Transparency News 7/27/15
Monday, July 27, 2015
State and Local Stories
The City of Portsmouth’s auditor, who did not complete any audits in his first year and a half, has missed self-imposed deadlines to produce two that he promised. The Virginian-Pilot filed a Freedom of Information Act request to Auditor Jesse Andre Thomas for his reviews of billing and customer service in the Public Utilities Department and a full audit of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare Services. In response to the request, Thomas claimed an exemption that covers "Investigative notes, correspondence and information furnished in confidence, and records" of the city auditor.
Virginian-Pilot
The rift between Botetourt County’s voter registrar and its electoral board was purely political, former Registrar Phyllis Booze asserted in a lawsuit filed Friday claiming she was let go for partisan reasons. Because she is a Republican, Booze claimed, the two Democrats on the three-member board voted not to reappoint her in June to another four-year term. In her lawsuit, filed in Roanoke’s federal court against electoral board members William “Buck” Heartwell and Paul Fitzgerald, Booze seeks lost wages, compensation for emotional suffering and her job back. While much has been made of the point that Booze’s two detractors on the board are Democrats, the lawsuit is believed to be the first public statement of how her political affiliation factored into their long-running tense relationship.
Roanoke Times
National Stories
One image shows Vice President Dick Cheney watching his television, smoke and flames rising from the twin towers. In another, he stares straight ahead, his face reddened. And a third shows Cheney and his wife, Lynne, exiting the Marine 2 helicopter at a location not disclosed that day, now known to be Camp David. All three images are part of a group of previously unseen photographs of President Bush, Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other White House staffers in the moments and hours after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, a third tore into the Pentagon and a fourth hurtled into an empty Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. The images were released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information request received by the National Archives from Colette Neirouz Hanna of the Kirk Documentary Group.
Daily Press
At least four emails Hillary Clinton kept on a private server during her years as Secretary of State were classified “secret” at the time, according to an inspector general review — a finding that calls into question her assertion in March that she took care to avoid sending classified materials. However, suggestions from Clinton aides that she didn’t knowingly keep classified information on the private account still have some life. So far, it appears none of the information was marked as classified before it moved into or out of her home-cooked email system, but that caveat has not stemmed Republican complaints that it was reckless for her to handle her sensitive work on a private system.“None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included [Intelligence Community]-derived classified information and should have been handled and transmitted via a secure network,” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said in a letter to congressional committee leaders. McCullough said in the letter that he found that one of State’s public releases of emails in recent months under the Freedom of Information Act resulted in disclosure of classified information. While the inspector general said the intelligence community had made “a definitive determination” that the information was classified, State has continued to deny that any breaches occurred when the agency posted several thousand pages of Clinton emails on its website in May and June. Other documents made public Friday show the classification issue triggered debate even within the agency. Some at State wanted to deem even more of Clinton’s emails classified than the agency ultimately did, according to a memo from McCullough’s office posted online by the department’s inspector general.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
The General Assembly has now passed a bill that will raise the threshold for private partnerships, requiring a more compelling public interest before the state invests. That should help prevent public-private projects that exist primarily as investment vehicles rather than serving a clear public need. The new rules mean these contracts should also have greater transparency.Following that principle should make the Elizabeth River tunnels deal the last in which the state, in secret, gives away everything to build something. For every public-private partnership designed to save the state money by leveraging private-sector efficiencies, there is a proposal that seeks nothing more than to insert public money into private pockets.
Virginian-Pilot
The fight might be in California, but the fallout could affect police policies and public information nationwide. Police in Gardena, California, say they will challenge a judge’s ruling releasing video images taken during an officer’s shooting of an unarmed man. At stake are issues of: individual privacy; the public’s right to know; the importance of protecting evidence in investigations; law enforcement’s desire to guard its own from adverse publicity; and perhaps even the alacrity with which police departments adopt body cameras as a way to provide evidence.
Daily Progress
Metro officials haven’t been exactly forthcoming. After initially refusing to provide information about Ms. Pett’s contract, the records grudgingly released to The Post through Metro’s public access to records policy redacted information used in the formulation of Ms. Pett’s pay rate. Officials said the contract was thoroughly vetted. But, as a Metro spokesman clarified to us, Interim General Manager Jack Requa had no role in approving the contract and, in fact, was not comfortable with a long-distance employee. That means the board and its top leaders were the ones who thought it was a good idea to pay someone a lot more to do a lot less. Given that they are the ones who are supposed to be fixing Metro’s problems, that’s a disturbing conclusion.
