Transparency News 7/25/17

Tuesday, July 25, 2017



State and Local Stories

The Richmond City Council approved an exit package worth nearly $400,000 to secure former City Auditor Umesh Dalal's resignation last week amid scrutiny of his job performance. It’s the largest severance package paid out by the city in recent memory. Council President Chris Hilbert revealed the number Monday, after initially saying the details of Dalal’s departure would remain confidential. Asked why the payment was so large compared with other severance packages, Hilbert said the council agreed to terms proposed by Dalal. The council's decision to approve the payout took place in a closed meeting last week. The decision was not unanimous, with three council members voting against it on grounds that it was too high: Parker C. Agelasto, Kim Gray and Kristen Larson.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Hampton woman was convicted of election fraud last week — with a Circuit Court jury finding she intentionally used an incorrect election date on a fictitious campaign website. Mary Patricia Taylor, 57, was convicted in Hampton General District Court last fall of the misdemeanor charge of "communicating false information to registered voters." A judge at the time fined her $1,000 and ordered her to perform 100 hours of community service. But Taylor appealed that decision to the Hampton Circuit Court — and opted for a jury trial. After a morning of testimony July 17, a jury of four men and three women found Taylor guilty of the charge, said Gloucester Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Megan C. Zwisohn, a special prosecutor handling the case after the Hampton prosecutors office recused itself.
Daily Press

When Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport applied for the federal money that later briefly launched People Express Airlines, then-Executive Director Ken Spirito promised major local financial support — but without asking any of the bodies that would provide it. Peninsula Airport Commission minutes show the commission never approved anything like that.
Daily Press

Judge Kurt Pomrenke told a judicial review panel last month he was “dead wrong” for contacting potential witnesses prior to his wife’s trial on corruption charges. Pomrenke, 63, a juvenile and domestic relations court judge for Bristol, Virginia, Washington and Smyth counties, made that assertion and others during a June 13 evidentiary hearing before the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission of Virginia. The Bristol Herald Courier obtained a copy of the transcript of the hearing in Richmond.
Herald Courier


National Stories
​

Residents paid state government agencies at least $891,246 over the last three years to receive public records.  The Michigan State Police took in the overwhelming majority of that money, mostly through the $10-a-pop criminal background checks it provides, according to records provided to the State Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request.   The actual statewide revenue over those years is likely higher. Four state agencies could not provide the number of requests that required fees, while three were unable to report the amount of revenue from FOIA fees collected in 2014 or 2015. 
Lansing State Journal

A federal judge on Monday allowed President Donald Trump's voting commission to go forward with collecting voter data from 50 states and the District of Columbia, ruling the White House advisory panel is exempt from federal privacy review requirements whatever additional risk it might pose to Americans' information.
Martinsville Bulletin

The National Archives on Monday made public over 400 previously unreleased documents related to the CIA and FBI's investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Among the 441 materials released include 17 audio files of interviews of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the United States in January 1964. Nosenko claimed to be the officer in charge of the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald during Oswald's time in the Soviet Union. Other documents released include items related to the probe of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination who was murdered five years after President Kennedy was killed, in 1968. A 1992 law requires that the National Archives to preserve the approximately 5 million pages of records surrounding the investigation. Most of the records have been available to the public since the late 1990s. 
Fox News

Six months into his presidency, the expected “War on Data” hasn’t materialized. In fact, according to the Sunlight Foundation, which has been tracking the issue closely, just one main dataset has gone down since Inauguration Day—a database on violators of two animal protection laws, whose removal was already under consideration before Trump took office. All climate data remain online. The Environmental Protection Agency even posted an exact, fully clickable replica of its website as it stood on January 19, the last day of Obama's presidency—a step toward transparency that surprised many observers.
Politico