Transparency News 9/1/16

 

Lawyers representing the Daily Press will present an oral argument Thursday asking the Supreme Court of Virginia to review a Newport News judge's ruling that court officials do not have to release their statewide database of case information. The court typically uses the oral argument to clarify any questions or concerns they have about the briefs the parties have filed, said Hunter Sims, the attorney representing the Daily Press. Several organizations have signed on to a brief supporting the Daily Press, including the  Virginia Coalition for Open Government
Daily Press

Questions about race and whom to endorse for mayor have caused a rift in a predominantly white political action committee, and four of its 12 board members have quit. People for Portsmouth’s president, Pam Kloeppel, says she wasn’t being racist at a council meeting in June when she spoke about who was being hired to run city departments. She was just stating a fact. But Councilman Mark Whitaker, a frequent critic of the PAC and an advocate for minority hiring, implied otherwise. Kloeppel said she was simply defending the data she had received after a Freedom of Information Act request on top-level employees who had left since the city fired Rowe, one of five candidates running against Mayor Kenny Wright. The data included 12 employees and showed a shift from 58 percent white to 33 percent. The mayor had told The Virginian-Pilot he didn’t believe the figures. The Pilot made its own request about all top-level employees and found that half of the 18 are black, and half are white.
Virginian-Pilot

Strasburg Town Council voted to purchase a property for $100,000 in a closed session last Thursday, but analysis of the real estate contract and interviews with council members raise questions regarding the legitimacy of closing the session to the public. Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711 allows for the closure of public meetings under certain situations, including acquiring real estate when “discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the town.” However, council met after both the town and the seller had contractually agreed to the $100,000 price. According to Spitzer, he handled the negotiation process himself and council convened without knowing the details of the contract. “I went into that meeting without Town Council knowing what I had negotiated,” Spitzer said. ” … They did not know what the price was.” At the council’s meeting last Thursday, members voted 5-1 to enter a closed meeting. The lone dissenting vote, Councilman John “Red” Hall Jr., said he doesn’t believe in the use of closed meetings. “I haven’t seen anything that our adult citizens of Strasburg shouldn’t be able to hear in these closed sessions,” he said. “To me, these are some major decisions being made, and I don’t see why the citizens shouldn’t know that.”
Northern Virginia Daily



National Stories
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The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is publishing the results of its survey of journalists on the "release to one, release to all" policy under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). More than 100 self-identified journalists responded to the survey. Respondents to the survey were generally in favor of a “release to one, release to all” policy if it is implemented with a delay between release to the requester and release to the public. While a quarter of respondents supported the policy unconditionally, almost 60% support it only with conditions, such as a delay period.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

So far it’s been a quiet year for data breaches. No major state and local cyberattacks have yet been reported in 2016. Of course, that doesn’t mean attackers are taking a break. Evidence suggests they’re merely spending less time developing new approaches and instead refining some old but proven ways to hack, according to Verizon’s recent Data Breach Investigations Report. The break in action is giving state and local governments some much-needed time to regroup, though. It’s true governments have always faced an uphill battle against cyberattacks. Shrinking budgets and a lack of specialized talent have been chronic problems. But recently agencies nationwide have begun to broaden their use of a few conventional tactics to mitigate the rising tide of attacks: teamwork, employee training and insurance.
Governing


Editorials/Columns

WHENEVER METRO Board Chairman Jack Evans discusses the transit system’s problems, he inevitably points a finger at the secrecy that has long surrounded the agency. There is, he said recently, a “whole culture of not telling people what is going on.” So it makes no sense that the proposal to create a new multi-state agency to oversee the safety of the system thumbs its nose at the public’s right to know. If this new agency is to have any chance at being effective, it is critical that there be public access to its meetings and records. We first raised the alarm about the failure to guarantee public access to the workings of the proposed commission after draft legislation for the new body was released in May. While we welcomed the fact that officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia were finally, after years of inaction and significant safety lapses, taking steps to establish a new agency with broad investigative and regulatory authority over rail-transit safety, the move to shield the group’s workings from public view was worrisome. New concerns about secrecy were recently sounded in a letter from open-government advocates to lawmakers in D.C. and the two states. Leaders of the D.C. Open Government Coalition, the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government faulted the draft legislation for alluding to an expectation of openness without mandating public access or providing any mechanism for enforcement.
Washington Post

It bears repeating: The University of Virginia did not, as former Rector Helen E. Dragas alleged, create a “slush fund” — generally defined as a hidden cache of money, loosely monitored; the secret nature of its existence raising suspicions that it might be used for unpermitted purposes. The ruling that UVa did not operate a “slush fund” comes from an authoritative source: the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts. However, not to be lost amid the tussle over how the university created its $2.2 billion fund — in UVa’s own terminology, a “strategic investment fund” — are broader issues brought to the forefront during the debate. A third area of concern is the public’s ability to follow all this debate — essentially, to “follow the money.” When the university submitted its response to the lawmakers, some legislators criticized UVa’s withholding of certain information as being protected from public view because it was among the university’s “working papers.” This newspaper has questioned the exemption of “working papers” from public scrutiny ever since that rationale was first used, as we recall, back during Doug Wilder’s administration as governor. While some background materials probably should be kept secret, at least initially, there is danger in the concept of exempting “working papers” from open view. It is while public policies are being “worked on” that the public really needs to be informed, so as to influence those policies before they can be adopted. Former Rector Dragas also alleges that the strategic fund was discussed behind closed doors at a board meeting that should have been open. State law allows specific exemptions to the overall rule that public meetings must be open, but general policy discussions should be transparent.
Daily Progress

Once again, we ask, “What is it with public officials — both elected and appointed — who just do not get how important open government and a free, independent press are to the functioning of a republic?” In this day and age, we simply cannot fathom why some in public positions of leadership choose to denigrate the news media for doing its job of reporting on the public’s own government and institutions — and money, regardless of whether the coverage is “friendly” or not. The latest public official to unload on the news media and the concept of open government is the rector of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, essentially the chairman of the board of one of the nation’s top institutions of higher education — and, one founded by Thomas Jefferson, the quintessential proponent of government that is accountable to its citizens.
News & Advance