Transparency News 7/8/15
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
State and Local Stories
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors will forgo a pay raise for the next four years, but board members remain divided about whether an increase is warranted and whether the matter should have been discussed publicly or in closed session. The Virginia Freedom of Information Act allows public bodies to discuss certain things in closed session, including the "assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of specific public officers, appointees or employees of any public body.” But at least one opinion issued by the Virginia Attorney General’s office says elected officials are not employees, but rather public officers, and that public officers are not permitted to discuss their own performance “or related matters” behind closed doors. Supervisors Pete Candland, R-Gainesville, and Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, were the first to publicly declare they would not support the pay increases. The issue was brought to light June 16 when Candland and Lawson left a closed meeting to protest a discussion about the pay plan, which both said should have occurred in public. Candland commented further during his supervisor’s time June 23, saying he was fulfilling his “statutory duty,” under section 2.2-3712(D) of the Code of Virginia, to publicly object to the closed session. Supervisor Mike May, R-Occoquan, who is running for commonwealth’s attorney this fall against 12-term incumbent Democrat Paul Ebert, said he agreed that the discussion was “probably inappropriate” but said he did not leave the room, as Candland and Lawson did, because he did not think the session was illegal. Supervisor Frank Principi, however, said he disagreed with Candland and Lawson’s protest of the meeting because supervisors can discuss personnel matters, including pay increases, in closed session. Principi said he considers the elected supervisors to be employees of the county. “I have to follow all the county personnel policies,” he added. “I get paid by the county. I think by all definitions, I’m a county employee, absolutely.”
Prince William Today
An education advocate charged with trespassing in Chesterfield County Public Schools entered an Alford plea Tuesday, meaning she admitted there was enough evidence to convict her, but does not admit guilt. Kandise Lucas was arrested at Meadowbrook High School in April when she attended a meeting with the parent of a special-needs student who was trying to have her son transferred to another school. School officials banned her from school property in 2011 after she allegedly recorded meetings on special-needs students’ education plans and declined to give copies of those recordings to the school district, according to her lawyer, Alexander Taylor. But he said Lucas was invited to attend the meeting in April.
Times-Dispatch
The chief architect of a Republican legislative redistricting plan is expected to testify in a lawsuitthat claims the plan unconstitutionally packs black voters into a dozen legislative districts. Delegate Chris Jones of Suffolk is expected to take the stand Wednesday in federal court in Alexandria and defend the plan. Jones led efforts in 2011 to redraw that state's legislative boundaries for the 100-member House of Delegates.
News & Advance
Halifax County officially launched its new emergency preparedness and mass notification services for citizens, va-halifaxcounty.civicready.com on July 1. According to Halifax County Emergency Services Interim Emergency Coordinator Chad Loftis, the county partnered with CivicReady to create this new site. CivicReady is an expert in helping local governments engage communities in emergency preparedness to provide them with official and direct mass communication in emergency situations.
Gazette Virginian
National Stories
In today’s world, there has never been a bigger demand for transparency than when it comes to how law enforcement reacts to crime. So to meet that demand, the city of Oakland, Calif., is launching its Oakland Police Department Calls for Service Web app. The city’s IT department partnered with Esri, utilizing its ArcGIS platform to provide residents with real-time crime data via an interactive map on the city’s website. In this way, users can view the latest criminal and emergency activity on the map as it's filtered through the Oakland Police Department’s 911-dispatch system. Ahsan Baig, the city's division manager of Public Safety Services and Business Applications, explained that the application was developed in response to increasing citizen requests for crime data in the area. If residents were seeing police cars in their neighborhood or curious as to why a police officer was down the street, they were voicing a growing need to be more involved in local criminal response.
Governing
When the Department of Homeland Security launched a mobile app to send Freedom of Information Act requests directly to the federal government agency, it created a precedent. Unfortunately, it was a bad one. Instead of launching a better way for the public to make and track requests or teaming up with the Department of Justice to fund work on a universal FOIA request feature at the government's openFOIA website, the federal agency that receives and responds to the largest number of FOIA requests in the country actually made the experience of submitting one worse. The app lets you do a bunch of things you already could do on the World Wide Web: It was already possible to learn how to make a FOIA request online using a simple form at DHS.gov or regulations.gov, check the status of a request, browse the DHS FOIA library or read about exemptions using a mobile web browser. Instead of just making any of those webpages responsive to the device accessing them, however, DHS made a new mobile app with a tiny font size that duplicates them. What's worse, if you decide to try to use the app to make a request, you'll quickly run into a challenge: The soft keyboard of the touchscreen obscures the text you're typing into the form while you enter it. If you compose a request in a note and paste it in, you can get around the problem, but this is terrible mobile design.
Huffington Post
Editorials/Columns
So, what has been learned over the last 40 years? Civic engagement means more than checking off a box after a public venting session. Truly effective civic engagement has a systemic effect that can actually change the culture and mood of a community. To work well in today's environment, civic engagement should incorporate digital with the older conventional methods. It helps if it is fun.
