Transparency News 9/20/16

 

For years, Norfolk police didn't tell complainants how their internal affairs cases ended. After a Pilot article and subsequent calls for transparency from a new mayor, that's changing, at least a little bit.
Virginian-Pilot

Email issues may be causing headaches for Hillary Clinton, but a look through the more than 145,000 email records publicly available online from Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine’s term as governor of Virginia show little more than a politician who is media conscious, careful even of language in internal memos lest they be leaked to the press, and who worked closely with press representatives on amendments to the state Freedom of Information Act. The email messages — part of more than 1.3 million records still being processed by the Library of Virginia — also provide some insight into Sen. Kaine's reluctance to release his full travel schedule when he served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during his last year as governor.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press



National Stories
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A federal judge lashed out at the State Department on Monday over what he charged was foot-dragging over Freedom of Information Act requests relating to Hillary Clinton's service as secretary of state. “You have a client that, to say the least, is not impressing the judges on this court, myself included. … It is in your client’s interest to start being more obviously cooperative,” U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon warned Justice Department lawyers representing State during a hearing Monday. “The State Department is at risk of being perceived as obstreperous. [They] need to get with the program.” The 10-minute hearing took place on a suit for records on how — and whether — Clinton and her aides were trained to handle classified information. State had proposed a deadline of Oct. 17 to produce about 450 unclassified documents relating to the training issue sought by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Politico

The Montana State Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to review the disciplinary records related to a former University of Montana student and determine which, if any, can be released to author Jon Krakauer. In an opinion released Monday, the court both affirmed in part and reversed in part a previous order by Lewis and Clark County District Court that all the records be released. The Montana Supreme Court said that while the District Court had correctly ruled Krakauer, who lives in Colorado, could make the request under Montana’s right to know law, the student’s education records have a heightened level of privacy protection that the lower court needed to balance with that right.
Missoulian

The administration of Florida Gov. Rick Scott is moving the Office of Open Government to a place where members of the public can still reach it. Jackie Schutz, a spokeswoman for Scott, said the office will be relocated to the 16th floor of the state Capitol building from its current location near Scott's executive offices. The Associated Press reported earlier this week that renovations had placed the open government office behind a locked door that is accessible by employees only. The Office of Open Government is supposed to respond to public records requests.
Daily Progress

Editorials/Columns

Since before the nation’s founding, the idea that the identities of jurors would be known not just to the parties before a court but also to the community at large has been a fundamental principle of the American judicial system. “When the colonists imported the jury system to America,” a Massachusetts trial court recognized, “they brought with them a system in which a defendant in all types of criminal trials traditionally had been tried by individuals whom the defendant knew or, at least was highly likely to know.” A different court similarly pointed out that the jury selection for the British soldiers on trial for committing the Boston Massacre “was open to the public, and the identities of the jurors who acquitted the soldiers were known to the community.” Despite their overall rarity in American history, “nameless juries have progressed from a judicial fluke to a well-established departure from ordinary procedure, and a measure which some authorities argue seriously should be ordinary procedure.” Today, every federal judicial circuit, excluding the 10th Circuit, has approved of the use of anonymous juries.
Kevin Delaney, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press