Transparency News, 8/20/20
Thursday
August 20, 2020
August 20, 2020
state & local news stories
"They’re stuck in a procedural cul-de-sac, unable to officially get underway until the online session can be formalized Sunday."
For a list of (and links to) today's General Assembly committee meetings, click here: https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?202+oth+MTG
Yesterday, the Senate Education and Health Committee combined three bills (from Senators Barker, Newman & Suetterlein) all having to do with disclosing the names of certain facilities (like nursing homes) with communicable disease outbreaks. Going forward, the bill will be SB 5081.
Among the bills filed yesterday:
HB 5090 -- Hurst
Adds inactive/closed criminal investigative files, defined in the bill, to the types of law-enforcement and criminal records required to be released in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Under current law, the release of criminal investigative files is discretionary. The bill also allows a law-enforcement agency or attorney for the Commonwealth to petition a court of record for permission not to release criminal incident information that would otherwise be subject to release, if the release of such information is likely to jeopardize an ongoing investigation or cause certain other harms.
HB 5092 -- Nick Rush
Provides that individual votes of the members of the Virginia Parole Board shall be public records and subject to the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
SB 5050 -- Obenshain
The bill requires that the monthly reports issued by the Virginia Parole Board regarding actions taken on the parole of prisoners (i) be published on the last day of the month and (ii) include the offenses of which prisoners considered for parole were convicted, the jurisdictions in which such offenses were committed, the amount of time served by such prisoners, and the reasons for release or discharge.
The first virtual floor session in 401 years of Virginia legislative history got off to a rocky start Wednesday, as the House of Delegates wrestled with a balky video system and Republicans complained of lost connections. But the state Senate, meeting in person, began advancing ambitious measures aimed at overhauling policing and the criminal justice system.
Democrats in control of the House insist the experiment with online lawmaking during a pandemic won’t slow their efforts to tackle the same big topics as their counterparts in the Senate. But for now, they’re stuck in a procedural cul-de-sac, unable to officially get underway until the online session can be formalized Sunday over Republican objections. There was no committee action in the House, where Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) had pushed for moving the session online after convening Tuesday at the Virginia Commonwealth University basketball arena. Because there are 100 seats in the House — compared with 40 in the Senate — Filler-Corn argued that a virtual meeting would be the best way to protect members and staff from the coronavirus.
The Washington Post
The Virginia Senate is advancing a bill making it clear that information about COVID-19 outbreaks must be published for public view. Nursing homes and assisted living centers have been hit particularly hard by the virus, with nearly half of the commonwealth’s 2,410 deaths attributed to residents in those facilities. At the onset of the pandemic, Gov. Ralph Northam and his advisers refused to identify the names of those facilities, citing the state code.
The Roanoke Times
Over the strong objection of Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, a Senate committee advanced a bill that would curtail emergency decisions made by the state health commissioner, in part spurred on by frustration with the administration’s initial refusal to release information on nursing homes experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks. An early decision by the administration to withhold the names of nursing homes and assisted living facilities with COVID-19 outbreaks was also “based on guidance from the Virginia commissioner of health,” according to Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky. But the policy, which was suddenly reversed in June, attracted months of bipartisan criticism from legislators who said it prevented residents and their families from accessing vital health information. Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, said frustration over the policy led to wider support of Newman’s bill. “Initially, they refused to identify long-term care facilities and other types of operations that had outbreaks because they were interpreting language in one section of the code to apply very broadly to everything,” he added. “And what this does is address that issue. It’s good to have a discussion and debate about those types of things, and this will basically ensure that the Board of Health is involved.”
Virginian Mercury
Virginia Tech and Radford University have separately unveiled data dashboards about campus COVID-19 cases. Radford reported an overall positivity rate of 0.75% out of 1,470 tests given Aug. 1-14, which amounts to about 11 individuals. The dashboard, posted online Tuesday, says data is current as of Friday. The dashboard, which does not include any additional information, will be updated weekly. Tech reported an overall positivity rate of 0.14% out of 3,663 tests given Aug. 9-16, which amounts to five positive cases of COVID-19.
The Roanoke Times
Portsmouth police were supposed to drop an investigation into a June protest and vandalism at the Confederate monument, and City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton didn’t know charges were coming until officers took out warrants against 14 people earlier this week, Pettis Patton told council members in an email Wednesday. The email was made public in a Facebook post by Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke, whose mother, state Sen. Louise Lucas, was among those charged with felonies stemming from the June 10 protest. A school board member, local NAACP leaders and several public defenders also were charged. In her email, Pettis Patton wrote that Chief Angela Greene “reported a Conflict of Interest” relating to an investigation into the protests, although she did not say what that conflict was.
The Virginian-Pilot
Yesterday, the Senate Education and Health Committee combined three bills (from Senators Barker, Newman & Suetterlein) all having to do with disclosing the names of certain facilities (like nursing homes) with communicable disease outbreaks. Going forward, the bill will be SB 5081.
Among the bills filed yesterday:
HB 5090 -- Hurst
Adds inactive/closed criminal investigative files, defined in the bill, to the types of law-enforcement and criminal records required to be released in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Under current law, the release of criminal investigative files is discretionary. The bill also allows a law-enforcement agency or attorney for the Commonwealth to petition a court of record for permission not to release criminal incident information that would otherwise be subject to release, if the release of such information is likely to jeopardize an ongoing investigation or cause certain other harms.
