Honolulu’s City Council passed a pair of bills that will impose some of the toughest regulations on the island of Oahu’s vacation rental industry in decades.
Bill 89, approved unanimously, will allow the permitting of as many as 1,715 owner-occupied, bed-and-breakfast type rentals. That’s nearly double the number of short-term rentals currently allowed on the island but well below the potential number of illegal vacation rentals, estimated to be as high as 8,000. What’s more, the bill authorizes no permits for rentals of entire homes.
The other bill, passed 7 to 2, sets fines of $1,000 for a first violation of the regulations and up to $10,000 for repeated transgressions. It also allows vacation rentals only in resort areas.
Before the votes, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the bills weren’t perfect, but they would begin to address the flaws with the current system.
“I don’t think we should let the perfect get in the way of the good,” he said. “I think the current model of enforcement is not working. And I don’t think it will ever work, by the way.”
Following the votes, the travel website Expedia issued a statement saying the laws would hurt the state’s economy.
“The Council had a clear choice between fair and enforceable compromise and a dangerous and onerous ban,” the company said. “Unfortunately, with tonight’s vote, Council puts in jeopardy nearly 7,000 local jobs, $336 million in local household income, and $77 million in state taxes.” (HAWAII NEWS NOW, HONOLULU CITY BEAT)
On May 29 Riviera Beach, Florida, a city of roughly 35,000 people near West Palm Beach was hit by a ransomware attack that took down all of the city’s computer networks, along with its water utility pump stations.
“Anything that was done online, we did not have access to,” said Rose Anne Brown, a spokeswoman for the city.
Last month the City Council of Riviera Beach unanimously agreed to pay the hackers who initiated the cyberattack about $592,000 in Bitcoin, in the hope of recovering data that was rendered inaccessible.
Although there’s no guarantee the hackers will make that data accessible once they receive payment, the cost of not paying the ransom could be far greater than the 65 Bitcoin the attackers demanded. Baltimore has refused to pay a $100,000 ransom for a cyberattack on that city in May that has cost it an estimated $18 million in repairs and lost revenue.
Jason Rebholz, a principal at the technology advisory firm Moxfive, said the large ransom demanded in the Riviera Beach attack suggests hackers are becoming emboldened by the increasing effectiveness of their attacks.
“The complexity and severity of these ransomware attacks just continues to increase,” he said. “The sophistication of these threat actors is increasing faster than many organizations and cities are able to keep pace with.” (NEW YORK TIMES)
At least 189 bills dealing with independent contractors have been introduced in state legislatures this session, according to LexisNexis State Net’s legislative tracking system. Fifty of those measures have been passed by one or both chambers of their originating legislatures, including California’s gig economy-worker bill, AB 5. Twenty-two of the bills have been signed into law.
When San Francisco-based Lyft driver Roosevelt Thomas recently got a message from the company urging him to sign a petition opposing California Assembly Bill 5 – which would turn rideshare drivers from independent contractors into employees – he knew right away he wouldn’t sign it.
“I was a general contractor for 30 years. I’ve had employees and I’ve used independent contractors,” he says. “I know the rules. And after driving for both Uber and Lyft, as far as I’m concerned, I feel they are trying to game the system.”
While many of his fellow drivers seem to agree with him, rideshare companies and other businesses that regularly use contractors are fighting the bill, which passed the Assembly in May and is now awaiting action in the Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement.
If it becomes law, AB 5 would codify the unanimous 2018 California Supreme Court ruling in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, in which delivery drivers successfully challenged the decision by Dynamex to make them independent contractors. The ruling established a so-called “ABC” test for determining whether a worker could be classified as an independent contractor, requiring that employers show a worker is: A) free from the control and direction of the employer B) performs work that is outside the hirer’s core business; and C) customarily engages in “an independently established trade, occupation or business.”
Failing at any one means that worker should be classified as an employee, requiring the employer to pay at least the state minimum wage as well as payroll taxes, worker’s compensation, disability, overtime and paid leave.
As far as Thomas is concerned, Lyft fails on all three fronts. He says that aside from the obvious connection to the company’s core business, it also regularly requires him to work in certain parts of town and to accept certain ride requests, it even tries to control the topic of conversations he might have with passengers.
“If I’m an independent contractor,” he asks, “shouldn’t I be able to talk about anything I want?”
