Transparency News 8/30/13

 

Friday, August 30, 2013
 
State and Local Stories

 

An internal investigation reveals that the captain piloting the Surry ferry on Aug. 7 pulled away before receiving a signal that it was safe to depart, causing a car attempting to board to plunge into the James River. The incident report, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, contains various accounts of the incident in which a 2006 Scion driven by 19-year-old Emma Fretts got stuck half on the Surry vessel and half on the dock. A timeline of events based on surveillance footage shows Captain Jack Goolsby, who was suspended after the incident and no longer works for VDOT, pulled away only one minute after cars began boarding. Results of a drug and alcohol test given to Goolsby were negative, according to the report.
Virginia Gazette

Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission is getting a new director. Nineteen-year JLARC veteran Hal Greer will succeed Glen Tittermary, whose retirement takes effect Sunday.
Times-Dispatch

Virginia Secretary of Education Laura Fornash has an assignment. Gov. Bob McDonnell wants aninventory of all existing Virginia public school buildings — including the ones not in use for instruction — to show how a change in historic tax credit usage for schools could help.
Times-Dispatch

If Virginia Tech English professor Steven Salaita were to be deported, as some in the social media world have suggested in recent days, they might be dissatisfied with the outcome. The writer of a controversial Salon.com commentary titled, "No, thanks: Stop saying ‘support the troops,' " was born in Bluefield, W.Va., and raised in Bluefield, Va. Salaita's commentary, which critiques the ubiquitous "support the troops" meme as a barrier to questioning of American foreign policy and treatment of returning war veterans, has caused a social media firestorm this week that has pulled in Virginia Tech, too. In a statement responding to Salaita's article, university spokesman Larry Hincker wrote that however much the university administration may "disagree with associate professor Salaita's opinions, we also recognize one of this nation's most cherished liberties ensconced in the [F]irst [A]mendment to our nation's Constitution and embedded in the principle of academic freedom. He has a right to his opinions just as others have a right to disagree."
Roanoke Times

Patrick County School Superintendent Roger Morris retaliated against four teachers he’d seen as critics, an outside investigation found. Patrick County School Board Chairman Ronnie Terry, confirming the findings, said Thursday that resolution of a similar complaint by an administrator was pending. Morris, who went on paid medical leave last month, was not available for comment.
Roanoke Times

Councilman Kenneth "Ken" Pritchett is seeking a court injunction against City Council to prevent a disciplinary hearing on allegations of misconduct - by Pritchett himself. Under new disciplinary rules concerning City Council members, it's possible that Pritchett could be removed from elected office or censured. City Council voted to hold a public disciplinary hearing related to allegations made by former City Planning Director Sharon D. Williams that called into question conduct by Pritchett, according to a statement from the city. The allegations from Williams stated the event occurred April 23. According to the statement, Pritchett abused his position by inappropriately demanding employment application information related to the city's museum director position.
Progress-Index

Bedford County residents often bring requests, concerns and complaints before the board of supervisors. Jackie Davis brings prayers. During 15 board meetings from last November to this week — a dozen in a row since February — Davis has come to pray during the 15-minute citizen comment period held twice a month. Like clockwork, the Thaxton resident stands up when the chairman opens the public comment period. Walking to podium, she politely states her name and place of residence and then bows her head and prays as most in the room, including the seven elected board members, also bow their heads in a moment resembling a church service. Bedford County Attorney Carl Boggess recently said Davis’ prayers at board meetings is a matter of a citizen’s right to free expression and is not a case of government-sanctioned prayer.
News & Advance

National Stories

U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former ­intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.
Washington Post

The U.S. intelligence community has pledged to disclose more data about government surveillance programs by reporting annually how many secret court orders are issued to telecommunications companies under certain legal rules. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday announced a plan to release the total number of legal orders issued every 12 months to telecom companies by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the number of targets affected by those orders.
Reuters

The Federal Reserve’s inspector general said the Fed violated its own rules for handling confidential material when it inadvertently issued the minutes of a policy meeting a day before the scheduled release in April. The inspector’s report on Thursday recommended procedural changes after the Fed’s minutes from March were sent a day early to more than 100 staff members in Congress, lobbyists for the financial industry, and employees of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
New York Times

The Library of Congress no longer needs the computer room that visitors once used to search its electronic card catalogue. These days the entire library has a wireless Internet connection, so workers this summer put a collection of old microfilm machines in that room instead. Meanwhile, the library’s old-school physical catalogues, the kind filled with carefully penned index cards, have long since been relegated to cool basement hallways where schoolchildren marvel at their obscurity.
Washington Post

