Transparency News 9/26/15

Monday, September 28, 2015
 

State and Local Stories

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The McAuliffe administration kept secret a 2014 report that found duplication by the state’s conservation police agencies. But faced with pressure from The Virginian-Pilot and a state delegate, the Office of the State Inspector General released the report this week. The 58-page study is titled “Limited Performance Review, Law Enforcement Activities in the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and Virginia Marine Resources Commission.” It was requested by former Secretary of Natural Resources Douglas Domenech, and was done by the Office of the State Inspector General, which investigates waste and inefficiency in state government. The report was presented a year ago to current Natural Resources Secretary Molly Ward and to officials with the agencies involved, but was not released publicly.
Virginian-Pilot

Texas prison officials are helping their counterparts in Virginia prepare for a scheduled execution next week by providing the state with pentobarbital, a lethal drug that corrections agencies nationwide have had difficulty obtaining. The disclosure, which surfaced in a court filing in an Oklahoma death penalty case, was confirmed Friday by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Virginia prison officials also confirmed the trade, saying they needed pentobarbital to replace a dose of another drug they intended to use, midazolam, that will soon expire. Lawyers for condemned Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip mentioned the Texas-Virginia drug exchange when challenging Oklahoma's plan to use midazolam during Glossip's lethal injection next week. The powerful sedative achieved notoriety after it was used in executions that took longer than expected last year in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma. Glossip's attorneys cite the Virginia-Texas exchange as proof that the drug is available, and included a photo of what they said were three bottles of pentobarbital with April 2016 expiration dates in Texas' possession. The lawyers said they obtained the photo from the Virginia Department of Corrections through a Freedom of Information Act request.
U.S. News & World Report

National Stories
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The District’s inspector general has filed an ethics complaint against the chairman of Metro’s governing board, alleging that he violated conflict-of-interest rules in serving as a paid adviser to a company that has done tens of millions of dollars in contract work for the transit agency, according to a member of the board’s ethics committee. Mortimer L. Downey, who joined the Metro board as a representative of the federal government in 2010 and became chairman this year, has made no secret of his lucrative ties to the engineering company Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has been paid $81 million in recent years to manage Metro’s capital improvements program. Although Downey has said that his approximately $100,000-a-year job as a part-time “senior adviser” to Parsons Brinckerhoff was approved by Metro’s general counsel — and that he ended his 10-year relationship with the company three months ago — the Metro board’s ethics committee has received a conflict-of-interest complaint from the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, according to committee member Michael Goldman. Goldman, a lawyer who represents Maryland on the board, would not disclose details of the confidential complaint, saying only that the inspector general has alleged that Downey’s involvement with Parsons Brinckerhoff was improper.
Washington Post

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission can’t force two former credit-card company employees accused of insider trading to give up the personal passcodes for their old work-issued smartphones. The case highlights the thorny legal questions raised by a common corporate practice: Many American workers have one password-protected phone that they use for work and personal activities.
Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed its employees to stay on the job despite internal investigations that found they had distributed drugs, lied to the authorities or committed other serious misconduct, newly disclosed records show. Lawmakers expressed dismay this year that the drug agency had not fired agents who investigators found attended “sex parties” with prostitutes paid with drug cartel money while they were on assignment in Colombia. The Justice Department also opened an inquiry into whether the DEA is able to adequately detect and punish wrongdoing by its agents. Records from the DEA’s disciplinary files show that was hardly the only instance in which the DEA opted not to fire employees despite apparently serious misconduct. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an “improper association with a criminal element” or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.
USA Today

Over the objections of Attorney General Ken Paxton's office, the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling making it easier for private companies to keep secret details of their contracts with the state of Texas and local governments, a move that public information advocates warn is ripe for abuse. In a 7-1 opinion, the justices ordered Paxton's office to block the release of some information contained in a lease between Boeing and the Port Authority of San Antonio because the aerospace manufacturer said making the details public could prove useful to Boeing’s competitors. That’s a lower threshold than what the state had previously observed, that information could be withheld only to protect proprietary information and trade secrets. “For followers of open government, it’s the biggest decision in recent memory simply because the exception is so broad,” said Bill Cobb, a former deputy in the Attorney General’s office. “I think it’s going to prevent a lot of information from being released.”
Governing

Editorials/Columns

Four years ago this newspaper integrated its commenting interface with Facebook, as an efficient means of removing anonymity. The objective: “cleaning up our online commentary.” Research has demonstrated that anonymity breeds incivility: According to one study, 53 percent of anonymous posters made rude and insulting remarks, while only 29 percent of identified commenters did so. Moreover, nasty attacks accomplish nothing. They do not provoke thought or advance the discussion. All they do is encourage more emotional vomiting by others. And we’re glad to be able to post reader comments — comments that might not always achieve Ciceronian rhetorical heights, but that do steer clear of the gutter worst. Please continue to share your thoughts with us — forcefully, if necessary, but always civilly. And, as they say in cyberspace: Don’t feed the trolls.
Richmond Times-Dispatch