Transparency News 2/23/17

Thursday, February 23, 2017


State and Local Stories
 
Peninsula Airport Commission board member was set to take the witness stand in circuit court last week in the case of a restaurant owner at Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport fighting the surprise termination of his long-term lease. Airport Commissioner Steve Mallon — called as a witness by the restaurant owner's lawyer — was expected to testify about why the six-member board unilaterally revoked the agreement at an October meeting. But the commission's attorney, Herbert V. Kelly Jr., objected. Though the vote to terminate Tom McDermott's lease took place in open session, the discussion occurred in a closed session, which Kelly said Mallon shouldn't be allowed to share it publicly. "The decision to terminate the lease was made in a closed session under the advice of counsel," Kelly said. "It's a privileged attorney-client conversation." Kevin J. Cosgrove, McDermott's attorney with Hunton & Williams, countered that a closed session isn't a recognized exception to testimony under Virginia's court rules. The discussions are "relevant to what's going on in this case," Cosgrove said. "Here we've got a commissioner who will testify to why the lease was being terminated."
Daily Press

Two members of the Portsmouth’s housing authority board have resigned under pressure from the City Council. The council sent a letter to housing authority commissioners asking them to attend a Feb. 28 hearing, where they can make their cases for keeping their seats. The letter cites the council’s right to pull members for inefficiency, misconduct and neglect of duty, and it calls for the resignation of those who have served longer than six months.
Virginian-Pilot

Legislation is moving forward that would allow Roanoke to add 1,000 solar panels to the top of the Berglund Center. A bill by Sen. John Edwards that would simplify the process for Roanoke to contract with a solar energy company cleared Virginia’s House of Delegates on Tuesday. Senate Bill 1226 by Edwards, D-Roanoke, comes shortly after the city was prepared to hire Secure Futures for a solar energy project on top of the downtown entertainment venue, but ran into some legal difficulties while finalizing the deal. Right before Secure Futures signed onto the project, the company realized that by working with the local government, it would have to make public certain trade secrets and proprietary information that could have jeopardized their financial standing and bargaining power in future deals, company President and CEO Tony Smith said. “There was no going forward,” he said. “The project just kind of stalled out.” Edwards’ bill tweaks Virginia Freedom of Information Act requirements so companies entering into solar services agreements with localities or other public entities can ask that certain proprietary information or trade secrets be kept confidential. The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council approved the legislation, Edwards said.
Roanoke Times

An attorney who was involved in an effort to remove an elected Albemarle County official years ago has now been appointed to serve as the special prosecutor in a legal case that could see Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy removed from office.  On Wednesday, Michael Doucette, the Lynchburg commonwealth’s attorney, said he had been appointed by the Charlottesville Circuit Court to serve as a special prosecutor in the case. Doucette said he would seek a continuance in the case when it comes before a Charlottesville judge Thursday so that he can have more time to investigate the allegations of “misuse of office” against the city councilor.
Daily Progress



National Stories


AT LEAST TWICE a day, the data recorder on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter beams images to a station in White Sands, New Mexico. That data gets copied to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and then copied again to computers at Arizona State University in Tempe. Two other copies go to an off-campus building where they live on different access-controlled computer systems. Mark Robinson, the researcher running the team that operates the LRO’s cameras, analyzes that data. Every three months his team uploads raw and calibrated images to NASA’s public website for anyone to access. That’s five layers of redundancy. “Nobody would be ever be able to delete these data,” Robinson says. “I’ve dedicated my life to preserving data. Buildings can collapse. Computers fail. But the LROC data will still be around.” For one thing, deleting federal records is illegal. The National Archives Office of the Inspector General investigates claims of record fraud and can refer cases for prosecution. And for another, NASA shares and backs up all of its datasets over multiple government research facilities and academic institutions across the country. So there’s no easy way to erase all the copies of it, even if a webpage or two were to go missing.
Wired

A privacy protection group scored a pair of legal wins Tuesday in a court battle with the FBI over access to studies the law enforcement agency has done of how its own record-keeping systems could impact personal privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the law enforcement agency under the Freedom of Information Act in 2014, seeking copies of the FBI's "privacy impact assessments" and "privacy threshold analyses" on various bureau databases containing personal information. The FBI eventually produced about 2,200 heavily redacted pages for EPIC, with much of the information deleted on the grounds that it reflected sensitive law enforcement methods or techniques. In an unusual ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said the FBI had failed to demonstrate that the deleted information met a threshold test for the exemption: that the records be compiled for law enforcement purposes.
Politico

Crime scene photographs and the 911 emergency call reporting a homicide and an attempted homicide in Franklin County, Vermont, last month must remain available for the public to inspect and hear, a Vermont Superior Court judge has ruled. During a bail hearing for Ethan Gratton, 26, of Georgia, about three dozen colored pictures were displayed, many on a large screen in the courtroom, while the 911 phone call recording also was played on a loudspeaker for the judge, lawyers, court personnel, police, press and public to hear. Either during the five-hour bail hearing Jan. 18, or shortly after, Gratton's defense team made a private request to the court to seal the photographs, 911 audio recording and other exhibits.
Brattleboro Reformer


Editorials/Columns


Anyone who doubts that creativity is abundant in the public sector need only scroll through the lists of semifinalists and "Bright Ideas" recognized by the Harvard Kennedy School's Innovations in American Government awards program. The programs being highlighted for this year signal a growing trend of utilizing existing technology platforms, and particularly social media, to reduce program costs and improve services. More often than not, these innovations tap into the practical know-how of digitally savvy public employees to address difficult challenges.
Stephen Goldsmith, Governing
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