Transparency News 11/9/17

Thursday, November 9, 2017


State and Local Stories


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Two local journalists are suing Charlottesville and state law enforcement for information about police safety plans related to the Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally.  Freelance reporters Natalie Jacobsen and Jackson Landers, represented by an attorney from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, on Oct. 31 filed a complaint against the Charlottesville Police Department, Virginia State Police and the Office of the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security after their Freedom of Information Act requests were denied. In the complaint, the two said they were told their requests were denied because the records contained tactical plans and could endanger law enforcement personnel if they were made public. Caitlin Vogus, an attorney for Landers and Jacobsen, argued that the police department should not be exempt from the suit because it is a public body. She said that if some of the information contained in the requested records included sensitive information, it should be redacted and the records should not be withheld outright.
Daily Progress

Chesterfield County’s Economic Development Authority has publicly made some revisions to information regarding an industrial megasite after facing criticism for being misleading. The Economic Development Authority has announced that it plans to buy and ask county elected officials to rezone about 1,700 acres of land in the county’s southeastern Bermuda District. A group of residents opposed to the project who call themselves the Bermuda Advocates for Responsible Development took issue with the way the EDA presented information to the public about what the Comprehensive Plan calls for on the megasite land. “The question of transparency has again and again come up during this process. Repeatedly during those (community) meetings, CEDA and county officials stated that the proposed application to rezone this 1,700-acre site to I-3 heavy industrial is consistent with the current Comprehensive Plan. Our research concludes that it is not,” Mike Uzel, a leader of the BARD group, has said. The EDA has since revised the answer to that question on a website dedicated to presenting information to the public about the megasite. It nearly matches what Economic Development Director Garrett Hart said in a recent interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Richmond Times-Dispatch



National stories

The Wisconsin Legislature is set to vote Thursday on a Republican-backed proposal limiting the public's access to footage from police body cameras, despite objections from open records advocates who say it will quash the public's ability to access certain video. The bill has the support of law enforcement agencies across the state. Supporters say the goal is to institute guidelines and privacy protections for members of the public unwittingly captured on police cameras. Under the proposal, all footage from a police body camera would be exempt from Wisconsin's open records law except for video involving injuries, deaths, arrests and searches.
Minneapolis Star Tribune

The head of the federal agency that produces U.S. nuclear weapons has privately proposed to end public access to key safety reports from a federal watchdog group that monitors ten sites involved in weapons production. Frank Klotz, administrator of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), made the proposal to members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in an October 13 meeting in his office overlooking the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, multiple officials said. Klotz contended that recent media stories about safety lapses that relied on weekly disclosures by the board – a congressionally-chartered group -- were potentially counterproductive to the NNSA’s mission, the officials said.
USA TODAY



Editorials/Columns

The moral implications of a political organization requesting access to students’ personal information for political uses are worrying. Accessing the personal information of students, especially without their knowledge, constitutes a disturbing violation of privacy. Many students in Virginia, unaware of this practice, feel uncomfortable receiving political spam in their messages. Although NextGen has both political reasons and legal means to engage in this type of behavior, actively collecting students’ private information for political gain is unethical and should be expressedly denounced by universities across Virginia — including our own.
Cavalier Daily

When a sexual assault happens on a college campus, the students deserve to know where it happened — at the very least. And by withholding that kind of basic information, which goes against the spirit and the letter of the state’s open-records law, the College of Charleston (S.C.) isn’t doing itself, the victim or the public any favors. Clamming up just fosters fear and frustration.
The Post and Courier

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