Transparency News 6/21/17

Wednesday, June 21, 2017



State and Local Stories

A few hours before he sent a news release on how the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality intended to evaluate the risk that construction of two natural gas pipelines might pose to the state’s rivers, streams and wetlands, an agency spokesman asked a last-minute question to a pair of senior DEQ officials. “Just to make sure I’m clear on this,” DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden wrote to James Golden, DEQ’s director of operations, and Melanie Davenport, director of the water permitting division. “Issuing individual 401 certifications would apply to each instance for both pipelines where a (Virginia Water Protection) permit is required, right? This does not mean one individual permit for each pipeline, right?” Hayden says he never got an answer to his 9:16 a.m. April 6 email, obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through a Freedom of Information Act request aimed at discovering why the DEQ waited nearly seven weeks to correct what it later called an erroneous public perception of its intended process for handling the water-quality certifications for the pipelines. The DEQ refused to turn over nine email chains that were part of The Times-Dispatch’s request. Six of those were withheld under exemptions the agency claimed for attorney-client privilege or “legal memoranda and other work product.” Three email chains were withheld under the exemption in the FOIA law for “working papers and correspondence of the Office of the Governor.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors met Monday night to discuss upcoming priorities — but it could not get past the prevalent party-line split that’s permeated its politics for some time.
Roanoke Times

A former James Madison University student accused of fraud for submitting false voter registration applications pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg. Court documents, which include a statement of facts and his plea agreement, show that Andrew J. Spieles, 21, of Harrisonburg, caused 18 fraudulent voter registration forms to be submitted to the Harrisonburg registrar in connection with the Nov. 8 presidential election.
Daily News Record

Petersburg’s financial crisis is much worse than previously known, with the city needing more than $20 million to rebuild its rainy day account. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for fiscal year 2016 paints a dire financial picture for Petersburg. The audit reveals “a harsh reality for financial stability for the city of Petersburg,” according to Robert Bobb of the Robert Bobb Group, the consultants hired to fix the city’s finances. The audit team from Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates discovered over 25 findings with regard to a lack of financial controls. According to the audit team, two to three findings would be normal. “The auditors have been unable to find evidence of malfeasance due to extremely poor record keeping,” the city said in a statement.
Progress-Index



National Stories
​

A Department of Veterans Affairs official has taken the novel step of filing a Freedom of Information Act request against her own VA department in order to learn what a whistleblower has been saying about her.  The whistleblower is Scott Davis, a well-known VA official who has testified in Congress and has made several TV appearances about the troubled VA. He told the Washington Examiner on Monday that he was stripped of some of his final duties in his Atlanta job, weeks after warning that retaliation against whistleblowers is on the rise at the VA. The other VA official is Angel Lawrence, director of the Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta. Lawrence filed a FOIA request to obtain any email Davis might possess that was sent between Lawrence and any other VA employee.
Washington Examiner

A lawsuit filed against the University of Michigan seeks sealed records of a noted anti-immigration activist, which are housed at the Bentley Historical Library. The lawsuit was filed June 12 with the Michigan Court of Claims by Hassan Ahmad of the Virginia-based HMA law firm. He wants documents donated by Dr. John Tanton, which consist of materials documenting Tanton's work as a political and environmental activist from 1960 through the 1990s. It includes a series related to his involvement with Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood, Zero Population Growth and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which Tanton founded in 1979, seeking to end illegal immigration and set a ceiling on legal immigration.
MLive

State investigators released the dashboard video of Officer Jeronimo Yanez shooting Mr. Castile in Minnesota last year that had been shown to jurors.
New York Times

President Donald Trump is expected to make an announcement in the coming days on whether any recordings exist of his private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, potentially bringing to an end one of the central mysteries of the ongoing probe that has consumed his White House. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that he expects an announcement "this week" on the possibility of tapes. The president fired Comey in May and then tweeted that the lawman, who was overseeing the investigation into possible contacts between Trump's campaign and Russian officials, "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."
McClatchy


Editorials/Columns


FORMER FBI DIRECTOR James B. Comey’s open testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, broadcast live on national television, reflected well on our democracy. An estimated 19.5 million people watched our government at work. On the same day, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer told an audience of lawyers, law professors and students that he was not ready to allow the public to watch Supreme Court proceedings — because, he said, cameras might change the nature of oral arguments. Breyer’s views reflect the opinion of all the Supreme Court justices, with the possible exception of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who said during his confirmation hearings in March that he was “open” to the possibility of cameras in the courtroom. With its long tradition of overruling unconstitutional state and federal laws, the Supreme Court is the most powerful judicial tribunal in the world. If any court should be televised, it is the Supreme Court. There would be many obvious advantages.
Eric Segall, Virginian-Pilot

The 2017 Texas legislative session was not a good one for open government advocates. Bills that would have addressed cavernous transparency loopholes created by recent court decisions were unable to make it through the Senate and House. The only significant open government bill to pass both chambers was vetoed by Gov. Greg. Abbott. The most that can be said is that the Legislature didn’t weaken open government laws even more. “It’s regretful that most of our proactive proposals did not pass because of opposition from big business and others resisting public information access. The people of Texas deserve to know how their taxpayer money is spent and how government decisions are made,” Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said in a statement.
Times Record News