Transparency News 11/25/19

 

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Monday
November 25, 2019

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state & local news stories

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"Most localities in the [Peninsula] region broadcast their work sessions live, either online or on a public access television channel."

Work sessions of the Newport News City Council are held a few hours before each regular meeting in a conference room on the top floor of City Hall. The council sits at a long table with the city’s clerk, attorney and manager, and receives presentations from city staff and other local and regional agencies. They can ask questions, get into discussions and call on people in the room for information, although there is not a public comment period. What is not present are city cameras that record the work session to be broadcast live and posted online. Of all the Hampton Roads cities and Peninsula localities, including Gloucester and Isle of Wight counties, Newport News is the only one that does not post video recordings of work sessions. Most localities in the region broadcast their work sessions live, either online or on a public access television channel.
Daily Press

Although the validity of signatures on a petition seeking the Board of Supervisors' removal from office has been confirmed, the matter was continued in circuit court Friday to an unknown date as a new prosecutor will take over. A petition for the removal of all five supervisors - Dan Murray, Archie Fox, Tom Sayre, Linda Glavis and Tony Carter - was filed in October. Reasons for their removal cited in the petition center around the board’s lacking oversight of former Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority Executive Director Jennifer McDonald, who has been charged on 32 felony counts related to alleged financial improprieties during her decade-long tenure at the EDA. The supervisors’ lawyers state in documents filed this week in Warren County Circuit Court that the petition should be dismissed because the EDA is “a separate political subdivision.” It notes that McDonald was employed by EDA board, not the supervisors.
The Northern Virginia Daily

The Fairfax County Police Department has traced a data breach that put sensitive information of more than 1,700 officers and other employees at risk to a single form that was improperly created and removed from a computer system, officials said. The department revealed the breach earlier this month, but said at the time it had heard from only about 500 people who had been affected and had yet to confirm the source of the leak. An investigation has found that full names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers were among the data that followed a circuitous route to end up in the email inbox of a police chief in a neighboring jurisdiction [Purcellville, in Loudoun County], officials said. That inbox was copied onto a thumb drive, which has disappeared.
The Washington Post

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stories of national interest

It’s not every day a fundraising email contains more than hyperbolic talking points. But South Carolina state Rep. Nancy Mace, who’s vying for the Republican nomination in one of the GOP’s top pick-up opportunities for Congress next year, got a little more personal this week, offering in an email to supporters to release her student records from The Citadel. “I got FOIA’ed,” read the subject line. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee submitted a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this month for those records, but the Citadel determined they were protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and notified Mace of the request. So Mace, the first woman to graduate from the military college, decided to use the episode to make a political point and released the records herself, while also taking the opportunity to raise money and build her own email list.
Roll Call

 

 

quote_2.jpg"[She] decided to use the episode to make a political point and released the records herself, while also taking the opportunity to raise money and build her own email list."

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