November 2009 Archives

Sometimes these things are unintentionally funny.* As in this one, faxed early this morning from state police in Harrisburg. A trooper went to an address in West Hanover Township, Dauphin County, and wrote the following on a news release:

"This crime occurred as the accused struck the victims about the head and face then left the above residence and became disorderly."

 Hit people and then became disorderly. Interesting.

Of course, that refers to the charges the person faces -- harassment (presumably for hitting people) and disorderly conduct (for whatever he did after hitting people). Still, it's kind of funny if you think about it.

*Said with all due respect for the job police do every day.

Harley-Davidson workers got a look at their tentative new contract this morning. It includes a commitment from the company to invest up to $90 million to restructure the York operations and that the company will discontinue its efforts to relocate to Kentucky.

Harley workers still must approve the contract. A Dec. 2 vote is scheduled. You can see the entire document here.

Thanks to Robb Montgomery for this, what he calls a "live data graphic." It looks like one of those dot-tests you do to see if you're color blind. But when you mouse over the dots, you see the name, position and salary of a White House staffer. The dots are different sizes, corresponding to the salary.

Pretty cool, and, needless to say, has local possibilities. If there's some data you'd like to see us look at like this, leave a comment.

The last tears of a departing Hurricane Ida fell as light rain and drizzle in York County for the past few days -- and it's gone now, with clearing expecting tomorrow and sun for all of next week -- but it prompted us to remark on the weather in the paper the other day and give you a look at how much precipitation we've had in the past year.

But there's more data out there than we published on newsprint.

And no, the open records blog hasn't turned into a weather blog. I realize that historical precipitation numbers aren't exactly what we normally talk about here ... but cut me a little slack and just think of it as us making our own records open. We've been tracking precip in York County by month since 2002, using York Water Company numbers*, so there are some interesting numbers to look at.

 For starts, if you feel like you've lived in a tropical rainforest this fall ... how soon you forget. (I count myself the worst offender here). Here are the precip totals from September-November from 2002-now:

2002: 14.6 inches
2003: 17.93
2004: 14.06
2005: 12.42
2006: 14.35
2007: 7.44
2008: 12.14
2009: 9.78 (through Friday)

We're halfway through November, so it would have to rain like crazy for this not to be one of the driest falls in the last eight years. Who would've guessed?

Other interesting facts:

• In October, York County had 5.17 inches of rain. That's the most in October since 8.34 inches fell in 2005.
  
• York County has exceeded its average annual rainfall every year since 2002 except for 2006, which ended with about a one-inch deficit. Through October this year, the county was more than 8 inches below its annual average to that point.
• Highest rainfall in any month: 9.56 inches in September 2004 (remnants of hurricanes Frances and Ivan, whose Susquehanna River flood level is pictured above, and compared with Agnes' 1972 level).
• Lowest precipitation in any month: .36 in February 2002.
• In the 94 months we've been tracking this (through October), precipitation amounts have been below the monthly average 38 times and equal to the monthly average once.

Anything else you want to know?

*York Water Company has made its weather data available online at its Web site, beginning with this year's stats.

Good that the Wall came down, and cool that we can read some of the original documents from that time shedding light on what happened:

A letter to Mikhail Gorbachev from an adviser, who said the wall has come down and socialist system is finished.

Documents about East Germans fleeing to the west through Czechoslovakia.

 Once-secret documents show opposition to German reunification by U.S., others.

The CIA's "Outlook for Eastern Europe in 1990."  Put "Berlin Wall" in the search bar.

If you've come across other documents on the Wall, link to them here.

A truancy town hall in Dover scheduled for Monday night made me wonder if you could get truancy numbers from the state. And the answer is not literally -- at least, I couldn't find anything on the site -- but you can get dropout rates (scroll down to see the links), which, I believe it is generally agreed upon, can be linked to truancy rates.

A look at the 2007-2008 numbers* shows you that:

• Crispus Attucks, York County High, York City School District and York County School of Technology have dropout rates in the top 20 of all schools in Pennsylvania.
  
• No other county school had a dropout rate higher than 1.6 percent (Eastern York), and that ranked 172nd in the state of the 617 public, charter and other school districts listed.
  
• Six York County public school districts -- Southern York, West York, Dallastown, Central, York Suburban and South Eastern -- had dropout rates of less than 1 percent.
• 603 students dropped out -- including 117 from York City, 78 from York Tech, 59 from West Shore and 58 from CA.
  