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D), lauded the court’s decision.
“Individuals are not able to make it on three side hustles. That shouldn’t be the norm. That shouldn’t be accepted,” Gonzalez said in a statement upon filing the measure last December. “In a state with one of the country’s highest poverty rates, this court decision is crucial to helping Californians maintain solid employment in an economy that’s left millions struggling.”
She went further in May after the Assembly endorsed the measure, saying “Big businesses shouldn’t be able to pass their costs onto taxpayers while depriving workers of the labor law protections they are rightfully entitled to.”
It isn’t just labor protections at stake. According to the California Labor Commissioner, employee misclassification costs the Golden State approximately $7 billion a year in lost payroll taxes. And a 2017 report by the federal Government Accountability Office that analyzed almost 16 million tax returns between 2008 and 2010 found that about three million involved misclassification, costing the government over $44 billion in unpaid federal taxes.
Rideshare companies and business groups have lobbied furiously to counter AB 5’s momentum. In a joint op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle in June, Uber and Lyft officials said changing employment classification of ride-share drivers “would pose a risk to our businesses,” suggesting instead they be allowed to develop “a system of worker-determined benefits, from paid time off to retirement planning to lifelong learning” in exchange for being made exempt from the law.
They didn’t offer further details, but on the surface their proposal sounds like a deal in place with the Uber-funded Independent Drivers Guild in New York City. According to the Los Angeles Times, the two rideshare giants are reportedly negotiating with local chapters of the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union. There was no indication it would include basics like a minimum wage or disability coverage.
Although much of the attention since the ruling has focused on Uber and Lyft, the ruling’s reach – and that of AB 5 – goes much further. A 2017 report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center shows that 8.5 percent of the California workforce is comprised of contract labor, compared to about 7.2 percent nationally. As such, AB 5’s reach could extend to hundreds of thousands of workers across the employment spectrum, from barbers to exotic dancers to truck drivers and beyond.
Katie Prior knows that possibility all too well. When she left her stable corporate job to open a home-based Pilates studio in Rancho Cordova, California in 2016, she says she knew she was taking the biggest risk of her life. But within a year, things were going well enough to move the business into a good retail space. Business kept getting better, and a much bigger space soon followed. It was more than she had dared hope for.
And then the Dynamex ruling came down.
All of Prior’s instructors worked as independent contractors, a status she says none of her instructors wanted to change. But while most also teach at other studios or operate as an LLC, Prior opted in May to make them all employees out of fear she could eventually incur a hefty fine if AB 5 becomes law. She says that other studios around the greater Sacramento area did the same thing, but also cut their instructors’ pay as well. She opted instead to absorb the entire cost of the change.
“It hit me super hard,” she says. “I was doing well and finally putting money into savings and feeling safe, and now I’m back to being paycheck to paycheck and feeling like when I first opened and was trying to build the business.”
Worker classification is hardly an issue relegated to California. At least 20 states have some form of their own ABC test, most notably Massachusetts and New Jersey. The difference, says Jeff Hanscom, Vice president for Government Affairs for the International Franchise Association, is that most of those are nowhere near as broadly applied as in California.
“There are other states that have an ABC test on their book, but most are limited in their application to specific parts of employment, like worker’s compensation or unemployment compensation,” he says. “The biggest issue with Dynamex and AB 5 is that it applies across the board, especially in wage an hour cases, which is of major concern to the franchise community.”
States also have very different perspectives on the issue. As the National Law Review points out, Tennessee recently made it easier for companies to classify workers as independent contractors. Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Nevada are among several with current initiatives or task forces to evaluate how their state agencies are identifying and investigating misclassification. Meanwhile, Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Iowa among others have adopted “virtual marketplace” statutes that automatically deem app-based service providers like Uber and Lyft to be independent contractors.
Diana Mulcahy, an author and professor who teaches a nationally acclaimed course on the gig economy at Babson College in Massachusetts, says one of the key challenges for workers, employers and lawmakers is that the current way we classify workers is hopelessly outdated.
“Back in the days when the vast majority of workers were employees, it made sense to structure the labor market to deal with the issues that employees faced,” she says. “But in a labor market where people increasingly work independently, either full-time or on the side, it doesn’t make sense to have a two-tiered system.”
