Transparency News 7/23/15

Thursday, July 23, 2015

State and Local Stories


A state group reviewing Virginia's open records laws will consider narrowing one of the law's widest exemptions, and it will also discuss opening some government employee personnel records to public view. Such changes would likely be more than a year away, if they materialize at all, and require approval from the Virginia General Assembly. But a subcommittee tasked with a 3-year review of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act agreed Wednesday to look at new language for a law that press and open government advocates hope to see tightened. A separate request, to take the law's "working papers" exemption away from university presidents, foundered in the subcommittee Tuesday, with a lack of support from members. A number of state legislators had sought to cut back the provision, which allows college presidents to shield a broad swath of documents and correspondence from FOIA requests. "It's an anomaly," said Del. David Ramadan, a retiring House member who wants presidents removed from the exemption. "In reality, we know why. It was lobbied well."
Daily Press

Pittsylvania County Circuit Court Judge Stacey Moreau is scheduled to hear a Freedom of Information Act complaint against the county’s Agricultural Development Board on Aug. 6. Deborah Dix of Blairs, Phillip Lovelace of Gretna, and Karen Maute of Danville want the judge to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the agricultural board to follow Virginia’s open meetings and public records laws. A General District Court judge dismissed the group’s FOIA petition in June after the agricultural board admitted it made mistakes and put a corrective action plan in place.
Star-Tribune

The line of information about Bakken crude oil shipments will continue to run from railroad companies to emergency responders, according to a letter from the Federal Railroad Administration. The letter sent by the U.S. Department of Transportation to railroads Wednesday, instructs them to continue complying with a 2014 emergency order issued after the CSX Transportation Inc. derailment and explosion in downtown Lynchburg. The information includes the frequency, volume and routes for Bakken crude oil movements to state emergency response commissions despite a rule issued in May by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation — that gave the order a 2016 sunset.
News & Advance

The chair of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors said her vote for Shannon Hair over Joyce Wright, an African-American, for a position on the board at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research had nothing to do with race. “It’s not even on my radar to discuss whether a person is a minority,” said board of supervisors Chair Brenda Bowman, who represents the Chatham-Blairs District. “I look at the candidates. It has nothing to do with race.” Bowman said it was the first time the county received high interest for a board vacancy since the county adopted a candidate applicant bank in 2012. She said she regrets the board did not hold a closed meeting to discuss the matter since they had more than one applicant. “I thought I had a good plan, but if I had to do it all over again, I would have held a closed meeting for the discussion,” Bowman said. “After all, this was the first time we had a situation such as this.”
Register & Bee

Court documents filed in connection with Wes Rosenbalm’s guilty plea Tuesday paint a picture of widespread corruption and fraud during much of his tenure as CEO of BVU — both before and after it became an independent authority. Information, including a 14-page statement of facts, reveals that Rosenbalm and other unnamed employees received memberships at the Country Club of Bristol, personal use of BVU vehicles, gift cards, money and other perks paid for by BVU or its vendors — but none was declared to the Internal Revenue Service. Documents also show that at least nine unnamed vendors or contractors were regularly pressured to pay for gift cards, parties or provide other items to remain in good standing.
Herald Courier

Tracing the genealogy of a person or family can be difficult enough even with complete records. However, when the records are missing key pieces of information such as last names or exact birth dates, a family tree can be hard to compile. Since June, the Louisa Historical Society has been working to overcome this challenge as they work to compile records of enslaved workers. The group is focusing specifically on slaves within the Green Springs District between 1700 and 1875. Recently, the group received a grant from the Bama Works fund of Dave Matthews Band. The grant will goes towards the development of a geospatial database which connects the records to a specific time and place on a map.
The Central Virginia

Metro agreed to pay nearly $350,000 to its former general counsel who signed on as a consultant to its board the same day she resigned from the transit agency. The contract Kathryn Pett signed would have paid her $311,300, plus roughly $36,000 in travel expenses, before it was abruptly canceled last month, according to newly-released documents obtained by The Washington Post. According to the documents, obtained through Metro’s Public Access to Records Policy, Pett was hired because she was “uniquely qualified” to serve as special counsel to the board. Pett, the documents said, possessed “a depth of experience” with issues related to Metro and the Federal Transit Administration “that is not prevalent in the marketplace as it would require unacceptably lengthy start up and acclimation time. . . .”
Washington Post


National Stories
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It is no surprise that front-line employees often have the best ideas for making an organization work better, faster and cheaper. And when a process falls short, they see it firsthand. Led by Chief Performance Officer David Edinger, Denver's Peak Academy is one of the country's most successful efforts to turn the insights of municipal workers into meaningful results. Peak Academy brings employees together to teach them the skills for making small, continuous improvements in how the city-county government does business. By building an organizational culture in which workers feel empowered to speak up and managers to listen, Edinger hopes to help Denver save money and create more value for citizens.
Governing

Republican and Democratic U.S. senators introduced legislation to give the Department of Homeland Security more authority to protect government Internet addresses, hoping to prevent more cyber attacks like recent massive breaches at the government’s hiring office. Among other things, the legislation would give the DHS the authority to monitor all federal agencies in the “dot-gov” Internet domain, and operate defensive countermeasures.
Reuters