Transparency News 9/16/15
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
State and Local Stories
A Loudoun County judge has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman (R) illegally obtained and published private e-mails of his Republican primary opponent and that he has illegally concealed the true source of campaign donations in his run for reelection. Speakman’s complaint alleges that Chapman illegally obtained private e-mails written by Noble, his potential political opponent, and then illegally published them. To access e-mails, documents show that Chapman’s internal affairs office in September 2014 asked Fairfax County for copies of e-mails from a retired Loudoun deputy who had begun working as a civilian contractor for Fairfax. Chapman’s internal affairs deputy, Ron Weckenman, told Fairfax that he was looking into the retired deputy’s “misuse of his Fairfax e-mail account” while communicating with sheriff’s employees “working in collusion against the Sheriff,” according to the e-mails provided to the retired deputy, former Maj. Ricky Frye. Many of Frye’s e-mails had been sent to or received from then-Maj. Noble, who was preparing to challenge Chapman for the Republican nomination in 2015. Weckenman and Chapman did not seek a search warrant or a subpoena for Frye’s “fairfaxcounty.gov” e-mails, and Fairfax did not require one. Records show Fairfax turned over Frye’s e-mails in three days.
Washington Post
Former Altavista Police Chief Kenneth Walsh was indicted this week on charges of embezzlement and forging public documents. A Campbell County grand jury on Monday indicted Walsh on 10 felony indictments: one count of embezzlement of public funds and nine counts of forgery of public documents. The forgery charges pertain to destruction of property.
Roanoke Times
Norfolk Southern Corp. is planning to relocate 253 workers from Virginia to its Atlanta office tower, according to a posting on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website, citing records from the city of Atlanta's development arm. In January, the Norfolk-based railroad announced it was asking 500 employees at its Roanoke office to relocate either to Norfolk or Atlanta.
Virginian-Pilot
Washington County voters have a new tool that offers information about the Nov. 3 election. VOTE411.org is an Internet site that provides information about candidates, issues, poll locations and other topics related to the upcoming elections. It was made possible by the League of Women Voters. Washington County residents can go to the site, enter their street address, click “On Your Ballot” and receive personalized information, according to a news release. The site then shows which candidates are running in that district and their answers to questions specific to their races. The League of Women Voters of Washington County prepared the questions, and most candidates in county races responded. Their answers are now available on VOTE411.org.
Herald Courier
It’s one thing to say the county needs to modernize its courts facilities — but quite another to say how big the courts must be to handle future growth. North River District Supervisor Marshall Pattie raised concerns last week about the trustworthiness of a study prepared by Moseley Architects in July that does just that. Based on population and caseload growth projections to 2035, the Richmond firm proposed a Verona courts complex of 120,000 square feet that would cost an estimated $44 million. The current county courts use shy of 68,000 square feet. Staunton used the same data to propose even more space — and cost — to merge city and county courts downtown. “The Moseley study projected the county’s caseload growth will exceed its population growth over 20 years,” Pattie said. “Does that really make sense?” A University of Virginia expert says no.The expert is Hamilton Lombard, a research specialist with U.Va.’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, which produces the population projections on which the study appears to have relied. “We have a big note on our website warning our population projections are out of date at this point,” Lombard said last week. “We advise against relying on them, because we were using 2010 data, so there are five years of trends we haven’t captured.”
News Leader
National Stories
A federal judge has ruled that an upstate New York town violated a Connecticut man's First Amendment rights when he was arrested on a charge of aggravated harassment for writing profanities on a $175 speeding ticket three years ago. In ruling issued last week, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel allowed Willian Barboza's lawsuit against the village of Liberty, N.Y. to proceed on claims the town of approximately 10,000 people 100 miles northwest of New York City failed to properly train police officers about free speech.
