The question on everyone’s mind right now is how long Augusta will remain crippled from the recent cyber-attack.
Government being shut down can be a good thing. If they are not working, they are not wasting taxpayer money on useless programs and agendas. Without access to their network, how will the city ever enforce the non-discrimination, tiny-home and blight ordinances? You know the ones: those symbolic ordinances that tons of time and resources were spent on that have yet to yield one single action.
Augusta’s Cybergate has crippled some essential functions of daily life. For example, real estate transactions cannot be finalized due to the inability of lawyers to run title searches and record deeds.
It’s a good thing the cyber-attack didn’t happen in Edgefield County, or the giant private golf course project would be stalled. Of course, the truth there is that the project was never going to happen, and the group has yet to close on a single piece of property. One of the largest tracts of land the group needed is yet to be placed under contract. For now, that part of the CSRA will have to remain undeveloped and undisturbed.
Cybergate has no end in sight. The FBI as well as local officials are not providing any details of substance. When the dust settles, the city will have to provide transparency on what transpired. I suspect what will be found is that the mayor was kept in the dark by the city lawyer and interim administrator on the details as they were initially unfolding. If true, there has to be a reckoning.
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste”
That turn of phrase was coined by former president Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. It’s a concept Democratic officials, including those running Augusta, have embraced.
I have my own turn of phrase. “Where there is enough smoke, there is a fire.”
Was a lieutenant with the Augusta Fire Department driving drunk or high when he ran over and dragged a dead body on May 13th? The Augusta Press believes the citizens of Augusta deserve an answer to that question.
The city has cited ongoing cyber-related issues as the reason that they cannot provide updates to Gregory Hartshorne’s personnel file.
The May 13th incident is allegedly under investigation, but the only way we know there is an investigation is that the city refuses to provide the results of Hartshorne’s toxicology report. The story has gone from there being no toxicology test done per the incident report, to the city doing a toxicology report, the fire chief claiming he can’t release the report due to HIPAA, which has been proven false by TAP’s lawyer, and now there is an “ongoing investigation,” which exempts the release of the toxicology results.
What is there to investigate? Either Hartshorne made an honest mistake, and we can all move on or his faculties were compromised. If the toxicology proves he was not high or drunk, why not publicly state as much and put an end to the debate. If he was compromised and driving, the truth is going to come out, so go ahead and get ahead of it.
Instead of providing transparency, the fire chief pretends he doesn’t know the law on what he can and can’t release to the media. If he doesn’t know, he should not have been selected for the job, and if he does know, why lie?
Both former mayor Hardie Davis and Sheriff Richard Rountree use the same playbook that the fire chief is now using. Delay as long as possible, even if you know it’s going to come out, and the further removed from the incident the less sting there will be on the department. This is the unwritten policy of many of Augusta’s elected officials as well as many department heads.
Republicans are no better than democrats.
I am an equal opportunity griper. It’s my opinion that both the Democrat and Republican parties are broken. While I gripe a lot about Democrats and insanity, they way embraced this week’s vote on the debt ceiling made me ashamed of the Republican party.
Local congressmen Rick Allen (Ga) and Joe Wilson (Sc) both voted for the bill, in a move I find very disappointing.
This was the Republican party’s chance to show that they are the party of fiscal sanity. Instead, they settled for a lukewarm compromise that makes no real headway against out-of-control spending. It was done all for the sake of getting a deal done.
Had Republicans toed the line and held the government hostage for real concessions, they would have prevailed. They forgot that the strongest negotiation tool is being willing to walk away. Had Speaker McCarthy gotten up and walked away from negotiations, the ensuing chaos would have forced the Democrats and their feeble president to the table. The longer the chaos, the more it hurts Democrats in 2024. Instead, cowardice won the day, and Congress punted its responsibility until after the 2024 election.
Government being shut down on the national level and local level shows what programs truly matter and where the waste is. All can learn from a good government shutdown.
Local Journalism Matters
Tomorrow, more than 200 journalists employed by Gannett Co. Inc., the parent company of the Augusta Chronicle, will go on strike. The Augusta Chronicle is not one of the 14 newsrooms participating in the strike.
The issues brought up in the strike center around Gannett’s disdain for local journalism and its systematic gutting of newsrooms. The Augusta Chronicle has not been immune to the cuts, which were partly responsible for the launching of The Augusta Press because of the decline in local news content.
The News Guild-Communications Workers of America, which is leading the strike, has some very harsh words for Gannett. Below are a few excerpts from the SEC filing.
• The merger of GateHouse Media and Gannett Media in November 2019 has been an unmitigated disaster. The NewsGuild-CWA criticized the merger at the time as likely to impose a massive debt burden on the company that would be addressed only by very negative actions:
• While the merger was a mistake for virtually all stakeholders – save some highly paid corporate executives – it is the situation we now need to face. But we need to face that situation with a realism that Mr. Reed [Gannett CEO] lacks.
• The percentage reduction of local news stories in these newspapers ranges from 59% to 95%.
• Gannett is becoming the new news industry vulture, the Alden Global Capital of 2023. It buys, cuts, and hollows out newsrooms. Virtually every story now about our company references the cutbacks and what it has done to the communities where it is present.
What has over 10,000 local stories and 20,000 individual comments?
The Augusta Press exists to provide the Augusta area with locally focused content. It is locally owned and operated. We believe that the model we have created, private business merging with experienced journalist to create a hybrid super local paper, will be the model that other markets our size will follow.
While newspapers are dying nationwide, we are growing and increasing both staff and subscribers, and we want to thank our readers for that.
Recently we hit our 10,000th story. Today, we hit 20,000 comments. Those are approved comments. We would have hit that number much sooner had we not had to delete some vulgar or insensitive ones and regulate a handful of our subscribers. You know who you are. We love you anyway, despite some of your more interesting comments.
We are here to serve the community, and we rely on you, the reader, telling others about us and sharing our stories online. Our viability and success are thanks to you, and for that we the staff thank you.