But an observation from YorkCounts, which is sponsoring the town hall, is good to keep in mind when you're looking at the numbers. In its "Stay in School Initiative Report to the Community," it noted that the state's dropout rates are compiled by counting the number of students who were enrolled on Oct. 1 and still enrolled on the following Sept. 30.

 YorkCounts says that gives an incomplete picture of how many students are graduating within four years. Its research shows that between 1998 and 2008, 6,429 students dropped out of York County schools, and that in 2005-2006, the four-year graduation rate in York County was 78 percent.

PDE itself wrote a qualifier to the numbers in its introduction to the 2006-2007 dropout rates, noting that rates at a school like York County High could be inflated because "their students are at high risk of dropping out and many are attending school while working full time. The methodology of calculating dropouts must be examined to truly understand these high dropout rates. ..."

YorkCounts says the town hall, titled "Kids, Truancy and a County at Risk," will focus on the United Way of York County's Stay in School Report as well as the work of Judge John Uhler's Truancy Task Force (read more about the latter at the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission site; click on "current JCJC newsletter.")
 
*You can crunch your own numbers at the PDE Web site, but you have to have Microsoft Excel (or OpenOffice, which is free and has a good spreadsheet function, or some kind of spreadsheet capability). If you have neither but want more numbers, let me know in the comments section and I'll post them as soon as I can.

Here's an attention-getting quote from the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center,* from a story in the Harvard Law Record, that seems to say the more transparent government is, the less it can be trusted:

(Michael) Leiter said that everything counterterrorism did would require a large degree of public trust. He believed transparency would undermine such trust, making it difficult for counterterrorism policymakers to operate. Much needed to happen behind the scenes, he said, citing the use of provisions of the Patriot Act to foil a recent bomb plot against New York City subways, and noting that, in terms of international operations, there "was no altruism in international affairs," and that difficult and delicate trade-offs were often made in the pursuit of security.
 ... Leiter said that, in the absence of public oversight, lawyers ought to play a greater role ensuring that there is accountability for any action taken behind the scenes. A breakdown of the internal channels set up by the Church and Pike Commissions in the 1970s - specifically, a lack of trust in the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the special courts set up to monitor use of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) is what has led members of Congress to leak vital information to the press, rather than deal with problems within the system. "Everything now plays out on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post," Leiter said, making it difficult for the NCTC and other national security agencies to pursue effective policies.

It's hard to imagine how trust could be undermined by transparency. For example, if you had no idea what happened inside the county's courtroom, why would you have more trust that justice was being carried out than if you could see it for yourself?

No doubt there are legitimate needs for secrecy in, say, the fight against terrorism. But for the leader of the country's counterterrorism office to say everything it does should be kept secret, and therefore public trust about its activities will increase, seems odd.

What do you think of Leiter's comments?

*Quote flagged on Twitter by openthegovernment.org, thanks very much.

York County congressman Todd Platts wants to be top dog at the Government Accountability Office (story here), which may be one of those agencies you haven't heard much about. But it actually does some pretty interesting stuff. It's known as the investigative arm of Congress because it performs a watchdog role over other agencies, and it works on behalf of members of Congress or congressional committees.

A description of its job that appears online: "We advise Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient, effective, ethical, equitable and responsive."

You can go on the GAO's Web site and find anything from a report on the Department of Defense's planning for withdrawing forces from Iraq to how the IRS is managing tax debt collections to safety issues if the age standard for commercial pilots is changed. The GAO is also reporting on stimulus money and takes reports on stimulus fraud.

I recall in 1998 when I was an editor at the Carroll County (Md.) Times, our staff did a lengthy series on heroin use by teens in that community. We used a GAO report on heroin trafficking to help us build a map that showed, station-by-station, how heroin got from Afghanistan to a Baltimore suburb.

The comptroller's job would include testifying before Congress. The job carries a 15-year term.

Right now, the acting comptroller general is Gene L. Dodaro, who's been with the GAO for more than 30 years, according to his bio on the site. He is a graduate of Lycoming College in Williamsport.

The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper that covers Congress, broke the story early this morning and has quotes from Platts' letter of application, which it said it obtained from a source and would not release. Here is The Hill's story.

I'll be moderating a live chat tonight beginning at 8 p.m. on the York County election. We'll post local and statewide results in the chat and ask your thoughts on some topics. Please stop by.