Washington Post
State and Local Stories
The City of Portsmouth’s auditor, who did not complete any audits in his first year and a half, has missed self-imposed deadlines to produce two that he promised. The Virginian-Pilot filed a Freedom of Information Act request to Auditor Jesse Andre Thomas for his reviews of billing and customer service in the Public Utilities Department and a full audit of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare Services. In response to the request, Thomas claimed an exemption that covers "Investigative notes, correspondence and information furnished in confidence, and records" of the city auditor.
Virginian-Pilot
The rift between Botetourt County’s voter registrar and its electoral board was purely political, former Registrar Phyllis Booze asserted in a lawsuit filed Friday claiming she was let go for partisan reasons. Because she is a Republican, Booze claimed, the two Democrats on the three-member board voted not to reappoint her in June to another four-year term. In her lawsuit, filed in Roanoke’s federal court against electoral board members William “Buck” Heartwell and Paul Fitzgerald, Booze seeks lost wages, compensation for emotional suffering and her job back. While much has been made of the point that Booze’s two detractors on the board are Democrats, the lawsuit is believed to be the first public statement of how her political affiliation factored into their long-running tense relationship.
Roanoke Times
National Stories
One image shows Vice President Dick Cheney watching his television, smoke and flames rising from the twin towers. In another, he stares straight ahead, his face reddened. And a third shows Cheney and his wife, Lynne, exiting the Marine 2 helicopter at a location not disclosed that day, now known to be Camp David. All three images are part of a group of previously unseen photographs of President Bush, Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other White House staffers in the moments and hours after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, a third tore into the Pentagon and a fourth hurtled into an empty Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. The images were released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information request received by the National Archives from Colette Neirouz Hanna of the Kirk Documentary Group.
Daily Press
At least four emails Hillary Clinton kept on a private server during her years as Secretary of State were classified “secret” at the time, according to an inspector general review — a finding that calls into question her assertion in March that she took care to avoid sending classified materials. However, suggestions from Clinton aides that she didn’t knowingly keep classified information on the private account still have some life. So far, it appears none of the information was marked as classified before it moved into or out of her home-cooked email system, but that caveat has not stemmed Republican complaints that it was reckless for her to handle her sensitive work on a private system.“None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included [Intelligence Community]-derived classified information and should have been handled and transmitted via a secure network,” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said in a letter to congressional committee leaders. McCullough said in the letter that he found that one of State’s public releases of emails in recent months under the Freedom of Information Act resulted in disclosure of classified information. While the inspector general said the intelligence community had made “a definitive determination” that the information was classified, State has continued to deny that any breaches occurred when the agency posted several thousand pages of Clinton emails on its website in May and June. Other documents made public Friday show the classification issue triggered debate even within the agency. Some at State wanted to deem even more of Clinton’s emails classified than the agency ultimately did, according to a memo from McCullough’s office posted online by the department’s inspector general.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
The General Assembly has now passed a bill that will raise the threshold for private partnerships, requiring a more compelling public interest before the state invests. That should help prevent public-private projects that exist primarily as investment vehicles rather than serving a clear public need. The new rules mean these contracts should also have greater transparency.Following that principle should make the Elizabeth River tunnels deal the last in which the state, in secret, gives away everything to build something. For every public-private partnership designed to save the state money by leveraging private-sector efficiencies, there is a proposal that seeks nothing more than to insert public money into private pockets.
Virginian-Pilot
The fight might be in California, but the fallout could affect police policies and public information nationwide. Police in Gardena, California, say they will challenge a judge’s ruling releasing video images taken during an officer’s shooting of an unarmed man. At stake are issues of: individual privacy; the public’s right to know; the importance of protecting evidence in investigations; law enforcement’s desire to guard its own from adverse publicity; and perhaps even the alacrity with which police departments adopt body cameras as a way to provide evidence.
Daily Progress
Metro officials haven’t been exactly forthcoming. After initially refusing to provide information about Ms. Pett’s contract, the records grudgingly released to The Post through Metro’s public access to records policy redacted information used in the formulation of Ms. Pett’s pay rate. Officials said the contract was thoroughly vetted. But, as a Metro spokesman clarified to us, Interim General Manager Jack Requa had no role in approving the contract and, in fact, was not comfortable with a long-distance employee. That means the board and its top leaders were the ones who thought it was a good idea to pay someone a lot more to do a lot less. Given that they are the ones who are supposed to be fixing Metro’s problems, that’s a disturbing conclusion.
Washington Post
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