Transparency News, 8/19/2022

Friday
August 19, 2022

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state & local news stories

"The city’s position could have really far reaching consequences and undo common understanding of how FOIA operates."

The city of Norfolk is arguing that public records requests don’t apply to elected officials in response to a lawsuit alleging the city violated open records laws. That has prompted concerns from an open government advocacy group. Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said it could have major implications for the Freedom of Information Act, the Virginia law that guarantees citizens have access to public records. “The city’s position could have really far reaching consequences and undo common understanding of how FOIA operates,” Rhyne said. “I’ve never heard someone say FOIA does not apply to elected officials.”
The Virginian-Pilot

Suing Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares for defamation on Wednesday, a woman fired just weeks after she was hired as a deputy attorney general says the office falsely labeled her departure as a resignation. Monique Miles claims that Miyares fired her for her opinions on the 2020 election and the riot on the U.S. Capitol that followed on Jan. 6, 2021. Represented by the Arlington, Virginia, lawyer Steven Krieger, she filed suit in Richmond City Circuit Court, seeking $1 million in damages. Miles says Miyares hired her in mid-January 2021, shortly after his election, only to terminate her employment as The Washington Post prepared to publish screenshots of comments that Miles had posted to Facebook the previous year after armed supporters of former President Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the 2020 election.
Courthouse News Service

The former mayor of Pamplin pleaded guilty Thursday in Appomattox Circuit Court to one count of embezzlement of public funds. William Reve Horton, 49, was arrested in April following an investigation into the town’s finances. He was first elected mayor of Pamplin in 2014 and served three terms. Fleet said between July 1, 2016, and Dec. 8, 2016, Horton used the card for $858.86, saying there were a “number of times where he paid for personal charges” with town money.
The News & Advance

Last month, a Loudoun County Circuit Court judge ruled against the School Board’s lawsuit to halt a special grand jury convened by Attorney General Jason Miyares investigating the school system. This week, WTOP has learned, the board has appealed that ruling to Virginia’s Supreme Court. Court records show Virginia’s highest court received the appeal from the school board’s attorneys on Tuesday. The basis of the appeal isn’t clear, as the board’s motion was filed under seal. Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson said in the filing that the School Board “seeks to seal materials that are already publicly available.”
WTOP
 

stories of national interest

"The media companies argue the affidavit's release would help the public determine if the Justice Department had legitimate reasons for the search"

Attorneys for many of the nation's largest media companies will try to persuade a federal magistrate judge on Thursday afternoon to make public the affidavit supporting the warrant that allowed FBI agents to search former President Donald Trump's Florida estate last week. The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS and the other broadcast TV networks, CNN and others want U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart to release the affidavit over the objection of the U.S. Justice Department, which says its investigation of Trump's handling of "highly classified material" would be compromised. The media companies argue the affidavit's release would help the public determine if the Justice Department had legitimate reasons for the search or if it was part of a Biden administration vendetta against Trump, as the former president and his backers contend. Trump, in a Truth Social post last week, called for the release of the unredacted affidavit in the interest of transparency.
CBS News

Finding privacy concerns outweigh the value of the documents, the Sixth Circuit rejected a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter’s records request seeking documents under federal FOIA related to a U.S. attorney’s decision not to charge a state prosecutor with obstruction of justice over his purported links to drug buyers.
Courthouse News Service

Four years after West Jordan police officers shot and killed 23-year-old Michael Glad, a judge has decided that the public may finally learn why officers pulled the trigger. The Salt Lake Tribune has been fighting since 2021 for internal police interview records from the shooting, known as Garrity statements. Such interviews are conducted as part of an agency’s own review of a police shooting, and cannot be used against officers in criminal court. But in some instances, they have become public. Despite winning access to the documents in May 2021 from the State Records Committee, West Jordan declined to release the interviews to The Tribune. Instead, the city took the news organization to court, asking that a judge determine whether the interviews are public record. In a ruling filed Friday, 3rd District Judge Vernice Trease found that the the public’s right to access the records in this case “substantially” outweighed the privacy concerns West Jordan raised.
The Salt Lake Tribune

MOST DRIVERS WHO head up to Alta Ski Area from Salt Lake City pay no mind to the nondescript turnoff from Utah State Route 210 that veers out to the left about five miles before the slopes. Some motorists may catch a glimpse of the black gate and the “No Trespassing” signs or see a plain white cargo van peeling off the main road and feel a twinge of curiosity. What passing motorists wouldn’t see, at the end of a winding lane, is a bunker-like concrete structure about the size of a two-story house, surrounded by a system of motion sensors and hidden cameras. Behind the structure’s loading door, a tunnel stretches some 200 feet into the solid granite mountain, leading to a series of vaults that constitute one of the most secure private storage facilities in the world. Designed to protect against floods, earthquakes, fires, and even a nearby nuclear blast, Perpetual Storage opened in 1968 to house some of the most precious objects in America. But by the late 1970s, physical assets were already slightly passé. While Perpetual was happy to secure rare artifacts, what kept paying the salaries of its armed guards was the business of storing corporate microfilm and computer records. Patrick Lynch, Perpetual’s co-owner, told The Washington Post in 1979 that the master file for one customer was worth $15 million (equivalent to $60 million today). So when George MacArthur Posey III approached Perpetual in 1978, he wasn’t interested in the vault’s fine art or bullion. He was after information. Posey was looking for certain records belonging to General Electric. As it turned out, there was an easier way to obtain valuable technical data than going through the executives of storage vaults, and Posey would make a hugely profitable business of it for the next several decades. It involved a high-minded, fast-evolving, and relatively new law called the Freedom of Information Act. 
Wired

A judge ordered the release of body-worn camera footage showing the violent arrest of Barry Spencer Green by Lincoln County (North Carolina) sheriff’s deputies on May 28, 2022. WBTV has been investigating excessive force allegations related to the arrest since Monday, when we first spoke with Tyler Thompson, a former deputy who was fired one day after calling the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to report his concerns about Green’s arrest. WBTV’s Chief Investigative Reporter Nick Ochsner petitioned a judge to release video of the incident. Lincoln County Attorney Megan Gilbert told a judge that release of the video “would harm the reputation of the Sheriff and the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office as a whole.”
WBTV