Transparency News 9/26/19

Thursday
September 26, 2019

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state & local news stories

"The ACLU repeated its prior call, and also urged police to publicly release the bodycam footage and the names of the officers involved."

At the invitation of Henrico County police, members of several civic and community groups on Wednesday viewed footage from the body cameras of two officers involved in last week’s fatal shooting of a woman wielding an ax in her home. While many who saw it didn’t want to comment directly on the content of the footage, all agreed it was a tragic outcome and many were looking for ways to ensure a similar situation doesn’t happen again. The state branch of the ACLU repeated its prior call, and also urged police to publicly release the bodycam footage and the names of the officers involved, after two staff members watched the footage Wednesday. The state branch of the ACLU repeated its prior call, and also urged police to publicly release the bodycam footage and the names of the officers involved, after two staff members watched the footage Wednesday.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

An email hack of a Charlottesville city employee may have exposed personal information of 10,700 utility billing customers, Charlottesville officials said Wednesday. Officials said they are contacting the current and former utility billing customers to warn them that personally identifiable information may have been exposed by the unauthorized access to one employee’s email inbox.
The Daily Progress

The Warren County School Board met for a special closed meeting Wednesday to discuss the evaluation of Superintendent Greg Drescher.  The meeting was held the day after Drescher turned himself in to state police on Tuesday after being indicted on two misdemeanor counts of misfeasance and one count of nonfeasance Friday by a special grand jury investigating potential criminal activity involving the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority.  Drescher, who previously served as the EDA board chairman, was among 14 people indicted on the same charges who went before the magistrate this week. Board members made no comment regarding anything discussed in the meeting.
The Northern Virginia Daily

Edward Dickinson Tayloe II was not happy. A Charlottesville newspaper had published a profile this year featuring him as one of 13 people suing to prevent the removal of the city’s embattled Confederate monuments. So far, okay — but the story focused heavily on his family’s slaveholding history. “Tayloe, 76, comes from a First Family of Virginia that was one of the largest slave-owning dynasties in Virginia,” reads the article, written by Lisa Provence for the C-Ville Weekly. It goes on to quote a University of Virginia professor, Jalane Schmidt, who said the Tayloes had antagonized black people for generations. Almost exactly two months after the story came out, Tayloe took his revenge. He sued all three — the paper, the reporter and the professor — for defamation, demanding more than $1 million in damages. By referring to his family’s slaveholding past in a story about Tayloe’s fight to preserve the monuments, Tayloe’s lawyers argued, the C-Ville Weekly and Schmidt implied their client was a racist. The fallout caused Tayloe to suffer “humiliation” and “emotional distress,” among other things, the lawyers wrote in court documents.
The Washington Post

stories of national interest

Communications between Ann Arbor, Michigan, residents and city council members are part of the public record and not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, a Washtenaw County judge has ruled. In her ruling, Kuhnke said FOIA doesn’t exempt communications between a resident and a city employee when they are discussing a public body in the performance of an official function. “(The communications) all involve the business of the city, the work of the city, the decisions of city council,” she said. "... If the only reason they shouldn’t be disclosed is because they are communications by a citizen to a member of council, I reject that.”
MLive

There isn’t a great official data source available for cyberattacks on government in the U.S. But the data that is available — compiled from news reports by a few intrepid security researchers — shows a pretty clear picture: There’s been a dramatic spike in ransomware attacks on state and local government this year. Also, that’s nothing new. Government has been experiencing a steady increase in all kinds of cyberattacks for some time now, and the preferred method of attack keeps evolving. There’s no central authority to which governments report cyberattacks, so the best way to collect nationwide data is through the media. It should be noted that there are limitations inherent in using media reports to compile data. They can provide ample details, but it’s virtually guaranteed that the data sets are incomplete, because the news media won’t catch every attack, and not all attacks are reported.
Governing
 

"If the only reason they shouldn’t be disclosed is because they are communications by a citizen to a member of council, I reject that.”

editorials & columns

"Government needs to be fully accountable to its citizens — especially in as solemn a matter as an execution."

As RTD reporter Frank Green noted in a recent article, some key steps in execution by lethal injection have always been hidden in Virginia. But following a controversial 2017 execution, a state policy change now hides everything except the reading of the death warrant and the inmate’s last words just before the chemicals begin flowing. As the suit contends, this secrecy limits the public’s ability to understand how executions unfold or whether an execution is violating the Constitution or is otherwise botched. Prison policy calls for the attendance of six citizens, or “official witnesses.” Up to four media pool witnesses — one each from print, television, radio media and the wire services — and an unspecified number of immediate members of the murder victim’s family are permitted to witness the execution. The lawsuit contends that the First and 14th amendments guarantee the public a right to access to government proceedings for which there is a history of accessibility and in which access plays a significant, positive role in the functioning of the process, Green reported. Green has witnessed at least 19 executions as a media representative. Government needs to be fully accountable to its citizens — especially in as solemn a matter as an execution. To ensure the integrity of a highly sensitive process, citizen and media witnesses need to be able to view the entirety of the execution.
Richmond Times-Dispatch