Transparency News 7/14/15

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

State and Local Stories


Citing a former city employee, ousted Richmond administrator Sharon Judkins alleges in new court filings that City Auditor Umesh Dalal personally disliked herand former Chief Administrative Officer Byron C. Marshall. The latest filing ahead of a scheduled jury trial in Judkins’ $10.7 million civil suit against Dalal and the city also refers to the hazy circumstances surrounding her departure as a “termination from the City.” Judkins, through her attorney, Verbena M. Askew, also said a former employee of Dalal’s could speak to his personal dislike of her and Marshall.
Times-Dispatch

The value of free dinners, tickets and tchotchkes bestowed on state officials and lawmakers in Virginia is declining but not disappearing, according to lobbyist disclosure forms released Monday. In the six-month period from November 2014 to April 30, 2015, lobbyists spent $456,418 — down from the $472,107 during the same period the previous year and down from the $540,609 spent from November 2012 to April 2013. But wining-and-dining activity during the lobbying-intensive months when lawmakers are in Richmond for the General Assembly session in January and February dropped only 7 percent, according to figures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in state politics.
Times-Dispatch


National Stories
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A judge has ordered the temporary halt of information in the case of a man charged in the shooting deaths of nine black church parishioners. Circuit J.C. Nicholson ruled Friday that Dylann Storm Roof's right to a fair trial "could be in jeopardy" because of all the publicity of his case. The order prevents information such as 911 calls, coroner reports, witness statements and mental health records from being released until a hearing on the matter can be held Thursday.
USA Today

Hillary Rodman Clinton will disclose the names of the supporters raising money for her campaign, a spokesman confirmed on Monday. The decision was communicated in recent days to her top fund-raisers, known as “bundlers” because they bundle together contributions from networks of friends and business associates. Because candidates can only accept a few thousand dollars from any one donor, campaigns rely on teams of hundreds of such volunteers to raise a substantial portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars now needed to sustain a competitive presidential bid. But federal law does not require candidates to disclose the names of bundlers unless they are registered lobbyists. That means it impossible to know the names of the people whom candidates rely on the most to raise money — and what industries and interests those people represent — unless campaigns volunteer the information.
New York Times

The Social Security Administration confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 300,000 Americans without giving those taxpayers sufficient information to figure out why their money was being taken, according to a new report by the agency’s inspector general. After The Washington Post reported last year on Social Security’s drive to collect decades-old debts from hundreds of thousands of people whose parents allegedly received overpayments, the agency temporarily halted the collections and the inspector general opened an investigation of the practice. The review concludes that in more than half of the 300,000 cases, the letters Social Security sent to taxpayers informing them of debts were returned as undeliverable. In almost 8,000 of those cases, the government went ahead and confiscated tax refunds due to people who had never received any notice of a debt, the report said.
Washington Post


Editorials/Columns

Incumbents are raking in the dough, including the 50 House members and 16 state senators without opposition in November. And the donations to political action committees, the twisted outgrowth of our campaign finance laws, are through the roof. Lawmakers would have you believe there's no quid pro quo in this system. They deny that just because Donor X gave tens of thousands of dollars to their campaign and their political action committees, and that Donor X's spouse and children did the same, that it won't influence their votes. Some unopposed House incumbents have so much to spare, they shovel it to House speaker, who just so happens to be the man who can name them to the committees that really attract the special interests' booty. For citizens, however, that doesn't come out in the wash. The flow of money into Virginia's political system gives the appearance of impropriety if not a clear indication of influence-peddling, and the commonwealth needs a better system to restore confidence in government.
Daily Press

A long tradition of First Amendment jurisprudence shields even hateful expressions from government reprisal. Neither Congress nor the states can punish people for writing racist things on the Internet, printing Klan literature, or joining the Westboro Baptist Church in waving “God Hates Fags” signs at military funerals. Other countries are not so liberal. Even England, which has a robust tradition of free speech, has banned American talk-radio host Michael Savage, as well as a controversial French comedian, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, for racially offensive commentary and jokes. After a man walked by Parliament earlier this month waving the flag of the Islamic State, there was an outpouring of demands for a crackdown on such expression. America’s approach is superior. The government should not be in the business of deciding which speech qualifies as hate speech in the first place.
Times-Dispatch

The story gets uglier. Many highly placed members of Congress and in the administration believe the data breaches were not common hacks, but rather the work of the Chinese government. That would make them acts of espionage. . . . By all means, blame the perpetrators. Find them, and punish them. If they represent the Chinese government, then take diplomatic steps against Beijing as well. But that doesn’t excuse the failure to adequately protect Americans’ sensitive information. And an inspector general from inside the agency already had warned about the depth of the problem. The OPM’s information technology systems were so vulnerable, he said, that last November he recommended that several of those systems be shut down immediately.
Daily Progress