Editorials from around New York

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New York’s newspapers:

America’s intelligence chief must value honesty over politics

The New York Times

July 30

Before President Trump picked Dan Coats to be the director of national intelligence, Mr. Coats spent 24 years in Washington as a member of the House and the Senate from Indiana, serving long stints on both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. He had also been ambassador to Germany.

His predecessors included James Clapper, an Air Force lieutenant general who previously headed two other intelligence agencies, and Adm. Dennis Blair, who commanded United States naval forces in the Pacific.

After an increasingly difficult tenure, Mr. Coats is stepping down and Mr. Trump has chosen as his replacement Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas.

The 2004 law creating the position of director of national intelligence says that whoever holds the post must have “extensive national security expertise,” but Mr. Ratcliffe has been a House member only since 2015 and joined the House Intelligence Committee just this year. Before that he was a small-town mayor and a United States attorney, apparently with little or no experience dealing with terrorism or national security issues. He may have even falsely claimed to have prosecuted terrorists.

One reason Mr. Coats’s tenure was so uncomfortable was that, unlike many Trump appointees, he was more likely to say what he believed to be true than what the president wanted to hear.

Even some influential Republican senators are concerned that Mr. Trump’s main reason for picking Mr. Ratcliffe is his intense loyalty, and not his experience on intelligence issues.

Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he didn’t even know Mr. Ratcliffe.

“I talked to him on the phone last night,” Mr. Burr said. “It’s the first contact I’ve ever had with him.”

That Mr. Ratcliffe’s record seems so undistinguished by relevant experience and so filled with examples of partisanship makes it all the more vital that the Senate carefully vet him.

Days before Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified last week that Russia had corrupted the 2016 presidential race and was once more “doing it as we sit here,” Mr. Coats appointed an experienced official to oversee election security intelligence across the government in a newly created senior position. A bit late in the game, but it amounted to an act of courage in the face of Mr. Trump’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the problem and respond forcefully ahead of the 2020 elections.

Mr. Ratcliffe appears to have caught Mr. Trump’s eye by being a dogged critic of the Russia investigation and claiming that the F.B.I. harassed Mr. Trump. During Mr. Mueller’s testimony, Mr. Ratcliffe accused Mr. Mueller of violating American judicial norms by writing an inconclusive report about whether Mr. Trump committed a crime by obstructing justice.

Just before Mr. Trump picked him for the intelligence job, Mr. Ratcliffe was on the president’s favored source of intelligence, Fox News, smearing the special counsel’s report.

“Its conclusions weren’t from Robert Mueller, they were written by what a lot of people believe was Hillary Clinton’s de facto legal team, people that had supported her, even represented some of her aides,” he said.

Mr. Coats has defended the nation’s intelligence agencies in their unanimous finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. He refused the president’s request to get James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, to end his investigation of Michael Flynn, the national security adviser who has since pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

These were not the only ways Mr. Coats rubbed Mr. Trump the wrong way. Time and again he delivered truths at odds with Mr. Trump’s preferred version of reality - saying that North Korea was unlikely to abandon its nuclear weapons, that Iran was abiding by the nuclear deal, that the Islamic State continued to be a threat in Syria.

The president made his position clear on Tuesday when he said that “the intelligence agencies have run amok” and that Mr. Ratcliffe would “rein it in.”

Mr. Coats wasn’t perfect. Some experts think he could have done more to protect America’s 17 intelligence agencies from politicization. But more often than not, he stood by the professionals and their analysis.

One of the most important lessons from America’s response to the attacks of 9/11 that led to the creation of this post was that intelligence agencies need to work freely and honestly, and not be swayed by political considerations and the need to placate a president. An administration that sought and got the message it wanted from the intelligence apparatus is what helped lead to the invasion of Iraq and the disasters that followed.

The Senate needs to be sure we don’t go down that road again.

Online: https://nyti.ms/333rmuM

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Trump-Cummings clash isn’t necessarily skin deep

Newsday

July 30

President Donald Trump’s continued efforts to denigrate Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings and Baltimore are a national embarrassment.

Once again, Trump has reached for the racist dog whistle as if it’s his favorite instrument. The previous installment of the Trump show was a fight with minority congresswomen. This week, it was Cummings, who is black, and Baltimore, which Trump called “rodent infested.”

Cummings, a Democrat, is one of the most prominent and respected members of the House. He has received bipartisan backup since the president’s Twitter deluge. Here are some very concerning possibilities about why Trump kept going:

He thinks his path to re-election is racial division.

