Day by day Level
The cyberattack and the approaching election
Betty Manzella first got to work on the Suffolk County Board of Elections in 1995, when, she says, “the entirety was once paper.”
Now the GOP elections commissioner, she’s just lately been excited about that bygone generation, because the BOE offers with fallout from a September cyberattack on Suffolk County techniques.
In keeping with that obvious intrusion, the county took down public-facing web infrastructure, together with internet sites and emails, disruptive in an age when such a lot is completed on-line. Election officers have needed to turn on contingency plans and use workarounds whilst techniques go back. That incorporates operating with the Division of Motor Automobiles to procedure on-line voter registration programs, a few of which might be “placing in our on-line world at this time,” Manzella stated Wednesday.
And the BOE’s site with all its election knowledge has been out, changed by way of a brief blurb at the county’s transient touchdown site at suffolkcountyny.gov.
That blurb comprises the similar normal inquiry e-mail deal with as same old, BOEinfo@suffolkcountyny.gov, and Manzella says she has get admission to to it, so inquiries about absentee ballots and voter registration are coming in and can also be responded.
The transient touchdown site additionally has the telephone quantity for the BOE, which electorate can name with questions. And New York State nonetheless has its personal site the place electorate can take a look at their registration and extra.
All of which is to mention that Manzella thinks “we are in lovely just right form” because the November elections manner, in spite of the stressful previous few days. She says the board will quickly be striking out a agenda for early vote casting, which begins Oct. 29, and she or he and her colleagues are heading in the right direction to get army ballots mailed on Friday, as required by way of regulation.
The election received’t be “impeded,” she says.
Even so, she’s excited about the fewer technologically attached facets of the start of her occupation, reminiscent of stick machines that didn’t require Wi-Fi.
“There is something to be stated in regards to the previous tactics,” she mused.
— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano
Speaking Level
Hempstead the city car audit may get some mileage
An audit by way of New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli launched this month discovered that the The city of Hempstead lacked ok file retaining and documentation to stay observe of the city vehicles and different automobiles and didn’t have suitable procedures to observe gas utilization.
The audit to start with coated the 2018-2019 period of time, however then was once up to date thru February 2021, straddling the administrations of former The city Manager Laura Gillen and present The city Manager Don Clavin.
The document confirmed that whilst there was once no centralized stock of the city automobiles, a department-by-department research indicated that town had 1,236 automobiles as of February 2021. 3 departments — parks and sport, freeway, and sanitation — held the majority of the ones automobiles, accounting for 62%. However the the city additionally didn’t adequately handle name documentation, because it stored just about two dozen titles in unsecured places, and was once not able to find two of them.
The comptroller discovered town had 553 passenger automobiles, 96 of that have been accredited to be taken domestic. However the audit discovered that there was once no documentation offering explanations for why staff had been allowed to take their automobiles domestic, and the workers weren’t required to handle logs to turn how their the city vehicles had been used.
Then there’s gas. The comptroller discovered that nobody was once tracking gas utilization and, in drilling down additional, that there have been a number of problematic information. One consumer, as an example, recorded 919 gallons pumped, however best drove the car 1,413 miles, translating into an absurd 1.54 miles in line with gallon. Others rounded their car mileage recordings, or wrote in numbers that had been obviously mistaken.
Hempstead Basic Products and services Commissioner Gerald C. Marino replied to DiNapoli’s audit in a letter issued closing month and revealed within the audit itself. Marino famous that since 2020, when Clavin took place of business, “the The city has proactively taken steps to mitigate the worries raised within the document.” Town additionally promised to study the comptroller’s suggestions and “take them below advisement and enforce them, the place essential.”
Marino stated the city officers had been reviewing town’s “car use coverage” and already has attempted to begin centralizing stock information. What’s extra, town “has necessarily eradicated using take-home automobiles, apart from in very restricted cases,” he wrote, additionally promising to supply steering to people referring to gas use, and to observe that use going ahead.
Most likely that’ll get started with tightening reporting procedures so it does not seem the city vehicles are getting best 1.54 miles in line with gallon.
— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall
Pencil Level
A New (York) headache
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Reference Level
Struggle and international relations over the years
The circus another way referred to as the U.N. Basic Meeting involves the city the 3rd week of each September, and this 12 months isn’t any exception. However as global leaders preach and delegates community in New york whilst international tensions stay prime, it’s sobering to appreciate that the main points of debates would possibly alternate over time, however the substance unfortunately stays the similar.
Fifty-five years in the past, Newsday’s editorial board regarded as the U.N. speech given by way of American Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, watching that “what’s wanted is a mutual reputation that wars can’t be ended until nationwide rights are revered,” in a Sept. 22, 1967 piece referred to as “Laying It At the Line.”
That prescription can have been written for the present warfare in Ukraine. However Goldberg and the board had been referencing warfare in Vietnam and turbulence within the Heart East — one lengthy resolved, the opposite unfortunately nonetheless roiling in its infinity of variations.
In his deal with, Goldberg tried to hyperlink a proposed finish of American bombing with a willingness by way of the North Vietnamese to start peace negotiations.
“Does North Vietnam conceive that the cessation of bombing would or will have to result in every other effects than significant negotiations or discussions below cases which might now not drawback all sides?” Goldberg requested.
The board stated Goldberg was once “laying it at the line” and delved right into a debate at the distinction between “may” and “would” with regards to the intentions of North Vietnam to speak.
5 years previous, the board mirrored on U.N. speeches given by way of American Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson and Russian Overseas Minister Andrei I. Gromyko amid rising tensions in Cuba. Stevenson’s speech was once “a reasoned attraction for global peace and disarmament,” the board wrote in “Two Faces of Mankind,” which was once revealed on Sept. 22, 1962. Gromyko’s deal with, alternatively, “was once a mélange of bluster and threats, an attraction to each interest and to worry.”
Analogies, in fact, don’t seem to be best. All conflicts have similarities and variations. The Vietnam Struggle endured for every other 8 bloody years, the Heart East stays a hotbed of warfare, and the fraught scenario in Cuba culminated lower than a month after Stevenson’s deal with within the Cuban missile disaster, when the sector frightened nuclear warfare would get away till a diplomatic answer was once discovered.
However the editorial board’s conclusion in 1962 stays wincingly related: “So the Basic Meeting will get below manner with the traces drawn however without a problems resolved. What is going on in the back of the scenes might neatly resolve how a lot of the roaring and bellowing by way of [fill in this blank] is authentic and what sort of is a part of the degree surroundings.”
— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina @adfiscina