PERSPECTIVE: Liberating Public Data – Easier Said Than Done

by Sasha Cuerda For the past few years we have been working with the Connecticut Secretary of the State (SOTS) on initiatives related to the business registration data that they process and manage. These are the official data set of record for businesses that are required to register to operate within Connecticut.

However, accessing these data has been historically difficult. The office’s CONCORD system was built and optimized for the important work of managing transactions around business filings and registration. It was not designed as a system to be search or analyzed for data. The data are also old, with data going back centuries, which is both good and bad

When we started on this project we were faced with a significant initial obstacle. We were given raw data on a CD-ROM and a "data dictionary" that consisted of a photocopied database schema. Variable names were not particularly readable and while some of the relationships could be inferred from the table names, there was a lot of information that was missing. Another technical challenge was that most of the values were stored as character strings.  This meant that the validation of data being input was taking place in the application that staff used to input data. We couldn't rely on the database to have done much work to catch "mistakes" that made it through the business systems. Therefore, many of the input errors such as spelling mistakes or typos remained in the data.

For example, we had to determine a solution for the many instances where a business has both a "primary" address and also a mailing address. If you've ever had to fill out a form online where your address is required, you've probably encountered a case where you are presented with a check box that gives you the option to use your primary address as your mailing address.

Checking that box usually results in all of your address data being copied, or sometimes that system will grey out the form fields and keep you from editing them. Regardless, something is happening that captures the fact that both address are the same. Most likely this means that when the data are saved to a database, the same data are entered in both fields. This didn't seem to be the case with these data.

Additionally, we encountered businesses with a primary address and no mailing address, which was easy enough to reconcile (the assumption is that they are the same). But we also encountered the opposite, where a mailing address was present but no primary address. This poses a challenge. Does this mean that the business does not have a physical location? Is it a business on paper only? Or was there a data entry error resulting in the wrong set of address fields being updated? If the registering agent filled out a paper form, did they leave primary address blank? These inconsistencies make seemingly trivial questions, such as how many businesses were formed in town X in time period Y, hard to answer.

Given these issues, the first step in bringing these data into a modern, flexible, search context was to build out the data dictionary and develop an understanding of the values that were present in the data. We conducted informational interviews with staff and contractors, explored the range of values in the data and bit by bit, built a model of how data flowed, what it meant, and how it was structured in the context of the regulations and procedures that business owners go through when submitting information to the Secretary of the State. Once we were confident that our model was accurate and complete enough, we set about building the search system (http://searchctbusiness.ctdata.org/).

The search interface offered by the CONCORD system is quite fast, but suffers from a few significant limitations, primarily that there is limited support for wild card searches (e.g. a search for pizza will not find pizzeria) and that the search is very character/word sensitive.

For example, say you wanted to search for businesses that contain the term "New Haven" in their name. This probably indicates something about where they are located, but it might also be used as a name by housing developers or in a variety of other circumstances. With CONCORD, you'd get roughly 26 pages of results, all for businesses starting with "New Haven". However, you won't find the Advanced Nursing & Rehabilitation Center of New Haven, LLC, Peoples Church of New Haven, League of Women Voters of New Haven, or any number of other businesses whose name features but does not start with New Haven. Moreover, if you want to search for a business whose address is in New Haven, you cannot. These were two problems we wanted to resolve.

The Secretary of the State also wanted to support searching by place and by date of formation. We handled this by building a search index table that would allow us to very quickly find matches and return enough information to the user for them to decide if they wanted to explore a given business in more detail.

In the course of doing this work, we've worked with folks from other state agencies. Given the importance of business activity, a number of state agencies place high value on the business registration data. However, the structure of the live database limited how data could be extracted and analyzed. Our workflow enabled us to support more free-form exploration of the data on their behalf and led to a number of additional projects where we linked these data with other internal datasets.

Recently we worked with a state agency to develop a methodology to link businesses registered with SOTS with internal and third party data. Linking business names is hard to do manually. In some cases, it is possible to handle look ups on an ad hoc basis, but bulk work is very time consuming. Moreover, it is quite common for businesses to use slight variations of their names in different contexts, particularly small businesses. They might be required to add something to their name when registering to avoid name conflicts, but in practice they may advertise themselves with a simpler name.

Businesses also can formally change their name with the Secretary of the State, but those changes are almost certainly not reflected in other datasets and databases. Larger companies are often structured in complex ways for legal purposes; it may attach one name to a company when discussing it in policy terms, but from a legal perspective, that business might exist as groups of distinct entities. All of these issues make matching lists of businesses challenging, so much so that there is a technical term for the problem: entity resolution.

