Monthly Archives: June 2009

Tuesday (3)…Hawaii unions rally today, furloughs make news across the country

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With Hawaii’s public employee unions poised for a unity rally at the State Capitol this afternoon, it seemed like a good time to check furlough-related news from across the country.

• From Stateline.org, an overview of furloughs being implemented across the country.

• Another review of furloughs comes from Illinois, where the governor lacks legal authority to unilaterally send employees home, but must bargain with public employee unions.

• In New Jersey, the state court system shut down due to furloughs.

• In Wisconsin, state workers will be furloughed eight days per year, far short the three days per month planned by Gov. Lingle.

All in all, it’s grim everywhere. And I didn’t even wade into the California budget swamp.

Tuesday…LRB’s move to third-party hosting explained, government tweets, Honolulu Weekly on newspapering, Baloney Detection

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Legislative Reference Bureau staffer Stephen Bibbs responded to yesterdays entry, explaining that the move to third-party private hosting services stems from the need for remote 24/7 access required for the current generation of blogs and social media, which conflict with the security requirements of the state’s computer network.

Here’s his email:

You are correct regarding the server moves for iClips and our blog, First Reading. The moves were made necessary for reasonable state server security concerns. All updates to state hosted websites must now be done from state run networks. This would be fine for general website maintenance, however not for the two mentioned services.

The iClips, are done in off hours and remote. I capture most of the national news at publication hours Eastern Time (i.e., our late night) and the local news early morning. The new page is then prepared and uploaded, and email alerts of its availability sent out. The timeliness of this content is part of its value, thus is finished before I come to work.

Our blog utilizes Blogger which previously would post from its remote site to our location on the state server. However, again, no more remote uploading of files is allowed. We can continue to post not only during work hours but off hours whenever a post suggests itself and benefit from the free services of Blogger apps and hosting.

We also have recently begun our Twitter service (twitter.com/lrblibrary). This is hosted of course on Twitter which offers the access and publication flexibility for which it is known.

Thanks much for following our moves.

Stephen Bibbs
LRB Library

He continued in a second email:

From what little I know of network administration, security issues (both access and tampering) are a main concern. Because the state hosts servers for much diverse information and activity, closing off remote access seems understandable to me.

I think it is fortunate that web content is moving to the cloud, so to speak. Many federal, state and local governments are utilizing such inexpensive or free application and hosting servers as blogging services, Twitter, YouTube channels, and Flickr. As alluded to in my original response, a commitment to the newer and popular technologies available demands hours spread across the day. As demographics begin to take into account life within the Internet and the second realities, government services must respond. It is not so much government IT policy needing to be updated as government itself adapting to offer a presence where the people are.

Anyway, I myself like the idea of government (and the services they can provide) in Second Life.

Meanwhile, check out this list of U.S. government agencies using Twitter, including everything from the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon to the Peace Corps and a long list of NASA projects. And how about the growing number of federal government blogs?

I was looking for a list of states with blogs or using Twitter, but a quick search didn’t find such a beast.

And newspapers are also having to come to terms with the spread of Twitter and Facebook as common means of communication, and that includes rules for their use, according to a story in Editor & Publisher.

Meanwhile, the cover story in the current issue of Honolulu Weekly looks at the state of Honolulu newspapers. Weekly editor Ragnar Carlson manages to elicit some revealing quotes from his counterparts in the mainstream. Advertiser publisher Lee Webber, for example, told the Weekly he doesn’t know whether there will be a print edition of the newspaper in five years, although he says the Advertiser will still be here.

And Mark Platte recognizes the diminishing coverage as newsrooms pare staff.

Mark Platte, who has been editor of the Advertiser since 2006, acknowledges that something has to give. “Absolutely it does, even for us, and we’re the big gun in town. We don’t cover every beat I would like to cover. We cover hospitals, but we don’t have anyone on health care. We’re not covering higher education. When you reduce the staff, you’re not going to be able to do the kinds of stories you need a lot of time on. Especially the kinds of investigative stories that really take a lot of time and effort.”

