Transparency News, 8/25/2022
Thursday
August 25, 2022
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Contact us at vcog@opengovva.org
state & local news stories
For months, conservative school board members and their supporters have taken to calling school administrators and teachers “porn peddlers” for their unwillingness to remove certain books from school libraries. When they repeatedly used the term again during Tuesday night’s meeting, Superintendent Aaron Spence decided he had heard enough. “You will stop saying that my staff is giving pornography to children,” Spence said to Board Member Victoria Manning. Manning responded by shouting over him multiple times, “I will not.” The debate over whether citizens with no children in the school division had the right to challenge library books got heated — with board members and Spence often shouting over each other. During this, two children who had been in the room throughout portions of the meeting were escorted out.
The Virginain-Pilot
In May, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration offered a job to T. March Bell, an attorney and former congressional aide. Unlike many of the governor’s hires, Bell’s new role as senior advisor to Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Bob Mosier wasn’t formally announced by the administration. But Bell is a well-known figure in politics at the state and federal levels. He was asked to resign as deputy director of Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in 1997 after a legislative audit found he couldn’t justify a nearly $8,000 payment to a former employee. Bell’s position in the Youngkin administration became public following a series of public records requests filed by Josh Stanfield, a progressive activist. The latest includes a May 20 letter from Youngkin’s chief of staff offering Bell the job, which comes along with a $125,000 annual salary. Stanfield also first reported Bell’s presence at a meeting of Youngkin’s Commission to Combat Anti-Semitism in a July post on the Blue Virginia blog. Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson for the governor, said Bell is not a member of the commission.
VPM
Two community members who have said they intend to run for seats on the Fairfax County School Board have apologized after laughing at footage of a student singing and playing the national anthem at a school board meeting. Stephanie Lundquist-Arora and Harry Jackson were captured laughing at the student in an episode of “Shadow Board,” a live-streamed YouTube show of four community members reacting to the Fairfax school board’s live meetings. Lundquist-Arora and Jackson are two members of the panel featured on “Shadow Board.”
The Washington Post
Virginia Beach City Council voted nine months ago to create a new citizen board to investigate complaints against the police. There would be a crucial difference from the city’s current Investigation Review Panel: it could ask a court to subpoena witnesses and documents. To do that the board needs lawyers. The city has not found any, and the second deadline to do so has expired. The board may ask a court for a subpoena only after making "a good faith effort" to obtain documents and witness testimony voluntarily. The subject of the subpoena can appeal to the court as well, asking for them to quash it.
WHRO
stories of national interest
About two dozen boxes of presidential records stored in then-president Donald Trump’s White House residence were not returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in the final days of his term even after Archives officials were told by a Trump lawyer that the documents should be returned, according to an email from the top lawyer at the record-keeping agency. “It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post. The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line “Need for Assistance re Presidential Records” — shows just how early Archives officials realized that many documents were missing from the Trump White House. It also illustrates the myriad efforts Archives officials made to have the documents returned over an 18-month period, culminating with an FBI raid earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
The Washington Post