Shifting away from that, Mulcahy says, will require a system in which employers “take responsibility” for all of their workers by extending the full range of benefits and subsidies and protections they offer employees, even if they are contractors.
“The way the labor market is set up now, it penalizes you for not having a full-time job,” she says. “Workers are being shut out of basic protections, and is that really what we want to do to our workforce?”
For Prior, the answer is a hard no. But like many small business owners, she says she feels swept along in the current created by a raging battle between Corporate America and Big Labor. In the meantime, she is just trying to stay positive about it all.
“I have to look at it from the perspective that even with all of this I’m still not in the red,” she says. “Maybe a lot closer to it, but unlike a lot of other studios in California I can stay open and pay my bills. So I’m actually one of the lucky ones.”
Analytics experts from Fortune 500 companies, along with other top data practitioners, will converge on Las Vegas this month—and that's not the only stop on the Predictive Analytics Worldtour, now in its 10th year. Washington DC, London and Berlin will also host PAW conferences, which have attracted nearly 15,000 attendees representing more than 10,000 companies in the past decade.
The wide availability of big data, combined with advanced computing technologies, is expected to push the predictive analytics market up to $12.41 billion by 2022. Clearly, predictive analytics is a big deal. But for the non-experts among us, crunching data to foretell the future sounds a little like crystal-ball gazing. Does it really work? Let’s take a closer look at how it’s down and why it’s so important.
Predictive analytics relies on the enormous stores of data from both internal and external sources, along with a range of technologies including data mining, statistical modelling, and machine learning algorithms. And many of us experience it every day—in simple predictive applications like Waze that use data on traffic volume, construction zones or traffic accidents to suggest faster, alternate routes and on social media platforms and retail websites that serve up articles and ads based on past interests.Gartner defines predictive analytics as information technology that embraces four key attributes:
1. It emphasizes prediction instead of description, classification or clustering).2. It expedites analyses to hours or days, versus months that may be spent on manual analyses.3. It focuses on uncovering insights that are highly relevant to the business.4. It makes big data more accessible to business users.
Predictive analytics is one stage in the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). Where more traditional business intelligence applications focus on the past—what has happened and why—predictive analytics answers the question: What is going to happen?It’s an important distinction. As author and organizational theorist Geoffrey Moore says, ““Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway.” When an organization can’t see where its headed, chances are, it won’t end up where it wants.By leveraging historic and current data for analysis, predictive analytics empowers organizations to anticipate what’s to come, allowing proactive, data-driven decision making to mitigate risk and maximize opportunities for growth.
The desire to know what’s going to happen in the future isn’t new. Historical artefacts suggest that humans have practiced fortune-telling for millennia. Ancient people relied on the movements of the planets and starts (astrology), divination using dust, sand or salt (abacomancy) and other practices to predict the future. Our fascination with prediction even spills into popular fiction—Hogwarts offers courses in arithmancy, ancient runes and divination.
What is new is the volume, variety and quality of data available to enable accurate forecasts. So, how are businesses using predictive analytics?
• Banking and financial services organizations use it to detect fraud, accelerate application screening and inform buy-sell decisions.• Retail and entertainment brands use it in their PR, marketing and sales efforts to anticipate trends, optimize customer experiences, inspire product development and generate long-term value for the business.• Supply chain and risk management professionals use it to forecast inventory requirements, automate onboarding risk assessments and identify potential reputational, regulatory, financial or strategic risks on the horizon.
But there’s one hurdle that most companies must overcome to achieve the desired results from predictive analytics: the data. Forrester Research Analyst Michele Goetz notes, “Most organizations [83%] simply don’t recognize this as a problem. When asked about challenges expected with AI, having well-curated collections of data for training AI was at the bottom of the list.”
Unfortunately, the lack of relevant, clean data is one of the biggest barriers to successful predictive analytics endeavours. Siloed data is common, and the data in each silo—from sales, marketing, customer interactions, etc.—may be in completely different formats. Even when internal data is readily available, companies benefit from complementary datasets, such as news or social commentary, to fill in the blanks and achieve actionable business intelligence.
Organizations at the forefront of applying predictive analytics will realize substantial competitive advantages. Efficiency will climb, and with it, the opportunity to use human resources where they have the most impact—in person-to-person interactions and in making critical decisions that require emotional intelligence. Experts believe that deep learning and predictive AI analytics will be as transformative on society as internet and cellular technology was over the past decade.
