Transparency News 8/8/14
Virginia Coalition for Open Government View this email in your browser
Friday, August 8, 2014
State and Local Stories
Virginia has hired an executive director to run a new ethics board intended to implement and police reforms approved earlier this year in the wake of the gifts scandal surrounding former governor Robert F. McDonnell and his family. Chris Piper, a longtime employee of the Virginia State Board of Elections, will move to the Division of Legislative Services, where the board — the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council — will be housed. The Division of Legislative Services is a nonpartisan agency of the General Assembly. Piper is credited with helping expand the state program for filing campaign finance forms electronically, the Virginia Public Access Project said Thursday in a statement about his hiring.
Washington Post
Norfolk School Board Chairman Kirk Houston has backed off a claim that board members had not received a school-specific report of Standards of Learning results. Two members referenced the scores during a meeting Wednesday, but Houston told The Pilot then that board members didn't have the information. Thursday afternoon he said he had been mistaken.“"I saw the report and didn't realize what it was because I didn't read it,"he said. "I am not a dishonest person and don't want to be seen or believed to be one."
Virginian-Pilot
A judge has dismissed a misconduct conviction against former Franklin County Sheriff Ewell Hunt, citing the prearranged conditions of his plea agreement. Hunt was convicted of misdemeanor misconduct in office in July 2013, after he entered an Alford plea to the charge. He made that plea as he was appealing a general district court jury’s prior guilty verdict, which stemmed from his alleged failure to sound an adequate alarm on May 30, 2011. That was the day Hunt was warned that one of his deputies, Jonathan Agee, was speeding toward Roanoke, armed and enraged and intending to kill his ex-wife. Hunt’s plea agreement in the case against him stipulated that if he committed no criminal offenses, his charge would be dismissed after one year, a period that expired last month.
Roanoke Times
Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie and congressional candidate Barbara Comstock’s efforts to attract independent voters without alienating tea party activists have landed them in a sticky situation. Both candidates were scheduled to attend a public meeting of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Tea Party on Thursday, but after organizers heard the gathering could be infiltrated by Democrats, they moved it to a private location that one activist said would keep out the “liberal press” and “unfriendlies.” When word of the change got out, the candidates decided a conference call actually would be best. Democrats pounced, asking what Gillespie would say to tea party supporters that he couldn’t say to reporters. Tea party activists who’d been hoping for some face-to-face contact with the candidates weren’t happy, either.
Washington Post
If you're looking for the fastest Internet service in the US, you should pack your bags for Virginia. With an average of 13.7 megabits per second, Virginia tops the country for the speediest Internet access, according to Broadview Networks. What state has the slowest broadband speed? Alaska, with an average of 7 Mbps. How fast is the home of Silicon Valley -- California? It comes in No. 20 with an average of 10.9 Mbps.
CNET News
Here are two of the key documents in the dispute between parents of football players at Loudoun Valley High School in Purcellville, Va., and the administrators of the school and the district. The first is a general proposal, jointly prepared in February by Brain Sentry and Inova Neuroscience Research, to outfit all of Loudoun’s football and lacrosse players, at a cost of $50 per sensor, and then study the data from the sensors. The second is a letter sent to the football parents on Wednesday night by Loudoun Valley’s top administrators, making clear that the sensors shall not be used.
Washington Post
National Stories
At a news conference in London, Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and similar sites like Wiktionary, released a list of its links that Google has removed from its search engine in accordance with Europe’s “right to be forgotten” law. “We will put the notices up as they come in, in order to be sure that people can find out what information is not being made available to them,” said Katherine Maher, a spokeswoman for Wikimedia.
New York Times
A former securities lawyer serving 23 years in jail for fraud won an early victory in his fight to obtain documents from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI about his case. Gregory Bartko was found guilty of fraud and other securities law violations in late 2010. He sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Justice Department, the FBI and other agencies for information about his case and the prosecutor who put him behind bars, Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Wheeler. He filed a lawsuit in July 2013 in the federal court in Washington after most of his requests were denied.
LegalTimes
Former U.S. Sen. Larry Craig must file papers next week that detail why he thinks $216,000 in legal bills rooted in his 2007 arrest in an airport sex sting were an appropriate use of campaign funds. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in July ordered the Idaho Republican to file court papers about his personal legal bills connected to criminal charges of soliciting sex from an undercover officer in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The judge on Thursday extended Craig's deadline to Aug. 15.
The Federal Election Commission in June 2012 sued Craig in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying the spending was not an "ordinary and necessary" expense incurred as part of his duty as a senator.
LegalTimes
A key ObamaCare official involved in the rocky rollout of Healthcare.gov likely deleted some of her emails that are now being sought as part of an investigation into the problems by a House committee, Fox News confirmed Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services informed House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa in a letter Thursday that some of the emails belonging to Marilyn Tavenner, who leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, may not be “retrievable.”
Fox News
Editorials/Columns
If people perceive that you are doing something in secret, they will assume you are trying to hide something. When conducting the public's business, elected officials and civic leaders need to be absolutely as transparent as possible to avoid even the perception of chicanery. If the Hampton School Board had devoted 10 minutes of open discussion to these pay raises in June, maybe the board members wouldn't still be trying to explain them in August.
Daily Press
