal


Editorials/Columns

Pittsylvania County has been in the news lately, after the county Agricultural Development Board was confirmed as having broken the law in regards to FOIA and open meetings. This is really the tip of a large iceberg. What I found when I looked at the online records of this county might surprise you, but to me, it’s another day looking at a Virginia jurisdiction that is allowed to flaunt and disregard this law. Partially through ignorance of the law by the county attorneys in this state, the FOIA law is even less understood by the Judiciary. This case is the second example I am personally aware of where the judge in the case opined that the law had been broken, but that they would not punish anyone, “….because the law is complicated and they didn’t understand it….”
The Only Other Shoe

Unless we’re missing something, [the definitions of meeting and public agency in Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act] would mean, for example, that if there were a tiny town called Hicksville, Conn., and if that town had a dog catcher, the dog catcher’s budget, and any meetings at which that budget was worked out, are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. What are the chances, then, that the framers of that law meant it to apply to the Hicksville dog catcher but not to the University of Connecticut, its board of trustees or its president? And yet, the university’s budget this year — nearly $1.3 billion, of which nearly a third comes from the state — was crafted by a committee, behind closed doors, and finalized by the whole board, again behind closed doors. Altogether, there was about seven hours of to-ing and fro-ing over the plan, all sub rosa, according to The Day, of New London, and then it was formally rubber-stamped at a public meeting, without discussion. What’s the big secret? Apparently those who run UConn believe they can do this, legally, because they, in their wisdom, have determined that working behind a veil of secrecy serves the public interest, and because they consider the budget to be a draft, legally, until the board takes final action. And, of course, because that’s the way it’s always been done.
Record-Journal

It is time for the president to publicly support the language in the FOIA reform bills moving in Congress. Two bipartisan Freedom of Information Act bills in Senate (S. 337) and the House (H.R. 653) will codify the administration’s FOIA policy and guidance while strengthening citizens’ access to public information. Each contains language that closely mirrors the administration’s instructions on FOIA – which otherwise cannot be guaranteed to last into the next administration. These FOIA reforms are critical for achieving the unprecedented levels of openness promised by the president, on day one, when he announced that “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”
Patrice McDermott, Pensacola News Journal