HB 5092 -- Nick Rush
Provides that individual votes of the members of the Virginia Parole Board shall be public records and subject to the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
SB 5050 -- Obenshain
The bill requires that the monthly reports issued by the Virginia Parole Board regarding actions taken on the parole of prisoners (i) be published on the last day of the month and (ii) include the offenses of which prisoners considered for parole were convicted, the jurisdictions in which such offenses were committed, the amount of time served by such prisoners, and the reasons for release or discharge.
The first virtual floor session in 401 years of Virginia legislative history got off to a rocky start Wednesday, as the House of Delegates wrestled with a balky video system and Republicans complained of lost connections. But the state Senate, meeting in person, began advancing ambitious measures aimed at overhauling policing and the criminal justice system.
Democrats in control of the House insist the experiment with online lawmaking during a pandemic won’t slow their efforts to tackle the same big topics as their counterparts in the Senate. But for now, they’re stuck in a procedural cul-de-sac, unable to officially get underway until the online session can be formalized Sunday over Republican objections. There was no committee action in the House, where Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) had pushed for moving the session online after convening Tuesday at the Virginia Commonwealth University basketball arena. Because there are 100 seats in the House — compared with 40 in the Senate — Filler-Corn argued that a virtual meeting would be the best way to protect members and staff from the coronavirus.
The Washington Post
The Virginia Senate is advancing a bill making it clear that information about COVID-19 outbreaks must be published for public view. Nursing homes and assisted living centers have been hit particularly hard by the virus, with nearly half of the commonwealth’s 2,410 deaths attributed to residents in those facilities. At the onset of the pandemic, Gov. Ralph Northam and his advisers refused to identify the names of those facilities, citing the state code.
The Roanoke Times
Over the strong objection of Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, a Senate committee advanced a bill that would curtail emergency decisions made by the state health commissioner, in part spurred on by frustration with the administration’s initial refusal to release information on nursing homes experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks. An early decision by the administration to withhold the names of nursing homes and assisted living facilities with COVID-19 outbreaks was also “based on guidance from the Virginia commissioner of health,” according to Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky. But the policy, which was suddenly reversed in June, attracted months of bipartisan criticism from legislators who said it prevented residents and their families from accessing vital health information. Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, said frustration over the policy led to wider support of Newman’s bill. “Initially, they refused to identify long-term care facilities and other types of operations that had outbreaks because they were interpreting language in one section of the code to apply very broadly to everything,” he added. “And what this does is address that issue. It’s good to have a discussion and debate about those types of things, and this will basically ensure that the Board of Health is involved.”
Virginian Mercury
Virginia Tech and Radford University have separately unveiled data dashboards about campus COVID-19 cases. Radford reported an overall positivity rate of 0.75% out of 1,470 tests given Aug. 1-14, which amounts to about 11 individuals. The dashboard, posted online Tuesday, says data is current as of Friday. The dashboard, which does not include any additional information, will be updated weekly. Tech reported an overall positivity rate of 0.14% out of 3,663 tests given Aug. 9-16, which amounts to five positive cases of COVID-19.
The Roanoke Times
Portsmouth police were supposed to drop an investigation into a June protest and vandalism at the Confederate monument, and City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton didn’t know charges were coming until officers took out warrants against 14 people earlier this week, Pettis Patton told council members in an email Wednesday. The email was made public in a Facebook post by Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke, whose mother, state Sen. Louise Lucas, was among those charged with felonies stemming from the June 10 protest. A school board member, local NAACP leaders and several public defenders also were charged. In her email, Pettis Patton wrote that Chief Angela Greene “reported a Conflict of Interest” relating to an investigation into the protests, although she did not say what that conflict was.
The Virginian-Pilot
stories of national interest
“A covert FERPA violation would be when you started being able to say, 'Okay, there are 10 people who have it, and five of them are male, and they’re all freshmen, they all came in from New York or something,"
UNC law professor Maxine Eichner said in March that the Student Privacy Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Education released a document containing frequently asked questions about how institutions can deal with the release of COVID-19-related data without violating FERPA. One of the questions on the FAQ document asks if an institution can disclose information regarding a student contracting COVID-19 to other students and the school community without the student's consent. “It depends, but generally yes, but only if that information is in a non-personally identifiable form,” according to the Department of Education's FAQ. Eichner said she disagrees with the idea that FERPA prohibits disclosure of the number of COVID-19 cases in a cluster. Northwestern University associate professor of law Matthew Kugler clarified this distinction by giving an example of a scenario that would be classified as a FERPA violation. “A covert FERPA violation would be when you started being able to say, 'Okay, there are 10 people who have it, and five of them are male, and they’re all freshmen, they all came in from New York or something," Kugler said. "Suddenly, you might have a FERPA problem because you could identify them." Kugler said as long as data is not linkable to specific students, its release is not a FERPA violation.
The Daily Tar Heel
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Nov. 2 in a closely watched dispute over Endangered Species Act documents. The court released the November schedule Wednesday, placing the case first for the month. The justices have a small environmental docket for the 2020 term so far, with just two cases on deck—though several more could be added. At issue in the endangered species case is whether the Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to hand over certain internal records that are labeled “drafts.”
Bloomberg Law
The Daily Tar Heel
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Nov. 2 in a closely watched dispute over Endangered Species Act documents. The court released the November schedule Wednesday, placing the case first for the month. The justices have a small environmental docket for the 2020 term so far, with just two cases on deck—though several more could be added. At issue in the endangered species case is whether the Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to hand over certain internal records that are labeled “drafts.”
Bloomberg Law
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