Transparency News 8/15/17

Tuesday, August 15, 2017



State and Local Stories

Allegations that Buchanan Mayor Larry Hall made disrespectful comments to female town officials have been discounted by an independent investigation, the town council said Monday night. An attorney hired by council found “no basis to determine that the mayor discriminated against any female employee on the basis of her sex,” Vice Mayor James Manspile said, reading a statement from the council. Hall said there was no truth to the allegations and that he was “very hurt” because they came from people he considered friends. The issue surfaced during an April meeting, when Manspile brought up a letter from a citizen that he had received. According to meeting minutes, the citizen claimed to have witnessed “on several occasions Mayor Hall talking disrespectfully to the women in the town office and a woman council member.” After discussing the matter in a closed session, council decided to have an attorney from a Salem firm that specializes in local government and personnel matters look into the allegations. Because the accusations are being treated as a personnel matter, details of the comments and the investigation into them were not released. “We ask the members of the public to respect the confidentiality of all parties involved,” the statement read.
Roanoke Times

A hearing for a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Abingdon Town Council, three council members and the town attorney is scheduled for today. The hearing was expected to take place Monday afternoon, but Judge Eric Thiessen recused himself Monday, according to the Washington County General District Court's clerk's office. A substitute judge will preside. Documents filed by a local man in Washington County General District Court allege that Mayor Cathy Lowe, Vice Mayor Rick Humphreys and Councilman Bob Howard met in May to instruct Deb Icenhour, town attorney, to request guidance from a circuit court judge about whether a fellow council member, Cindy Patterson, was fit to remain on the council. If the meeting took place, the documents claim that it violated Virginia law because it was not held in public and was not included in meeting minutes.
Herald Courier

"This man is dangerous," Taylor Lorenz wrote in her witness report.  The complaint from the reporter for The Hill was one of several released Monday by the City of Charlottesville after the "Unite the Right" rally. A total of six people were arrested by city police and another by Virginia State Police.  The Hill covers Capitol Hill from Washington, D.C. "This man came up and started yelling at me to stop recording," Lorenz wrote in her witness statement. "I showed him my press credentials (I'm a reporter) and he started screaming at me.  "Then he came up behind me, punched me in the face," she wrote.
News Leader


National Stories
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When Wilmington (Delaware) City Council members were planning to publicly condemn one of their colleagues in April, they violated an open meetings law, according to an opinion from the Attorney General's office. Officials released a public agenda midday on April 5 for a meeting the next day. The Freedom of Information Act requires public bodies to give notice of their regular meetings at least seven days in advance, wrote Deputy Attorney General Michelle E. Whalen.  "We believe that council's interpretation of FOIA's notice requirements is incorrect as a matter of law," Whalen wrote.  The AG's office found the council routinely violates FOIA by posting its agenda 24 hours or fewer before meetings. 
Delaware Online

The Justice Department is demanding that a web hosting provider hand over all information it has on a website that helped organize protests against President Donald Trump, including the IP addresses of those who visited the site. DreamHost on Monday published a search warrant (PDF) approved by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that grants the Justice Department's request for records from Disrupt20.org"involving the individuals who participated, planed [sic], organized, or incited the January 20 riot," violent protests that occurred in Washington on Inauguration Day. The site bills itself as "building the framework needed for mass protests to shut down the inauguration of Donald Trump and planning widespread direct actions to make that happen."
CNET News
(Note: VCOG’s website has been hosted by DreamHost for at least 5 years.)

As the public, press and researchers have long requested, the trial court in Washington, D.C., has begun making court files available online. Called "eAccess" on the court home page, the new system replaces the previous Court Cases Online portal that included for each case only a list of events (called the "docket"). The new system adds access to case documents such as complaints, motions, briefs, opinions and orders. Of 22 types of D.C. cases, dockets are now available in all, and records filed after last Friday, August 11, in eight. Those include major areas such as civil and criminal, as well as specialized courts such as landlord and tenant, small claims, and some probate and tax cases. No information is provided on a schedule for adding earlier records and the remaining case types.
D.C. Open Government Coalition

Records released this week show authorities battling the deadly Sevier County (Tennessee) wildfires looked to an expected downpour that came too late for salvation as crews struggled in a desperate tug-of-war with skyscraper-sized flames the night of Nov. 28, 2016. Notes kept by various members of the command staff over the hours and days that followed open a window into the efforts to fight the fire and the making of critical decisions. The entries, sometimes only a few words apiece, don't amount to the detailed narrative of a diary. They're more like verbal snapshots, moments on a timeline that together tell the story of efforts overwhelmed by a fire called Tennessee's worst in at least a century. That timeline stayed secret for months until released this week in response to a public records request. City officials had cited the Juvenile Court case against two Anderson County boys accused of starting the fire as grounds for withholding the records, but prosecutors dropped that case in June.
USA Today



Editorials/Columns


In less hysterical times, news that the Sons of Confederate Veterans want to gather next month at the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue would elicit yawns and, perhaps, an occasional roll of the eyes. But as the appalling violence in Charlottesville this weekend demonstrates, these are not normal times. Richmond has a compelling interest in preventing a repetition of the mayhem and murder we witnessed on Saturday. At the same time, contentious times do not nullify the First Amendment. Quite the opposite, in fact. When passions are high and anger fills the air, it is most important to protect our free-speech heritage, which is ultimately the only legitimate path to truth and compromise.
Richmond Times-Dispatch