Entity resolution takes two forms, grouping entities that can be functionally considered one "business" for a given context, and linking different representations for the same underlying entity.  We were able to conduct a number of matching runs using business name, address, city, and the name of principals to build out a list of linked entities and eliminating the need to try to manually link hundreds of thousands of entities.

We have more to do with these technologies and with these data. We want to add a map interface to our business search portal, which would enable users to search for businesses within a certain geographic area, making it possible to ask questions like: How many businesses were formed in our main street district since we altered the zoning? Further, since we’ve undertaken this work, more powerful open source solutions have been developed and we would like to optimize our search backend with these new offerings.

Liberating this data has been a fun challenge.  It has demonstrated to us the value in investing in open source solutions and approaches and we have also learned by making these data open, the value it has for many users across the state; not only other state agencies but also economic development organizations, regional planning associations, and chambers of commerce.

_________________________

Sasha Cuerda is Director of Technology at the Connecticut Data Collaborative. He is a software developer with experience building data visualization tools, developing database systems for managing spatial data, and developing data processing workflows. He is also a trained urban planner and geographer. This article first appeared, in a somewhat lengthier version, on the website ctdata.org, the Connecticut Data Collaborative. 

With Continued Funding in Doubt, Gov. Rell, Former Legislators to Reprise Campaign Finance Reforms

Former Governor M. Jodi Rell, who supported and signed Connecticut’s landmark campaign finance reforms into law just over a decade ago, will be the keynote speaker later this month at a day-long conference that will bring many of the key players in that debate together again.  The October 26 event at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) comes the same week that the state legislature may be voting on a new state budget for the fiscal year that began on July 1, with the continued existence of public financing of state political campaigns – a core component of the reforms - in serious doubt. Among the panelists will be former Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams, former House Speaker James Amann, former Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, and former House Minority leader Lawrence Cafero. They will be joined by former House member Tim O’Brien, who served on the Government Administration and elections Committee, and Senate Co-Chair of that committee, Sen. Michael McLachlan.

In addition to the legislators, key players in the debate including Karen Hobart Flynn, President and CEO of Common Cause, Jeffrey Garfield, former Executive Director of the Connecticut State Elections enforcement Commission Tom Swan, Executive Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action group, will be part of a second panel.

A week ago, in an op-ed published in Connecticut, Flynn criticized those who would now eliminate public funding of campaigns, known as the Citizens Election Program (CEP), which she described as “a remarkably successful alternative to the corrupt system that earned our state the unfortunate moniker ‘Corrupticut’ in 2004.”  A budget narrowly approved by the legislature and vetoed by Gov. Malloy late last month would have eliminated funding.  It has been estimated that $40 million would be disbursed to statewide office and legislative candidates in 2018, surpassing the $33.4 million distributed to qualifying candidates in 2014.  Recent studies suggest that the program has been effective in reducing special interest money in campaigns.

Flynn added that the law, passed in 2005, “allows candidates and officeholders to look out for the interests of all their constituents rather than being consumed with the needs of their major campaign contributors. It gives talented, motivated citizens who've never had the money or the connections traditionally required for success in politics a chance to seek and win public office with neither big money nor connections.  Now, nearly 80 percent of all candidates for legislative and state offices use the program.”  Qualifying candidates must raise $5,000 to $250,000 — depending whether they are seeking a statewide office or legislative seat — in $100 increments or less in order to receive a grant of public funds from the CEP.

Rell, in signing the plan into law at an Old State House ceremony flanked by legislators from both political parties in 2005, said "This is the bipartisan spirit that people want.  It takes special interests out of elections and is putting elections where they should be, in the hands of the people."

At the time, Connecticut was the first state to pass a public financing system that affects all statewide races including the legislature. The law took effect on Dec. 31, 2006.  Additional reforms were passed by the legislature in 2008, designed to strengthen the 2005 law by expanding the authority of the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) and enabling the state’s public financing system to operate more smoothly, Gov. Rell’s office said at the time.

The Oct. 26 program is coordinated by the Center for Public Policy and Social Research (CPPSR) at CCSU. The CPPSR has been designated a Connecticut Higher Education Center of Excellence, and is noted for offering innovative academic research and outreach programs which promote a greater understanding of the history, structure, processes, personnel and policies of State government. The center incorporates the Governor William A. O'Neill Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Practical Politics.

The program, "Campaign Finance Reform  in Connecticut," will be held in the Constitution Room of Memorial Hall on the CCSU campus in New Britain, from 8:30 to 1: 30.