Fox News
Editorials/Columns
Life is full of trade-offs and the current debate over natural gas pipelines is full of them. The reality is that every form of energy has some problem with it: Coal is dirty. Wind turbines are sometimes giant blenders for birds and bats. Utility-scale solar has been known to cook birds right out of the sky. Nuclear? Perfectly safe until something goes wrong — now there’s a whole city near Chernobyl that’s uninhabitable. However, we’re not conflicted at all about government secrecy, so our eyes popped wide open last week when we read reporter Casey Fabris’ account of how representatives from Mountain Valley Pipeline held a series of meetings with Franklin County supervisors — one or two at a time, to get around the state’s Freedom of Information Act rules requiring public bodies to meet in, well, public. “I am quite frankly shocked by the lack of transparency that MVP has displayed with mapping on this project with respect to this issue and in general.” That’s not coming from some wild-eyed environmentalist threatening to lay down in front of the bulldozers. That’s a normally mild-mannered assistant county administrator, Roanoke County’s Richard Caywood, who is his county’s official point person for pipeline developments.
Roanoke Times
David Brock appears to be the sort of apostate who abandons his faith but not his fanaticism. So the former Clinton nemesis might not find much funny about this irony: The candidate he supports for president wants Congress to have the power to ban the book Brock has just written — a defense of that very same candidate. The book is “Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary Clinton and Hijack Your Government.” It defends Clinton, whom Brock supports through two groups he founded (American Bridge and Media Matters), from the meanies at The New York Times, which Brock calls a “megaphone for conservative propaganda” (yes, really). Clinton supports a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. Political reporters and others who don’t know any better write about Citizens United as though it were a “campaign-finance case” that took “the reins off big-money electoral donations.” This is wrong. Campaign donations were never at issue. The group that gave the case its name never tried to make a campaign donation. It made a movie. About Hillary Clinton. The common thread running through these tales, and many others like them, is plain enough: Politicians and government officeholders want to control what people can say about them, who can say it, when they can say it and whom they can say it with. They’re not trying to protect democracy from corruption. They’re trying to protect themselves from criticism.
A. Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch
State and Local Stories
A Loudoun County judge has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman (R) illegally obtained and published private e-mails of his Republican primary opponent and that he has illegally concealed the true source of campaign donations in his run for reelection. Speakman’s complaint alleges that Chapman illegally obtained private e-mails written by Noble, his potential political opponent, and then illegally published them. To access e-mails, documents show that Chapman’s internal affairs office in September 2014 asked Fairfax County for copies of e-mails from a retired Loudoun deputy who had begun working as a civilian contractor for Fairfax. Chapman’s internal affairs deputy, Ron Weckenman, told Fairfax that he was looking into the retired deputy’s “misuse of his Fairfax e-mail account” while communicating with sheriff’s employees “working in collusion against the Sheriff,” according to the e-mails provided to the retired deputy, former Maj. Ricky Frye. Many of Frye’s e-mails had been sent to or received from then-Maj. Noble, who was preparing to challenge Chapman for the Republican nomination in 2015. Weckenman and Chapman did not seek a search warrant or a subpoena for Frye’s “fairfaxcounty.gov” e-mails, and Fairfax did not require one. Records show Fairfax turned over Frye’s e-mails in three days.
Washington Post
Former Altavista Police Chief Kenneth Walsh was indicted this week on charges of embezzlement and forging public documents. A Campbell County grand jury on Monday indicted Walsh on 10 felony indictments: one count of embezzlement of public funds and nine counts of forgery of public documents. The forgery charges pertain to destruction of property.
Roanoke Times
Norfolk Southern Corp. is planning to relocate 253 workers from Virginia to its Atlanta office tower, according to a posting on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website, citing records from the city of Atlanta's development arm. In January, the Norfolk-based railroad announced it was asking 500 employees at its Roanoke office to relocate either to Norfolk or Atlanta.
