Transparency News 8/26/15

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

State and Local Stories


A motion to dismiss a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the city of Charlottesville was denied Tuesday, setting the stage for an evidentiary court hearing that could decide whether the city police department will have to release detailed reports of its temporary detainments and “stops and frisks.” After police officials last summer said his request for reports of all stops and frisks from June 2012 to June 2014 would be honored, attorney Jeffrey Fogel was told February his request was denied as an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act allows authorities to withhold criminal investigative files. According to Fogel’s lawsuit, the Charlottesville police department agreed June 2012 to track all future stop-and-frisk reports, requiring officers to file narrative reports of the reasons and circumstances of each stop. Court documents show city attorneys denied this claim. According to a letter to Fogel from the police department, which The Daily Progress obtained through a records request earlier this year, only 45 of the 273 stops recorded between June 2012 and June 2014 resulted in an arrest. Fogel said in court Tuesday that the city’s defense that the records are criminal investigation files exempt from FOIA is rejected by the fact that the reports are information that is kept for the supervision of officers.
Daily Progress

Records revealed by the recent data hack of the adultery website Ashley Madison show that the names of two prominent state senators from Virginia appear among its user base. Customers using the names and personal information of Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, R-James City, and state Sen. A. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, have made payments to the Canada-based dating service marketed to people in marriages or committed relationships, according to an analysis of the user data by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Richmond Times-Disptch

Botetourt County’s former voter registrar may have violated state law by living outside of the county five years ago, but she lacked criminal intent, a special prosecutor has found. In a letter released Tuesday, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring said he would not seek charges against Phyllis Booze, whose residency became an issue this year during a contentious process in which the county’s electoral board decided not to reappoint her. “While Ms. Booze may, at one time, have been in possible violation of certain provisions of the Election Laws of Virginia, we find no evidence of willfulness on her part,” Herring wrote in a letter to Circuit Judge Malfourd “Bo” Trumbo, who appointed him special prosecutor in June.
Roanoke Times

A two-year rift between two Gainesville-area youth baseball leagues is heading back to court -- this time in a lawsuit that Patriot High School Principal Michael Bishop has filed against Ryan Sawyers, one of three candidates for chairman of the Prince William County School Board. Bishop’s suit, filed in Prince William Circuit Court in February, seeks $3.35 million in damages from Sawyers and co-defendant Guy Morgan, a Gainesville entrepreneur and owner of the historic Ovoka Farm, located about 12 miles outside Middleburg. The lawsuit charges defamation of character, civil conspiracy and “interference with business expectancies and contractual relations” and seeks $1 million in compensatory damages on each charge, plus $350,000 in punitive damages, according to court documents. The suit alleges that Sawyers and Morgan sullied Bishop’s reputation and sought to have him fired from Patriot High School through “a campaign of emails” sent to school division officials in 2014. The emails, included in court documents, express concerns about Bishop’s actions as president of the Gainesville Haymarket Baseball League, which launched in late 2011 as an affiliate of the Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth Baseball League.
Inside NOVA


National Stories
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Government transparency advocates won a significant victory Tuesday as a federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission cannot use unreasonably high fees or excessive demonstrations of readership to deny document requests from journalists and other users of the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that “erroneous interpretations” of the FOIA by the Federal Trade Commission unreasonably required Cause of Action, a non-profit government watchdog, to demonstrate that its activities would educate “the public at large.” In a stinging rebuke, the appeals court noted that the FOIA only requires that Cause of Action contribute “significantly to the ‘public’ understanding,” and further observed that “to the contrary, we have held that ‘proof of the ability to disseminate the released information to a broad cross-section of the public is not required.’”
Daily Caller

Caroline Kennedy, the United States ambassador to Japan, and several other senior American diplomats there have used personal email accounts to conduct State Department business, the inspector general for the department said in a report released Tuesday. The inspector general, Steve A. Linick, identified instances in which “sensitive but unclassified” information was sent and received on personal email accounts, the report said.
New York Times


Editorials/Columns

Rarely is a chapter of laws used in a way that is more antithetical to its purpose than Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. The act, among the greatest tools available to the people to keep tabs on government, is frequently exercised by government agencies to withhold records, shield themselves from public scrutiny and escape accountability. Law enforcement agencies in Virginia have great latitude to withhold information related to cases classified as active. That doesn’t mean state law prohibits agencies from releasing relevant information; the act simply gives authorities the discretion — the power — to withhold details by claiming disclosure could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. That distinction, between what a public agency can and cannot release under the law, is often conflated to justify withholding information. Virginia’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control did precisely that when officials refused to release a State Police report on ABC agents’ actions before and after assaulting a University of Virginia student in March. Charges against the young man were dropped, yet officials at both agencies refused to disclose the full findings of the purported investigation. Those actions, like so many others by government officials refusing to disclose their work on behalf of the public, are in direct conflict with the high-minded ideals outlined in Virginia’s FOIA so many years ago.
Virginian-Pilot

Ask any journalist and they’ll tell you the Freedom of Information Act process is broken. Denials are at record highs, navigating the bureaucracy can be a nightmare, and the federal agencies recently killed a modest reform bill. But a series of FOIA lawsuits also have just shown how the 50-year-old transparency law can still be indispensable. And absent any change in the law, the best way for news organizations to make sure it stays relevant is to use it innovatively and aggressively. A study by Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse showed that, with the exception of The New York Times, no legacy news organization sued the government under FOIA in 2014. But where print newspapers have largely faded away, digital-only news organizations—including some that are foolishly caricatured as mere meme generators and gossip mags—are thankfully starting to spend the time and money to fill the gap.
Columbia Journalism Review