Transparency News 3/23/17

Thursday, March 23, 2017


State and Local Stories
 
Richmond City Auditor Umesh Dalal said Wednesday he has reviewed allegations made by a city official about his staff’s handling of taxpayer data and found them to be without merit. Instead, he attributed the issue to a misreading of his office’s decision to use a late property tax bill received by one of his office’s employees to investigate why residents don’t always get their tax bills on time. “So we traced that case and the facts of that case through the process,” Dalal said, adding that his staff was disturbed by the claim that it had acted inappropriately.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Sussex grand jury has indicted the mayor of one of its oldest towns, alleging Walter Mason committed election fraud in 2016. According to court records, Mason was indicted on 12 counts of felony election fraud by the grand jury Tuesday in Sussex County Circuit Court, with the jury issuing a true bill on all charges facing the mayor and longtime resident. The indictments allege on four different occasions between February and April of 2016, Mason “unlawfully and feloniously, willfully make a false statement or entry on an absentee ballot application,” a violation of Virginia Code Section 24.2-1016. In addition, court documents further allege that Mason “unlawfully and feloniously aid or abet or attempt to aid or abet” a total of seven different people “in a violation of absentee voting procedures,” violating regulations in Chapter 7, Title 24.2 of the Code of Virginia, which details who is qualified to vote via an absentee ballot.
Sussex-Surry Dispatch

A candidate running to be the city’s top prosecutor robocalled more than 1,000 residents from what looked like a city of Norfolk phone line, drawing fire from all corners. Ron Batliner, chief deputy for the commissioner of the revenue, said he recorded a campaign message from his city office Thursday night and sent it to the company making automated calls for his commonwealth’s attorney campaign. When the company made the calls Friday, the caller ID listed the city of Norfolk as the caller, not the robocall company, Batliner said in a Wednesday phone interview. No one actually used a city phone to call potential voters directly, Batliner said. More than 1,000 people answered the calls, he said, adding that he didn’t know how many of the calls went to voicemail. “I screwed up,” he said. “If you make a mistake, you’ve got to own up to it. You’ve got to be a straight shooter.”
Virginian-Pilot



National Stories


The Sacramento, California, City Council on Tuesday told police they must release video from a February shooting between officers and a parolee in North Sacramento as quickly as possible, despite an argument from the department that it needed more time to review the footage. The unanimous order by council members came after interim Police Chief Brian Louie asked for – and was denied – a waiver to withhold 23 videos for up to 60 days while the department continued its investigation into a Feb. 10 encounter with Armani Sicilian Lee.
Sacramento Bee

It’s now up to the Illinois Supreme Court to decide whether the Illinois High School Association should open its records to the public.  The case was spurred on by the Better Government Association after the association was denied a Freedom of Information Act request by IHSA.  BGA Attorney Matt Topic said the association sought “various contracts in which IHSA has entered, but really the issue is a much broader one really getting at the question of whether they’re subject to disclosure obligations.”  Topic argued IHSA should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requirements because it receives some taxpayer-funded resources, “which doesn’t necessarily need to be direct tax dollars. But it also more importantly looks at the type of function that they’re performing and whether they’re controlled by government. Here, school districts.”  IHSA’s Matt Troha said in an email “due to the ongoing litigation, we are not currently commenting on the case.”
WJBC

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s backlog of unprocessed Freedom of Information Act requests continued to grow during 2016, driven largely by an avalanche of individual immigration-related requests, a new report released on Monday indicates. In an annual report released on Monday, DHS said it received about 16 percent more FOIA requests in 2016 than in the previous fiscal year, raising the amount of unprocessed requests from 35,374 in fiscal year 2015 to more than 46,788 in fiscal 2016.
Law 360

The University of North Carolina Public Records Office has changed the way people make public records requests to the University.  They now use Next Request, a web-based portal, to field public records requests. Before this change, requests were made via email and displayed as open or closed on the public records website. Gavin Young, senior director for the Public Records Office, said the University of New Mexico is the only other school using Next Request. “We want to make it easier for people to be able to make a request and the web form does that," Young said. "Not just make a request, but then track the request progress.” “Our cost is $6,250/year and a one-time $1,500 setup fee and $500 training session. The total purchase was $8,250 for this year,” Young said in an email.
Daily Tar Heel
Categories: