Transparency News 2/2/15

Monday, February 2, 2015






Click here for VCOG's annual chart of access-related legislation

State and Local Stories

House Speaker Bill Howell has announced steps to improve transparency in the budgeting process, including adopting a 48-hour waiting period proposed by Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge. Cline, whose district includes most of Amherst County, introduced a bill that requires the final budget be posted online for at least two days before a vote is taken. Too often, he said, major appropriation decisions are rushed through before the public and full General Assembly has time to digest them. Cline’s bill, House Bill 2076, was referred to the House Rules Committee, which Howell chairs. On Friday, Howell announced plans to include the bill and other proposals in a new set of internal rules.
News & Advance

The Virginia Supreme Court's Office of the Executive Secretary has repeatedly refused a request from the Daily Press to release its compilation of case records from most of the state's circuit courts. The record the Daily Press sought, and that the Supreme Court used to release, compiles summary information about almost every circuit court case in the state. The Office of the Executive Secretary is reviewing its policy about access to the record, spokeswoman Kristi S. Wright said last summer, explaining the court system's stance after several months of ignored requests for the record from the Daily Press. The office believes the record is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, she said in repeated exchanges about a formal, written request for the record. FOIA exempts records that court clerks are required by law to keep, but the office is not a clerk and the state law does not mention the compilation of the case records. Despite repeated requests, Wright would not say what section of the Code of Virginia says the database is a record that court clerks are required to keep. A lawsuit in North Carolina is challenging that state's refusal to release a similar database.
Daily Press

When it's time to strike a plea bargain, African-Americans have had less luck than whites in reducing charges, a Daily Press review of statewide court data found. A Daily Press analysis of more than 110,000 case status records from last year, assembled by open government advocates after the Virginia Supreme Court refused to release a statewide compilation it once made public, suggests Virginians don't always get equal treatment when pleading guilty. Pleading guilty is a part of the justice system that few pay attention to, even though more than four in 10 felony charges are resolved that way — nearly the same percentage as are resolved when prosecutors drop the case or judges throw them out for inadequate evidence. 
Daily Press

Suffolk City Council members are set to consider during their meeting next week an addition to their code of ethics that directs them not to disclose to others what they discussed in closed session. Mayor Linda T. Johnson said Friday that she asked that the item be brought up for consideration. Nothing in the Freedom of Information Act’s open meetings section requires public bodies to hold a closed meeting for any reason. But the mayor said certain topics would not be “ethical” to discuss. She said she does not believe that the new provision would diminish transparency or violate council members’ free speech rights. Councilman Roger Fawcett said he thinks the language should be stricken. “I think it’s clear-cut we shouldn’t discuss issues,” he said. But, as far as putting it in the city code, “I’m not sure we want to go there.”
Suffolk News Herald

Janice Denton, a city resident and member of the Hopewell Citizens for Good Government, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Hopewell over City Council’s closed session to appoint the mayor and vice mayor. On Jan. 6, council appointed Brenda Pelham as mayor and Christina Luman-Bailey as vice mayor. Denton, who filed the suit on Thursday, felt that the closed session made it seem like the council decided on a mayor and vice mayor before the official vote during the regular meeting that followed. Denton said Attorney General Mark Herring wrote an opinion advising against it, but the council majority went forward with the closed session anyway. Councilors Jackie Shornak and Wayne Walton, however, refused to participate in the closed session. Both council members read statements at the meeting questioning the legality and ethics of meeting behind closed doors on the night of appointing a new mayor and vice mayor. “I feel that the election of mayor and vice mayor should be out where the citizens can hear it because they’re elected officials, they represent us,” Denton said.
Progress-Index

The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into Virginia Beach Councilman John Uhrin's vote that approved millions in taxpayer incentives to renovate The Cavalier Hotel and allow a luxury housing community on the site weeks before his wife was hired to market the homes. A federal grand jury ordered Virginia Beach to turn over computer records, emails and phone logs surrounding Uhrin's July 2013 City Council vote on The Cavalier Hotel renovation project. The request seeks documents related to East Beach Realty and several other companies associated with Uhrin's wife, Catherine J. Sassone, according to a federal subpoena released Friday. The subpoena is not directed toward The Cavalier Hotel itself but targets documents "relating to the Cavalier Residences" and other aspects of the housing development and sales, according to the court order. Uhrin said Friday evening he did nothing wrong and has been transparent in his dealings.
Virginian-Pilot

Roanoke County’s human resources director, who had been disciplined in July for misuse of county time and funds, has resigned. Roanoke County announced in a late Friday afternoon news release that Joe Sgroi, who worked for the county for 19 years, will resign and retire Feb. 13. Sgroi was suspended for three days last summer for what former department employees said was making personal purchases on his county credit card and spending questionable amounts of time out of the office during work hours. They alleged that Sgroi made purchases on iTunes with county funds and spent work time golfing. Roanoke County officials never confirmed those allegations, saying they couldn’t comment on a personnel matter. The matter came to the forefront when Roanoke County Supervisor Al Bedrosian spent months publicly talking about two department heads who had been punished for wrongdoings. His comments coincided with the search for a new county administrator because Sgroi was helping with the search.
Roanoke Times

