Transparency News 9/1/17

Friday, September 1, 2017



State and Local Stories

The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday ruled a Loudoun County parent does not have right to “student growth percentile” data because the data contains “teacher performance indicators” and discloses identifiable teacher information that may be withheld from disclosure under FOIA by a provision of the Education Code.
Read the opinion on VCOG’s website

The General Assembly would occupy a new 15-story building that would face Capitol Square with a 105-year-old facade in a proposed design unveiled by the state on Thursday. The Virginia General Assembly is proposing a building design that would place most public functions on the four lower floors, from committee meeting rooms to the cafeteria, while moving legislative and staff offices to the upper levels of the 426,000-square-foot General Assembly Building.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Valley Metro buses in Roanoke will operate one hour later than normal to accommodate riders attending a public hearing about a proposed fare increase in October, bus system officials said. The meeting is just one avenue for telling officials about the proposal. Valley Metro plans to place comment cards at the bus station and solicit public input online.
Roanoke Times

Virginia Beach City Councilmember Bobby Dyer on Tuesday, Aug. 22, announced he has drafted a resolution calling for a moratorium on public-private partnerships following the council’s approval earlier this month of a development project near Town Center that includes a $10 million tax break. The council’s vote in support of the CityView II project came after some criticism by citizens during a hearing – and amid concerns that a member of the development authority voted in July to support the project despite a possible financial conflict with one of its players.  The Virginian-Pilot’s Alissa Skelton has reported that a special prosecutor will review the July vote. 
Princess Anne Independent News

Two Virginia Department of Transportation officials were arrested Thursday for allegedly taking $140,000 in bribes from snow-removal contractors, according to prosecutors and court documents. The bribery scheme started in the 2013-2014 snow season and involved more than $9.1 million in contracts, according to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The state officials steered snow-clearing work to contractors in exchange for bribes and the officials often got a cut of the contractor’s payment from the commonwealth, prosecutors said. Anthony Willie, superintendent at the Burke-area maintenance headquarters, and his deputy, Kenneth Adams, secretly sought “to enrich themselves by corruptly demanding . . . and agreeing to receive and accept bribes . . . in exchange for being influenced in the performance of official acts in their roles as public officials,” according to the indictment.
Washington Post



National Stories
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Few things can be more galling for a (federal) FOIA requester than to patiently wait on a request for years, only to be told by an agency that if they don’t respond quickly and let the agency know they’re still interested, their request will be closed out. In the worst cases, we’ve seen requesters told they only have five days to respond - and the postmark on the envelope is after the deadline, meaning only the most psychically gifted requesters even have a chance to keep their request open. And while we’ve seen an increase in these types of letters recently, the good news is that we haven’t seen the most aggressive worst practices that we saw a few years ago.
Muck Rock

Wisconsin's offer to Foxconn Technology Group to extend $3 billion in tax breaks was made in a handwritten deal that increased substantially before being signed by Gov. Scott Walker, documents released Thursday under the state's open records law showed. Walker's office released the documents to The Associated Press and other news organizations. One handwritten page, signed by Walker and Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou on July 12, called for the Taiwanese company to invest up to $10 billion in the state in exchange for $3 billion in subsidies. That was two weeks before the deal was publicly announced. A June 26 letter from Walker's administration said the state's offer had increased substantially, but portions of a June 2 offer from the state to Foxconn were blacked out by Walker's office.
McClatchy