Hartford Region Ranks 49th Among 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas in Charitable Giving

The average percentage of income given to charity by residents of the Hartford metropolitan region ranked 49^th among the top 50 largest metropolitan regions, according to a new survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.  Only residents of the metropolitan Providence, Rhode Island region donated less. Greater Hartford residents, on average, donated 1.9 percent of their income to charity according to the analysis.  The average amount given, among those itemizing gifts, was $2,994.  The total in Itemized contributions among the region’s 1.2 million people was $600 million.

In Providence, $600 million was donated with an average gift of $2,748, or 1.8 percent of individual income.  The Providence region includes 1.6 million people.

Both cities are among the 60 of America's 100 largest metropolitan areas that give less than the national average of 3.1 percent.

The Chronicle used 2015 Internal Revenue Service data on individuals who earn $50,000 or more annually and who itemize charitable deductions on their income-tax returns to create a snapshot of giving in every county and metropolitan area in the country. Only donations of taxpayers who took a deduction are included, the publication noted. The key measure, according to the Chronicle, is the giving ratio: the total of a locality’s charitable contributions as a share of its total adjusted gross income.

The metropolitan regions with the largest average percentage of income to charity:  Memphis (5.6%), Salt Lake City (5.5%), Birmingham (5.4%), Atlanta (4.6%), San Jose (4.6%), Jacksonville (4.2%), Nashville (4.0%), and Oklahoma City (4.0%).

Five years previously, in 2012, Hartford ranked last among the 50 largest metropolitan regions.  The giving rate that year was also 1.9 percent, reflecting an 89.9 percent decline in giving rate since 2006.  Providence was 49^th that year.

Overall in 2015, only 24 percent of taxpayers reported on their tax returns that they made a charitable gift according to the new analysis of Internal Revenue Service data. A decade earlier that figure routinely reached 30 or 31 percent, the Chronicle pointed out. Study authors suspect the numbers come from economic fears in the wake of the Great Recession, and a higher cost of living.

Forum on Bankruptcy Planned as Budget Eludes State, Hartford Nears Decision

If the state legislature remains deadlocked on approval of a state budget and the level of municipal aid that would be sent to the City of Hartford, a public forum planned for next Thursday, October 19, may offer a sneak preview of what will come in the days after the headline “Hartford Declares Bankruptcy.” In a program organized by the City of Hartford with support from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the front-burner topic will be “What Does Municipal Bankruptcy Mean and What Can We Learn From Other Cities.”  Insight will be offered by Kevyn Orr, former Emergency Manager for the City of Detroit; Don Graves, former Deputy Assistant to President Obama and Counselor to Vice President Biden; and Mayor James Diossa of Central Falls, Rhode Island.  Moderator for the forum will be Jay Williams, recently installed as President of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, and Mayor of Youngstown, Ohio.

The purpose of filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy is to provide a financially distressed government body protection from its creditors while it reorganizes to make itself more fiscally stable.  Opinions differ on its impact and effectiveness.  In Connecticut history, the city of Bridgeport filed for bankruptcy in 1991, but the filing was withdrawn by a new administration after the incumbent Mayor was defeated.  Years later, action by the state legislature to take over fiscal management of Waterbury prevented a possible bankruptcy declaration.

The 90-minute program on October 19 will be held beginning at 8 a.m. at The Society Room on Pratt Street in downtown Hartford.  The conversation continues at a late-afternoon public forum, with the same panelists, at Hartford Public High School.  

Central Falls, the first city in Rhode Island history to declare bankruptcy, in 2011, came out of bankruptcy in a relatively short 13 months.  Described as one of the hardest hit communities in the great recession, with unemployment reaching 16 percent between 2010 and 2012, Central Falls was considered by 2015 as among communities in the state that, although still struggling, were on the rise.

On July 18, 2013, Detroit, Michigan, became the largest municipality in United States history to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  Detroit’s highly visible bankruptcy is today credited by some observers as a key element in the city’s ability to rebound in more recent years, attracting new investment after shedding considerable liabilities through bankruptcy court.  It is even using its bankruptcy as a plus as it goes after Amazon’s second headquarters – a competition that Hartford also looks forward to entering.

Out of nearly 89,500 municipalities in the country, there were just 239 municipal bankruptcy filings between 1980 and 2010, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council.  That number picked up considerably in the aftermath of the recession, including Detroit, Central Falls, San Bernardino and Stockton, CA; and Jefferson County, AL.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said earlier this month that Hartford would seek Chapter 9 protection if additional state aid was not forthcoming by November. The city is seeking at least $40 million more this year — on top of the $260 million the city is already due to receive -also now in doubt due to the state's budget stalemate.  The city, facing a $65 million deficit, is expected to run into cash-flow problems this fall, with shortfalls of $7 million in November and $39.2 million in December, according to published reports.

