Transparency News, 5/24/21

• VCOG created a pop-up website on FOIA fees to support and inform the discussion of fees going on right now at the FOIA Council. Check back for additions the site as the process moves forward.

• Here's the video of the FOIA Council subcommittee on records meeting, held Tuesday, May 18.

• Here's the video of a conversation I participated in for This Week in Virginia with David Bailey, and joined by Bonnie Atwood, Tom Brewster, Randy Dillard, Chris Saxman and Andrew Smith, on where we get our news.
 

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Virginia State Police confirmed on Thursday that is it conducting a criminal investigation of General Assembly candidate Mark Earley Jr., who moved in with his parents in Richmond to run for office and made an omission on an economic interest statement. State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller confirmed the investigation to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which first reported last month on the circumstances of Earley’s Republican bid in House District 68, held by Del. Dawn Adams, D-Richmond. Geller said police would not release the complaint because of the ongoing investigation.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Gov. Ralph Northam’s office announced steps on Thursday designed to help ease a backlog of requests for pardons and smooth the application process. Northam’s office said in a news release that there’s been a “major influx” of pardon petitions during his administration and that of previous Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Northam has declined to disclose the number of cases in the backlog or the number of state employees assigned to investigate cases. The governor’s office redesigned its pardon website and petition portal and is eliminating a requirement that petitioners obtain a copy of their criminal history from Virginia State Police, which can be expensive. Northam’s office also announced the appointment of a new member to the Virginia Parole Board, the scandal-plagued panel that reviews requests for pardons and decides whether certain inmates should be paroled.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Democratic Del. Steve Heretick (D-Portsmouth) was deposed earlier this month in a lawsuit that alleges he was involved in a scheme to illegally take advantage of thousands of people who received settlements from injuries or workplace accidents. Heretick denies any wrongdoing. And his case has drawn little media attention since a 2018 story in the Virginian-Pilot. But his deposition -- sworn, pre-trial testimony -- is the latest sign a federal court is taking the complaint seriously. It alleges the lawyer played an instrumental role in an industry that many consumer rights advocates say is predatory. Heretick asked “as a matter of journalistic fairness” that VPM refrain from reporting on the case until the court issues a ruling on the merits themselves, rather than just the motions to dismiss -- a more narrow standard where a judge determines if a complaint states a plausible claim so that the case can proceed. 
VPM

U.S. House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee are pushing for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declassify documents from a research facility in China relating to the origins of the coronavirus. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, the top Republican on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, along with other GOP lawmakers, wrote a letter to Blinken requesting documents be declassified to help them investigate “the possibility of an accidental laboratory leak.” The documents they are requesting include those related to a fact sheet the State Department under the Trump administration released in January that reported collaborations that the Chinese military had with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, such as classified research and laboratory animal experiments.
Virginia Mercury

After a series of speakers during the May 11 School Board meeting read aloud racy passages in two books available in Loudoun high school classes, administrators have opened a formal review. Following the meeting, the division pointed critics to the policy that permits parents and community members to request a “reconsideration of instructional materials.” On Tuesday, it announced, “a division level review of the optional high school-level books, ‘Monday’s Not Coming’ and ‘#MurderTrending,’ has been initiated. The reviewing committee will make a recommendation to the superintendent when the process is complete.”
LoudounNow

 

 

A Texas man convicted of fatally beating his 83-year-old great aunt more than two decades ago was executed Wednesday evening without media witnesses present because prison agency officials neglected to notify reporters it was time to carry out the punishment. agency spokesman Jeremy Desel never received the usual phone call from the Huntsville Unit prison to bring reporters from The Associated Press and The Huntsville Item to the prison. He and the media witnesses were waiting in an office across the street.
Associated Press

A D.C. police employee was sentenced to six months of intermittent incarceration and six months of home confinement for taking more than $40,000 in bribes to divulge confidential information from traffic crash reports that was later used to pitch legal and medical services to people involved in traffic crashes, prosecutors said. One of the "runners," Marvin Parker, also contacted a second police employee after the policy change and began paying her $400 to $500 per week for emails or texts of photos of her handwritten summaries of reports, according to plea documents. That person has not been identified, but is no longer with the department, police said.
The Washington Post
 

Virginia’s open records law doesn’t just suffer from problems with its text ... but also from a general culture of contempt for the concept on the part of some government officials. That much was apparent Tuesday during a subcommittee meeting of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act Advisory Council, which was hearing testimony on one bill that would attempt to curb the high costs some public bodies impose for records and another that opens up police disciplinary records to public scrutiny. Catastrophizing is common at the Capitol. Change this code section a little or tweak a word here or there and all the demons of unintended consequence will come roaring out of Pandora’s box, lobbyists often argue. Even by those standards, the squalling from opponents — chiefly local government lawyers and representatives from police agencies — made it clear that some of them view FOIA not just as a headache they’d rather not deal with but as a dangerous tool for the citizenry to bedevil their betters at county and city governments, sheriff’s offices and police agencies.
Robert Zullo, Virginia Mercury

An attorney general’s opinion released late last week has ended a bizarre episode in which the S.C. Department of Corrections refused to release the names of inmates who died in custody. The 11-page opinion by S.C. Solicitor General Robert Cook concluded that the Corrections Department probably would be considered a “covered entity” under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — as medical officials at the agency had warned, prompting Director Bryan Stirling to stop releasing the names pending an opinion from Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office. But the opinion also noted that the federal privacy law specifically allows medical information to be released if another law requires it. And although the S.C. Supreme Court has bizarrely held that autopsies are exempt from disclosure, the May 14 opinion concluded that the names of dead inmates (along with their death certificates — and in fact everybody’s death certificates) are public records under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act. The opinion confirms our dismay at a county coroner’s refusal to release the name of a notorious inmate who died in prison this month. And it should serve as a reminder to McCormick County Coroner Faye Puckett and any other coroners who are confused about the requirements of their job, which include obeying state law.
The Post and Courier