Transparency News 9/26/16

 

As he transitions from nonprofit director to mayoral candidate, former Venture Richmond Director Jack Berry hasn’t been shy about deriding the administration of Mayor Dwight C. Jones as “dysfunctional” and overly focused on “shiny projects.” But Berry struck a very different tone in hundreds of emails he exchanged with top city officials as he worked to advance Jones’ controversial proposal to build a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom. The emails — provided by the city to the Richmond Times-Dispatch in response to a Freedom of Information Act request — show Berry was more deeply involved in the development and rollout of the plan than previously known:
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The interim head of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail said Friday that he's pushing jail staffers toward more transparency and improved operations — and said he welcomes a possible U.S. Justice Department investigation into the facility. Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe — a board member of the regional jail and its acting superintendent for the past two weeks — distributed DVDs to the media with 12 hours of video footage outside the cell in which a man died in custody in August 2015. McCabe also released the names of 18 inmates who died at the regional jail since January 2012, along with the date and official cause of death. And he said he's working to ensure that calls from inmates' families are promptly returned.
Daily Press



National Stories
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The Society of Professional Journalists, American Society of News Editors and OpentheGovernment.org are leading a campaign asking presidential debate moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz to include a question about open government in an upcoming presidential debate. “They are in unique positions to ask each candidate about their stance and plan for an open government,” said Andrew Seaman, SPJ Ethics Committee chair. “SPJ believes public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalists serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government. They also seek to ensure that the public’s business in conducted in the open, and that public records are open to all.” Journalists Cooper and Raddatz will moderate an upcoming presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9. 
Society of Professional Journalists

In ordering the first-ever release by a full federal district court of a year’s worth of secret government surveillance requests, U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington added to a decades-long career spent charting the frontier of technology and the law in the nation’s capital. Howell on Wednesday stepped into the fierce debate over the limits of secrecy and law enforcement searches in a digital age by releasing a list of more than 200 cases in which U.S. prosecutors in the District sought court orders for data about individuals’ phone, email or online communications. Nationwide, more than 20,000 such orders were approved in 2013 alone; almost none are ever unsealed.
Washington Post

Nearly 200 additional pages released late Friday from the FBI's now-closed investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server show an often-haphazard handling of sensitive information and devices by top aides who scrambled to keep their boss in the loop on important digital information. One aide recalled helping Clinton replace BlackBerry devices three or four times during her tenure, once after the secretary spilled coffee on a device and again when one of the new devices began to "slowly fail over time.'' Each time, confidential assistant Monica Hanley told FBI agents in a January interview, that a new device was secured and a technical aide would "sync'' it with Clinton's server and then "talk Hanley through the process of wiping the old device.''
USA Today


Editorials/Columns

You've read a lot about the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on this page. We hope you've read the Daily Press' many reports about how your state and local governments affect your quality of life that we could not have shared with you if not for this foundation stone of democracy in our state.  Goodness knows, as plenty of politicians and officials tell us, Daily Press staffers talk an awful lot about FOIA. Why? The place to start is with an unusually eloquent passage of the Code of Virginia that, equally unusually, sets out a basic commitment of the General Assembly.We've painted it on the wall of our offices, along with some stirring words on democracy from Thomas Jefferson and the First Amendment which guarantees our rights of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, freedom to petition the government to redress wrongs and freedom of the press.
Daily Press

These names and faces and crimes and sentences should adorn the walls of BVU’s board room as an admonition for future board members, much as the ancient Roman emperors and generals would be accompanied on their victory parades by a slave stationed behind them whispering, "Respice post te, mortalem te esse memento" — "Look about you, remember you are only mortal." We don’t know if this anti-hubris would have had any effect on the nine now-felons, but we hope it will be heeded by the seven new board members who are now tasked with restoring public trust following months of devastating revelations. They need to be reminded, frequently, who it is they serve. They need to be reminded that the infection that causes corruption grows where there’s no sunlight to disinfect it — in secrecy and behind closed doors. The only fix will be to throw open their meetings and account for every decision publicly. And we, the public, need to be the ones to demand that transparency and remind BVU that they are accountable to us, and that we will not tolerate even a hint of wrongdoing. If we must, we will be the ones standing by their shoulders, whispering ....
Herald Courier