Good Wednesday morning. I assume we all survived the Ides of March in tact, and are enjoying the springlike weather?
Just a few more days until the season officially kicks off – a season we upstaters sometimes like to call…brown.
Today is a very important one for the vestiges of my former reporter self: Freedom of Information Day.
Actually, even though I’m not a member of the Fourth Estate anymore, I do still feel quite strongly about the need for transparency when it comes to holding public entities and individuals accountable.
Sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfectant.
Now, every good reporter – or, in this case, former reporter – knows about Freedom of Information Day, which is held every year during Sunshine Week, which, in turn, is a national initiative spearheaded by the News Leaders Association to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy.
(By the way, if you’re as aspiring and/or closet government watchdog and have some time on your hands, I really do recommend clicking on the NLA link above, which offers subsequent links to very handy tools on how to conduct an audit, how to make a FOIA request and much, much more).
Anyway, we all know, instinctively, that the more information we have about our government the better, even though watching how the sausage gets made can be downright painful at times.
But why TODAY, as opposed to all other days (I’m doing a little early Passover prep here), are we celebrating Freedom of Information Day?
As it turns out, March 16 is the birthday of James Madison, America’s fourth president, who is widely regarded as the Father of the Constitution and also its foremost advocate for openness in government.
Madison, for those who might be in need of a quick refresher of what they learned back in high school Social Studies, not only drafted the Constitution, but the Bill of Rights, too. He was the most vociferous voice arguing in favor at the time of insisting that the people not be kept in the dark by the government of the newly-formed nation that existed to protect and serve them.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was enacted on July 4, 1966 and took effect a year later, declared that every person has the right to get information to federal agency records that are not protected by one of nine exemptions or special law enforcement record exclusions.
At the state level, well, things aren’t looking so good on the freedom of information front, and New York, sadly, routinely falls near the bottom of the pack. But cheer up, New Yorkers! Governor Kathy Hochul just this week announced new actions to increase transparency and access to public records.
Also, at the federal level, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed federal agencies to “apply a presumption of openness” when fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests, after lawmakers pressed him to increase transparency as the denial rate for such inquiries has risen in recent years.
Phew. I feel so much better now. Don’t you?
But it’s hard to stay cynical and bitter when the forecast calls for temperatures near 60 degrees and mostly sunny skies. Right?
Right.
In the headlines…
Russia’s foreign ministry says it has imposed sanctions on President Joe Biden and 12 other US officials. The list includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, press secretary Jen Psaki and other members of the administration.
In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the restrictions were “the consequence” of what it called the White House’s “extremely Russophobic policy.”
Biden signed a $1.5 trillion bill that funds federal operations through September and sends billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine as the country fights off a Russian invasion.
The president said during a signing ceremony that the new assistance shows the United States is “moving urgently to further augment the support to the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their country.”
Biden is expected to announce an additional $800 million in military aid for Ukraine, according to a White House official, bringing the total U.S. support for Ukraine to $1 billion in just the last week.
Biden plans to travel to Brussels next week to meet with NATO allies about bolstering support for Ukraine as it fights to fend off Russia’s unprovoked attack.
A veteran video journalist for Fox News, Pierre Zakrzewski, and freelance journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed outside Kyiv after the vehicle they were traveling in was struck by incoming fire on Monday, the network has announced.
Zakrzewski, 55, and the Ukrainian journalist, Kuvshynova, 24, were traveling in the same vehicle as the Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was also injured in the attack in the town of Horenka. He is hospitalized.
A Russian state television employee who stormed a live broadcast on Monday was interrogated by the police for 14 hours and fined by a Moscow court.
Russian troops seized control of a hospital in the city of Mariupol and are holding about 500 people hostage, according to regional leader Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Ukrainians must realize the country will not be joining NATO and must “count on ourselves and our partners who are helping us” to withstand the Russian onslaught, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Zelensky thanked the leaders of three NATO member countries who traveled into Ukraine’s war-torn capital for an extraordinary meeting yesterday and urged others to do the same.
