Transparency News 8/22/16

 

Personnel Records Work Group 
1:30 PM on Wednesday, September 7, 2016 in  House Room C of the General Assembly Building (GAB) , 201 N. 9th Street, Richmond, Virginia  23219

Meetings Subcommittee 
10:00 AM on Monday, September 19, 2016 in House Room C of the GAB

Records Subcommittee 
10:00 AM on Thursday, Spetember 8, 2016 in House Room C of the GAB
10:00 AM on Thursday, September 29, 2016 in House Room D of the GAB

FOIA Council
1:30 PM on Monday, September 19, 2016 in House Room C of the GAB
1:30 PM on Monday, October 17, 2016 in House Room D of the GAB 
1:30 PM on Monday, November 21, 2016 in House Room C of the GAB

The three jurisdictions have promised for years to set up an oversight commission with actual enforcement power, but only this spring did the three tentatively agree on the bill that would establish such an agency. The leaders of the D.C. Open Government Coalition, the Virginia Coalition for Open Government and the Maryland-Delaware-D. C. Press Association are concerned that, as written, the bill would allow the new commission to set its own rules for what it shares with the public and what it does not. “Unfortunately, the legislation as currently written does not guarantee public participation in the oversight process,” the letter states.
WTOP

Since the mid-1990s, School Board member Carolyn Weems and her husband have owned and operated a home-based printing business.  Their clients include churches, corporations, sports teams, philanthropic groups and the U.S. military, according to the company’s website.  Simply Sales has also sold tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise the past several years to a local agency with close ties to Weems: Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Since 2009, the company has received more than $56,000 from the city’s schools – including more than $34,000 from a single elementary school – according to documents obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through a Freedom of Information Act request. The orders were primarily for apparel, including T-shirts, headbands, banners and stickers, records show.
Virginian-Pilot

A federal lawsuit is challenging whether the Virginia Department of Corrections is following state law on saving video recordings made inside prisons. Lawyers for James Raynor, an inmate at Sussex II State Prison, complain that prison staff deleted or otherwise lost copies of surveillance video of a 2013 incident in which Raynor was beaten by another inmate — a recording the lawyers contend should have been kept for five years. 
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Ivy Tower, which wasn't the city code violation hotspot Newport News City Manager Jim Bourey claimed in opposing a Boston developer's renovation proposal, seems not to be as big a crime center as alleged either. Newport News police report making 102 calls to the subsidized-rent high-rise over the past year, for complaints ranging from trespassing to a shooting. That's less than a fifth the number of visits to the Aqueduct Apartments in Denbigh, one of the city's busiest for calls to police, and less than half the total to Ridley Court, three long blocks up Ivy Avenue from Ivy Tower. "I did not look at all the statistics related to the building," Bourey said in an email, when asked about the crime figures and the small number of code violations reported.
Daily Press


Editorials/Columns

Call me a traitor to my profession and a foe of transparency if you will, but no, I don't think the news media ought to have access to the personal email accounts of a dozen Chicago police officers who were present when an officer shot and killed Laquan McDonald in October 2014. The Tribune and other news outlets reported Tuesday that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a binding opinion that any electronic communications that the officers had regarding the circumstances of McDonald's death, even on their home computers or personal smartphones while off-duty, are part of the public record and therefore subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. An email exchange is more like a conversation than a formal correspondence. And no matter how probative it might be, we would never think of requiring public employees and elected officials to install surveillance equipment in their homes, cars and offices and on their devices just in case we might find it in the public interest to retroactively eavesdrop on their conversations.
Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune