In March 2018, Salisbury, Maryland accounting firm TGM Group completed phase I of an “agreed-upon procedures” report for Dewey Beach (Delaware) town government. The report revealed the Dewey Beach Police Department had been receiving property from a federal military surplus program without town oversight or proper accounting. In addition, the Dewey Beach Patrol competition team had an off-the-books bank account and was accepting donations without nonprofit status. Although the draft report was available to anyone who attended the Aug. 3 meeting to review, photograph, etc., it was apparently not free for anyone to take home. Reporters from two news agencies, including Sussex Living, took copies when they left the meeting, without protest. Mayor T.J. Redefer said no one at the meeting was aware the documents had been taken by the reporters. Jeffrey Smith, of the Dewey Citizens For Accountability, also took a copy of the draft, and that was noticed. According to Smith, committee chair Larry Silver confronted him in the parking lot after the meeting and demanded the document. Smith refused, and, Smith said, Silver charged at him in an effort to take it. After exchanging words, Smith left with it. Dewey Beach Police Department Sergeant Cliff Dempsey said that Smith was being charged with theft and disorderly conduct following an incident at the audit committee meeting, in which a complaint was investigated and witnesses interviewed.
Sussex Living
Senate Democrats filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on Wednesday to try to force the Trump administration to hand over documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's time working in the White House. Democrats submitted the FOIA requests to the CIA, the National Archives, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for documents tied to Kavanaugh's three-year period as staff secretary for President George W. Bush. The move, according to Blumenthal, marks the first time senators have had to use a FOIA request to get documents tied to a Supreme Court nominee.
The Hill
The West Virginia House Judiciary Committee approved 14 articles of impeachment against the four sitting justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Each justice is charged with "unnecessary and lavish" spending of state taxpayer dollars to renovate their offices in the East Wing of the Capitol. All four of them also are charged with failing to develop and maintain court policies regarding the use of state resources, including cars, computers and funds in general. Justice Allen Loughry faces additional charges related to his alleged use of state vehicles for personal travel, having state furniture and computers in his home, having personal photos, documents, photos and artwork framed on the state's dime, and handing down an administrative order authorizing payments of senior status judges in excess of what is allowable in state law.
Governing
Across the country, the search for HQ2, as the project has been nicknamed, is shrouded in secrecy. Even civic leaders cannot find out what sort of tax credits and other inducements have been promised to Amazon. And there is a growing legal push to find out, because taxpayers could get saddled with a huge bill and have little chance to stop it. “The only time the public may become aware if the city has promised Amazon incentives is if we win and then we need to get those incentives passed,” Inianapolis City-County Council Member Jared Evans said. A primary reason for the information blackout is that, in many cases, the bids were handled by local private Chamber of Commerce affiliates or economic development groups that are not required to make their negotiations public. Many of the groups are also not covered by Freedom of Information Act or state open-records requests.
The Seattle Times
No one told some Broward school board members they were filing a contempt-of-court case against the South Florida Sun Sentinel. No one except the Sun Sentinel, that is. The district’s chief lawyer, Barbara Myrick, asked a judge this week to hold the newspaper and two reporters in contempt of court for publishing an uncensored report about the Parkland school shooter. She said she never consulted the school board despite filing the action on the board’s behalf. The newspaper wrote Friday night about a long-awaited report regarding the education of Marjory Stoneman Douglas gunman Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people Feb. 14 at Stoneman Douglas. After a judge’s order, the district released the report with nearly two-thirds of its content blacked out to protect the Cruz’s privacy rights — a move that also concealed much about how the district mishandled Cruz’s education. Reporters Brittany Wallman and Paula McMahon, acting on a Facebook tip from a reader at 7:30 p.m., discovered that the district had erred in how it redacted the report. Anyone could copy and paste the report into a Microsoft Word document to make all of the text visible.
Orlando Sentinel
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"Anyone could copy and paste the report into a Microsoft Word document to make all of the text visible."
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