A week ago, in a newsletter to bond holders and other investors, Municipal Market Analytics noted some of the issues that a Chapter 9 petition could pose not only to Hartford, but to jurisdictions beyond the city’s borders, including steeper interest rates when towns in the region borrow for infrastructure projects, and a possible adverse impact on the state’s bond rating.  The report was speculative, but could have an impact on decisions made at the State Capitol in the coming weeks.

Connecticut's Top Teachers Lead Classrooms from Ashford to Westport

There will be an Awards Ceremony next month to honor Connecticut’s 2018 Teacher of the Year – Erin Berthold, who teaches at the Cook Hill School in Wallingford – along with Teacher of the Year nominees from throughout the state.  The ceremony is scheduled to take place in Hartford just days after Berthold’s application, representing Connecticut, is due at the National Teacher of the Year selection committee. Berthold’s selection was announced last week at her school.  She is the first Wallingford educator to be selected for the annual award.

“I’m beyond thrilled and surprised,” Berthold told the Meriden Record-Journal.  She is in her 11th year of teaching. “I never really thought I’d win an award for teaching. It’s my job, it’s what I do. Working with six-year-olds is the real reward of teaching.”

The teachers who were earned recognition as finalists in Connecticut, along with Berthold, included LeAnn Cassidy, Social Studies, Memorial Middle School, Regional School District 15; LeAnn Cassidy, Social Studies, Memorial Middle School, Regional School District 15; and Courtney Ruggiero, Social Studies, Bedford Middle School, Westport.  Their teaching will also be honored, along with a dozen semi-finalists.  It is the culmination of a process that touched school districts throughout Connecticut, as local districts shined a spotlight on outstanding teachers in their respective communities.

The process begins with the Commissioner of Education sending Teacher of the Year applications to every district superintendent in the spring, encouraging them to participate in the recognition program.  The Teacher of the Year Program seeks to recognize exemplary teachers and does not try to identify the “best” teacher in the state, according to the Teacher of the Year website.

District teams identify one exemplary teacher from within their teaching populations.  Each district nominee completes the state application in the ensuing months and submits it to the State Department of Education.  Applications are distributed to members of a reading committee, and the results are tabulated to identify approximately fifteen semi-finalists.

Semi-finalists are invited to an interview with the Selection Committee at which they present a prepared presentation and respond to several questions related to education issues and current trends.  Four finalists are chosen from among the semi-finalists.  A committee of 12-18 people then travels to each of the finalists’ schools to observe the teachers in action and to interview teams of parents, teachers, support staff, students, administrators, and Board members. 

Following the site visits, the selection committee travels to a neutral site where they deliberate and vote to determine who will emerge as the next Connecticut Teacher of the Year.  Once that selection is made, the announcement follows shortly thereafter, in early October.

The 2018 Connecticut Teacher of the Year semi-finalists teach in school districts all across the state are:

• Katie Amenta, English, Berlin High School, Berlin
• Rebecca Aubrey, World Languages, Ashford School, Ashford
• Kevin Berean, Technology Education, Amity Middle School, Regional School District 5
• Martha Curran, English Language Arts, Walter C. Polson Upper Middle School, Madison
• Cheryl Gustafson, World Language, Somers High School, Somers
• Brian Kelly, Music-Band, John Wallace Middle School, Newington
• Kristen Keska, Social Studies, East Hampton High School, East Hampton
• Yolanda Lee-Gorishti, Science, Crosby High School, Waterbury
• Jeanne Malgioglio, English Language Arts, Madison Middle School, Trumbull
• Candace Patten, Social Studies, Southington High School, Southington
• Colleen Thompson, Music, Simsbury High School, Simsbury
• Vincent Urbanowski, Mathematics, The Academy of Information Technology, Stamford

The Connecticut Teacher of the Year Program is made possible by contributions made to the Connecticut Teacher of the Year Council, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides recognition for exemplary teachers and excellence in teaching.

Berthold has taught at Cook Hill for three years and was previously a special education teacher at Yalesville School and Moses Y. Beach School in Wallingford, the Record-Journal reported. Earlier in her career, Berthold taught at Lincoln Middle School in Meriden and Woodhouse Academy in Milford.

The Connecticut Teacher of the Year and Teacher of the Year finalists serve as teacher-ambassadors for public education. They are appointed to various education advisory committees and become consultants to the Commissioner of Education. In addition, they present workshops; speak at education conferences and meetings; address student, civic, college and university, and governmental groups; and operate special programs in accordance with their interests and expertise throughout the coming year.

