Transparency News 10/23/15

State and Local Stories

A panel of three federal judges ruled Thursday that the 12 House of Delegates districts that Democrats challenged in federal court are constitutional, giving Republicans a win for now in Virginia’s fraught political map-making battle. The 2-to-1 ruling comes four months after a separate three-judge panel sided with Democrats in a similar case centered on the state’s redistricting of its congressional map four years ago.
Washington Post

The Essex County Board of Supervisors are considering revising its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Policy to specify the cost of fulfilling requests that take more than 15 minutes to fulfill. The Virginia Freedom of Information Act is a state law that gives citizens the right to obtain government information. Assistant County administrator Pam Smith said that county does not charge for this service, even though the current policy gives it the power to do so. She said the problem with the current policy is that it is not specific enough to let citizens know what costs they may incur. During the October 13 supervisors’ work session, Smith proposed a rate of $19 per hour charged in 15-minute increments for FOIA requests that take more than 15 minutes to complete. She also suggested a rate of two cents per page for additional copies, with the first five copies being complementary. Smith said the county isn’t experiencing financial burden due to the printing of these requests; however, fulfilling FOIA requests that require research or sifting through old documents are time-consuming and take employees away from their other duties.
Northern Neck News

By a single vote, the Bedford County School Board approved a renewed contract for Superintendent Doug Schuch Thursday evening. The 4-3 decision received some opposition based on the timing, as this was the last meeting before an upcoming election in which at least two board members are certain to change.
Roanoke Times

Governor Terry McAuliffe  announced on Wednesday that Virginia death, marriage and divorce certificates are now available at all DMV customer service centers and DMV 2 Go mobile customer service centers, as an expansion of the partnership between the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the Virginia Department of Health (VDH)’s Division of Vital Records. In the partnership’s first phase, birth certificates became available at DMV customer service centers in March 2014. Since then, DMV has issued more than 180,000 birth certificates, and the partnership was recognized with a Governor’s Technology Award presented at the annual Commonwealth of Virginia Innovative Technology Symposium in Richmond last year.
Herald Courier


National Stories
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D.C. Open Government Coalition President Kevin Goldberg testified to the D.C. legislature Wednesday on the latest proposals from the mayor that would limit public access to police body camera video, calling them "unnecessary and overbroad." He also noted the process leading up to the proposals--directed by the Council to involve community input--in fact consisted of only two meetings with little revealed. These sessions simply "did not allow for adequate debate and discussion" and were "not an acceptable participatory process" for such important issues of the public right to know. Community members of the advisory panel wrote D.C. officials a month ago with these concerns, yet they were never addressed.
DCOGC (NOTE: Goldberg will be a panelist at VCOG's conference Nov. 12)

With new amendments to the state shield law, journalists in Montana will not have to worry about electronic communications services turning over reporters's records to the government. House Bill 207, sponsored by Rep. Daniel Zolnikov, "prohibits government bodies from requesting or requiring disclosure of privileged news media information from services that transmit electronic communications." The bill was signed into law in April and took effect on Oct. 1 as an amendment to the existing Montana shield law, known as the "Media Confidentiality Act." The old shield law protected journalists from source disclosure subpoenas, but did not address subpoenas to third-party communications service providers that held electronic records, like phone companies and email services. The new amendment was designed to keep the government from demanding this information. “Technology is running over the Bill of Rights,” said Zolnikov.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A federal judge Monday barred Indiana from enforcing a new law that prohibits voters from taking photos of their election ballots and sharing the images on social media. U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the “ballot selfies law” that made it a potential felony to post photos of a marked ballot on social media. In her 20-page ruling, Barker invoked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ 1928 warning that “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Indianapolis Star

Arizona tried to illegally import a lethal injection drug that's not approved in the U.S. but never obtained it after federal agents stopped the shipment at the Phoenix airport, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Arizona documents obtained by the AP were released as part of a lawsuit against the corrections department over transparency in executions. The AP is a party in the lawsuit.
Fox News