Transparency News 9/27/16

 

A new report says the city should move full steam ahead with building a sports and entertainment arena near the Oceanfront. But the public won’t get a detailed explanation for how Johnson Consulting arrived at that conclusion because many of the financial predictions upon which it’s based have been redacted from the report. The City Council will meet in closed session tonight to discuss the project’s finances. Mayor Will Sessoms said the council should emerge with news about the arena and with plans to vote on a deal on Oct. 4.
Virginian-Pilot

A picture taken by a Danville Register & Bee reporter of Danville police investigating a crime scene last month showed the hoods of two patrol cars raised. It raised questions about whether those hoods obscured the view of the cars’ dashboard cameras. The fatal shootings by police of African-Americans around the country have reignited discussions about transparency and accountability from law enforcement. In response to the controversy, the Danville Police Department will no longer raise the hoods on their patrol cars, Police Chief Philip Broadfoot told the Register & Bee Monday afternoon. “We’re going to close them … It’s not worth the damage to the trust that we have with the community,” the chief said.
Register & Bee

Virginia's attorney general has been asked to investigate the way the Augusta County Board of Supervisors is distributing information on the county courthouse referendum.  The request came after former state Sen. Frank Nolen filed a complaint with the Augusta County Electoral Board. Nolen has questions about the neutrality of statements the supervisors have made during recent town hall meetings and tours about the referendum, which, if passed by county voters on Nov. 8, would authorize  the board to move the courthouse from Staunton to Verona. 
News Virginian



National Stories
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Adam Marshall has been named the first Knight Litigation Attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. This full-time staff position, funded by a grant from the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation, will focus on litigation involving access to courts and public records, particularly at the state level, and on press freedom issues affecting digital media. Marshall joined the Reporters Committee in 2014 as the organization’s Jack Nelson-Dow Jones Foundation Legal Fellow shortly after he graduated from The George Washington University Law School. During his time at RCFP, Marshall has focused on freedom of information policy and legal issues, and he led the development of an online map of police body camera access laws and policies. Marshall received his undergraduate degree from Kalamazoo College and studied abroad at the London School of Economics.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

The fact that a now-retired nuclear weapon was once located at a now-closed location in the United States shall no longer be considered classified information, the Department of Defense announced last week. This may seem so trivial and insignificant as to be hardly worth deciding or announcing, but it could have positive practical consequences for current and future declassification efforts. "The repeated discoveries of this kind of [information] in numerous records [have] impeded the prompt declassification of many documents," the National Declassification Center said last week, praising the move.  So with the categorical declassification of such information, the declassification of some historical records should now be facilitated and accelerated.
Secrecy News



Editorials/Columns

At the behest of oil and gas interests, a state commission has suggested that Gov. Terry McAuliffe delay the implementation of new drilling rules. The industry wants time to ram through the General Assembly a new exemption to the state’s Freedom of Information Act so it can keep secret the chemicals companies use in fracking. The governor should say no. Whatever proprietary interest companies might have in keeping their fracking formulas from competitors is heavily outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. Industry has no more right to hide what toxins it pumps into the ground than it has to hide what effluents it pours into the streams or what particulates it belches into the sky. And sharing that information with emergency officials in the event of disaster hardly suffices. Disclosure at that point falls into the category of “too little, too late.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

While many may have long ago recognized U.Va.’s longing to be listed amid the top echelon of higher education, the veil came off this summer with news of a $2.3 billion Strategic Investment Fund—the incredible size of which the school’s board of visitors had not been apprised. That’s entirely separate from the university’s endowment, reported at $6 billion or $7.5 billion in 2015, depending on the source. U.Va. students, alumni and parents in the Fredericksburg area, as well as taxpayers across Virginia and their elected officials, deserve and expect a transparent approach to finances by their prestigious flagship university. This episode has put the university’s credibility on that responsibility in doubt. We are not suggesting the university swiftly allocate this money here and there, willy-nilly. On the contrary, it should be spent with care and wisdom. What the public needs to know is how the fund was orchestrated in the first place and why it was kept under wraps. Virginians need to be assured that it will be used to provide a world-class education to a student body that’s racially, culturally and economically diverse, and to the greatest extent possible, Virginian.
Free Lance-Star

Just because more deaths happen at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail than other local correctional facilities doesn’t mean residents should be unduly alarmed. Conversely, just because the sickest, most mentally disturbed inmates are dispatched to the regional jail doesn’t absolve government from fighting the ghastly conditions under which some inmates have died. Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe became the interim superintendent this month after the previous chief announced his retirement. McCabe has pledged more transparency, and on Friday he began a series of weekly media briefings. That’s welcome.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot