Transparency News, 4/12/2022
Tuesday
April 12, 2022
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Contact us at vcog@opengovva.org
state & local news stories
Yesterday, the governor signed HB734, the bill that takes away public access to some closed criminal investigative case files. VCOG opposed the bill and wrote to the governor asking for amendments, but to no avail.
HB734
Much has been done to help the Shenandoah Valley Animal Services Center since it closed for a week in February due to staffing shortages, but advocates say they feel less and less informed at each shelter owner's meeting. Animal shelter volunteer and president of Augusta Dog Adoptions Amy Hammer proposed the board move the meeting time to the evening so those who cannot easily take off work can come after their shift ends, but the board did not seem to budge on its meeting time. Tim Fitzgerald, county administrator, said evening meetings would be unlikely with board members' schedules.
News Leader
Soon after allegations of a sexual assault surfaced at Alexandria High School’s Minnie Howard Campus, a parent filed a Freedom Of Information Act request to find out more. Two weeks after filing her request, the parent was told that it could be fulfilled, but it would cost $84,300. On March 21, Devon Runyan Wells, a parent of five ACPS students, requested all email communications over the last two years regarding Title IX complaints and investigations between Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr., School Board Members and staff. Wells also asked for any emails that contained the words rape, harassment, assault, sexual abuse, weapon, police, law enforcement, gang and gang violence. ACPS Chief Technology Officer Elizabeth Hoover told Wells that fulfilling her request would require three hours of email research and more than 2,800 hours to review an estimated 168,300 emails. She wrote that narrowing the scope of the request would be significantly cheaper and take less time for staff to process. Wells ended up sending another request that shortened the search period to last September, which will end up costing her $1,500 if she chooses to accept the charges.
ALXnow
The Suffolk School Board struck back on the reestablishment of the Education Committee, voting 5-2 Thursday in favor of a resolution asking that City Council reconsider the idea, though the mayor said the committee would start meeting with or without the board’s participation. The majority of the board, led by Chairwoman Dr. Judith Brooks-Buck, said that having joint meetings with all members of both the council and board is preferable to having any meetings of a smaller Education Committee. New board member Heather Howell and Sherri Story voted against the resolution, both saying they saw no reason not to take part in the meetings. “If we believe, or if we say that we believe in transparency,” Brooks-Buck said, “then there is no need for us sending you to a meeting with somebody when all of us can sit down and talk to whomever we want to talk to in public with everybody listening, everybody knowing how everybody feels and what everybody said.”
Suffolk News-Herald
An upcoming speech by former vice president Mike Pence at the University of Virginia has reignited a debate over free speech on the Charlottesville campus. The response to the event has been intense. Tickets were quickly snapped up, with nearly 500 people on a standby list to get one. Some posters for the event were defaced, and others mocking it were taped up. An editorial in a campus newspaper said the university should not give a platform to Pence, equating “hateful rhetoric” to violence. That sparked outrage over “cancel culture,” limits on free speech and concerns about censorship. At an event last week called, “What Should We Do About Free Speech at UVA?” panelists spoke to an audience of about 100 students, professors, alumni and others, with the university president emphasizing that protection of free speech should be about principles rather than politics.
The Washington Post
stories of national interest
A nearly decade-long effort to unseal certain court records related to electronic surveillance ended late last month after a federal court issued a standing order that details the process for making the records publicly accessible. BuzzFeed News investigative reporter Jason Leopold (then a reporter with VICE) originally sought to unseal the electronic surveillance records in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2013. Reporters Committee attorneys joined the case in 2016 to help promote public access to these materials. The records sought include three kinds of court orders authorizing the use of powerful electronic surveillance tools in criminal investigations. These tools allow law enforcement to collect different kinds of electronic information, including metadata about a person’s phone calls or text messages and, in some cases, the contents of emails.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
