Transparency News 10/2/15
Friday, October 2, 2015
State and Local Stories
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The city of Richmond’s target date to submit a basic financial report to the state that is already 10 months past due came and went Thursday. Last month, city officials said they expected the report to be complete “no later” than Oct. 1. Martha Mavredes, the state Auditor of Public Accounts charged with collecting the audited, technical snapshots of municipalities’ revenues and expenditures, was watching her inbox. “To my knowledge there has never been a local (comprehensive annual financial report) submitted this late,” she said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Danville City Council member Larry Campbell asked the Danville School Board for help both informing students about Virginia elections and increasing the city’s low voter turnout during the school board’s monthly meeting Thursday. “What I’d like to ask the school board and students within our area in a history or sociology class is if you all would develop some sort of initiative or awareness piece within each program to assist them,” Campbell said during the public comment section of the meeting.
Register & Bee
The Culpeper Town Council Personnel Committee met in closed session, again, Wednesday morning to interview candidates for eight vacancies on various authorities, boards and commissions. The committee has met behind closed doors every month so far this year to discuss such appointments or town personnel related matters. Meanwhile, Culpeper Town Council has also met in closed session at every regular monthly meeting so far this year as well as additional special meetings, starting Jan. 2 special to discuss an employee discipline matter. Other reasons cited for closed door meetings in 2015 were for legal consultation, property acquisition, personnel matters and future or pending litigation related to ongoing cases involving utility easements, the police department and the commonwealth's attorney. Council is legally able to meet in closed session for the cited reasons.
Star-Exponent
A battle over the motto “In God We Trust,” is playing out in Richmond County. Richmond County District 2 Supervisor Jean Harper is looking to have the United States national motto displayed prominently in Richmond County buildings. Harper was contacted by a representative of a non-profit organization called “In God We Trust,” where she later brought it before the September Board of Supervisors meeting. David Niose is the legal director for the American Humanist Association based out of Washington D.C. said he is familiar with the ‘In God we trust organization’ and finds their message problematic.
Northern Neck News
National Stories
As government negotiators dig into perhaps the final round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations this week in Atlanta, they may take comfort in knowing that nothing they are doing has to be shared with the public they represent until years after it is over. That’s because a federal district court in Manhattan decided this week, in a closely watched Freedom of Information Act case brought by Intellectual Property Watch, that draft texts of the trade deal can be kept secret. The court did, however, cast doubt on the government’s reasons for also keeping its communications with industry lobbyists from the public eye.
IP Watch
Competitions for business are playing out across the country as states increasingly offer lucrative tax breaks to attract the data centers that function as the brains of the Internet. An Associated Press analysis of state revenue and economic-development records shows that government officials extended nearly $1.5 billion in tax incentives to hundreds of data-center projects nationwide during the past decade.
SiliconValley
The latest bout in an ongoing legal tussle between Gawker Media and Hulk Hogan was decided Thursday in favor of the former professional wrestler. In a pretrial hearing, Circuit Judge Pamela Campbell ruled that more than a dozen court filings entered into the record by legal teams representing Gawker Media and Hogan will remain under seal. The filings, which span more than a year’s worth of litigation, were kept confidential on the grounds that their disclosure could jeopardize Hogan’s right to privacy. All told, Campbell ordered 15 separate case filings sealed. Although their contents remain confidential, general descriptions provided the court show the sealed material includes evidence and records of legal maneuvering by both sides filed between May 2014 and August 2015.
Poynter
Dozens of U.S. Secret Service employees earlier this year combed the files of a House lawmaker who had been critical of security lapses at the agency and disclosed some of his personal information that was then published in the media, a government report said on Wednesday. Some 45 Secret Service employees accessed the personal information of Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee who was leading a probe of the agency, said the report by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General. Soon after Chaffetz held a hearing on the Secret Service in March, media reports appeared that Chaffetz had been rejected for a Secret Service job in 2003. The initial publication was on April 2 in the online publication the Daily Beast.
Reuters