For Berthold, there is one additional assignment. The National Teacher of the Year application is due to the National Teacher of the Year office, Washington, DC on November 1.  Just two years ago, Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes, a high school social studies teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Waterbury, was also selected as National Teacher of the Year and was honored at a ceremony at the White House with President Barack Obama.

Lauren Danner, a General Science/Biology teacher and Science Department Leader at North Branford High School was Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year in 2017. Cara Quinn, a sixth-grade teacher at the Sunset Ridge School in East Hartford, was named the 2015 top teacher in Connecticut. In 2014, John Mastroianni, a music teacher at West Hartford’s Hall High School, was selected.

Photos:  (Above) Erin Berthold; (Below)  LeAnn Cassidy, Regional School District 15; Martha Curran, Madison; Courtney Ruggiero, Westport.

Concerns Raised That U.S. Census Count Changes, Funding Cutbacks May Hurt Connecticut

It occurs once every decade – the U.S. Census aims to count everyone in the United States, and is the foundation upon which a plethora of funding and policy decisions are based for much of the decade that follows.  The next nationwide census, in 2020, is already raising red flags, here in Connecticut and across the country. The Connecticut Council for Philanthropy is encouraging local participation in a national webinar about the role that philanthropy in ensuring a fair and accurate count in the U.S. Census in 2020.  The webinar, on October 30, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, is one of the early efforts to raise awareness of potential implications for the census if Congress, in an effort to keep costs in check, makes fiscal decisions that turn out to be penny wise and pound foolish – potentially jeopardizing levels of federal aid to communities and states, including Connecticut, that will last a decade.

"If you underfund the Census, you get an undercount," says Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the bureau during the 2000 Census. "And if you don't count people, they are politically invisible, in effect," he said earlier this year in Time magazine.

Announced plans by the U.S. Census Bureau, that it will be “introducing significant innovations to conduct the 2020 Census,” is spurring concerns even as the planning process is being refined and funding and operational decisions are being made.  The Bureau is focusing on “four key innovation areas… with cost reductions in mind.”  Among them is “re-engineering address canvassing,” a critical first stage in the census counting process.

Policy and administrative decisions, such as the changes outlined in the latest Census Bureau plan, will carry significant implications for census accuracy and outcomes, point out webinar organizers the United Philanthropy Forum and Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP). It is imperative, the organizations emphasize, that philanthropy take action now to support a fair and accurate count.  Speakers on the webinar will include:

• Terri Ann Lowenthal, Census Consultant with Funders' Committee for Civic Participation's Funders Census Initiative 2020
• Debbie McKeon, Senior Vice President of Member Services, Council of Michigan Foundations
• Daranee Petsod, President of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR)

Officials point out that “Data from the census drive key decisions made by government, business, nonprofits and philanthropy. Unfortunately, the Census has historically missed disproportionate numbers of people of color, immigrants, young children and low-income and rural households.”

In a commentary article earlier this month in CT Mirror, Aparna Nathan and Mark Abraham of New Haven-based DataHaven raised concerns not only about the impact on nonprofit organizations from a less-than-accurate census, but about the across-the-board dangers of a census that does not provide an accurate count – particularly for Connecticut.

The culprit: underfunding. 

In 2012, according to Nathan and Abraham, Congress told the Census Bureau to spend no more for the 2020 Census than they spent on the 2010 Census, and even encouraged them to spend less. Carrying out the same operation as in 2010 would cost a projected $17.8 billion overall, but the 2020 Census Operational Plan aims for $12.5 billion.  Already, a number of dry-runs and field tests have been postponed or cancelled outright, potentially undercutting plans for the census, now littler more than two years away.

“An underfunded 2020 Census is likely to systematically undercount some of the state’s more vulnerable populations and undermine efforts to create a more equitable, opportunity-rich state,” they wrote.  “Since population distributions are used to draw voting districts and determine the number of representatives each state or neighborhood gets in our legislative bodies, undercounting hard-to-count groups means that their vote may count less and their voice might not be heard at the state level or in Congress.”

The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Census Operational Plan, dubbed “A New Design for the 21^st Century,” increases reliance on technology to determine its count, considered to be a most cost-effective approach.  But others say technology has its limits, especially among certain populations, and overreliance can lead to an incomplete and inaccurate count.

The document itself acknowledges that possibility, noting that “As the Census Bureau continues to evaluate the 2020 Census operational design, an analysis of the impact on the quality of the census results is required to ensure that innovations designed to reduce cost do not have an unacceptable impact on quality.”