Ron Littlefield, City Accelerator
State and Local Stories
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors will forgo a pay raise for the next four years, but board members remain divided about whether an increase is warranted and whether the matter should have been discussed publicly or in closed session. The Virginia Freedom of Information Act allows public bodies to discuss certain things in closed session, including the "assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of specific public officers, appointees or employees of any public body.” But at least one opinion issued by the Virginia Attorney General’s office says elected officials are not employees, but rather public officers, and that public officers are not permitted to discuss their own performance “or related matters” behind closed doors. Supervisors Pete Candland, R-Gainesville, and Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, were the first to publicly declare they would not support the pay increases. The issue was brought to light June 16 when Candland and Lawson left a closed meeting to protest a discussion about the pay plan, which both said should have occurred in public. Candland commented further during his supervisor’s time June 23, saying he was fulfilling his “statutory duty,” under section 2.2-3712(D) of the Code of Virginia, to publicly object to the closed session. Supervisor Mike May, R-Occoquan, who is running for commonwealth’s attorney this fall against 12-term incumbent Democrat Paul Ebert, said he agreed that the discussion was “probably inappropriate” but said he did not leave the room, as Candland and Lawson did, because he did not think the session was illegal. Supervisor Frank Principi, however, said he disagreed with Candland and Lawson’s protest of the meeting because supervisors can discuss personnel matters, including pay increases, in closed session. Principi said he considers the elected supervisors to be employees of the county. “I have to follow all the county personnel policies,” he added. “I get paid by the county. I think by all definitions, I’m a county employee, absolutely.”
Prince William Today
An education advocate charged with trespassing in Chesterfield County Public Schools entered an Alford plea Tuesday, meaning she admitted there was enough evidence to convict her, but does not admit guilt. Kandise Lucas was arrested at Meadowbrook High School in April when she attended a meeting with the parent of a special-needs student who was trying to have her son transferred to another school. School officials banned her from school property in 2011 after she allegedly recorded meetings on special-needs students’ education plans and declined to give copies of those recordings to the school district, according to her lawyer, Alexander Taylor. But he said Lucas was invited to attend the meeting in April.
Times-Dispatch
The chief architect of a Republican legislative redistricting plan is expected to testify in a lawsuitthat claims the plan unconstitutionally packs black voters into a dozen legislative districts. Delegate Chris Jones of Suffolk is expected to take the stand Wednesday in federal court in Alexandria and defend the plan. Jones led efforts in 2011 to redraw that state's legislative boundaries for the 100-member House of Delegates.
News & Advance
Halifax County officially launched its new emergency preparedness and mass notification services for citizens, va-halifaxcounty.civicready.com on July 1. According to Halifax County Emergency Services Interim Emergency Coordinator Chad Loftis, the county partnered with CivicReady to create this new site. CivicReady is an expert in helping local governments engage communities in emergency preparedness to provide them with official and direct mass communication in emergency situations.
Gazette Virginian
National Stories
In today’s world, there has never been a bigger demand for transparency than when it comes to how law enforcement reacts to crime. So to meet that demand, the city of Oakland, Calif., is launching its Oakland Police Department Calls for Service Web app. The city’s IT department partnered with Esri, utilizing its ArcGIS platform to provide residents with real-time crime data via an interactive map on the city’s website. In this way, users can view the latest criminal and emergency activity on the map as it's filtered through the Oakland Police Department’s 911-dispatch system. Ahsan Baig, the city's division manager of Public Safety Services and Business Applications, explained that the application was developed in response to increasing citizen requests for crime data in the area. If residents were seeing police cars in their neighborhood or curious as to why a police officer was down the street, they were voicing a growing need to be more involved in local criminal response.
Governing
When the Department of Homeland Security launched a mobile app to send Freedom of Information Act requests directly to the federal government agency, it created a precedent. Unfortunately, it was a bad one. Instead of launching a better way for the public to make and track requests or teaming up with the Department of Justice to fund work on a universal FOIA request feature at the government's openFOIA website, the federal agency that receives and responds to the largest number of FOIA requests in the country actually made the experience of submitting one worse. The app lets you do a bunch of things you already could do on the World Wide Web: It was already possible to learn how to make a FOIA request online using a simple form at DHS.gov or regulations.gov, check the status of a request, browse the DHS FOIA library or read about exemptions using a mobile web browser. Instead of just making any of those webpages responsive to the device accessing them, however, DHS made a new mobile app with a tiny font size that duplicates them. What's worse, if you decide to try to use the app to make a request, you'll quickly run into a challenge: The soft keyboard of the touchscreen obscures the text you're typing into the form while you enter it. If you compose a request in a note and paste it in, you can get around the problem, but this is terrible mobile design.
Huffington Post
Editorials/Columns
So, what has been learned over the last 40 years? Civic engagement means more than checking off a box after a public venting session. Truly effective civic engagement has a systemic effect that can actually change the culture and mood of a community. To work well in today's environment, civic engagement should incorporate digital with the older conventional methods. It helps if it is fun.
Ron Littlefield, City Accelerator
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