Transparency News 5/23/17

Tuesday, May 23, 2017



State and Local Stories

Several Richmond City Council members made it clear Monday that they want city finance officials to reveal the name of a mystery business that received a $3 million tax refund in March. The payment included $475,000 in interest doled out at taxpayer expense despite the fact that the refund was a result of the company overpaying its taxes based on self-reported revenues. “I’m going to do a Freedom of Information Act request so I can get that information,” said Councilwoman Reva Trammell. “To me, I cannot believe that this person did this for three years and y’all did not catch it.” City officials have refused to identify the company, citing a state law that makes it a misdemeanor to reveal certain taxpayer information. And to Trammell’s point, they’ve already denied public records requests aimed at identifying the business, citing the state law. That includes a request already submitted jointly by Trammell and Councilwoman Kim Gray.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Come June 1, Gloucester County will start recording conversations between staff and members of the public, both in person and over the phone. County Administrator Brent Fedors said the new audio recording policy is expected to improve customer service and could result in more polite interactions. The recordings, the policy states, will be available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. "It's not about catching people doing things wrong or saying things wrong. This is about changing behavior: behavior of our own internal team; the behavior of the public that engages with our team," Fedors told the Board of Supervisors this week. Some supervisors seemed concerned about the community's perception of the policy.
Daily Press

Six years after former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his family began receiving money, loans, vacations, golf outings, designer clothes and a Rolex from a businessman he called a friend, little has changed to prevent such largesse being provided to Virginia's top executive, state officials say.  Post-McDonnell changes to state ethics laws that went into effect last year place a $100 annual limit on gifts from a lobbyist, his or her clients or someone seeking business with the state. The changes ended a common practice of lobbyists providing lawmakers with unlimited gifts, such a hunting trips, expensive sports tickets or pricey dinners. A new ethics council was set up advise officials and to approve acceptance of specific gifts or travel costing more than $100. But there remained a large exception: There is no limit on gifts to an officeholder or immediate family members from a "personal friend" who isn't a lobbyist, a lobbyist's' client or someone seeking state business. "We call this 'the Jonnie Williams problem,'" said Del. Todd Gilbert, who helped draft the new gift limits in 2015 and serves on the ethics panel. "It rears its head every time we try to address this."
Virginian-Pilot

Over the next 18 months, nearly 8,000 Newport News Public Schools webpages will change. Videos will have closed captioning for hearing-impaired browsers. Those with low vision will have a high-color contrast option to better see content, and inserted text to describe images will display for blind users. Special coding will be added to help people using screen readers navigate pages. The changes are a result of a resolution agreement signed in November 2016 between NNPS and the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, or OCR.
Daily Press

A rare, if not unprecedented, scenario played out during a Loudoun County Board of Supervisors public hearing in early May. Late in the May 10 meeting, Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large), Supervisor Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) and County Administrator Tim Hemstreet abruptly left the dais to hold a back-room meeting in the middle of a discussion on the Silver Line small area plan. Ten minutes later, the trio reemerged to the dais and did not note what was discussed. Supervisor Volpe said “unequivocally” that the meeting with Randall and Hemstreet had to do with a “personal family matter” and had nothing to do with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) as another board member has speculated. Executive Director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government Megan Rhyne said as long as there were only two members of the Board of Supervisors involved in the discussion – that they do not make up a committee – there is nothing under current law that would prevent them from conducting the meeting with the county administrator present. 
Loudoun Times-Mirror

The Virginia Department Elections website displayed warning messages Monday saying the site was insecure on the last day of voter registration for the June 13 gubernatorial primaries. The issue lasted a little more than an hour and was cleared up shortly after election officials became aware of it, but it was the second time in less than 12 months that the agency has had technical difficulties with a registration deadline for a statewide election looming and would-be voters encouraged to register online. Last October, a federal judge ordered the state to temporarily reopen its voter registration period after the website crashed at the deadline to register for the presidential election. The website did not go down Monday, but multiple web browsers displayed warnings flagging the site as potentially dangerous.
Roanoke Times

The state Department of Aviation needs to tighten its oversight of state airport funds, the state office of the inspector general said Monday in a report prepared in response to the Peninsula Airport Commission keeping state aviation officials in the dark about its use of taxpayer funds to pay off a loan for the now-defunct People Express Airlines. The inspector general's review of the aviation department is one of two major audits sparked by Daily Press reports earlier this year that Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport repaid $4.5 million that People Express owed TowneBank. A Virginia Department of Transportation audit of the airport is due in the next few weeks. The inspector general found that the Peninsula Airport Commission did not tell state officials it had used state money to repay a loan and did not even report it had spent the money for more than a year after it should have.
Daily Press


National Stories
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A Louisiana private investigator tried to exploit a loophole in an online student financial aid tool to illegally obtain Donald Trump’s tax records during last year’s presidential campaign, federal prosecutors allege in court records. Jordan Hamlett, 31, was unsuccessful in his attempts to get Trump’s tax information and has been charged with false impersonation of a Social Security number. The website Hamlett allegedly attempted to exploit allowed students filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — the form that colleges and the government use to determine grants and loans — to upload tax information by submitting a Social Security number and other data. The data-retrieval tool, an initiative of the U.S. Education Department and the Internal Revenue Service, was designed to make financial aid applications simpler for millions of students. But the government shut it down in March amid security concerns. Someone pretending to be a student could start the financial aid process, provide a false Social Security number and give permission for the IRS to automatically populate the FAFSA form with tax information.
Washington Post

Cybersecurity is more than just an information-technology issue. It is a public-safety concern and an area of potential exposure to liability. As part of their daily operations, governments collect personal data to use to improve public services. With such large amounts of data housed on their servers, it is not a question of if but of when a government or one of its agencies will experience a data breach.
Governing

President Donald Trump would seem to have a legal ace to play if he wants to stop James Comey from testifying or to prevent the release of the fired FBI director’s memos: executive privilege. Except that Trump would probably lose, just as President Richard Nixon did when he tried to claim executive privilege in the Watergate case. What is executive privilege?It’s a principle presidents cite to protect their conversations with aides and others from public scrutiny. It allows the president to withhold information or documents related to those conversations and to prevent current or former executive branch officials from testifying about them. It’s not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, although it’s understood to be implied by the constitutional separation of powers. The argument is that a president’s aides and close advisers need to maintain confidentiality to protect national security and so the president can be certain he’s receiving candid and honest advice. Executive privilege applies only to the president’s communications while in office, not during the run-up to the election.
McClatchy