Transparency News 9/15/14
State and Local Stories
The arrest of former Windsor Police Chief Arlis "Vic" Reynolds turned into the case of the missing mug shot this week, as agencies pointed fingers over who was supposed to have Reynolds' processing paperwork. Ultimately, the Virginia State Police concluded Friday afternoon that they could not release the photos of Reynolds or another former police officer charged with embezzlement. Booking photos are typically provided to the public by law enforcement as a matter of course when an arrest is announced and Virginia's Freedom of Information Act specifically cites mug shots as records that are required to be released. State Police spokeswoman Corrine Geller said because the arresting officers chose not to print out copies of the photographs, they were not records in the possession of State Police and therefore were not subject to release by the agency. The State Police is one of the agencies with access to the CCRE, however Geller said taking the mug shots from the database and publicly distributing them would be a violation of state law governing the protection of criminal histories. Maria Everett, the executive director of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, said that the state's open records law is clear: if an adult is arrested for a felony and photographed during booking, that photo is a publicly available record. "Just because you store it in a database or something and say 'under public records law, we can't get to it or we can't release it' … that flies in the face of open records laws to me," Everett said.
Daily Press
The chairman of the Virginia Press Association’s Freedom of Information Committee believes Suffolk’s city attorney’s advice to hold meetings of a new task force in the open is on the right side of the law. “You’re doing the public’s business, and any reason not to have it public should be very narrowly defined,” said Dick Hammerstrom, who’s also an editor at The Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg. “They’re spending the public’s money, and they want to decide how to spend it privately. It just goes against any concept of open government. The public would want to know what they’re deciding, especially because it involves the education of their children.”
Suffolk News-Herald
Richmond Chief Administrative Officer Byron C. Marshall has resigned his position, multiple sources at City Hall confirmed late Sunday night, bringing an end to his five-year tenure at the helm of the city government’s daily operations. Marshall resigned Friday, the sources said. The administration of Mayor Dwight C. Jones plans to make a formal announcement Monday morning. The City Council was informed Sunday evening, but the precise circumstances of Marshall’s departure are unclear. Marshall recently sparred with the city auditor’s office over a report detailing Marshall's attempt to boost the retirement pension for one of his deputies, Sharon Judkins, just as her employment with the city was ending. Marshall said he was attempting to negotiate a friendly departure for Judkins and received flawed information on human resources procedures.
Times-Dispatch
In June, the Portsmouth City Council gave Auditor Jesse Andre Thomas 90 days to shape up. That probation period ends Tuesday, and Thomas still has not produced his first audit - although he's been saying since at least February that he is on the verge of completing his audit on entertainment venue Willett Hall. Thomas is now more than 17 months into his employment with the city, drawing $92,700 annually. When questioned by The Virginian-Pilot, at least three council members said that, based on Thomas' performance during the past three months, they're ready to part ways with him. "It's not even that the Willett Hall audit hasn't been completed," Councilwoman Elizabeth Psimas said. "We have a staff member who was given a time period to improve the quality and quantity of his work. And I have seen nothing."
Virginian-Pilot
How local governments procure legal services differ around the state, James Campbell, executive director of the Virginia Association of Counties, said Thursday. "It truly is all over the board," Campbell said. Contracts may vary from written to verbal, Campbell added. Any agreement technically is a contract, he said. Across the state, many counties employ attorneys on a full-time basis. Other counties hold law firms on retainer. "Some are even less formal than that," Campbell said. Whether or not Shenandoah County could find an attorney at a lower cost remains uncertain. Towns and counties in the valley pay varying amounts for legal services. Litten works for the county at $244 per hour -- 75 percent of his normal billable rate. The discount applies to other attorneys with the firm who may also work for the county. The firm bills at 50 percent of the rate for Litten's attendance at board meetings. Litten's rate doesn't apply to litigation filed on the county's behalf. State code allows for governing bodies to appoint attorneys who then work at their request. Local governing bodies also can establish a contract or other agreement with an attorney or law firm for legal services.
Northern Virginia Daily
Charlottesville’s registrar only recently repaid the city more than $4,500 to cover her husband’s taxpayer-funded cellphone use for more than five years while he held positions neither with her office nor the city. “It was wrong, and I know it was wrong,” Sheri Iachetta said Friday. “I’m sorry it happened.” Charlottesville Electoral Board Chairwoman Joan Schatzman said she was “deeply disappointed.” “I feel stupid, because she told us she had been paying [Owen’s] bill all along and I believed her,” Schatzman said.
Daily Progress
National Stories
Facing charges of public corruption, South Carolina's embattled House Speaker Bobby Harrellsuspended himself from the House of Representatives and transferred his duties as speaker to his next in command Thursday. The move marked the end of Harrell's almost decade-long chapter as one of South Carolina's most powerful politicians. It came as the race to succeed the Charleston Republican as head of the GOP-controlled House narrowed to three candidates, including a Lexington County state representative. "I am proactively taking this step because I believe it is the right decision for the South Carolina House of Representatives," Harrell wrote in a letter to the clerk of the House. "I have great respect for this institution and the people of South Carolina. I have always sought to act in their best interest and continue to do so now by taking this action and suspending myself from office." Harrell's self-suspension came the day after he was indicted by a Richland County grand jury on nine misdemeanor charges, including illegally using campaign money for personal expenses, filing false campaign disclosure reports and misconduct in office.Governing
Inspired by successful efforts in Brazil and other countries, several American communities haveundertaken pilot efforts to allow citizens to directly decide how public funds are spent in their neighborhoods. However, one of the biggest concerns raised by critics of this approach is that not enough citizens actually participate to make the efforts meaningful and legitimate. How to address this concern? Expanding the use of social media in the participatory budgeting process holds promise, according to a new report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
Governing
September has not been a good month for state laws that make it a crime to lie about political candidates or ballot initiatives, with federal judges striking down such laws on First Amendment grounds in Minnesota and Ohio.
