Transparency News 7/19/16
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
State and Local Stories
The FOIA Council's subcommittee on records will meet tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:30 in the General Assembly Building.
Yesterday's FOIA Council subcommittee on meetings delayed acting on a proposal to require local governments to post meeting minutes online within three days of their final approval. When local government representatives worried about smaller localities without the ability to quickly or easily access their websites, VCOG suggested eliminating the three-day time. Two of the subcommittee members (Kathleen Dooley from the City of Fredericksburg and Shawri King-Casey from the Attorney General's Office) however, expressed concerns that the proposal was an unfunded mandate and was an attempt to codify what should be best practices. Subcommittee member Marisa Porto of the Daily Press disagreed. Because the subcommittee is short two members (due to term limits, two members stepped down July 1), the subcommittee agreed to postpone a final recommendation.
Prince William County Schools Superintendent Steven Walts recently received a 2-percent salary bump and a one-year extension on his current contract, bringing his total annual pay package to more than $413,000. The updated contract, now extended through 2019, was the result of Walts’ first evaluation by the newly elected Prince William County School Board, which gained a new chairman and three new members in last November’s election. Board Chairman Ryan Sawyers declined to offer details about the evaluation, citing concerns about divulging confidential personnel information.
Inside NOVA
National Stories
When it comes to government transparency, size doesn’t matter. Small towns or big cities, it makes no difference — all Delaware municipal governments must provide requested information in a timely manner and at a fair cost. They are mandated to do so under the Delaware Freedom of Information Act. But just because they are required to do so, it doesn’t mean they see many requests.
Delaware State News
The FBI is using antiquated computer systems to deliberately foil requests made under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, a new lawsuit alleges. Ryan Shapiro, a national security researcher and Ph.D. candidate at MIT, has been studying the Freedom of Information Act for years with a particular focus on noncompliance by government agencies. He already has multiple FOIA lawsuits in motion against the FBI, and earlier this month he filed a new one. In it, he describes numerous attempts to obtain information over the past two years, and the FBI's frequent response that it can't locate what he's looking for.
PC World
Attorneys for The New York Times and the Justice Department are due in federal court Tuesday as part of a lawsuit seeking to force the Pentagon to release full copies of more than a thousand pages of work-related emails Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent and received from his personal account. The lawsuit, filed in May but not previously reported, is the latest wrinkle in the ongoing saga over the use of personal email by top government officials. It’s an issue that has dogged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and led earlier this month to a stinging rebuke from the FBI for the former secretary of state -- but no criminal charges.
Politico
A federal judge is citing prosecutors' concerns about threats of violence in a ruling that'll keep many documents secret in the criminal case involving Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and a 2014 armed standoff with government agents. U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen says she found a credible risk that public disclosure of information that prosecutors will have to provide to attorneys for the 19 defendants might be used to intimidate witnesses and court officials. Leen's order, issued Friday in Las Vegas, doesn't apply to materials collected from the internet and other public sources. It rejects arguments by some defendants and media including The Associated Press, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Nevada newspaper publisher Battle Born Media that grand jury transcripts, FBI and police reports and witness statements should be made public.
KATU
Google said that global government requests for its user data had risen in the second half of 2015 to an all-time high. Authorities made 40,677 requests in the second half of last year, according to an update made to the company’s transparency report, up from 35,365 in the first half of the year.
The Hill
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is seeking authority to destroy recordings of staff training just one day after their creation. The agency, which is cooperating with federal investigators over allegations of staff abuse of inmates, destroying public records, and other incidents at its Irma youth prison, is asking the state’s Public Records Board to approve an update to the department’s records policy. The proposal would — for the first time, officials say — explicitly state how long the agency must keep recordings of employees participating in training designed to improve performance.
Wisconsin State Journal
State and Local Stories
The FOIA Council's subcommittee on records will meet tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:30 in the General Assembly Building.
Yesterday's FOIA Council subcommittee on meetings delayed acting on a proposal to require local governments to post meeting minutes online within three days of their final approval. When local government representatives worried about smaller localities without the ability to quickly or easily access their websites, VCOG suggested eliminating the three-day time. Two of the subcommittee members (Kathleen Dooley from the City of Fredericksburg and Shawri King-Casey from the Attorney General's Office) however, expressed concerns that the proposal was an unfunded mandate and was an attempt to codify what should be best practices. Subcommittee member Marisa Porto of the Daily Press disagreed. Because the subcommittee is short two members (due to term limits, two members stepped down July 1), the subcommittee agreed to postpone a final recommendation.
Prince William County Schools Superintendent Steven Walts recently received a 2-percent salary bump and a one-year extension on his current contract, bringing his total annual pay package to more than $413,000. The updated contract, now extended through 2019, was the result of Walts’ first evaluation by the newly elected Prince William County School Board, which gained a new chairman and three new members in last November’s election. Board Chairman Ryan Sawyers declined to offer details about the evaluation, citing concerns about divulging confidential personnel information.
Inside NOVA
National Stories
When it comes to government transparency, size doesn’t matter. Small towns or big cities, it makes no difference — all Delaware municipal governments must provide requested information in a timely manner and at a fair cost. They are mandated to do so under the Delaware Freedom of Information Act. But just because they are required to do so, it doesn’t mean they see many requests.
Delaware State News
The FBI is using antiquated computer systems to deliberately foil requests made under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, a new lawsuit alleges. Ryan Shapiro, a national security researcher and Ph.D. candidate at MIT, has been studying the Freedom of Information Act for years with a particular focus on noncompliance by government agencies. He already has multiple FOIA lawsuits in motion against the FBI, and earlier this month he filed a new one. In it, he describes numerous attempts to obtain information over the past two years, and the FBI's frequent response that it can't locate what he's looking for.
PC World
Attorneys for The New York Times and the Justice Department are due in federal court Tuesday as part of a lawsuit seeking to force the Pentagon to release full copies of more than a thousand pages of work-related emails Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent and received from his personal account. The lawsuit, filed in May but not previously reported, is the latest wrinkle in the ongoing saga over the use of personal email by top government officials. It’s an issue that has dogged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and led earlier this month to a stinging rebuke from the FBI for the former secretary of state -- but no criminal charges.
Politico
A federal judge is citing prosecutors' concerns about threats of violence in a ruling that'll keep many documents secret in the criminal case involving Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and a 2014 armed standoff with government agents. U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen says she found a credible risk that public disclosure of information that prosecutors will have to provide to attorneys for the 19 defendants might be used to intimidate witnesses and court officials. Leen's order, issued Friday in Las Vegas, doesn't apply to materials collected from the internet and other public sources. It rejects arguments by some defendants and media including The Associated Press, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Nevada newspaper publisher Battle Born Media that grand jury transcripts, FBI and police reports and witness statements should be made public.
KATU
Google said that global government requests for its user data had risen in the second half of 2015 to an all-time high. Authorities made 40,677 requests in the second half of last year, according to an update made to the company’s transparency report, up from 35,365 in the first half of the year.
The Hill
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is seeking authority to destroy recordings of staff training just one day after their creation. The agency, which is cooperating with federal investigators over allegations of staff abuse of inmates, destroying public records, and other incidents at its Irma youth prison, is asking the state’s Public Records Board to approve an update to the department’s records policy. The proposal would — for the first time, officials say — explicitly state how long the agency must keep recordings of employees participating in training designed to improve performance.
Wisconsin State Journal
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