Are you ready to make magic with predictive analytics?
With the legislative session in its usual summer lull, California Sen. Scott “Salmon Salad” Wilk and Asm. Tom “Turkey Burger” Lackey have taken on a new goal: losing weight. As Wilk announced on his Facebook page, he and Lackey are aiming to each lose 20 pounds over the next three months. Each has already progressed a quarter or more to that number, much to the approval of their spouses. As Wilk says, “My wife says when My weight’s up, I snore like a buffalo.”
-- By RICH EHISEN
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey was mad, mad, mad! Angry! Perturbed! Vexed! That commie pinko lefty wussbomb Nike had crumbled to PC pressure and cancelled plans to produce sneakers bearing the iconic Betsy Ross version of the American flag. But Nike bailed after love-him-or-hate-him football player/activist/Nike symbol Colin Kaepernick complained that the flag was representative of a time when slavery was in full bloom. That sent Ducey into a Trump-like Twitter rant in which he vowed to withdraw incentives being offered to Nike to locate a factory in Arizona, railing “We don’t need to suck up to companies that consciously denigrate our nation’s history.” But that resolve apparently didn’t extend to his own footwear. As the Washington Post reports, Ducey was photographed on the 4th of July wearing...wait for it...Nikes! Maybe the gov had a change of heart when he heard other states suddenly cozying up to The Swoosh.
If feelings of being disrespected were currency, America wouldn’t need a single other consumer product to remain the richest country on the face of the earth. Case in point comes from the town of Needles, a tiny town in the Mojave Desert area of California. The town is hard on the Colorado River, but the real current comes from the spectacularly deep well of butthurt townsfolk feel over the state’s increasingly strict gun laws. Now, as the Associated Press reports, city leaders recently declared the community a “2nd Amendment Sanctuary City” as a means of poking a certain finger at those lefty lawmakers in Sacramento. City leaders say their real goal isn’t to have folks walking through town with a shootin’ iron on their hip, but to assure passers-through that they won’t get in trouble should they get stopped in town with a loaded firearm on them. You know, as you do.
Back in the 70s’s, Chicago news icon Mike Royko famously dubbed then-California Gov. Jerry Brown “Governor Moonbeam” for the brash young governor’s appeal to young progressive voters, or what Royko called “the moonbeam vote.” The nickname was only reinforced by Brown’s idea of California becoming the first state to launch its own satellite. Well, here all these years later the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports that Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has issued an executive order to form the Mississippi National Guard Space Directorate, which would be a state-level part of President Donald Trump’s...uh... fanciful plan to create a Space Force as a new branch of the U.S. military. One can only wonder what fun the late Royko would have had with this one.
The SEATTLE City Council votes unanimously to enable the construction of more and larger backyard cottages in all neighborhoods. Council members also endorsed removing requirements that property owners live on site and provide off-street parking. The new rules also limit the size of aboveground living space for a single family in a new house to half the square footage of the home’s lot (SEATTLE TIMES).
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that a BERKELEY ordinance requiring cellphone retailers to warn customers in writing that carrying a cellphone in certain ways may cause them to exceed federal guidelines for exposure to radio-frequency radiation does not violate the 1st Amendment (LOS ANGELES TIMES).
-- Compiled by RICH EHISEN
A federal court upholds a KENTUCKY law requiring doctors who perform abortions to first complete an ultrasound and attempt to show and describe the image to the patient, as well as to play an audible heartbeat of the fetus (LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL).
TENNESSEE Gov. Bill Lee (R) signs HB 1151, which clarifies what constitutes a public place in regards to existing public indecency laws, including “restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, or showers, designated for multiperson, single sex use” (CBS NEWS).
HAWAII Gov. David Ige (D) signs a trio of pro-LGBTQ bills: HB 1165, which allows nonbinary gender markers on state-issued identification like driver’s licenses; HB 711, which bans the so-called “gay panic” defense that allowed assault defendants to claim they acted only after a person of the same sex made sexual overtures to them; and HB 664, which bans the use of so-called gay conversion therapy, which seeks to change a person’s sexual identification, on minors (HAWAII GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
Also in HAWAII, Gov. Ige signs SB 1039, which makes the Aloha State the first to remove a requirement that a person be a victim of sex trafficking to have a prostitution conviction erased (ASSOCIATED PRESS).