John B. Geer stood with his hands on top of the storm door of his Springfield townhouse and calmly said to four Fairfax County police officers with guns pointed right at him: “I don’t want anybody to get shot . . . And I don’t wanna get shot, ’cause I don’t want to die today.” But as one officer tried to ease Geer through the standoff, another, Officer Adam D. Torres, shot and killed Geer from 17 feet away, telling investigators he saw Geer move his hands to his waist and thought he might be reaching for a weapon, according to newly released documents from the county. The other three officers, and a lieutenant watching from a distance, said they saw no such thing, the documents show.
Washington Post

When Patricia Pittman learned of a developer's plans to build town homes behind her home in Hampton, she feared flooding would become worse for the people already living there. The Daily Press used the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of petitions like Pittman's that were submitted both in paper and electronically to the cities of Newport News and Hampton in the past two years. A review of those petitions reveals that outcomes can vary greatly, no matter how many signatures are presented.
Daily Press
 

National Stories

When is a legislature not a legislature? That odd question could have big implications for election law. The U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear arguments in a case brought by Arizona legislators challenging the authority of the state’s independent redistricting commission, which was set up by voters through a ballot initiative back in 2000. The federal Constitution states that election law shall be crafted “in each state by the legislature thereof.” The idea that this clause refers to anything other than the legislature itself is “wholly specious,” argues Arizona Senate President Andy Biggs. The commission’s lawyer, however, notes that the high court has previously held that the word “legislature” in the Constitution doesn’t necessarily mean the literal legislature, but rather the state’s lawmaking process on the whole. But the fact that the Supreme Court agreed to hear this case in the first place might mean some of the justices are ready to rethink this interpretation. If the high court ultimately sides with Arizona lawmakers, the ramifications could affect not only other states with redistricting commissions, but also any election laws approved by voters.
Governing

Tweeting a complaint or suggestion, even posting one on Facebook, is old hat in the private sector. After all, you can use an app these days to, say, hail a ride on Uber, Lyft or Sidecar. But if you encounter a bad driver or surly ticket agent while riding public transportation, there’s no app for that (or an easy way to tweet directly at an agency, for that matter). Times are changing, though, and public transit agencies are finally catching up. This past December, New Jersey Transit decided to send some of its front-line employees to get retrained in customer relations. Officials weren’t prompted by comments submitted through the usual online form, however. They were spurred to action by tweets and posts on Facebook. Employee behavior was a top issue on the agency’s social media dashboard. The move is noteworthy. With 60,000 Twitter followers and another 43,000 friends on Facebook, NJ Transit has a fairly big social media audience. It’s not enough to use these tools to push out service alerts and arrival times anymore. Instead, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms have long-term strategic value as a monitoring tool that can help transit agencies improve how their systems run and increase the public’s trust in them.
Governing

 

Editorials/Columns

Hovering over every other debate over state policy is another state policy that makes those debates possible: freedom of information. It is impossible to support or oppose a given governmental activity if you don’t know about it in the first place. That is why matters related to the free flow of information transcend the usual divisions of partisanship, geography, class and faction. Everyone has an equal stake in letting the sun shine. Some lawmakers understand this; others haven’t yet caught on.
Times-Dispatch

Well, what do you know. Former Del. Phil Hamilton - who's doing 9½ years in the federal pen for convictions on bribery and extortion charges - was right about something. Half right, anyway. In a recent interview with The Daily Press, Hamilton worried that federal law enforcement was beginning to target Virginia politicians. The disgraced legislator - who still insists there was nothing wrong with pushing for state funds for an ODU program while angling for a job there - indicated that this increased federal scrutiny was a bad thing. Fans of good government would disagree. Federal involvement is critical to protect the public interest in a commonwealth with laughably lax ethics laws. Hamilton seemed concerned that it was his old cronies in the General Assembly - all of them "honest and full of integrity," according to Phil - who were in law enforcement's crosshairs. Turns out federal investigators may be aiming a little lower. On Friday, we learned that the FBI was looking into a 2013 vote on the Cavalier Hotel project by Virginia Beach City Councilman John Uhrin.
Kerry Dougherty, Virginian-Pilot

Two bills now moving through the General Assembly would address longstanding problems proponents of good government in Virginia say must be addressed: redistricting reform and the inability of the governor to run for re-election. Though they received overwhelming support in the state Senate, hardly anyone expects the legislation to make it out of the Assembly. That likely outcome is a sad one for the commonwealth and its residents.
News & Advance

When the Tennessee Valley Authority refused at the end of last year to release information about the incentive package it gave a Clinton auto parts manufacturer, U.S. Reps. John J. Duncan Jr. and Chuck Fleischmann commendably blasted the utility for a lack of transparency. The Republican lawmakers could do the citizens of the country an even greater service by proposing to strengthen the federal Freedom of Information Act to prevent agencies from shielding subsidies from public scrutiny. Revealing the incentives TVA gave would not disclose any trade secrets, but it would allow citizens to determine whether TVA is being a wise steward of public money it spends on their behalf. Duncan and Fleischmann have an opportunity to ensure citizens can keep an eye on their government’s activities.
Herald Courier