Sizeable immigrant populations throughout much of the state, and refugee populations in Hartford and New Haven, might find themselves questioning the confidentiality and importance of the census, especially in the current climate of fear and anti-immigrant rhetoric, pointed out Terri Ann Lowenthal, a consultant and former congressional staffer who directed the House’s census oversight subcommittee and now lives in Stamford, Connecticut.

Because individuals in urban and immigrant communities tend to respond at lower rates to census inquiries received by mail, the more costly personal visits be census officials are necessary to obtain more accurate population and demographic counts.  If those visits are reduced in order to cut costs, the accuracy of the census itself is likely to diminish, observers say.  Connecticut, which does not have independent counts of its entire population, depends heavily on data derived from the U.S. Census for a host of policy and funding decisions.

Fred Carstensen, Professor of Finance and Economics at the University of Connecticut and director of the Center for Economic Analysis at the school, commented recently that “In the face of its fiscal/budget crisis, an accurate census and vastly improved understanding of demographics is crucial. But in all likelihood, Connecticut will fly blind--and lose significant federal dollars.”

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy recently pointed out that "Counting every person in the United States is an extraordinarily complex endeavor – it is the nation’s largest peacetime mobilization of personnel and resources. Even with careful planning, a perfect count is virtually impossible: Some people are missed, some are double-counted, and some do not respond fully. But, because the accuracy of the census directly affects our nation’s ability to ensure equal representation and equal access to public and private resources, achieving a fair and accurate census must be regarded as one of the most significant civil rights and social justice priorities facing the country."

PERSPECTIVE: The Social Media 'Leash' Can Choke Anyone

by Adam Chiara Social media gives everyone access to the most powerful communication tool in history, but that power can also be used against anybody.

Like the proverbial dog on a leash, companies, public figures, and even private citizens can be choked by those who have a massive social following. Those with social power can target anyone online using intimidation or shaming, which can leave us all to be potential victims.

Companies

Let’s look at a recent case: Ann Coulter’s battle with Delta Air Lines. Put aside who was right in the matter; that’s really not the point here. What’s important for is to apply the concept of what happened to future issues.

Coulter did not just complain, which even a celebrity has the right to do. Instead, she chained a leash on the company and tried to choke it. 

After insulting the airline and its employees, she then used a form of intimidation; Coulter tweeted pictures of passengers who had nothing to do with the incident and tried to embarrass them.

That is a threat from a company’s perspective. Coulter gave a clear message — if you anger me, I will even shame your customers.

Companies should of course be held accountable, and social media is one way to do that, but an organization should not be in the position where if something goes wrong, they are forced to act in fear of blackmail.

Yes, this day it was Delta, and they have not made too many friends lately. But tomorrow it could be a smaller company. Maybe a local place that has been a pillar to your community. Do you trust Coulter, or any other person with social power, with the ability to tarnish a business’ reputation indefinitely?

Private Citizens

It’s not just companies who must fear the wrath of an angry person with power. The social media leash can be tied on you by our president.

In 2015, when an 18-year-old college student told the presidential candidate Donald Trump that she didn’t think he was “a friend to women,” Trump made sure to humiliate her on Twitter.

“The arrogant young woman who questioned me in such a nasty fashion at No Labels yesterday was a Jeb staffer! HOW CAN HE BEAT RUSSIA & CHINA?,” Trump tweeted the next day.

The Washington Post reported that she then began receiving calls, emails, and Facebook posts that were threatening and were often sexual in nature.

“I didn’t really know what anyone was going to do,” she was quoted saying in the Post. “He was only going to tweet about it and that was it, but I didn’t really know what his supporters were going to do, and that to me was the scariest part.”

Whether you support Trump or not, understand what he did here. He either intentionally or ignorantly signaled for supporters to intimate this young woman. Why? To send a message — go after me, and I will go after you — only I have more power.

I’m sure there are some who just read that and would argue something along the lines of “she deserved it.” Again, that day it was her, tomorrow it might be your child who is targeted by a public figure.

Cutting the leash

If your tweet isn’t retweeted, does it make a sound?

The answer is no.

The reason why someone with millions of followers has so much power is because they know their post can be amplified. But if that tweet does not get spread, it will be lost in the river of endless content.

So even if you agree with something that was posted, it would be wise to take a moment and think before you share it.

What kind of precedent is this creating?

What if this post was directed toward an institution or person whom I care about?

Is this post advancing a dialogue or is it intended to intimidate or humiliate?

After considering these questions, then you can ultimately decide if you are going to help strap the leash on or not.

____________________________

Adam Chiara is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Hartford. He has worked as a legislative aide in the Connecticut General Assembly, as a journalist, and as a public relations practitioner. He's on Twitter at @AdamChiara. This article first appeared in The Hill. 