The CALIFORNIA Senate Health Committee holds SB 347, a bill that would have required sugar-sweetened beverages to contain a warning label advising consumers of their associated health risks like diabetes, obesity and tooth decay. The measure is likely dead for the year (CALMATTERS [SACRAMENTO]).
HAWAII Gov. David Ige (D) signs HB 1271, a bill that, among several things, allows pharmacies to accept returned prescriptions for disposal and bars the pharmacies from re-selling those medications (HAWAII GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
PENNSYLVANIA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signs SB 712, a budget bill that has a provision which bans state and local governments from regulating or banning single-use plastics until the completion of two government studies on the matter. The state Independent Fiscal Office will study the economic impact of such prohibitions to Keystone State industries while the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee will study the environmental impact of any such regulation on residents (JURIST).
The OREGON Senate approves HB 155, which would strengthen the authority of the state’s teacher licensing agency to investigate educators who engage in sexual misconduct. The measure, which passed both chambers unanimously, moves to Gov. Kate Brown (D), who is expected to sign it into law (PORTLAND OREGONIAN).
CALIFORNIA Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signs AB 272, which encourages Golden State schools to develop policies that ban or limit students’ use of smart phones on school grounds during school hours (CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
PENNSYLVANIA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signs SB 440, which allows Keystone State schools to eliminate off days due to snow by giving students homework via the Internet or other technology (HERALD [SHARON]).
The OREGON Senate approves HB 2005, which would grant workers up to 12 weeks of paid time off that they could also use to recuperate from their own serious illness, care for new adopted or foster children, or deal with domestic violence. The measure moves to Gov. Kate Brown (D), who is expected to sign it into law (PORTLAND OREGONIAN).
The OREGON Senate also endorses HB 2001, which would allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and “cottage clusters” on land previously reserved for single family houses in cities with more than 25,000 residents, while cities with at least 10,000 residents would be required to allow duplexes in single-family zones. The measure moves to Gov. Brown (D), who is expected to sign it (PORTLAND OREGONIAN).
MAINE Gov. Janet Mills (D) signs SB 593, which raises the cap on what constitutes a small brewer in the Pine Tree State from 1,600 barrels a year to 30,000 barrels annually. The law also will allow wineries to produce 3,000 barrels of hard cider and 50,000 gallons of wine (TIMES RECORD [BRUNSWICK]).
HAWAII Gov. David Ige (D) signs HB 710, which adds reproductive health decisions and utilization of family leave to the list of categories that are protected against discriminatory employment practices (HAWAII GOVERNOR’S OFFICE, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET).
CALIFORNIA Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signs SB 188, which makes the Golden State the first to bar discrimination based on hairstyle in both the workplace and in public schools (CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) issued Executive Order 19-11, aimed at protecting the Prairie State’s transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students. The governor’s directive creates a new 25-member working group tasked with ensuring schools are affirming those students and directs the Illinois State Board of Education to take several steps to support them. (ABC NEWS, ILLINOIS GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)
Saying the hiring of lobbyists is not a proper use of state funds, OKLAHOMA Gov. Brad Stitt (R) issued an executive order barring all Sooner State agencies from entering or extending any contracts with lobbyists without being granted written permission from one of the governor’s cabinet secretaries. The directive makes permanent a temporary order he implemented in January. (KFOR-TV [OKLAHOMA CITY], KJRH [TULSA)
Responding to vocal opposition to his appointment, former MICHIGAN Gov. Rick Snyder (R) announced he would not be undertaking a year-long fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School as previously planned. Snyder’s appointment had drawn intense criticism, with almost 7,000 people signing a petition seeking to have his fellowship revoked. (NEW YORK TIMES, INSIDE HIGHER ED)
The agenda for VIRGINIA Gov. Ralph Northam’s (D) gun-control special session will include a push for universal background checks; a ban on assault weapons, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines; and a one-per-month limit on handgun. Northam called the July 9 special session after a gunman killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building on May 31. (WASHINGTON POST)
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed legislation (AB 20) that greatly expands the Garden State medical marijuana industry. The bill Murphy signed takes several actions, including: increasing to three the number of ounces allowed to legal marijuana patients (from two); authorizing legal medical marijuana patients to obtain up to a year’s supply (up from the current 90 days); phasing out sales tax on medical marijuana; barring employers from taking adverse actions against workers who are legal medical marijuana patients; granting reciprocity with other states’ medical marijuana programs; legalizing home delivery; and creating the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission to oversee the program. (NJ.COM, NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)
The contentious cap-and-trade bill that caused Oregon Republicans to flee the state last month is dead, but the resolve of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown is anything but. In a press conference last week, Brown said she is exploring the possibility if implementing the program via executive order.