Former President Trump said he didn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin would go through with an invasion of Ukraine in an interview with the Washington Examiner published yestrday.
Biden announced he will withdraw his nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator, after a Democratic senator said he would join Republicans in voting against her, most likely dooming her chances of confirmation.
Raskin earlier sent a letter to the White House asking to withdraw her name from consideration to be the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, according to two people familiar with the decision. The New Yorker earlier reported the existence of the letter.
The withdrawal is a major blow for the Biden administration, which has struggled to advance its financial nominees through the evenly divided Senate.
The Senate confirmed Shalanda Young to serve as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, giving the agency permanent leadership for the first time in more than a year as it prepares the second budget of the Biden administration.
After losing an hour of sleep over the weekend, members of the United States Senate returned to the Capitol this week a bit groggy and in a mood to put an end to all this frustrating clock-changing.
The Senate passed by unanimous consent the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make Daylight Savings Time permanent across the nation.
If enacted into law, it would also mean that early risers lose an hour of daylight in the mornings in November, December, January and February.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio led the effort to bring more light to the evening hours in the winter, arguing there was little point to the practice that first started in World War I.
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Harris, has tested positive for COVID-19, a spokeswoman for Harris said. The vice president has so far tested negative.
“My symptoms are mild and I’m grateful to be both vaccinated and boosted,” Emhoff wrote on Twitter, encouraging others to get vaccinated and boosted as well.
At least nine House Democrats have announced in the last five days that they tested positive for the coronavirus, with more than half of those cases emerging after lawmakers attended a party retreat last week in Philadelphia.
The White House is set to open for public tours on April 15, more than two years after they were suspended because of the pandemic.
Experts are warning that the United States will soon see another spike in COVID-19 cases as wastewater samples in parts of the country show an increase in infections and the BA.2 subvariant spreads in Europe.
Daily cases are rising in more than half of the countries in the European Union. They’ve jumped 48% in the Netherlands and 20% in Germany over the past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech asked U.S. regulators to authorize an additional booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for seniors, saying data from Israel suggests older adults would benefit.
New data suggest that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is now preventing infections, hospitalizations and deaths at least as well as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
Some players on the Mets and Yankees may be unable to play in New York when the 2022 Major League Baseball season begins next month because of a city vaccination mandate.
Americans went on a buying spree for life insurance in 2021, driven by concerns of death from the continuing coronavirus pandemic.
Airlines said travel demand is roaring back—and they believe fliers will pay up to cover carriers’ mounting fuel bills.
The Cuomo administration undercounted COVID deaths in nursing homes by at least 4,100 as the pandemic raged across the Empire State, according to an audit released by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli yesterday.
The comptroller’s audit found that Health Department officials at times underreported the full death toll by as much as 50 percent from April 2020 to February 2021.
The audit shows a total of 13,147 deaths happened during that time frame, but only 9,076 were reported.
DiNapoli also accused the DOH of hindering his probe by delaying the production of data requested by his office, limiting auditors’ access to DOH staffers, not answering questions during meetings and not providing supporting documentation for its claims.
“Our audit findings are extremely troubling,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “The public was misled by those at the highest level of state government through distortion and suppression of the facts when New Yorkers deserved the truth.”
The health department rejected “conflating the Cuomo administration’s issues with transparency with the work of the department’s staff and the manner in which they use public health data” in a lengthy rebuttal of the report’s findings to the New York Times.
At a special meeting on Friday, commissioners of the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics may adopt a new strategy in their attempt to force Cuomo to repay $5.1 million in book royalties, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
A 30-year-old Washington man with a history of mental illness and assault charges was arrested early yesterday in connection with a series of shootings that killed two homeless men in New York and Washington and wounded three others.
Federal agents, acting on tips from the public and ballistics evidence, arrested Gerald Brevard III, of Washington, at about 2:30 a.m. in the southeast part of the district.
A suspect in the stabbing of two employees at the Museum of Modern Art in New York over the weekend was arrested early yesterday in Philadelphia, the New York Police Department said.
