Transparency News 2/15/18

 
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Thursday
February 15, 2018
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state & local news stories
quote_1.jpgFollow the bills we follow on VCOG annual legislative chart.
Up today in the Senate Education & Health Committee, starting at 8:30 a.m.:

HB1: This bill makes certain student directory information confidential. The current version of the bill is much narrower than the original version, and it now deals with this type of information within the context of Title 22.1 (the Education Code) instead of within FOIA. It still does not answer the question of why students over the age of 18 in colleges should have more right to keep contact information confidential than any other person over 18 in the Commonwealth.
HB1473: This bill prohibits public universities from approving an increase in undergraduate tuition or mandatory fees without providing students, certain parents, and the public notice of and an opportunity to provide public comment at a board meeting in advance of any vote on such an increase.
You can watch the committee hear this and other bills by clicking "Education and Health (SR A) from the Upcoming Events menu on this page.

UVA'S Student Council passed a bill Tuesday to require its representatives to host office hours once a week. Sponsored by first-year College student Avery Gagne and third-year College student Chi Chan, the bill was previously discussed during Student Council’s general body meeting Feb. 6. However, it was tabled due to concerns about implementation and enforcement in graduate schools.  The bill requires each representative to hold at least one office hour per week. Representatives are not required to hold their office hours at the same time and location each week, though consistent scheduling is recommended by the general body.
Cavalier Daily

Arlington County has denied a Freedom of Information Act request to release the 911 call made after the hit-and-run accident that Bijan Ghaisar was involved in prior to the police chase that ended with Park Police shooting him on Fort Hunt Road. Ghaisar, 25, died 10 days after being shot. The 911 call was made around 7:27 p.m. Nov. 17 after a vehicle rear-ended Ghaisar’s Jeep Grand Cherokee on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in the city of Alexandria. Ghaisar, an accountant who lived in McLean and graduated from Langley High School, left the scene of the accident for reasons unknown. He was later spotted by Park Police further south on the Parkway, and a chase began that ultimately ended with Ghaisar being shot and critically wounded in Fairfax County. Although the initial accident was in Alexandria, the 911 call was routed through Arlington’s communications center. 
Covering the Corridor

In an examination of how the principles of civility and freedom of speech could build a brighter future in communities, the executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center said Wednesday that she is reluctant to endorse traditional ideas about civility as a guiding principle for public discourse. “The word ‘civility’ has a qualitative nature to it,” Andrea Douglas said. “… It’s a behavioral term. It is related to the politics of the body. It is about the things that people do and how they comport themselves. Consequently, it has implications for power and control when it is used.” Douglas was the keynote speaker at the Public Education Foundation of Charlottesville-Albemarle’s annual luncheon and student expo at the Boar’s Head Resort.
Charlottesville Tomorrow
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national stories of interest
A federal judge doubled-down Tuesday on his order that Cook County, Illinois, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown provide public access to new electronically filed lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly ordered Brown on Jan. 8 to provide that access within 30 days. Since then, she has signaled she will appeal his order to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, she asked Kennelly to put his order on hold. On Tuesday, he shot down her arguments that, among other things, his order would require her to make public lawsuits that are filed under seal. Kennelly said that’s not the case, and that’s not the issue. “What is actually afoot is a system, effectively created by Brown herself, in which all e-filed complaints are treated as having been filed under seal until Brown herself clears them for public access,” Kennelly wrote. The judge added: “Brown cannot end-run the First Amendment by creating a system in which hypothetical doubt regarding whether litigants comply with rules about redaction allow her to exclude the public from access to judicial proceedings until she is good and ready to provide it.”
Chicago Sun Times

According to records obtained by the Washington Post, the Bureau of Land Management is recommending new legislation that would limit the number of FOIA requests individuals and agencies could file with the agency, create stricter criteria for fee waivers, as well as increased fees for “search and redaction.” For justification, BLM cites the agency’s limited resources, which in turn causes requests to “slow down the agency’s decision-making process.” In Financial Year 2016, the report states, the agency’s FOIA work cost $2.8 million, which was approximately .2 percent of the agency’s total budget of $1.3 billion that year.
MuckRock
 
quote_2.jpg“Brown cannot end-run the First Amendment by creating a system in which hypothetical doubt regarding whether litigants comply with rules about redaction allow her to exclude the public from access to judicial proceedings until she is good and ready to provide it.”
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editorials & columns
quote_3.jpg"We want to make it easier for you to access information and draw your own conclusions."
Transparency is a new buzzword at Pittsylvania County government. We talked about it a lot at our retreat last weekend; the Board is thankful that staff is being forthcoming with clear and factual information. They thanked us for giving them the bad news, warts and all, instead of painting a rosy picture in order to avoid conflict. We want the Board to be successful. We want them to have good information. Good information lends to good decision-making. We believe that every citizen has the right to have the same information we do. There are fairly few things, save personnel and economic development matters that we don’t make available to the public. We don’t want you to wonder what’s going on in Chatham – we want to tell you! We want to make it easier for you to access information and draw your own conclusions on what the County should do with the landfill, to support fire and rescue agencies and to appropriately pay for school indebtedness. An educated constituency is imperative for good governance.
David Smitherman, Star-Tribune

A Nevada court’s ruling that the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Associated Press must destroy and stop reporting on an autopsy report that another judge declared a public record just a week before is an unconstitutional restraint on the news outlets’ First Amendment right to publish. On Feb. 9, a trial court judge ordered the two news outlets to forfeit one of 58 anonymized autopsy reports for people killed in the Oct. 1 Las Vegas mass shooting. The order came after the widow of an off-duty police officer who was killed in the shooting filed a lawsuit claiming the release of her husband’s autopsy report violated her privacy rights. The week prior, the Review-Journal and Associated Press successfully sued the county coroner’s office for access to anonymized versions of the 58 reports, including the officer’s. 
Jose Ochoa, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

 

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