Transparency News 5/12/17

Friday, May 12, 2017



State and Local Stories

The Virginia General Assembly will stream some committee meetings over the Internet next session, a milestone for a body that has resisted this sort of technology. The Senate announced its plan Thursday to stream from two main committee rooms next year, and the House followed up with an announcement from Speaker of the House William Howell that the chamber has worked toward committee streaming "without fanfare for the last several months." Howell's news release also said the chamber has led the effort on transparency, in part by "consistently preserving press access on the House floor."
Daily Press

Internet access can be hard to come by at the farms and houses that dot rural Spotsylvania County near Lake Anna and Mineral. But that is changing, thanks to a new partnership between the county and the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. It’s resulted in a weekly “pop-up” library equipped with Wi–Fi at the Belmont Community Center, 7124 Belmont Road. Library patrons, and even those without a library card, can stop by from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays to use one of its 15 Chromebooks and a wireless printer, as well as other library services.
Free Lance-Star

Congratulations to Arlington County, recipient of VCOG’s 2016 open government award for government. Representatives weren’t able to attend the conference last December where winners were recognized, so here is Immediate Past President sharing the award with (below, from left) Ina Chandler, Robert Sharpe and Patricia Carroll last week.

National Stories
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South Carolina’s senate dramatically weakened a bill Wednesday that would have made it easier for members of the media and the public to obtain government documents.  A last-minute amendment by Sen. Margie Bright-Matthews, D-Walterboro, altered a bill to change the state's Freedom of Information Act which has been pushed by the S.C. Press Association.  The original bill, which received unanimous support in the House, would have set up an Office of Freedom of Information Act Review and allowed news organizations or members of the public to challenge disputes over government records in the state's Administrative Law Court. Bright-Matthews' amendment, however, strips out that change, and would require legal challenges over FOIA disputes to be handled in circuit courts, where they are already litigated. 
Charleston Post and Courier

A Portland, Maine, law firm is suing Gov. Paul LePage’s office, saying it’s not complying with the state’s Freedom of Access law. The firm, Andrew Schmidt Law, said it has been trying since November to get information behind LePage’s decision to join in two lawsuits and also withdraw from a refugee resettlement program. According to the suit, the governor’s office has acknowledged receipt of the FOAA request and in January said it would provide the information by March 22 at a cost of $30, but hasn’t yet turned over the documents.
Portland Press Herald

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he is withholding $50 million from the University of California in light of an audit last month that claimed to have found a stash of $175 million in secret funds while officials requested more money from the state. In his latest budget proposal for California’s 2017-2018 fiscal year, Brown said the money will only be released when UC makes progress in fixing its financial problems in addition to meeting other conditions set by his office, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Brown said he wants more transparency and financial reporting from the school system. He also criticized administrators' salaries as being too high.
Fox News

From Boston's John F. Kennedy Library to Southern California's tribute to Ronald Reagan, America's 13 major presidential libraries get about $65 million a year from the federal government. That opens the facilities, which typically gloss over their namesakes' faults, to criticism that they are taxpayer-funded "centers for presidential spin." The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park will take a different route, opting out of the presidential library network operated by the National Archives and Records Administration —and the millions of dollars in federal support that go along with membership. Agency officials on Thursday confirmed the split, which was not disclosed last week when former President Barack Obama unveiled conceptual designs for the center. 
Chicago Tribune

An 18-month push to update Colorado’s open-records law for the digital age culminated Wednesday in the final passage of a bill that clarifies the public’s right to copies of electronic government records in useful file formats that permit analysis of information in those records. Senate Bill 17-040 heads to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk after passing the House on a 39-26 vote and then repassing the Senate unanimously, all on the last day of the 2017 legislative session. The measure is intended to bar government entities from providing printouts of databases and spreadsheets when people ask for public records kept in databases and spreadsheets. No longer will governments be permitted to provide searchable records in non-searchable formats such as image-only PDFs.
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition


Editorials/Columns


If you want to get a sense of where Virginia’s FOIA is headed, meetings of the state Freedom of Information Advisory Council can be very, um, educational. They’re meeting this Monday, May 15, at 1:30 p.m. in House Room 1, in the state capitol. At that meeting, the Council’s main work will be to consider clarifying what kinds of records provided by businesses to governments can be (but not must be!) shielded from public scrutiny. FOIA currently has 28 separate exemptions for such records, most of which give specific agencies the option to withhold much less specifically defined records. Basically, the council is trying to define what trade secrets can be shielded and to take a crack at what “proprietary” records means as well.  The issue with the latter, as the Virginia Supreme Court has pointed out, is that proprietary means “belonging to.” It’s pretty vague, and therefore can used to apply to just about anything. And is. 
Dave Ress, Virginia Coalition for Open Government