He is not trying to be strategic and just spews haphazardly.

Or, he is maligning an individual who could pose a real threat to his presidency and family.

Remember that Cummings chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Recently, the panel approved subpoenas for messages sent from the personal accounts of high-level White House officials - reportedly Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. And the committee is probing Trump pal and inaugural committee chairman Thomas Barrack Jr.’s coziness with Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern interests, activity that reportedly has attracted the attention of federal prosecutors. A committee report released Monday said Barrack shared drafts of a major campaign speech on energy “to coordinate pro-Gulf language.”

None of those explanations for the Cummings focus are reassuring.

Online: https://nwsdy.li/31dH19n

___States take the lead protecting environment

The Middletown Times Herald-Record

July 29

States continue to do what they can to protect the environment, efforts that are good by themselves and that can provide a model for the nation once reality returns to federal policies.

Last week New York announced an agreement for two large offshore wind projects which could produce 20 percent of the wind power goal in the state’s plan. Wind farms produced about 7 percent of all electricity last year, up from less than 1 percent in 2010.

While the Trump administration continues to endorse pollution, California has reached a deal with Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW to produce more fuel-efficient cars, a standard that will affect vehicles all over the country.

Starting in January, the California city of Berkeley will ban natural gas hookups in new multi-family construction in most cases. This is one part of an effort to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and since energy use in buildings accounts for about 25 percent of those emissions, this will help the state as it seeks to meet the goal of 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2045.

The notion that this is happening in California will have some rolling their eyes. Instead, they should be thinking about what New York needs to be doing as it pursues a similar goal requiring an 85 percent reduction from 1990 levels over the next three decades. That legislation has just become law. Everything we do concerning energy from now on needs to be done in that context.

It will start with a new committee, the 22-member New York State Climate Action Council which is supposed to come up with recommend mandates, regulations and incentives in three years to ensure that utilities get 70 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2030, up substantially from the 26 percent last year.

In that context, the decision in Berkeley is not that radical. If these buildings cannot use natural gas, they will most likely have to use electricity. Not that long ago electric power came from plants fueled by oil or coal, heavy polluters. Many of those plants switched to natural gas in an effort to reduce, but not eliminate, emissions. In a zero carbon future, such buildings will most likely use electricity for most if not all power and most if not all of that electricity will be produced by solar, wind, hydro or other non-polluting sources.

There is a pattern emerging. While we talk a lot about reducing our reliance on plants that create pollution in favor of switching to sources that do not, that is a narrow focus on supply. What about demand? What are we going to do, what are we willing to do, to make sure that the ways we consume energy change in ways that either use less or create less pollution or, most likely, both.

Look at it one way and we have three years to wait for a committee to tell us what we need to do. Look at it another, and we have three years to change our habits, to study ways that we can reduce our own carbon footprints in consistent and meaningful ways.

Online: https://bit.ly/2OwbnlW

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Cooperation vital to Lake Ontario efforts

The Auburn Citizen

July 28One casualty of today’s bitterly divisive national political climate could easily be progress on regional issues that require state and national involvement.

We’ve seen that consequence occasionally creep into the flooding challenges along the Lake Ontario shoreline, but there have also been encouraging signs that New York state elected officials understand they need to work together.

Last week, a pair of congressmen representing shoreline communities, Republican U.S. Rep. John Katko and Democratic U.S. Rep Joe Morelle, came together to propose legislation to authorize the Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Study, which would fund work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the eight Great Lakes states to form a strategic plan for infrastructure investments.

Another example will come Monday in Oswego, when planning committee members for the new Lake Ontario Resiliency and Economic Development Initiative Commission established by Gov. Andrew Cuomo will meet with regional officials, state commissioners and local stakeholders to discuss assets, risks and priority projects.

Both of these efforts, New York’s commission and the Army Corps’ study legislation, are important and need to rise above politics as usual.

And they also need to be incorporated with each other.

We hope to see Katko and Morelle take part in the state commission’s meetings, including Monday’s that will focus on Cayuga and Oswego counties. And we hope to see Cuomo and his resilience commission be a vocal advocate for the bill to fund the Army Corps work.

With everyone working together, clearly focused on helping deal with the problem and not on who gets credit or blame, these initiatives can make a positive difference for New Yorkers along the shoreline.

Online: https://bit.ly/2Yxu4cv

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Voter protection should remain in the states’ hands

The Leader-Herald

July 30U.S. senators were told last week that the federal government should have a bigger role in protecting states’ election systems from computer hackers such as those working for Russia.

