Transparency News 5/22/15

Friday, May 22, 2015

 



State and Local Stories


A review of thousands of police replies to citizens seeking public records shows most Hampton Roads departments follow the law, even if they only release the minimum required. However, NewsChannel 3 found dozens of instances where citizens were improperly denied records, where police cited the wrong codes and exemptions, or where authorities failed to cite the specific reasons they were withholding documents.
WTKR (w/video)

State Sen. Richard Stuart, who chairs Virginia's Freedom of Information Advisory Council, said Wednesday he expects legislation will crop up soon in response to the Daily Press' ongoing battle to wrest a criminal records database from a Virginia Supreme Court agency. Stuart, R-Montross, initially said he expects the court itself to request such legislation. Later he expanded on that, saying he thinks someone – whether it's an official court request or not – will likely suggest changes to state laws governing the release of a range of Virginia databases. "I am speculating that there will be a request for legislation on this issue," he said, when asked specifically if anyone had actually approached him to ask for a bill, or even to sound him out about it. Del. Jim LeMunyon, R-Chantilly, the other legislator on the council, said he has not heard of any request. The Daily Press asked Stuart whether, by requesting legislation, the court would be acknowledging that it should release these records under current law. "I don't know that I should say I expect them to ask for legislation," Stuart replied. "I anticipate we're going to see legislation as a result of this … to clarify or come up with a rule going forward.”
Daily Press

The Portsmouth City Council has asked a search firm to hunt for city manager candidates, but the public has not heard about the process because members discussed it behind closed doors on March 30. The closed discussion may have violated the state's Freedom of Information Act, according to two Portsmouth council members. According to minutes from March 30, members announced a closed meeting under Virginia Code 2.2-3711 section A1. It states that - councils can meet in closed sessions to discuss, consider or interview "prospective candidates for employment," among other specifics. Freedom of Information Act experts said that section of the law does not apply to giving instructions to a search firm. "It's my opinion that a closed meeting is OK when it is to discuss identifiable candidates, but it is not OK to have a closed meeting to discuss the process by which those candidates will be hired," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
Virginian-Pilot

Attorney General Mark Herring’s office wants $19,501.50 to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act inquiry into his lawyers consulting with Sweet Briar College officials in the months leading up to the decision to close the women’s school. A letter from Herring’s “Compliance and Transparency Counsel” itemized the costs of compiling three months’ worth of communications between the attorney general’s office and officials of the private college. The price list conveyed to Kathleen Bell, a Virginia resident, included “the cost of a 30-minute search conducted by each of the office’s 181 attorneys,” along with “two hours of review by each OAG attorney.”
Watchdog.org
The incident might say more about the raw emotions and deep distrust swirling around Sweet Briar than Herring’s FOIA policies. Spokesman Michael Kelly said that FOIA fees of that magnitude are not the norm. The cost was estimated only after Bell resisted advice to more narrowly tailor her records Kathleen Bell sent a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails containing the term “economic development.” She suspected that the school was being shuttered for some undisclosed project. In writing, Herring’s office advised her to narrow her request. Bell turned to the state’s FOIA council, but staff attorney Alan Gernhardt agreed that “economic development” was very broad. “I would expect a search for all e-mail records containing the term to be voluminous, time-consuming, and expensive as it is likely to turn up hundreds or even thousands of records,” he wrote. Bell concluded that the council was biased and pressed on. “If the cost comes back as prohibitive, this is going to get ugly,” she wrote in reply. It did, and it did.
Washington Post


National Stories

The State Department is expected to release the first batch of emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email address in the coming days. The emails set for release, drawn from some 55,000 pages and focused on Libya, have already been turned over to the special House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on the United States outposts in Benghazi. The New York Times has obtained about a third of the 850 pages of emails. They capture the correspondence and concerns expressed among Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, and her advisers following the attacks, which claimed the lives of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
New York Times

Josh Duggar, of TLC's "19 Kids and Counting," resigned his position at the Family Research Council Thursday after reports surfaced that he allegedly sexually assaulted four female siblings in the large family, plus an additional female victim.  The 2006 police report obtained by In Touch Weekly magazine revealed that one of the Duggar siblings, who In Touch Weekly identified as Josh Duggar allegedly committed the assaults. An Arkansas State Police public information officer referred FOX411 to Arkansas code §12-18-104 which states “any data, records, reports, or documents that are created, collected, or compiled by or on behalf of the Department of Human Services, the Department of Arkansas State Police, or other entity authorized under this chapter to perform investigations or provide services to children, individuals, or families shall not be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act of 1967, 25-19-101 et seq.” However, In Touch claims they got the records from the Springdale Police Department through the same Freedom of Information Act.
Fox411


Editorials/Columns

If you care at all about open government in Virginia, you should be closely following the ongoing saga of the Daily Press’s attempts to get case information in bulk from the judicial branch and, most notably, the remarkable extent of resistance to transparency being displayed by the Office of the Executive Secretary (OES). Daily Press reporter Dave Ress, who (along with his colleagues) deserves a thank you from all of us, recently released OES’s May 14, 2015, letter declining to provide a copy of the case information database, despite the recent FOIA Council advisory opinion that OES should do so. This post examines OES’s 10-page, single-spaced, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, anti-openness letter. Va. Code § 2.2-3704(G) says that whole databases cannot be withheld from the public when only part of the information in the database is exempt and says that public bodies are to work with requesters to arrange the production format.  At the same time, it provides that public bodies need not produce records in a format not regularly used by the public body. OES’s letter reads § 2.2-3704(G) in an aggressively anti-transparency way, saying that anything other than its current systems would require creating a whole new database, which the statute doesn’t require. That doesn’t pass a technological smell test.
Open Virginia Law

Steve Morris is a tenacious critic of Augusta County. Our purpose here is not to endorse his candidacy. It is to endorse his activism. We need citizens who will not only see something wrong, but work to make it right. We need citizens who will run for public office. And we need officials who will listen and respond when a citizen has a valid complaint. The feds should not have had to come investigate such an obvious, fixable problem.
News Leader

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