“Working on legislation is my preferred approach; collaborating across the aisle and around the state,” she said of the failed measure, HB 2020. “However, given the uncertainty that now permeates Oregon's political system, I am also directing my staff and agencies to explore alternative paths in case these collaborative approaches do not lead to successful legislation. This includes the use of my executive powers and direction of state agencies.”
Brown also warned she might seek to change the state’s quorum rules, which were the vehicle that allowed GOP lawmakers to circumvent a vote on the measure. Oregon is one of only four states that require two-thirds of both chambers to be present in order to convene.
“For me, it’s a subversion of the democratic process, and a halt to the legislative branch,” she said.
Republicans made no bones about their actions.
“Our mission in walking out was to kill cap and trade, and that’s what we did,” Senate Minority Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. said June 28, one day before GOP lawmakers went back to the statehouse.
It was also not the first time Republicans took flight to block legislation they opposed: they also ran off in May in order to kill a school funding tax. That walkout also scuttled Democrat-supported measures on gun control and vaccines.
In her address, Brown made clear that she will continue to push for action on climate change by whatever means are available to her.
“I will continue to listen to any concerns brought by Oregonians. But make no mistake, doing nothing to reduce emissions is not an option,” she said. “Not for our economy, our communities, our environment and of course, particularly, our children. I am open to modifications, but I am not open to inaction.” (PORTLAND OREGONIAN, COLUMBIAN [VANCOUVER], ASSOCIATED PRESS)
FLORIDA Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill last month requiring former felons to pay all court fees, fines and victim restitution they owe before being allowed to vote. That requirement would potentially disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of former felons granted the right to vote by Amendment 4, overwhelmingly approved by the state’s voters last year. (TAMPA BAY TIMES)
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Franklin Valderrama ruled last week that when ILLINOIS legislators voted each year between 2009 and 2016 to forgo annual cost-of-living pay increases granted to them automatically by state law, they violated the state’s Constitution, despite the fact that those actions didn’t increase their compensation. The decision came in connection with a lawsuit filed by two former Democratic senators seeking back pay for themselves and “all others impacted” by the pay freeze votes. (CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK
Georgia’s Administrative Office of the Courts was hit by a ransomware attack that forced officials to shut down all court websites on July 1.
“Everything is shut down until they tell us to turn it on,” said Michelle Barclay, a division director for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
No personal information was compromised by the attack because the Administrative Office of the Courts only maintains court documents and provides applications for some courts and guidance about court operations.
“We’re definitely inconveniencing folks who rely on our applications,” Barclay said.
She also said the attack was suspected to have originated in a foreign country, prompting some to ask why the court agency was targeted.
David Allen, the state’s chief information security officer, said ransomware attackers are usually after money rather than information.
“They’re just trying to get a paycheck. That’s ultimately their aim,” he said. “We’ve seen some cases where the money has been paid, so you know that’s their primary motivator, to get the payday if they can get it.”
In two other recent ransomware attacks in Georgia, the attackers didn’t get their money. In 2017 computers at the state’s Department of Agriculture were infected with malware by hackers seeking $48,000. Remediation work, investigations and other expenses related to the attack cost the state $253,000. And last year the city of Atlanta’s computer network was crippled for days by two Iranian citizens who demanded $51,000 in ransom. The attack is estimated to have caused $17 million in damage to the city.
