Transparency News 8/29/16

 

Saying the controversy over a $2.3 billion fund at the University of Virginia depressed him, defiant Board of Visitors Rector Bill Goodwin told lawmakers Friday they should “put some parameters” on the state’s Freedom of Information Advisory Council following an opinion he disagreed with. Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City County, asked, “Are you advocating that we should abolish that council?” The comment prompted laughter in the room. Goodwin said he was not, but added, “I don’t think they should be off as a loose cannon when you’re funding the loose cannon.” Attorney Kevin Martingayle said Goodwin appears not to understand the FOIA Council, which can answer questions about hypothetical fact patterns. “The FOIA Council does not adjudicate the facts or competing versions of events,” Martingayle said in an email to The Pilot. “I would hope that the UVA BOV Rector would know that, and Senator Norment surely understands how it works.”
Virginian-Pilot

The FOI council has no obligation to seek all sides of a claim, Everett said after a hearing at the General Assembly in Richmond on Friday. The council’s opinions are advisory, Everett said. The council is not an investigative agency, she said. Everett said the opinions are written in hypothetical language that makes it clear that the council’s findings are strictly advisory. For example: “If a public body held a closed meeting to discuss topics other than those described in the motion, and in fact did discuss topics other than those identified in the motion, that closed meeting would be in violation of FOIA,” reads a passage from June’s opinion concerning U.Va. Everett added: “We’re not a tribunal. There’s no way to ascertain what the facts are — we weren’t there.” The council issues legal advisory opinions to anyone who requests them. Opposing parties in a dispute can receive different opinions from the council, each based on the facts they provided. Members of the council issue opinions on the assumption that the person requesting its guidance is acting in good faith, Everett said. “We have to assume the facts are what you say they are,” she said. “We don’t have investigators.” At the board’s retreat this month, Goodwin said he understands the purpose of FOIA but does not like the way the advisory council does its work.
Daily Progress

Norfolk officials showed police body-cam video of the fatal June 2 shooting to three journalists from The Pilot on Friday. In a separate viewing, they showed it to relatives of the 43-year-old who was shot to death at a Tidewater Gardens row house. It’s the first time the city has shown body-cam footage of a deadly police shooting to reporters. “That’s what we should be doing,” Mayor Kenny Alexander said Saturday. “We did it the right way.  “When we’re wrong, we should say we’re wrong. But when we’re right, we should show the family members, let them see how we came to a decision to shoot.” But that won’t necessarily mean making copies public, on television or online.
Virginian-Pilot

On the very day the General Assembly was gaveled into session this year, triggering the only limit on what legislators can accept for their campaign funds, Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw topped up his own fund with $5,000 from Anderson Financial, a car title lender. The prominent Richmond law firm Allen, Allen, Allen and Allen dropped $2,500 on him as well. Those donations were among the more than $227,000 legislators reported receiving over the past five years during the days they were actively considering bills, many of which affected donors, a Daily Press review of more than 100,000 donations found. State law bans General Assembly members and statewide officials from accepting campaign donations "on and after the first day of a regular session of the General Assembly through adjournment."
Daily Press

Del. Tony Wilt has asked Virginia’s attorney general to review the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Community Services Board’s policy for accepting gifts. 
Daily News Record

Fairfax County police announced Friday that they hired a veteran public relations expert and former TV news reporter to lead the department’s efforts to communicate with the public. Julie Parker, who had recently worked in media relations for the Prince George’s County Police Department, takes over as Fairfax County police seek to bolster transparency after criticism that it failed to give the public enough information after an officer shot and killed a Springfield man in 2013.
Washington Post

Board members of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, a group once known for first-class travel, junkets to exotic locations and expensive dining, have embraced frugality. A review of expense reports from 2015 found that the 17-member panel spent just over $32,000 on board-related travel and business — less than half of its $80,000 budget last year. The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the bulk of the money was spent by two board members who live in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and must travel to the District to attend the monthly board meetings.
Washington Post


National Stories
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The University of Kentucky is suing its own student newspaper. This comes after a five-month-long battle between UK and its student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, over open records relating to reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment by a university professor. Earlier this month, the university announced it would sue the Kernel over requests for documents involving the investigation of James Harwood, an associate professor of entomology accused of sexual assault and harassment in an investigation spanning seven months, after three years’ worth of allegations, according to the Kernel. The legal battle has been raging since April, when the Kernel filed an appeal with the Kentucky attorney general requesting the release of documents from the UK Open Records Office.
USA Today


Editorials/Columns

Friday was a good day for the University of Virginia, the General Assembly and what constitutes democracy around here. Quickly on the last: In a functioning democracy — the character and nature of public discourse, meaning the actual manner in which we exchange views and resolve differences — shapes and determines outcomes. It matters how you get there. It matters how you say what you say. It matters whether you act with goodwill or simply chuck a brick. It bears repeating: What we do in public spaces — in local government chambers, in the State Capitol or in courtrooms across the commonwealth — serves as an alternative to settling it in the streets or on the cable shows.
Virginian-Pilot

Virginia has — and always has had — a reputation for clean, honest government. In the Old Dominion, though, ethics, honor and civil behavior were not seen as things that could be legislated but stemmed from the character of the public servant. That’s still the case, but in this time when so many people seem to have little faith in their civil institutions, government leaders must take steps to reassure a skeptical public of the basic goodness of their public servants. We’re pleased the number of legislators accepting no gifts whatsoever rose so dramatically, but we’d like to report one day soon that none of the state’s 140 legislators took a single lobbyist gift. After all, they’re our representatives, not the lobbyists’.
News & Advance

Imagine if Congress had funded the National Institutes of Health to develop an antibiotic to combat a contagious disease. And, using millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, such a drug was created. But then local health-care providers improperly administered it to patients, thereby exacerbating the spread of the infection. No doubt, there would be a public outcry. Yet that is precisely the situation today with a different taxpayer-funded treatment for a different "illness" besetting our society: profound distrust in the integrity of our police. In 2014, in the wake of the riots following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., President Obama urged Congress to provide $75 million to help police agencies across the nation deploy body-worn cameras to capture the interactions between peace officers and citizens, part of a broader effort to restore public trust. Ultimately, Congress did provide a substantial sum, $20 million. Yet across the nation, state legislatures and local police departments have refused to administer the treatment. They've enacted laws and adopted policies precluding the public from seeing the recordings made by these cameras. In the past year alone, Kansas, North Carolina and South Carolina have declared body-worn camera recordings exempt from their open-records laws, and several other states have imposed severe restrictions on public access.
Steven Zansburg, Governing