Transparency News 2/10/17

Friday, February 10, 2017


State and Local Stories

VCOG’s legislative bill chart has updated committee assignments

The Arlington County government on Feb. 25 will debut a digitized online collection telling the story of the effort to desegregate Arlington’s public schools. Materials were culled from the holdings of the county library system’s community archives, and Arlington officials are putting out a call for donations of materials to augment the record. Residents who lived through the era are being asked to sit for oral-history interviews with the staff of the library’s Center for Local History; the results also will be incorporated into the archive.
Inside NOVA

Months after his name surfaced in a public corruption case, former Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe is under criminal investigation by the FBI. Two grand jury subpoenas, issued late last month and obtained by The Virginian-Pilot on Thursday, focus on vendors that do business with the Sheriff’s Office, particularly the company that provides medical services to the jail, Correct Care Solutions LLC. One subpoena was issued to the Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 18; the other went to the city of Norfolk on Jan. 27. The subpoenas are almost identical, save for asking the Sheriff’s Office for records relating to its online meals program.
Virginian-Pilot

The advertisement at the top of the conservative blog “Bearing Drift” shows Republican lieutenant governor candidate Jill Holtzman Vogel peeking over a white barrier. “What’s Jill Vogel hiding? Click to learn more,” the ad reads. The link goes to a website attacking Vogel and comparing her to Hillary Clinton — anathema for a Republican candidate. “Just like Her,” the website says, using the logo Clinton used in her failed Democratic presidential campaign last year. But who’s behind the ad is a mystery. Independent expenditures in Virginia campaigns must be disclosed, but “dark money” advertising like the anti-Vogel ad doesn’t violate state law because the ad doesn’t advocate or endorse the election or defeat of a particular candidate.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Over the course of a five-and-a-half hour hearing in the run-up to last year's presidential election, Republican legislators lamented problems with the state's electronic voter registration system. Days later, right at the deadline to register to vote, that system crashed. Funding to upgrade the system was cut Thursday in the Senate by some of the same legislators who keyed in on the issue last fall. State Sen. Jill Vogel co-chaired that October meeting, and she also heads the budget subcommittee that removed nearly $4 million in new funding Gov. Terry McAuliffe had proposed for the Virginia Department of Elections. She said on the Senate floor Thursday that some of that money will likely come back into the budget as the House and Senate negotiate a final spending bill.
Daily Press

Students at George Mason University sued their school and a private foundation tied to the school in a Virginia state court, seeking records related to donations from the billionaire Koch brothers. The students are concerned that Koch donations to GMU, a state university, come with inappropriate conditions; they launched their campaign on this issue in 2014 after learning that the Charles Koch Foundation, GMU’s biggest donor, had sought influence over faculty hiring and teaching curriculum, for example through a grant agreement with Florida State University.
Huffington Post

Two retired Augusta County judges may be in hot water with the state Supreme Court for expressing their views on the county courthouse referendum last fall. The Virginia Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission has recommended that  the Virginia Supreme Court  censure the two judges —  retired 25th Judicial Circuit Judge Humes J. Franklin, Jr., and retired Virginia Appeals Court Judge Rudolph Bumgardner III —  for allegedly violating the judicial canons. The state's highest Court is expected to consider the recommendation this spring, said Richard Cullen, the Richmond attorney for the two retired judges and a former Virginia attorney general. The ruling by the commission came after it reviewed a complaint, filed in October, by Augusta County Supervisor Tracy Pyles. The supervisor complained that Franklin and Bumgardner violated the canons by speaking out publicly against the November referendum, which asked county voters to move the county courthouse from Staunton to Verona and authorize $45 million for a new judicial complex. The referendum was rejected by county voters by a 2-to-1 margin.
News Virginian


National Stories

Florida state senators on Tuesday gave their first approval to legislation that open government advocates say threatens to roll back access to public records in Florida. The bill (SB 80) would let judges decide whether or not to force government agencies to pay attorney fees when they illegally block access to records. Current law requires that agencies pay for the lawyers of members of the public who successfully sue them over records. “Clearly we have a rash of people abusing this wonderful privilege to get information and open government,” said state Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, who chairs the government oversight committee. “They’re just abusing it to shake down people and troll for things to sue people about, and I think it needed some discipline.”But open-government advocates, led by the First Amendment Foundation, say that rather than clamp down on people trying to profit off public record lawsuits, the bill would have a chilling effect on the constitutional right to access government documents. “There are ways to address the problem short of punishing the 99 percent of people who make public record requests simply because they want the records,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, which fights for open government in the state. “It’s a constitutional right, and the only avenue for enforcement a citizen has is going to court.” (NOTE: the constitutional right exists under the Florida constitution, not the U.S. constitution)
Miami Herald



Editorials/Columns

Residents of Petersburg have been collecting signatures to get two members of the City Council — Mayor Samuel Parham and former mayor Howard Myers — kicked off it. The petitioners have a long list of grievances, and now that they have the signatures, they are taking their case to court. Which is a trifle odd. In Virginia, voters cannot directly recall an elected official. Instead, they can urge a judge to do so. The judge then conducts what amounts to a trial and delivers a verdict. Which is a trifle problematic. Because, as Prince William Del. Richard Anderson has pointed out, that leaves the judge in the position of having to decide whether to overturn the outcome of a democratic election. Judges are understandably hesitant to do such a thing, as they should be. Yet if they don’t, then they are left in the position of seeming to tacitly endorse behavior bad enough to inspire a recall movement. That’s not so good, either.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

IN AN UNCOMMON legislative action on Wednesday, the House of Delegates voted against reappointing June Jennings as state inspector general, an action tied to the Jamycheal Mitchell case and which quickly drew an incendiary response from Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who nominated her. The effort, led by Del. Rob Bell, a Republican from Albemarle, and backed by his party’s caucus, drips with politics, as does everything in Richmond. But it comes with reasonable cause. Jennings is certainly qualified for that position, but the OSIG has not functioned with sufficient inquisitiveness on her watch, especially in the Mitchell case. After the OSIG’s report into Mitchell’s death was released in April, they testified before a joint legislative subcommittee that their efforts reflected the constraints of the law, a conclusion that did not sit well with lawmakers. Did they ask for a copy of the jail’s internal report, they were asked. No, they responded, saying that the jail had declined media requests, and they didn’t expect a different response. Did they interview anyone at the Portsmouth General District Court, which ordered that Mitchell undergo a psychological evaluation at Eastern State Hospital? No, they replied. Smith later told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that jail officials said nobody at the court would speak with them. Did they visit the jail to interview principals involved? Only once, in November 2015, they said. Lawmakers on the panel were understandably frustrated that these methods reflected a lack of curiosity. While some disagreed with Jennings’ conclusion that the OSIG lacked the authority to look into a regional jail, surely the office could have gone the extra mile on Mitchell’s behalf. It should have.
Virginian-Pilot

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