Municipal Leaders to Urge Community Involvement at Rell Center Forum

Municipal leaders from Essex, Hampton, Norwich, West Hartford, and Wethersfield will gather to discuss how citizens can make a difference in local communities at a panel discussion, “Better Government Begins at Home: How to Make a Difference in Your Community,” presented by the Governor M. Jodi Rell Center for Public Service at the University of Hartford. The discussion, to be held on Thursday, October 12, at 6 p.m. in the Harry Jack Gray Center’s 1877 Club on university campus, will include:

• Anne Gruenberg, the President of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and a member of the Hampton Board of Education;
• Norwich Mayor Deb Hinchey;
• Essex First Selectman Norm Needleman;
• former Wethersfield Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman Rich Roberts.

West Hartford Town Manager Matt Hart will serve as moderator and lead a discussion about the importance of public involvement in local politics and how residents can take an active role in town governance.  Hart became town manager this summer, moving from Mansfield, where he was town manager since 2006.

Deb Hinchey was elected in November of 2013 and took the oath of office in December of 2013, becoming Norwich’s first female Mayor. Prior to being elected Mayor, Hinchey served on the city council.  She is not seeking re-election this year.  Norm Needleman is serving his third term as First Selectman, and is a successful local business owner.  He is currently seeking re-election.

Attendance at the program is free. More information is available at www.hartford.edu/rellcenter or 860.768.4234.

The program will focus on the many ways that individuals can get involved in local government service.  Some communities, such as Wethersfield, list individuals serving their local communities on the town website, also including vacant positions that need to be filled.

The mission of The Governor M. Jodi Rell Center for Public Service at the University of Hartford is to provide a community and academic forum for the discussion of ethics in government, the importance of civil discourse in politics, and citizen involvement in public service and government.

This fall, Leslie Smith of Hartford was named director of the Rell Center. Smith has taught American government at the University of Hartford since 2000 and directed the Politics, Economics, and International Studies Department’s internship program since 2005.  The Center seeks to encourage students and others to pursue careers in public service and to assist in providing a clearinghouse for student public service internships.

Traffic is for Women, Weather is for Men (Mostly) on Connecticut TV

Rachel Frank is an Emmy award-winning meteorologist, seen regularly throughout FOX61 evening newscasts.  Kaitlyn McGrath is a meteorologist for NBC Connecticut.  As women, they are the exception in Connecticut, where 16 men routinely provide the weather updates on Connecticut television stations. Traffic reporting, however, is a women’s domain in the state.  The news teams at all four television stations in the market – WFSB, WTNH, NBC and FOX - have women handling the traffic reporting responsibilities on their morning newscasts, and observers are hard-pressed to recall a man doing that job.

The latest shake-up of the weather reporting team at WTNH, NewsChannel 8, brought the disparity into sharper focus with half-page newspaper ads and television promos trumpeting the new all-male team of meteorologists, highlighted by the addition of veteran meteorologist Joe Furey, who moved to the station last month from FOX61.  Furey, named co-chief meteorologist, joins Sam Kantrow, Fred Campagna, Gil Simons and Kevin Arnone.

Also starkly absent from the meteorology and traffic reporting ranks in Connecticut – ethnic and racial diversity.

First, the traffic.  Morning newscast viewers see Rachel Lutzger on FOX, Nicole Nalepa on WFSB, Teresa Dufour on WTNH and Hanna Mordoh on NBC.

Nalepa wears many hats at channel 3, also serving as a health reporter and fill-in-anchor for the station.  Before joining the station, she was weekday morning anchor and reporter at WWLP-TV/22News in Springfield, MA, after having graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Communications from Westfield State University. Mordoh earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Criminal Justice from Indiana University and was a news reporter in Indiana and Kentucky before joining NBC Connecticut.

Lutzger also handles traffic reporting each morning for Kiss 95.7, Country 92.5, The River 105.9, WELI and KC101, and afternoons on The River 105.9. A native New Yorker, she first came to Connecticut to attend the University of Hartford. In addition to traffic reporting, Dufour is co-host for CT Style, a daily lifestyle program on WTNH.  She graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, and handled traffic reporting for WFSB before moving over to WTNH.

Connecticut briefly lost its most visible female meteorologist when Frank, an honors graduate of Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor’s degree in meteorology and a native New Yorker, left the station briefly in 2014 for New York City’s WPIX.  She returned to Connecticut and FOX61 later that year.  McGrath’s most memorable career moments, according to the station’s website, were covering everything from severe thunderstorms and flooding, to life threatening heat and an EF2 tornado in Charleston, South Carolina. She earned her degree in Telecommunications/News Broadcasting at the University of Florida, and, earlier this year, a Certificate of Science in Geoscience; Broadcast Meteorology Concentration, from Mississippi State University.

