Viewpoint

The Premise

1. It’s a simple premise. No one should have to see six-year-olds with the 2,000 Yard Stare.

2. Real Americans don’t want to see it ever again. If there is a silver lining to any of this, it’s that rank-and-file citizens, inured enough to mass killings that we can’t remember most of the previous twelve in 2012 without difficulty, are now saying, “No More. No.” We don’t know how and we don’t know what, but we have to change some things.

3. I’m writing this a week before you’ll read it, so you will know much more than I know. Developments are unfolding almost hourly, including some that were unrealistic only days ago. The NRA, whose power and influence is based not in cash but in lists, has taken down its Facebook page.

Property Tax Crisis Puts Long Island At Risk

Earlier this fall, County Executive Mangano suggested that the only way to keep Nassau’s unraveling real property tax assessment system in balance was for every owner to challenge their assessment every year. The Seventh Seal of local public administration has been broken.

Our state and local finance problems are just as much a part of the Superstorm Sandy story as pillorying LIPA officials and refilling beaches. So far, nearly all attention has been focused on Washington for damage relief funding. Already, there is pushback. Some House and Senate Republicans want offsetting spending cuts for the aid, which delayed disbursements for Irene damage last year. This will work itself out, one way or another. What’s really scary are the still-abstract long-range costs that will begin transforming into solid wall, soon.

What Was Civil Defense?

In the 1950s and 1960s, Nassau County local governments built a formidable Civil Defense (CD) complex designed to keep residents safe and alive in case of catastrophe. That CD system is gone, although bits and pieces are still with us today. Our auxiliary police units are vestiges of CD. First set up during the Second World War and revived during the Korean War, the “auxies” weren’t formally folded into the Nassau County Police Department until three decades ago. In 1965, the Levittown Public Schools contracted with the local unit to keep order during special events, and slowly the auxiliaries came to be thought of as “anti-crime” units.

The WWII civil defense system had been almost completely dismantled when the Soviet Union’s acquisition of atomic technology in 1949 jump-started the creation of CD systems at all levels of government. In less than a year, Nassau County had a working emergency headquarters, a series of air raid warning stations, a Civilian Air Patrol of volunteer pilots and detailed plans for police, fire, health, public works, transportation and other services for every village and unincorporated area.

Long Islanders Can Handle The Facts

All parts of a power transmission and distribution system can be put underground. The larger transmission lines that usually run along main roads and railroad tracks, the “tap lines” that branch off into neighborhoods, the substations and transformers, all of it. Underground systems are not perfectly protected, but they are better protected from wind, ice and trees.

The cost of underground wires in new developments is only a little more than putting in overhead wires. Replacement of existing overheads with buried wires is something else. It costs more, but how much more and if it’s worth the cost are questions that need serious study from some objective source, once and for all.

LIPA: Kissing the Pooch

“Due to the high call volume we cannot assign you a representative. Please try again later.”

By the second week, that’s what LIPA was saying.

In government, there is a direct link between performance and trust. LIPA has lost that trust, and not just for itself. This just sets back everything in our local public weal. Long Island is damaged.

Underground: The Reprint

(This was originally published in September 2011, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. It is reprinted exactly as it appeared 13 months ago.)    

There was a palpable shift in attitude toward LIPA on Wednesday, August 31. Frustration and outright hostility spilled over as the flow of useful information about outages and repairs slowed and sometimes stopped. A lot of good will has been lost by LIPA. Perhaps they can start to earn some of it back.

On the Record

There will be enough political stress over the next several days. This week, I offer the pipe of peace and urge thought and action on the most nonpartisan of subjects. Though the focus here is on local governments and public agencies, it all can be applied just as easily to businesses of all sizes and to your personal work. People in authority over public records, archives, libraries and data of all kinds need to dedicate the near future to checking, rechecking, rethinking, revising and re-envisioning their plans and procedures for keeping those materials safe for now and for the future. Clocks are ticking all over.

If you’re a data caretaker or policy maker, some problems you thought you had licked a long time ago may be coming back to haunt you. The true life expectancy of optical media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) is unknown, and it’s clear from published reports and personal observation that some types are failing faster than anticipated. In particular, many writeable CDs from 10 years ago or less are giving error messages, with demagnetized spots that make some or all data irretrievable. Software needed to access some data is no longer published or supported, and may no longer run on newer machines or operating systems. CDs themselves are soon going the way of microfilm and vinyl records.

13 Days

1. The polling. The polling. Media obsession with polling. It’s already insufferable where I now sit on the time-space continuum, on October 17, twenty days from Election Day. Ghosts of the Future, reading this a week later, I feel sorry for you, because the polling frenzy is probably even worse where you are.

2. The media loves polls because reporting on them is cheap and easy. The work is all done for them. It fills space during lulls in which there’s nothing much more to say or write. Very quickly, the polling itself becomes the story, crowding out true analysis and oversight of important issues.

Polling Places

1. We have not had a redistricting year election in Nassau County that didn’t have pockets of problems or confusion in the polling places. Be prepared.

2. Changes in federal and state legislative district borders, effective on January 1, have forced the merger or splitting of some election districts (neighborhood level voting precincts). It didn’t help that the Nassau County Board of Elections, run by the two major parties, was late in finalizing new election district-level maps (making ballot qualification problematic for outsiders).

Responsibility, Part II Of II

We’re very good at paying homage to the men and women who have died in service to our country. We’re not as good at honoring those who come back alive, many of whom continue to pay a price after their return.

Several months ago, a survey of 4,200 members of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America found that their top concern was unemployment (followed by mental health, disability benefits, health care and education). 17 percent reported that they were unemployed, a rate significantly higher than the official statistics. At the time of the survey, there was an official unemployment rate of 30.4 percent among veterans aged 18 to 24 and 48.0 percent for young black veterans.