Month: January 2018

Mayor speaks at Congressional Forum

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Opinion column

by Murrel Bland

Newly elected Mayor David Alvey has made it clear that the issue of Kansas City, Kansas, firefighters selling shifts will be resolved after a thorough investigation of the issue by County Administrator Doug Bach and Interim Fire Chief Kevin Shirley.

That was his comment when he spoke to a group of about 75 persons at the monthly meeting of Congressional Forum Friday, Jan. 19, at Children’s Mercy Park. The Kansas City, Kansas, Area Chamber of Commerce sponsors the forum.

Mayor Alvey, who was elected last November and took office Monday, Jan. 8, said that after a thorough examination of the firefighters’ issue, he will “let the facts speak for themselves.”

Mayor Alvey’s comments were consistent with a front page article from the Unified Government public relations office that was published in The Wyandotte Echo, the official newspaper for the UG, concerning the trading time issue among firefighters. (The UG’s statement from its public relations office also was widely quoted in other media, including the Wyandotte Daily on Jan. 4 at https://wyandotteonline.com/no-action-on-kck-fire-report-after-ug-commissioners-no-show-tonight/.)

Mayor Holland raised the issue of selling shifts in a last-ditch effort Jan. 4. Mayor Holland failed to get a quorum of the commissioners, so no official action could be taken. Among the agenda information provided at this lame-duck meeting was a list of firefighters who traded shifts but failed to repay them by working. This, according to a report, cost the Unified Government $919,312.82.

The firefighters’ union, along with the police union, supported Mayor Alvey.

The firefighters’ issue won’t go away. It is an issue that is discussed among Unified Government employees, business leaders and rank-and-file Kansas City, Kansas, residents. Some political observers who supported Mayor Alvey may allege that the action by Mayor Holland was “sour grapes” because he lost the election. Others may point out that the issue needs to be resolved regardless of when it was brought up.

Mayor Alvey talked about other issues at the forum. He had praise for the development at Village West, but expressed a concern for more development in the rest of the community. He said he plans to appoint a liaison who will be a member of his immediate staff and can attend to the concerns of small business.

Mayor Alvey told of his experience at the Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities when he first came on the board and the utility had only 19 days of cash on hand. He said it was necessary to raise rates to assure the financial viability of the BPU.

While on the BPU, he served on a policy committee of the American Public Power Association that fought for more reasonable federal regulations on coal-burning plants. This effort was able to help keep electric rates more reasonable. He also told of the BPU’s effort to waive fees for residential developers as an incentive for builders during the recent recession.

Mayor Alvey told of his concern about high property taxes, something he encountered while going door-to-door campaigning last year.

Mayor Alvey comes from Rockhurst High School, Kansas City, Mo., where he was an administrator. He received an undergraduate degree from Saint Louis (Mo.) University. He also studied at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis.; Creighton University, Omaha, Neb.; and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif.

Mayor Alvey and his wife Ann Marie are the parents of four daughters, Juliana, Christiana, Mariana, Analisa and a son, Joseph. The family lives in the Turner community.

Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is the executive director of Business West.

Piper results

Piper High School – boys basketball at Spring Hill Invitational Basketball Tournament
– Varsity defeated Gardner-Edgerton 71-53
– 3rd place

Piper High School – wrestling
– at DeSoto (Friday)
– 5th place as a team
– Piper 36, Bonner Springs 48
– Piper 48, Shawnee Mission South 30
– Piper 48, Wyandotte 27
– Piper 30, Topeka Seaman 46
– Piper 48, Tonganoxie 27
– Tyson Lanter and LeMoses White (5-0 on the night)
– at Bishop Miege (Saturday)
– Nick Lawson 3-0 first at 113
– Travon Griffin 2-3 third at 126
– Damion Howell 2-2 fourth at 145
– Tyler Phillips 3-1 third at 152
– Christian Johnson 3-1 third at 182

Piper High School – power weight lifting at Leavenworth
Piper Men’s Team – 8/9 = 6 pts
Piper Juniors Team – 5/12 = 87 pts
Piper Women’s Team – 11/13 = 11 pts
Medals –
Malakhi Kennon – 2nd Overall Jr. 123 Class
Anthony Ferguson – 3rd Overall Jr. 148 Class
Tony Cobbs – 1st Bench Press Jr. 198 Class

Piper High School – bowl at Olathe East Lanes
– Boys 4th place
– K. Fergus 5th place individual with a 605

– From Doug Key, Piper High School activities director

States waiting to share voter data while Kansas shores up security

by Celia Llopis-Jepsen, Kansas News Service

Some states fear that a Kansas voter record system could fall prey to hackers, prompting a delay in the annual collection of nearly 100 million people’s records into a database scoured for double-registrations.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach touts the program, called Crosscheck, as a tool in combating voter fraud. Last year, 28 states submitted voters’ names, birth dates, and sometimes partial social security numbers, to Kobach’s office.

But last fall, the news outlets ProPublica and Gizmodo reported a raft of cybersecurity weaknesses. For instance, Crosscheck relied on an unencrypted server for transmitting all that data.

Election officials in other states told Kansas to fix the problems, a process Kobach’s office says is nearly complete.

“We still have work to do finishing testing everything,” said Bryan Caskey, who handles elections matters in Topeka. “We all just need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to ensure the integrity of the program.”

Normally Kansas starts collecting voter registration records from other states on Jan. 15, but hadn’t started by then this year because of the security weaknesses.

The Illinois election board nearly pulled out of Crosscheck last fall. Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the agency, said his agency gave Kansas with a list of IT problems that need fixing before their state will send any more data.

“They’re not going to be able to just give us a date,” Dietrich said, “and have us give them data — until they address these things that we told them about.”

Kobach’s will no longer rely on that unencrypted data transmission system, which ran through the Arkansas Secretary of State.

“In this year’s version of the program, Kansas is taking all that in-house,” Caskey said.

Though it relied on Arkansas for data transmission — letting states upload their records and get lists of potential double-registered names in return — Caskey said Kansas had already been handling data storage without that state’s help. Now, he said, the Kansas office is confident it can handle the transmission safely, too.

Storing data for other states landed a Kansas state agency in trouble last year. Hackers accessed more than 5.5 million social security numbers stored by the Kansas Department of Commerce on behalf of 10 states.

In 2016, legislative auditors completed a three-year review of information technology security at 20 Kansas agencies that store sensitive information. They turned up significant weaknesses at most, including unpatched vulnerabilities that could open the door to hackers. The Secretary of State’s Office was not part of that audit.

Caskey said legislative auditors last reviewed his office’s IT security several years ago, and that they found no problems.

More recently, he said, the office hired an outside firm to review its cybersecurity. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also reviewing Kansas’ election systems for safety, including Crosscheck. That’s part of the office’s efforts to revamp security since the 2016 elections.

“So we’re doing everything that we know to do,” he said. Threats evolve over time, he said, but “I’m as confident as I can be today.”

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to kcur.org.

See more at http://kcur.org/post/states-waiting-share-voter-data-while-kansas-shores-security.