Transparency News 6/28/19

 

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Friday
June 28, 2019

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state & local news stories

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"The announcement came amid discussion nationally about free access to state laws and court decisions."

The Supreme Court of Virginia is moving to allow free access to unannotated versions of its model jury instructions. The court announced June 26 that the criminal Virginia Model Jury Instructions are now available in an unannotated format on the Virginia Judicial System website. The court said the unannotated version is being made available “as a service to the bench, bar, and the public.” The annotated versions of the instructions are for sale from a private publisher for $359 and $470 respectively. The announcement came amid discussion nationally about free access to state laws and court decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed June 24 to consider whether the state of Georgia can assert copyright in its annotated state code.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Paige Rice was and remains the only Charlottesville employee to have a city-issued Apple Watch, according to officials. The former clerk of council also had the authority to approve and make the purchase of the watch and an iPhone X. The watch, phone and two iPads in Rice’s name appeared on the City Council wireless statement until mid-October. The clerk of council office cellphone inventory used in budget preparations for the upcoming fiscal year did not list Rice’s phone.
The Daily Progress

It was raise day at the Orange County School Board meeting on Monday. By the close of the meeting, board members had voted to increase their salaries by about $2,000 per year. They also boosted Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cecil Snead’s annual pay by $7,000 and extended his contract until 2023. The board voted on Snead’s raise and contract extension during closed session. After the meeting, he said his salary will go up from about $148,000 to $155,000, effective July 1. His current four-year contract will be replaced by a new four-year contract ending June 30, 2023.
Orange County Review

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stories of national interest

On June 17, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court instructed state agencies to broaden their understanding of the “public interest” when deciding requests under the state’s public record law, a ruling that increases the grounds the public can invoke when fighting to get information released to them. The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court grew out of a lawsuit filed by the Boston Globe against the Department of Public Health for electronic copies of 4.6 million birth certificates issued between 1953 and 2011 and 2.2 million marriage licenses issued between 1983 and 2013. The SJC unanimously ruled that the complex issue raised in the Globe litigation that balances the right of the public access to government records with the privacy rights of Massachusetts citizens must be re-examined by lower court judges based on Monday’s ruling. The birth certificates and marriage licenses are available to the public at terminals at state offices or by using a private on-line company that collected $1.6 million in fees for the state. But searching at state offices usually only involves an individual birth certificate or marriage license, not millions of records at once, according to the court.
The Boston Globe

A judge has sided with WDRB News in an open records dispute with Kentucky State Police, ruling he could not “fathom” how the law enforcement agency justified withholding the internal investigations of troopers. Friday's ruling by Franklin Circuit Court judge Thomas Wingate found that reporters are entitled to the records but gives state police 10 days to appeal the decision. Even if there's an appeal, police must turn over the records to the judge within 10 days. Wingate also ruled WDRB may make a motion arguing police “willfully withheld” public records and should pay the station’s attorney fees and other costs.
WDRB

Lake City became the second Florida city in two weeks to agree to pay a large ransom demanded by hackers who shut down public computer systems.
The New York Times

 

 

quote_2.jpg"The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court grew out of a lawsuit filed by the Boston Globe against the Department of Public Health for electronic copies of 4.6 million birth certificates . . . and 2.2 million marriage licenses."

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editorials & columns

quote_3.jpg"Gorsuch focused only on an extreme narrowing of meaning of the word “confidential” in the original text of FOIA as written in 1966, basing this new restrictive definition on dictionaries of that era."

At 2:33 this afternoon, employees of The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press will join with our colleagues across the country in a moment of silence to remember the five people — Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters — killed one year ago at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md. One might have expected that a deadly attack such as that would have engendered some sympathy and compassion, that those who score cheap political points by using the press as a punching bag would pause to consider the dangerous atmosphere they helped to create. But, much like so many other mass-casualty shootings that take place in this country, the deaths of five people in a newspaper office did little to affect the political discourse or alter the nation’s trajectory. On Wednesday, federal lawmakers pledged their support for The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation and its efforts to build a memorial in the National Mall to honor slain journalists.
Daily Press

The Argus Leader’s eight-year battle for transparency in government spending records reached its legal pinnacle this spring in front of the United States Supreme Court. On Monday, in a shattering blow to government transparency, that battle was lost. Our quest for public access to information about where federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars are spent in South Dakota was struck down. A 6-3 majority reversed nearly a half-century of judicial precedent, effectively prioritizing private industry’s desire for secrecy in government dealings over the public’s right to know how their tax money is spent. The majority opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch ignored that the records we requested were of government payments to businesses, information that is typically public record. Gorsuch focused only on an extreme narrowing of meaning of the word “confidential” in the original text of FOIA as written in 1966, basing this new restrictive definition on dictionaries of that era.
The Argus Leader

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