Transparency News 7/18/17

Tuesday, July 18, 2017



State and Local Stories

The Richmond City Council voted Monday to accept City Auditor Umesh Dalal’s resignation after an investigation into his office is said to have documented bullying behavior toward his staff, high employee turnover and retaliatory behavior, among other problems. “The resignation is based on mutually acceptable but confidential terms and conditions,” City Council President Chris Hilbert said in a statement read after the vote, which followed a three-hour closed meeting. “The City Council expresses its great appreciation for Mr. Dalal’s services to the city and wishes him the best in his future endeavors.” Hilbert stressed the resignation was voluntary. He said the terms, including whether the council agreed to pay Dalal a severance package, are confidential.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Frederick County government launched a new version of its website that went live yesterday. Public Information Officer Karen Vacchio said the website had not been updated since the summer of 2013. Over the last several months, Frederick County staff has been working with its website provider, Vision Internet, on a redesign of the website. Vacchio said that difficulty navigating the website has made the browsing experience “cumbersome” and confusing for people trying to find needed information.
Winchester Star

The Strasburg Town Council might move to reduce its size, from the current eight members  to six. During a work session Monday, several members of the council said that the potential move could make it more efficient. “Before I ran, one of the things that the general public was fussing and complaining about is lack of decision-making,” council member Barbara Plitt said. But other council members issued concerns about what the move might mean. Council member Don Le Vine said that he feared the move might make the council less representative of the town.
Northern Virginia Daily



National Stories


First Amendment advocates last week sued President Donald Trump for blocking Twitter users who criticized him online, arguing the social media bans are akin to locking citizens out of a public square.   But the president is not the only government official limiting access to his digital podium.   Nearly 800 Twitter handles — including the official @POTUS presidential account now controlled by Trump — were blocked or muted by Michigan state government accounts as of this summer, according to records provided to the State Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request. Blocked users cannot access tweets from those agencies, which range from tongue-in-cheek memes to promotion of government programs to official announcements sometimes related to public safety. 
Lansing State Journal

A driver mows down six mailboxes, slurs her words and tells police she has a lizard in her bra. Throw in a wisecracking police officer, and what do you get? A flippant post on Facebook, along with photos of the woman, and of course, her lizard. Not everyone is amused. Police departments are increasingly using Facebook to inform the community about what they're doing and who they're arresting. Some add a little humor to the mix. But civil rights advocates say posting mugshots and written, pejorative descriptions of suspects amounts to public shaming of people who have not yet been convicted.
CBS

The FBI can keep sending surveillance orders to tech companies and ban them from disclosing those requests, an appeals court ruled Monday. Internet company Cloudflare and wireless network operator CREDO Mobile sued the federal government to be allowed to disclose public national security letters they have received. They argued that the letters, which are administrative subpoenas issued by the government to gather information for national security purposes, are unconstitutional because they violate the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections. 
CNET News

Last year, the National Archives (NARA) acquired a large number of historically valuable National Security Agency records. But they remain inaccessible to researchers, at least for the time being. David Langbart of NARA described the situation at a closed meeting of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee late last year. According to recently published minutes of that meeting: "The [NSA] records consist of approximately 19,000 folders without any real arrangement. These records mostly consist of technical, analytical, historical, operational, and translation reports and related materials. Most of the records date from the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, but there are also documents from the 1920s and 1930s and even earlier. The NSA reviewed the records for declassification before accessioning and most documents and folder titles remain classified. Langbart concluded that the finding aid prepared by NSA was the only practical way to locate documents of interest for researchers, but it is 557 pages long and is classified."
Secrecy News


Editorials/Columns


Richmond auditor Umesh Dalal’s job performance had been the subject of closed council meetings amid reports of higher-than-average turnover on his staff. An independent human resources contractor cited allegations of staff bullying and mistreatment by the auditor, according to sources who have read the report. If accurate — and at least one council member has doubts — this is serious stuff. There were also complaints about Dalal’s penchant for publicizing his work, sources said. “This auditor is very public and he has a good relationship with the media, and everyone likes conflict and he’s on the front page,” Chris Hilbert, president of the Richmond City Council said.
Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Some public bodies, from city councils to school boards, continue to invite judicial scrutiny of their adherence to the establishment clause in the Constitution. They show an overriding preference for a religion – you can guess which one it is – to the exclusion of all other faiths, or no faith at all. The Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled on the latest dispute, this time in a case involving the opening prayers of the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina. The Charlotte-area community is home to nearly 140,000 people. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote the decision. A majority of the judges agreed the commissioners’ prayer practices were “unconstitutionally coercive.” There was an overwhelming preference for Christianity. “As the history of legislative invocations demonstrates, the desire of this good county for prayer at the opening of its public sessions can be realized in many ways that further both religious exercise and religious tolerance.”
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot
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