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NEWS: Oct. 21, 2016
A Contested Presidential Election Could Put GSA Chief in the Hot Seat Donald Trump's debate bombshell hinting that he might contest the results of the Nov. 8 election should he lose has ears perked up at one federal agency in particular. The General Services Administration, under presidential transition laws dating back to 1963, is responsible for ascertaining which party's candidates are the "apparent" president-elect and vice president-elect in order to begin preparing for the transition. Criteria for making the declaration are left to the GSA administrator, currently Denise Turner Roth. >> Government Executive Russia Wants to Send Election Monitors to U.S. In an apparent move to embarrass the United States over Trump's claims of a "rigged" presidential election, Russia sought to send monitors to U.S. polling stations for the Nov. 8 vote, Russian media revealed. The bid was sharply rebuffed by the State Department. >> USA Today Think Tank: Elections Are Actually Easy to Hack Intelligence and homeland security officials have been rushing to reassure Americans that the upcoming election cannot be hacked. But one cybersecurity think tank says they are easy to hack, recently issuing a report that outlines a range of vulnerabilities and tactics. >> Federal Computer Week
County Executive, Town Official Charged with Taking Bribes, Kickbacks Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, a Republican who is the county's top elected official, and Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto were arrested in connection with a 13-count federal indictment charging them with soliciting and receiving "bribes and kickbacks" from a local businessman. Prosecutors said the businessman, identified only as "Co-conspirator No. 1," also gave a lucrative no-show job to Mangano's wife Linda, who also was charged in the case. >> Newsday, Reuters Poll: Maricopa County Sheriff Trailing by 15 Points Longtime Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio is trailing Democratic challenger Paul Penzone by nearly 15 points in a new Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll conducted as news broke that Arpaio would face a federal criminal contempt charge. >> Arizona Republic Public Pensions | California State's High Court to Rule on 'Immutable' Pensions California's generous public employee pensions, shielded for decades by the state's courts, may soon no longer be sacrosanct. An appeals court's ruling declaring that public workers' retirement plans were not "immutable" and could be reduced is now before the California Supreme Court and could be a vehicle for reducing hundreds of billions of dollars in pension-funding shortfalls. >> Los Angeles Times
Lawmakers Seek GAO Investigation of Federal Retirement Processing A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers with oversight of the federal workforce has called for the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the federal retirement process is operating as smoothly and efficiently as possible. A retirement processing backlog has plagued the Office of Personnel Management for decades, frustrating both members of Congress and federal retirees. >> Government Executive 4 Agencies Have High Retirement-Processing Error Rates A handful of federal agencies are making more mistakes than others as they prepare their employees' retirement applications and send them to OPM for processing. Four agencies had error rates well above the overall governmentwide rate of 13 percent in September. >> Federal News Radio GSA Seeks Cross-Agency Federal Staff Directory The General Services Administration is kicking off a project to create a directory with standardized contact information, including email and office addresses, for employees across federal agencies. >> Nextgov Education | Buffalo, N.Y. Teachers, District OK 1st New Contract in 12 Years Ending a 12-year deadlock, Buffalo's public school teachers have approved their first new contract since the last one expired in 2004. Teachers will receive pay bumps of 10 percent this year and 2 percent for the next two years. Educators agreed to longer school days, a two-day-longer school year and cuts to their health-care benefits. >> Education Week, Buffalo News
Investigators: Stolen Data Included NSA Hacking Tools Investigators pursuing what they believe to be the largest case of mishandling classified documents in U.S. history have found that an "astonishing quantity" of stolen documents in the possession of a National Security Agency contractor included top-secret National Security Agency hacking tools that two months ago were offered for sale on the internet. Contractor Harold T. Martin III was arrested in August. >> New York Times Demographics | The Nation Citing Budget Uncertainty, Census Bureau Calls off Field Tests for 2020 Count Less than six months before field tests were scheduled to begin for the 2020 population count, the Census Bureau has called them off, citing budget uncertainty. Bureau officials said the decision to cancel the upcoming tests is not ideal but that it is "the best overall operation remaining amid current uncertainty" about fiscal 2017 funding. >> Federal Computer Week >> Follow GovManagement on Twitter >> Share this edition:
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VIEWPOINT The Military | M.L. Cavanaugh Why Military Officers Shouldn't Vote I am a major in the U.S. Army, and I believe it is my professional duty--and that of my fellow officers in all branches of the military--not to vote in the presidential election. I strongly believe that officers, like all citizens, should have the right to vote. But because officers have a special responsibility to prevent politics from dividing our troops and separating us from society, it is all the more important for us to choose not to exercise that right. >> New York Times PLUS: Carter F. Ham on why military officers should vote. >> Army Times | More commentaries QUOTABLE “Hopefully, it signifies the beginning of a decolonizing revolution.” Qaiyaan Harcharek, a member of the city council of the largely Inupiat city of Barrow, Alaska, on the 381-to-375 vote approving efforts to change the name of the nation's northernmost community to its traditional Inupiat name of Utqiagvik, a measure opposed by some concerned that the change would cost the city money for changing references to the name on things like stationery and signage and would impact tourism and business >> AP/Yahoo News, Arctic Sounder | More quotes
More than 3 million Number of times an animated GIF of a patriotic squirrel from a 1953 newsreel has been viewed since it was posted online as part of a collection from the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, a cache available at the website Giphy that includes such well known curiosities as an animated version of the Oval Office handshake between Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon in 1970 >> New York Times | More data
UPCOMING EVENTS American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council Executive Leadership Conference Oct. 23-25, Williamsburg, Va. Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education Program on Leadership Decision Making: Optimizing Organizational Performance Oct. 23-28, Cambridge, Mass. Governing Summit on Financial Leadership Oct. 24-25, Washington, D.C. Urban Land Institute Fall Meeting Oct. 24-27, Dallas Center for American Progress Discussion: "Debbie Allen on Arts and Lived Experience: Race, Violence and Access to the American Dream" Oct. 24, noon-1:30 p.m. ET, Washington, D.C. American Enterprise Institute Discussion: "The Opiate Crisis: How Can Public Policy Promote Recovery?" Oct. 24, 3:30-4:45 p.m. ET, Washington, D.C. National Academy of Public Administration and George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government Discussion: "Presidential Transition: Impact on Local Governments" Oct. 24, 4-6 p.m. ET, Arlington, Va. Brookings Institution and PRRI Survey release: "Progress, Nostalgia and Cultural Change: Findings from the 2016 American Values Survey" Oct. 25, 10:30 a.m.-noon ET, Washington, D.C. >> Full events listings |