National Law Journal
Editorials/Columns
According to the Suffolk News-Herald story, meeting in the open went against Suffolk City Councilman Mike Duman’s personal preference. “My original desire was for the meetings to be open. (Closed) meetings can always be somewhat more productive, especially if there’s negotiations involved or there’s a need for more open conversation,” Duman said. “It’s easier to have a conversation when you don’t necessarily have to worry about being politically correct.” If we assume for a moment that Duman could be right about government meetings being more productive when they aren’t public, then we must disregard the reason both these bodies exist. Duman ran for public office and was elected, or hired, by the public. They call this public service. The spending issues the task force members hope to solve with public money that they receive from the public through taxes. And state law says unambiguously that “The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government.” There is that pesky word public again.Dick Hammerstrom, Free Lance-Star
Like “pink slime,” a term for fine-ground beef trimmings, “industrial sludge” is a dysphemism — the opposite of a euphemism — for a product that’s not as bad as it sounds. But people are still entitled to have concerns about the stuff, and to know where it’s being used. Unfortunately, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality failed to give the public adequate notice about a proposal to spread industrial sludge, which is a type of fertilizer, on 16,000 acres of farm fields in seven counties in the state. Residents were understandably displeased. Regular readers of this space know we’ve made a bit of a hobby horse out of the public-notice issue. Every year, some local government officials and state leaders try to weaken public-notice requirements on the specious grounds that doing so will save money. It won’t. All it would do would enable those officials to spread a lot more of their own ... fertilizer.
Times-Dispatch
Jerry Canada is right. It was inappropriate for a fellow school board member to seek an administrative job with Roanoke County Public Schools before first resigning from the division’s policymaking body. Yet board member Mike Stovall did not before seeking, and ultimately getting, the job of transportation department head, though Canada had told him he first should give up his elected seat.
Roanoke Times
Remember last fall, when part-time Roanoke County Supervisor Butch Church applied for the full-time county public information officer position? Although he didn’t get that gig, elected officials applying for full-time gigs in the government they rule is getting to be an annual thing in Roanoke County. The latest example is Mike Stovall, recently of the Roanoke County School Board. On Sept. 5 he announced he was resigning his elective seat for an unspecified “business opportunity.” A few days later, we learned more: * The business opportunity was a full-time job as the county schools transportation director, which pays $60,000 per year. * Stovall had in advance cleared his application with his colleagues on the school board before he tossed his hat in the ring for the job. Other council members and Lange were falling all over themselves to deny the hiring process had been greased for the (nearly) 20-year school board veteran. That they felt the need to deny it at all is a telling factor.
Dan Casey, Roanoke Times
In a routine congressional election featuring incumbents and challengers singing the songs of their parties, Independent Green Party candidates Ken and Elaine Hildebrandt stand out like thumbs mistaken for nails. They’re not the usual suspects. They are married. They accept no campaign donations from anyone — no citizens, no lobbyists and no large corporations. Elaine Hildebrandt, a teacher, is running for election in the 6th Congressional District, but lives in the 5th District. It’s rare, but legal.“In general, voters want their member of the House to live in the district, or at least have a home in it. That’s especially true in a state like Virginia, which is so close to D.C.,” Larry J. Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said. “We expect to see our representatives a great deal. You’re taking a chance if you don’t meet expectations. Ask ex-Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th, who was apparently seen over Skype more often than live and in-person in district town halls and other forums. Voters notice over time.” Elaine Hildebrandt recognizes the unlikelihood of getting elected, but she doesn’t see her residency as a big drawback. “A lot of people I talked to when I was circulating petitions in the district to get onto the ballot said they worked in the district but didn’t live there and, in a way, that’s how I look at it,” she said. “The district is where I will work, even if I don’t live there.”
Bryan McKenzie, Daily Progress
It’s time for Virginians to demand of their legislators and their publicly elected officials the highest possible standards of ethics and conduct. This means new laws with stiff enforcement. It is time for a new Virginia Way, where our representatives – at every level – exemplify the honesty and integrity that we the people have a right to expect. The free ride is over. And so is the gravy train. But only if the citizens insist.
Mike McClary, Star-Exponent
“I would love to go to the Masters,” says House Minority Leader David Toscano, referring to the famous golf tournament. “But I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to take Dominion’s money to do it.” That was a veiled reference to a trip enjoyed by two Republican lawmakers, Hanover’s Ryan McDougle and Spotsylvania’s Bryce Reeves — not that members of Toscano’s own Democratic Party don’t take plenty of unseemly swag too, mind you. Partisan digs aside, Toscano is entirely right. Yet a lot of state lawmakers can’t seem to grasp that obvious point, even after watching their most recent former governor get convicted on nearly a dozen federal corruption charges. Finally, it bears repeating why all of this is necessary in the first place. Beyond original sin and basic human weakness, there’s the fact that state government inserts itself into all manner of business matters, in ways that can make or break enterprises into which people have poured their entire lives. Even short of that, a tweak to the tax code or a change in an obscure rule can mean millions of dollars in revenue lost or gained. When companies and other interest groups ply legislators with swag bags and fancy trips, they are sometimes paying what amounts to protection money to government officials who could ruin them. And other times, they’re seeking an unfair advantage, a handout, or a loophole they plainly do not deserve.
Times-Dispatch