At FOX, Frank is joined on-air by Matt Scott, Dan Amarante and Sam Sampieri. The NBC “First Alert” team includes Bob Maxon, Ryan Hanrahan, Darren Sweeney, and Josh Cingranelli, along with McGrath.  The full-time meteorologists at WFSB are Bruce DePrest, Mark Dixon, Mike Cameron and Scot Haney. At WFSB, the all-male ranks are occasionally joined by reporter Melissa Cole, who serves as a “fill-in meteorologist, lending a hand during major weather events,” according to the station’s website. She studied Meteorology at Villanova University, and initially joined WFSB as a weekend newscast meteorologist.

A national study published this month in the Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, found that although “the overall percentage of females in the field increased and females were more represented in larger markets, females held fewer influential and desired positions in 2016 compared with previous studies. Females made up 8% of chief meteorologist positions and less than 11% of evening shifts, which was lower than numbers in previous studies.”

According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS), in 2005 about 20 percent of meteorologists nationally were women, up from 10 percent in 1995. In 2010, the Boston Globe reported that “for the first time, all five of the meteorologists on Boston’s early-morning and midday newscasts are women.”  Among them was Dylan Dreyer, now with NBC News and the network’s Today Show.  Commenting on a WeatherChannel program earlier this year with leading female meteorologists now working at national television networks, including ABC News Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee, the program host observed in a blog post, “Check the numbers on female chief meteorologists around the nation. It’s pretty pathetic.”

In a 2015 article published by Medium, it was reported that an AMS membership survey of its 14,000 members indicated that 2 percent were African-American.

Photos:  Traffic reporters (above, clockwise)  Hanna Mordoh, Nicole Nalepa, Rachel Lutzger, and Teresa Dufour;  Weather reporting teams at NBC Connecticut, FOX61 and WFSB.

New Area Codes Becoming More Prevalent in Connecticut; 475 and 959 Grow in Usage

Do the numbers 475 and 959 sound familiar?  If they don’t yet, they likely will in the relatively near future. There was a time, long ago but not far away, when residents in the entire state of Connecticut shared one Numbering Plan Area, better known as an area code.  All across Connecticut, it was 203.  Then, after about 50 years, it became more complicated.

First, with advances in technology and the exponential growth of communications devices, the state was split into two area codes in 1995, with Fairfield and New Haven counties retaining 203, and the other six counties shifting to the new 860. 

But that quickly proved to be insufficient.  Within the past decade, two “overlay” area codes were added.  Beginning in December 2009, residents or businesses in the 203 area code could be assigned a 475 area code.  And telephone customers in the 860 area could be assigned the 959 area codes as of August, 2014.

Commonly known as an area code, an NPA is the first three digits of a 10-digit North American phone number. In areas that have run out of phone numbers and a new area code has been introduced, some – including Connecticut - have chosen to overlay the new area code over the same area as the old one, instead of splitting the area in half. This avoids anyone having to change area codes, but does require that everyone in that region dial all ten digits for each call.

According to the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), which has jurisdiction for assigning area codes (Numbering Plan Areas) in Connecticut and beyond, as of June 30, 2017 telephone carriers reported approximately 57,000 numbers have been assigned using the 959 area codes, and nearly ten times that number, 523,000, have been assigned the 475 area code in Fairfield and New Haven counties.  The numbers are assigned to carriers, who then dole them out to customers. 

One of them is the Odyssey Early Learning and Enrichment Program in Norwalk, assigned a 475 number.  The New Haven Public Schools Office of Choice & Enrollment also was provided a 475 number, in the midst of all the 203’s across the city.  In Bridgeport, St. Vincent’s Medical Center Federal Credit Union has introduced customers to their 475 area code phone number.  The Hartford Correction Center began using a 959 area codes in January, and the UConn School of Social Work received a 959 number when they relocated to Hartford this year.

So, don’t be surprised if a new neighbor or a local businesses shares a phone number with an unfamiliar prefix.  It’s the wave of the future, and it’s here now.

It is still possible for the “old” 203 and 860 prefixes to be assigned to new customers by the carriers.  NANPA reports that there remain 200 blocks of one thousand numbers that may still be provided to various carriers for them to assign to customers.

Of course as reliance on land lines continues to diminish and people tend to keep their cellular phone numbers as the relocate across the country, the connection between where a person lives and the telephone area code becomes less meaningful. But for land lines in Connecticut what was once one area code is now four.  At least for the immediate future.