Transparency News, 8/22/2022
Monday
August 22, 2022
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state & local news stories
The Front Royal Town Council started its search to fill a vacancy after one member quit in protest last week. Councilman Joseph E. McFadden resigned moments after members and the mayor voted 4-3 at a work session to terminate Town Manager Stephen Hicks’ employment contract effective immediately. Hicks had worked as the town manager for 20 months. Council members met behind closed doors at a work session on Monday to discuss personnel matters, specifically the town manager, town attorney and clerk of council. They convened in open session but took no action on the personnel matters they intended to discuss. Council members made no announcement that they would start taking resumes from people interested in the vacant seat. Front Royal posted the advertisement for the appointment on the town’s website.
The Northern Virginia Daily
Former Lt. Gov. of Virginia, Justin Fairfax, has filed a $35 million defamation lawsuit against New York Public Radio. The lawsuit comes just a few months after the FBI questioned Fairfax on sexual assault allegations made against the then-governor in 2019. The 43-year-old former lt. governor, who left public office in January, has consistently denied the assault allegations against him, which have not resulted in criminal charges, and has long called for law enforcement to investigate them. The nature of the action of the suit states that “intentionally fabricated, false, and politically-motivated express and implied defamatory per se and per quod statements” were made with “actual malice” by both Meredith Watson and Vanessa Tyson. The suit goes on to say the two women are alleging “fictitious and intentionally fabricated sexual assaults” by Fairfax against them in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
WRIC
Former President Donald Trump's pick to oversee the parent agency of the Voice of America paid a prestigious private law firm so extravagantly to investigate his own agency's senior executive officials that it constituted a "waste or gross waste of government resources," a federal watchdog concluded Friday. Michael Pack, the former CEO of VOA-parent U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO, awarded the contract without any bidding process to the politically connected Richmond, Va., law firm McGuireWoods, which ultimately received more than $1.6 million in taxpayer money. Friday's report from the U.S. State Department's Inspector General found the service the law firm provided "were duplicative of existing resources and involved the payment of billable hours far in excess of the salary of federal employees who can perform the same work." The inspector general also found "serious violations of federal law and regulation" in the payment of a subcontractor without any authorization. Neither Pack nor two representatives of McGuireWoods replied to efforts requesting comment on the findings on Friday.
NPR
stories of national interest
The office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry redacted each of the names and emails of their staffers in emailsobtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Fox News Digital obtained the documents from government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), which revealed the correspondence between Kerry’s office and several recipients, including nearly 20 climate change groups. PPT was only able to obtain the documents after suing Kerry’s office over unfulfilled FOIA requests. However, the emails have every staffer’s name and email redacted.
Fox News
The Department of Justice (DOJ) improperly shielded portions of a memo to Attorney General William Barr that concerned whether former President Trump obstructed a special counsel probe into his campaign’s dealings with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled on Friday. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a federal judge’s May 2021 decision that the DOJ had improperly redacted parts of the Trump-era legal memo that should have been made public as part of a government watchdog’s records request lawsuit.
The Hill
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that he didn't take any classified material with him when he left the White House, the Associated Press reports. The FBI seized multiple sets of classified and top secret documents from former President Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. Driving the news: When asked by AP about taking any classified information with him, Pence said, “No, not to my knowledge.” Pence said he didn't want to "prejudge" the FBI's raid at Trump's home "until we know all the facts.” He added the search may have been politically motivated and called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to release more information. The concern that millions of Americans felt is only going to be resolved with daylight," Pence said. "I know that's not customary in an investigation. But this is unprecedented action by the Justice Department, and I think it merits an unprecedented transparency."
Axios
editorials & columns
Perhaps we are reading too much into them – that’s what we do – but actions taken by the Arlington School Board and County Board over the summer (when nobody was looking) should be disconcerting for those who value a robust community conversation. School Board members decided that they wouldn’t take any public comment at meetings during the summer months, returning with the opportunity for the public to weigh in on topics of importance in September. And then County Board members made a procedural change to their public-comment rules (reported in this week’s edition) that likely will have the effect of cutting down on the number of people who come to the dais at the start of board meetings to offer their insights. Both actions are defensible, perhaps, but taken together, they give off the unmistakable stench that today’s elected officials don’t want to hear what the public has to say or (perhaps as importantly) don’t want others in the community to hear what their neighbors have to say.
Sun Gazette