And since higher education is a basic building block necessary to sustain a high tech industry or any other remaking of our island economy, the lack of coverage reduces public understanding of our predicament.

Finally, here’s something useful to put in your tool box, a “The Baloney Detection Kit” from the publisher of Skeptic magazine.

Monday…Merwin on Moyers, LRB using private hosting services, AAUP on furloughs, camera fraud, and a Ms. Maile video

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Highly recommended: Bill Moyers’ fine interview with Maui-based poet William Merwin, who won his second Pulitzer Prize this year. Although you can read the transcript, the video is the prize. William reads a number of his poems, which is always a treat. Coming home on Friday night after spending much of the day emotionally involved with the memorial for Duke Bainum, this interview was the perfect remedy.

I’m not sure if I’m reading this one right. The Legislative Reference Bureau’s clipping service has moved from the regular state web site to its own site, lrbhawaii.info/iclips/. As near as I can tell, this appears to be hosted at iPower.com. Another LRB service, First Reading, is now a blog hosted at Blogspot. With all the state’s resources, LRB moves to private hosting services? Really? Is there a story there?
And thanks to LRB’s First Reading for linking to this article about regulation of virtual worlds. Very interesting.

I noted this mention of Hawaii in an online discussion of legal issues at universities in this financial crisis compiled by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

4. I teach at a unionized public university. The state is in the process of passing a law stating that all state employees will be furloughed for two days per month regardless of preexisting contracts. Is that constitutional?

Probably not. It is likely a violation of the “Contract Clause” of the United States Constitution, which says that no state shall pass a law that “impairs the obligation of contracts.” U.S. Const., art. I, § 10. The Contract Clause is violated “when one alleges that he or she has a contract with the state, which the state, through its legislative authority, has attempted to impair.” University of Hawaii Professional Assembly v. Cayetano, 183 F.3d 1096, 1101 (9th Cir. 1999) (citations omitted).

Several states, including Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Washington State, have tried to abrogate collective bargaining contracts by statute, and those laws have generally been struck down. (Note: not all of these cases arise in the higher education context.)

Hawaii: In University of Hawaii Professional Assembly v. Cayetano, 183 F.3d 1096 (9th Cir. 1999), individual University of Hawaii faculty members and their union sued the state for the imposition of a “pay lag” law that authorized six pay lags of between one and three days and excluded the subject from collective bargaining. The district court issued a preliminary injunction, halting the application of the law. The federal appellate court affirmed, ruling that the statute violated the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It reasoned that the state law violated the collective bargaining agreement, even when that agreement did not specify specific pay days, because the prior course of dealings established a contractual expectation that state employees would be paid the first and fifteenth day of every month. The court opined that the breach was substantial:

Plaintiffs are wage earners, not volunteers. They have bills, child support obligations, mortgage payments, insurance premiums, and other responsibilities. Plaintiffs have the right to rely on the timely receipt of their paychecks. Even a brief delay in getting paid can cause financial embarrassment and displacement of varying degrees of magnitude.

The court found the legislative action not reasonable or necessary because “other options” existed, including “additional budget restrictions, the repeal of tax credits, and the raising of taxes.”

If you’re like me and shop for cameras online, you will be interested in New York’s crackdown on consumer fraud by NY-based electronics companies.

According to the NY Times:

As part of the deal, five of the companies — Best Price Camera, Foto Connection, 1 Way Photo, 86th Street Photo and Broadway Photo — have agreed to change their business practices and accept continual monitoring. Two other companies, Camera Wiz and Sonic Photo, will close.

Here’s a list of the companies named by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for involvement in bait-and-switch practices.

[text]Here’s a bit of dog energy for the morning. This is Ms. Maile, who we’ve known for a long time. She’s getting to be quite an old lady, but still with lots of energy, as you can see. Just click on her photo for a short video.