Virginian-Pilot
Washington County voters have a new tool that offers information about the Nov. 3 election. VOTE411.org is an Internet site that provides information about candidates, issues, poll locations and other topics related to the upcoming elections. It was made possible by the League of Women Voters. Washington County residents can go to the site, enter their street address, click “On Your Ballot” and receive personalized information, according to a news release. The site then shows which candidates are running in that district and their answers to questions specific to their races. The League of Women Voters of Washington County prepared the questions, and most candidates in county races responded. Their answers are now available on VOTE411.org.
Herald Courier
It’s one thing to say the county needs to modernize its courts facilities — but quite another to say how big the courts must be to handle future growth. North River District Supervisor Marshall Pattie raised concerns last week about the trustworthiness of a study prepared by Moseley Architects in July that does just that. Based on population and caseload growth projections to 2035, the Richmond firm proposed a Verona courts complex of 120,000 square feet that would cost an estimated $44 million. The current county courts use shy of 68,000 square feet. Staunton used the same data to propose even more space — and cost — to merge city and county courts downtown. “The Moseley study projected the county’s caseload growth will exceed its population growth over 20 years,” Pattie said. “Does that really make sense?” A University of Virginia expert says no.The expert is Hamilton Lombard, a research specialist with U.Va.’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, which produces the population projections on which the study appears to have relied. “We have a big note on our website warning our population projections are out of date at this point,” Lombard said last week. “We advise against relying on them, because we were using 2010 data, so there are five years of trends we haven’t captured.”
News Leader
National Stories
A federal judge has ruled that an upstate New York town violated a Connecticut man's First Amendment rights when he was arrested on a charge of aggravated harassment for writing profanities on a $175 speeding ticket three years ago. In ruling issued last week, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel allowed Willian Barboza's lawsuit against the village of Liberty, N.Y. to proceed on claims the town of approximately 10,000 people 100 miles northwest of New York City failed to properly train police officers about free speech.
Fox News
Editorials/Columns
Life is full of trade-offs and the current debate over natural gas pipelines is full of them. The reality is that every form of energy has some problem with it: Coal is dirty. Wind turbines are sometimes giant blenders for birds and bats. Utility-scale solar has been known to cook birds right out of the sky. Nuclear? Perfectly safe until something goes wrong — now there’s a whole city near Chernobyl that’s uninhabitable. However, we’re not conflicted at all about government secrecy, so our eyes popped wide open last week when we read reporter Casey Fabris’ account of how representatives from Mountain Valley Pipeline held a series of meetings with Franklin County supervisors — one or two at a time, to get around the state’s Freedom of Information Act rules requiring public bodies to meet in, well, public. “I am quite frankly shocked by the lack of transparency that MVP has displayed with mapping on this project with respect to this issue and in general.” That’s not coming from some wild-eyed environmentalist threatening to lay down in front of the bulldozers. That’s a normally mild-mannered assistant county administrator, Roanoke County’s Richard Caywood, who is his county’s official point person for pipeline developments.
Roanoke Times
David Brock appears to be the sort of apostate who abandons his faith but not his fanaticism. So the former Clinton nemesis might not find much funny about this irony: The candidate he supports for president wants Congress to have the power to ban the book Brock has just written — a defense of that very same candidate. The book is “Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary Clinton and Hijack Your Government.” It defends Clinton, whom Brock supports through two groups he founded (American Bridge and Media Matters), from the meanies at The New York Times, which Brock calls a “megaphone for conservative propaganda” (yes, really). Clinton supports a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. Political reporters and others who don’t know any better write about Citizens United as though it were a “campaign-finance case” that took “the reins off big-money electoral donations.” This is wrong. Campaign donations were never at issue. The group that gave the case its name never tried to make a campaign donation. It made a movie. About Hillary Clinton. The common thread running through these tales, and many others like them, is plain enough: Politicians and government officeholders want to control what people can say about them, who can say it, when they can say it and whom they can say it with. They’re not trying to protect democracy from corruption. They’re trying to protect themselves from criticism.
A. Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch
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