Money may not have been the only thing the hackers were after in the attack on the court agency, however. Don Hunt, a data crime researcher at Georgia State University, suggested another possible explanation for the attack that isn’t likely to be very comforting for Georgia officials: “It was probably a test. The courts system is probably set up like another system they want to target.” (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION)
Attorneys representing the Association of Missouri Electrical Cooperatives (AMEC) and the American Democracy Alliance, a 501(c) group, received $508,000 in MISSOURI taxpayer dollars for their part in nullifying a campaign finance law approved by the state’s voters in 2016. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the November 2016 referendum, limiting campaign contributions to individual candidates and political parties at $2,600 and $25,000 per election respectively, violated AMEC’s and the alliance’s free speech rights. (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH)
The number of families receiving welfare benefits in GEORGIA has declined by nearly 70 percent over the past 14 years as a result of consistent efforts to trim the state’s voter rolls. As of May, the number of households granted benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program averaged 10,159 per month, down from 33,302 per month in the 2006 fiscal year. (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION)
A petition drive has been launched in NEBRASKA to qualify a measure to legalize casino gambling for the state’s 2020 ballot. Approval of the measure would bring the number of states that allow casino gaming to twenty-six, which includes nearly every state that neighbors Nebraska. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
A study released this month found that the town of North Topsail Beach, located on an island off North Carolina’s southeastern coast, could save $57.6 million over the next 30 years by buying 347 properties at risk of damage from storm surges, flooding and erosion instead of trying to protect those structures from such threats.
Robert S. Young, director of the Western Carolina University Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, said buying out the properties that are most vulnerable would permit local officials to focus more effort and resources on other areas of the community.
“If you can refocus all the administrative energy and emergency management funding to the 93 percent that is sustainable over the long term, that is really a positive argument for all of this,” he said.
Young also said the North Topsail report was one of a series it was planning to produce, covering communities in other states.
“What we really hope it will do is give town officials across the state something to think about and something to talk about,” he said. “Let’s have an open discussion about what is and isn’t feasible.”
North Topsail Mayor Dan Tuman, however, threw cold water on the buyout idea.
“It works only if all the property owners agree and people are not going to agree,” he said.
Tuman also said the $30 million the study estimated it would take to purchase the properties at high risk of erosion and flooding was “unrealistic.” He said buying all the homes in the town’s inlet hazard zone would cost $100 million.
Young said Tuman was referring to an area that fell outside the scope of his study, although he concurred that all the owners of vulnerable properties wouldn’t agree to sell. But he said the report wasn’t intended as an immediate action plan.
“The point is to say this should be one of the tools in the toolbox,” he said. “Everyone should take it seriously.” (NEWS & OBSERVER [RALEIGH])
Seven states suffer from weak governance, according to a report released last week by credit-rating agency Moody’s Investor Service. What earned those states - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin - the less than ringing endorsement from Moody’s was their failure to pass a full-year budget before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.
Moody’s noted that some of the states have “continuing appropriation bills” that allow spending until a full budget is enacted, making it less likely those states will miss debt payments.
“Nonetheless, late budgets are a sign of governance weakness which, in extreme cases, can be negative for state credit quality,” Moody’s said. “Late budgets can also expose local governments and other downstream entities to an interruption in state payment.”
In two of the seven states, budgets were vetoed. Moody’s said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) rejected the budget passed by the state’s GOP-led General Assembly because it didn’t provide enough funding for Medicaid expansion and teacher pay, and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) refused the budget passed by that state’s Democrat-controlled legislature because it rolled back some business tax cuts to provide more funding for education.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D), meanwhile, simply hadn’t taken action on the budget she received from lawmakers on June 30. Raimondo spokesman Josh Block said the governor’s staff was still reviewing the spending plan, but he also acknowledged the governor was concerned about a provision in the budget bill allowing the state’s controller to refuse to “authorize payments for additional staff, contracts, or purchases for any department or agency not projected to end a fiscal year within amounts appropriated unless necessitated by immediate health and safety reasons.”
House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello (R) and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio (R) said that provision was a “direct response to a growing frustration among legislators and the general public regarding the Administration’s lack of adherence to the budgets duly authorized by the General Assembly. (PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
At least two cities, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and one state, New Jersey (AB 591), have passed legislation requiring businesses to accept cash, according to the online and print business magazine Fast Company and LexisNexis State Net’s local ordinance and state legislative tracking systems. Cashless bans are also formally being considered in three cities, Chicago, St. Louis and New York, as well as the state of New York (AB 771/SB 5135) and the District of Columbia. A proposed ban also failed in Connecticut (HB 5703).
Source: Fast Company, LexisNexis State Net