Transparency News, 7/19/2022

Tuesday
July 19, 2022

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today's articles

"She simply made the wrong decisions, but made her decisions willfully and knowingly."

The Town of Lovettsville violated the Virginia Freedom of Information Act in failing to comply with a document request seeking material related to a councilmember’s post in a closed Facebook group, a Loudoun County judge has ruled. In an order issued Friday, one week after a three-hour trial, District Court Judge Matthew P. Snow issued a $500 civil penalty to the town clerk and awarded $89.44 in court cost and legal fees totaling $7,000 to the plaintiff, Caitlin Keefe. Snow issued a $500 civil penalty, payable to the Virginia Literary Fund, against Town Clerk Candi Choi in her official capacity. He noted it was the minimum penalty, as her actions indicated she sought to be responsive to Keefe’s request.  “The Court finds that all of Choi’s actions were made in good faith. Unfortunately, Choi’s actions on behalf for the Town were clearly unlawful,” Snow wrote.  “She simpl[y] made the wrong decisions, but made her decisions willfully and knowingly,” he wrote. In a statement issued by Town Manager Jason L. Cournoyer, the town characterized the error as a “technical violation” of the commonwealth’s open government law.
Loudoun Now

A defamation lawsuit filed last year by new Portsmouth City Manager Tonya Chapman, who was then chair of the Virginia Parole Board, against a Richmond TV station and one of its reporters has been thrown out by a judge. Chapman filed a $7 million lawsuit against WTVR-TV and reporter Jon Burkett in March 2021, alleging that two stories Burkett published about an investigation of the parole board by the state’s government watchdog agency included several defamatory statements. The lawsuit claimed Chapman suffered “great humiliation” and injury to her personal and business reputations. The stories focused on a 13-page draft report produced by the Office of the State Inspector General about the board’s controversial 2020 decision to release Vincent Martin, an inmate who had served about 40 years in prison for killing a Richmond police officer in 1979. WTVR was the first news organization to report on the document, which contained significant differences from the final report made public last year, including a critical finding about Chapman. Chapman did not participate in the decision to grant Martin parole. She said in her lawsuit that nothing in the first story explained that the report was a draft. She also said that sections of the draft report that dealt with her were not included in the final report “because they were not true.” In her decision to dismiss the lawsuit, Richmond Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline McClenney wrote that Chapman has not alleged “actual malice” in her lawsuit. 
The Virginian-Pilot

Norfolk’s housing authority is in dire financial straits largely because of its failure to downsize as the city government has taken over some of its duties over the past decade, according to an internal report obtained by The Virginian-Pilot. The internal report, commissioned by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 2021, revealed numerous problems within the organization related to overstaffing and its diminished role in city redevelopment efforts. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the NRHA provided the report to The Pilot, after initially refusing to turn it over.
The Virginian-Pilot

Since 2017, the Cato Institute alone has filed nearly 30 FOIA lawsuits against the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and Transportation, among others. But there is another, perhaps even more troubling problem with making FOIA work: government agencies destroying or even losing key records. One of the key offenders is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Over the last three years and in response to multiple Cato FOIA requests, the FBI admitted on over 30 occasions to having destroyed potentially or known responsive records on subjects of interest to Cato, and on at least 18 occasions outright lost the records at issue. Because of the FBI’s actions, historians and the public will know less about FBI surveillance of key historical figures and groups, from prominent anti-interventionists like the late Sen. Gerald Nye (R-N.D.) to religious organizations like the American Life League to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program or COINTELPRO.
Patrick G. Eddington, The Hill