Transparency News 8/12/14
State and Local Stories
A new batch of documents in a cigarette smuggling case could be closed to the public under a sealed motion filed by a defense attorney on behalf of two defendants facing a combined total of 50 charges. The motion, accompanied by four exhibits, also under seal, was filed by David Downes on behalf of his clients John Taveras and Thaer Nimer Khashman, after a contentious hearing last week. Circuit Judge Dennis L. Hupp refused to sign a proposed order to close the hearing and also rejected a motion by the prosecution for a gag order on Downes.
Northern Virginia Daily
The Virginia Department of Elections is working to correct an error that led the department to misinform as many as 125,000 state voters of invalid address changes. Edgardo Cortés, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections, issued the following statement regarding the misstep: “As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that the commonwealth's voter registration records are accurate, the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) routinely receives information for voters who may have changed their address," Cortés said. "To help voters update their registration, ELECT mailed letters to voters requesting that they review and update their information. Unfortunately, up to 125,000 voters erroneously received a letter indicating they had moved out of state, when in fact they may have moved within the state."
Loudoun Times-Mirror
National Stories
The U.S. government need not turn over a secret surveillance court's orders or the names of phone companies helping it collect call records, because it might reveal methods needed to protect national security, a federal judge decided on Monday. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, rejected the Electronic Frontier Foundation's argument that the U.S. Department of Justice should turn over the materials, in the wake of unauthorized disclosures last year by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.Reuters
Just a handful of state and local governments so far have designed mobile-friendly websites and services, while governments in other countries have done more advanced work with mobile applications -- especially in developing countries where smartphones are often the only way most people have to connect to the Internet, according to the Center for Technology in Government. But one U.S. state has taken the lead when it comes to redesigning websites to work effectively on tablets and smartphones and could be a model for other states to follow. Utah was the first state to develop an iPhone app, which came out in 2009 and let users check the licensure status of professionals in the state. It was also the first state to create an app for Google Glass that sends users notifications about approaching trains and light rail and other transit-related information.
Governing
A Texas House panel on Monday censured a University of Texas System regent for misconduct and incompetency, but it decided not to push for his removal. The committee investigated the regent, Wallace Hall, over his efforts to push out the president of the flagship campus in Austin. Mr. Hall had previously voted that the president’s behavior warranted impeachment. Committee members insisted they could later draft articles of impeachment if they need to do so. Mr. Hall was accused of abusing his office to overwhelm the university with records requests, bullying staff and potentially violating federal privacy laws. William C. Powers Jr., the president of the Austin campus, has agreed to step down in June 2015.
New York Times
Lawyers for accused movie theater gunman James Holmes are seeking a special prosecutor to probe whoever leaked to Fox News details about their client's plans to commit mass murder, a motion made public on Monday showed.
Reuters
Editorials/Columns
Daily Press
We applaud the rector’s actions; but much of what remains in the draft proposal is still problematic, in our opinion. One problem area, for example, is the call for Visitors to refrain, basically, from micro-managing UVa’s administration. Requests for institutional data “should be rare, for example, and there must be respect for the institutional chain of command. Both, by the way, were complaints stemming from former Rector Dragas’ relationship with Sullivan. At the core of this latest bit of dysfunction at UVa’s top leadership levels is a cancer in danger of going metastatic. A governance consultant to the board said the body is “not a team, not collegial and not unified.” A damning diagnosis if ever there was one one.
News & Advance
There’s an election yarn spun up in Highland County about the old man from up in the mountains who showed up to vote one Election Day and found the ballots had already been counted. Whether the story is true, or merely a tall tale, doesn’t really matter for our purposes here. It goes like this: The voting in this precinct took place in a building with no electricity. Election officials there would typically count the votes by candlelight. On this particular Election Day though, many years ago, all but one voter had already shown up by midafternoon to cast a ballot. Night was soon coming, and the election officials were eager to wrap things up and get home. They concluded the one missing voter — let’s call him Old Man McGrump — was unlikely to make it down from the mountains, so they went ahead and counted the votes. Naturally, that’s when the old man showed up to vote — and election officials were flummoxed about how he could do so without them knowing who he had voted for. In the local telling of the tale, that’s where it ends — with a round of guffaws about old-time politics out in the country. Except it doesn’t end there, because we a have very live example playing out down in Radford. Or is it Montgomery County?
Roanoke Times