Gary Cabana, 60, will be charged with second-degree assault for the stabbings, as well as third-degree assault for a previous incident in which he punched an employee. He will also be charged with aggravated harassment for sending threats via email.
Cabana, who was arrested after setting his hotel room on fire, causing significant damage and forcing an evacuation.
Gov. Kathy Hochul was met with loud jeers as she donned a New York Rangers jersey for the ceremonial puck drop before the team’s home game last night against the Anaheim Ducks.
For decades, New York lawmakers have groused about the state’s process for crafting an annual budget, arguing it hands too much power to the sitting governor. This year, with a new governor at the helm, they’re hoping to do something about it.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins tried to foist some of the blame for Albany refusing to tighten its lax bail reform laws onto Hochul, saying the governor is clearly in Stewart-Cousins’ camp on the matter.
Making changes to New York’s law that largely ended cash bail requirements for many criminal charges is unlikely to be addressed in the spending plan that’s due to pass by the end of the month.
Democrats in the state Legislature are seeking to add to Hochul’s criminal justice budget priorities by providing more money for the implementation of pretrial discovery measures, gun violence intervention and crime prevention and legal services.
Democratic leaders in the state Legislature defended a landmark piece of their spending plans in the Capitol, the day after agreeing to include the “Fair Pay for Home Care Act” in their respective budget proposals.
As reports of spiking energy bills from Con Edison continue to come in throughout New York, a group of state lawmakers are renewing their push for the creation of a new, statewide Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate.
With crime on the rise in the NYC transit system, several of NYPD’s top brass will be walking a subway beat like their rank-and-file subordinates.
Hillary Clinton gushed over Mayor Eric Adams’ public safety vision, saying his disregard of left-wing social media critics on policing was “music to [her] ears.”
At a time when crime is spiking around the country, Adams finds himself holding a megaphone to meet the moment nationally. “The over-proliferation of guns in our cities is creating what’s causing bloodshed across our nation,” he said in Washington, D.C.
Adams traveled to Miami yesterday to speak at a conference on cryptocurrency — a boom-bust form of virtual cash, which has gained notoriety in recent years.
Adams waxed poetic about cryptocurrencies during his trip, touting the non-government-backed currencies as an antidote to “historical inequalities” in the U.S. economy.
The city’s health department is taking baby steps toward Adams’ campaign promise to provide coaches known as doulas to all first-time parents giving birth.
The ice-skating plaza in Midtown is being transformed to a roller-skating rink that will open in April. It’ll be the first roller skate rink at Rockefeller Center since 1940.
Faculty and alumni of the New York State Summer School of the Arts (NYSSSA) are shocked and disappointed after learning the highly competitive residential arts program has been canceled this summer and may be in peril.
The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning about the Albany-bound “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” over ticketing issues, last-minute cancellations, refund processing and a lack of communication from the promoters.
Ex-Albany Nano czar Alain Kaloyeros has landed in a downstate federal correctional facility with floors that have been walked by a who’s-who of corrupt New York officials.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he has secured $1.5 million in federal funding for a new training center to be located in Albany’s South End for wind turbine assembly jobs.
The owner of the Central Warehouse in Albany is heading back into bankruptcy court to once again try to hold on to the massive property.
Hoping to ease transportation worries around Albany’s middle school enrollment redesign, which may have some students attending school farther from home next year, officials are working on a plan to put hall monitors on bus routes.
The New York Racing Association released the stakes schedule for the 2022 Saratoga season of thoroughbred racing.
Nearly 80 former and current employees of BuzzFeed accused the company in complaints of bungling its stock market debut and denying the workers the chance to sell their shares at a higher price.
A federal judge has ruled against ex-Trump administration official Omarosa Manigault Newman and ordered her to pay more than $60,000, in a lawsuit the Justice Department brought against her after then-President Donald Trump fired his former apprentice.
Starbucks wants its green-and-white cups to become less ubiquitous. The coffee giant said it is working to veer away from single-use paper and plastic cups and instead provide reusable ones to customers within three years.