The leaked secret budget documents reported on today in the Washington Post revealed that an American military lab in Afghanistan confirmed Osama bin Laden’s identity using DNA analysis shortly after he was killed. The AP notes that previously the Pentagon denied “it had any records of these tests in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press.” The AP says, the day after bin Laden was killed, it submitted FOIA requests for verification tests performed on bin Laden, as well as videos, photographs, and other documents related to the mission. In March 2012, the AP reports it was informed by the Defense Department that it could not locate any of the requested files.
Slate

Alabama House Republicans are asking people to sign a petition expressing opposition to “war on prayer." The petition will be sent to a group that objected to a school "prayer caravan" and a faith-based university  dorm.
AL.com

Also in Alabama…..An Alabama state senator is pushing to ban the first novel of Nobel and Pulitzer winner Toni Morrison on the grounds that its content and language are "objectionable." State Sen. Bill Holtzclaw, a Republican, wants The Bluest Eye pulled from high school reading lists, and says he also would support pulling it from high school libraries, according to the Alabama Media Group.
USA Today

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records has overturned a state police decision not to release the number of troopers assigned to each barracks because it could threaten public safety. In a ruling released on Wednesday, the office overseeing the state's Right to Know Law sided with state Rep. Timothy Mahoney, a Fayette County Democrat who has attempted since last spring to obtain the information about the busy Uniontown barracks, which is in the heart of his district. In July, Mahoney appealed the agency's decision to the open records office.
Pittsburgh Tribune

Editorials/Columns

Herald Progress: Hanover Supervisors took up their legislative agenda for the upcoming General Assembly session Wednesday. Among the Board’s action items is a softened request to ask the FOIA Advisory Council to study the current definition of “public meeting,” instead of asking the legislature to change the law so that three supervisors can talk shop outside of the public eye without violating current open meeting statutes. While we are grateful the Board has softened its stance, the current request remains troubling. For starters, the oxymoronic terms “federal government” and “efficiency” are used in the same sentence. We object to this on both semantic and practical grounds. Secondly, in no way does three supervisors meeting to discuss public business in private qualify as transparency. We’ll save the FOIA council time on that one. While it may make the Board work more efficiently by hashing out their business before meetings occur – and therefore taking care of the nitty gritty while we’re not watching – doing so would undermine the public’s trust. If Supervisors want to meet to discuss county business in an “informal” way, perhaps they should hold work sessions.

Times-Dispatch: When elected officials in Hanover and other jurisdictions want to meet, they have a simple choice. They can issue a public notice and get together to discuss the issue in the open, as they should. Or they can skirt the law’s intent by holding a series of “two-by-twos,” in which two supervisors at a time meet with county staff. (Virginia’s open-meetings law applies to gatherings of three or more elected officials.) Hanover’s supervisors find this inconvenient. So their chairman, W. Canova Peterson IV, wants state law changed so open-meeting laws apply only to quorums. In Hanover, that would permit three supervisors at a time to meet behind closed doors. This is a rotten idea, whose sole purpose is to put the convenience of public servants ahead of the interests of the public they are supposed to serve.

Dick Hammerstrom, Free Lance-Star: There’s really no excuse for not understanding FOIA. Never has more information about it been more available in Virginia. While government needs to understand the law, so should those who want make sure  government is delivering properly. Here are some Virginia organizations that can provide the training—for everyone who needs it.

Daily Press: This week's thorns go to: • The Accomack County Board of Supervisors. After one of the supervisors remarked that the board was a big supporter of the public library, the Eastern Shore News determined that only one of the nine board members had a library card.

Virginian-Pilot: Objections to the domestic use of aerial drones tend to focus on the Big Brother-y aspect of the operation, the further creep of creepy surveillance into our everyday lives. And then there's this: "It just hit a dude in the face!" That's a quote from a fellow videotaping the scene at last weekend's Great Bull Run, the Pamplona-like spectacle staged at a racetrack in Dinwiddie County near Richmond. While various people fretted about the well-being of the bulls and the individuals who'd paid for the opportunity to get flattened by bulls, that fellow was videotaping a drone - a spidery contraption with a camera attached - plummet into the stands. And hit a dude in the face.

Free Lance-Star: IT WAS ODD ENOUGH to imagine “running with the bulls” in Virginia, but when a drone flew over the inaugural Dinwiddie County Bull Run, held on Saturday at the Virginia Motorsports Park, the effect was downright “Hunger Games”-ish. The small, waspish drone soared over the grandstands, presumably taking pictures—of what? People enjoying themselves watching others run away from large bovines? Is that against some law? While spectators focused on the drone (and someone filmed it), it swooped, dipped, and then crashed into the grandstands, slightly injuring four or five people. The sheriff said he’d investigate. So did the FAA. Now we find out the drone belongs to Scott Hansen of Virginia Beach, a filmmaker. According to WTVR, Mr. Hansen says he had leased the drone to a client for the event, but he won’t reveal who that client is because of confidentiality.