Transparency News 9/21/15
Monday, September 21, 2015
State and Local Stories
VCOG's annual conference is
November 12. Click here for details.
When Norfolk City Auditor John Sanderlin stood before the City Council this summer and highlighted the work of his office - audits completed and in draft form - it was probably the first the public had heard of the efforts. There's a reason for that. Although the auditor reports yearly to council members, he does not publicly review the findings from the audits produced by his office. And while the audits generally are posted online, none of the audits from the 2015 fiscal year, which ended in June, were on the auditor's website until after The Virginian-Pilot notified Sanderlin last month.
Virginian-Pilot
The state Supreme Court protected execution manuals and other materials from public view this week, a decision with potentially far reaching implications for public access to a slew of government documents unrelated to Virginia's death penalty. With the decision (pdf), a majority of the justices determined that much of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act doesn't require government agencies to redact sensitive information from requested documents. In many cases, state and local officials can simply decline to release anything at all if the law exempts part from release. Del. Jim LeMunyon, R-Chantilly, has favored FOIA reform, and said Friday that legislation may be needed to clarify the law on redactions. He said the court's opinion seems out of line with FOIA's intent. "I'm just one guy … but I would find that hard to believe that was the intent of the legislature," LeMunyon said. VCOG’s Megan Rhyne was not hopeful for change. "I have not seen a willingness over the last few years for legislators to go against whatever a court has come down with," she said.
Daily Press
Some people who live in Prince Edward County are concerned after seeing a picture that appeared to show a 911 dispatcher asleep while working at the county sheriff's office. "The only thing I have to say is that it's a personnel issue and it has been addressed, that's the only comment I'm going to make," Sheriff Wesley Reed said.
WTVR
In a shift from recent years, the Norfolk City Council decided to hold its annual retreat this week in Norfolk. In the past, the council has traveled to Smithfield for two days, a decision that has drawn criticism in part because of the inconvenience to residents who drive roughly 30 miles to get there. What, Norfolk isn't good enough for you to sit around and hash out city issues? This year, it is. The retreat - all day today and the first half of Tuesday - will be held at the Slover Library. "Doing it here, I think it's better for everyone, to get feedback good and bad," Councilman Andy Protogyrou said. "We kind of wanted to be back home. I wanted to be back home." Protogyrou acknowledged that the schedule for the retreat comes at an "awkward time" for residents interested in attending. It falls during business hours, when many workers are on the clock. But Protogyrou said he asked City Manager Marcus Jones to televise the retreat so residents could view the meetings in their free time. Asked whether Jones would do so, city spokesperson Lori Crouch said in an email she would look into it.
Virginian-Pilot
National Stories
UT System Regent Wallace Hall defended his own work regarding access to public information at the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas conference Thursday. Since being appointed to the board by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, Hall has requested hundreds of thousands of pages of information in an effort to investigate administrative practices at the University. In February, the Kroll Report, performed by Kroll Associates Inc., a corporate investigations and risk consulting firm, found former President William Powers, Jr. responsible for admitting undergraduate and law students who did not meet academic standards. During an interview with Ross Ramsey, executive editor of The Texas Tribune, Hall said that as a member of the Board of Regents, he is a fiduciary and therefore responsible for protecting the future of the institution and making sure it complies with the law.
Daily Texan Online
Editorials/Columns
At this point, however, the trend in open government jurisprudence is not dim at all – it is a bright, flashing light. In recent years, it has become clear – through unnecessarily broad, careless, and extreme rulings – that a majority of the Supreme Court of Virginia is actively anti-openness. Among the most troubling aspects of the rulings in this list are the Court repeatedly disregarding the principles in Va. Code § 2.2-3700, which the General Assembly explicitly set forth to guide interpretation of FOIA; and not just ruling against openness but doing so with what seems to qualify as reckless abandon.
Open Virginia Law
The United States has slipped so far with respect to transparency that some open-government groups now rank it behind Yemen, Kyrgyzstan and Liberia. Today, the Freedom of Information Act – our country’s signature right-to-information law – is alarmingly dysfunctional. Consider what happened to Sharyl Attkisson, a journalist with five Emmy Awards, when she asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October for records related to a virus that had possibly killed 14 children and paralyzed another 115. The CDC still hasn’t turned over a single document in response. This isn’t the first such experience for Attkisson. She recently told a congressional committee that it took the Department of Defense 10 years to respond to a request she made in 2003.
Erin Carroll, Sacramento Bee