That sounds reasonable. Proposals that Uncle Sam have more power over us almost always do.

A report submitted to the Senate, on Russian efforts to interfere with U.S. elections, suggests Moscow is aided by limitations on our federal government’s ability to protect state election systems.

“We would not ask a local sheriff to go to war against the missiles, planes and tanks of the Russian army. We shouldn’t as a county election (information technology) employee to fight a war against the full capabilities and resources of Russia’s cyber army,” commented Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, after seeing the report.

But then, Wyden added, “That approach failed in 2016 and it will fail again.”

Not true, at least regarding the 2016 election.

An enormous amount of misinformation - just what Moscow desires - has been circulated about Russian meddling in 2016.

It is true Kremlin hackers made numerous attempts to infiltrate U.S. election systems. Traces of those attacks have been detected in every state. In many states, the Russians had no success whatsoever in even accessing data.

Perhaps the most effective assault was in Illinois, where Russian hackers got into the voter registration database. Records of about 200,000 voters were accessed, but nothing was changed.

The bottom line on 2016 is that not a single vote was altered by the Russians anywhere in the United States.

Perhaps those county sheriffs or, rather county and state election officials, are more capable than Wyden believes.

In some ways, federal control of election systems throughout the nation would be a gift to the Russians. They could focus on overcoming one security strategy rather than 50.

It would be foolish for Warner, LaRose and their counterparts elsewhere to say no to federal assistance. But there is a vast difference between that and federal control. That should remain in the states’ hands.

Online: https://bit.ly/2ysDw2m

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Dash, body cams for state police just make sense

The Utica Observer-Dispatch

July 26

No one doing a job that they’re paid to do should object to themselves being videotaped at work.

That is especially true for law enforcement officials. That way, when something goes wrong, there can be documentation to support them.

But when that documentation isn’t available, things can get messy. That’s the case involving Luke Patterson, who was shot and killed by a state trooper on May 23 while walking along Interstate 84 in the Orange County town of Montgomery. Unlike many other police shootings across the U.S., no video of the confrontation exists to help determine what happened.

That’s because New York State Police officers are not equipped with dashboard or body cameras. According to a nationwide Associated Press survey, New York is one of just five states where the primary state law enforcement agency doesn’t have them.

It’s time they did.

It certainly would help in this case. According to the Associated Press, Patterson, a chef who owned two restaurants, was walking by himself along the shoulder of the road around 2 a.m. after they responded to a report of a vehicle abandoned in the road. One trooper got out to talk with Patterson while a second drove alongside.

State police Maj. Pierce Gallagher told the AP that Patterson, 41, ignored the troopers and did not comply with any commands. He said the trooper on foot fatally shot him after Patterson made a “sudden movement” to try to open the police car door. Patterson was not armed.

Under New York law, officers are only permitted to use lethal force when they reasonably believe it necessary to defend themselves or the public from what they believe to be the use of “unlawful deadly force by another person.”

While a dash camera likely would not have recorded an attempt by Patterson to get into the patrol car, a body cam would have. State police have neither. Officials say state police once used VHS and later digital cameras on a limited number of vehicles but it didn’t have the funds to maintain the VHS equipment and the digital cameras required “costly maintenance.”

It seems that a state that had more than $12 million in cost overruns at new I Love NY highway rest areas (poor planning, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says), among other wasteful expenditures could find the cash for something worthwhile - like a camera system that would benefit both state police and the public they serve. In fact, law enforcement experts have praised the use of police cameras, arguing that the technology can increase transparency and is well worth the cost.

They also say the cameras can be a benefit to both officers and citizens. In recent years:

. Body camera footage cleared a Texas trooper after he was falsely accused of sexual assault by a woman he arrested.

. Dashboard camera footage sparked protests over the killing of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was shot by a white Chicago police officer. The footage showed the teen veering away from authorities, images that contradicted officers’ claims that he lunged at them with a knife. The officer was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.

. Body camera footage played a key role in the conviction of a former Dallas-area officer who shot and killed a black, unarmed 15-year-old boy. The jury was unconvinced by the officer’s argument that he feared for his partner’s life when he opened fire into a car driving away from a large house party in 2017.

Luke Patterson’s father, Mark, said that on the night his son was shot, Luke had stopped at a gas station but didn’t have his wallet and subsequently ran out of gas on the highway. He said the lack of police cameras shows political “stupidity” and a lack of courage from state lawmakers. He’s right.

Police have a tough enough job today, especially given the number of unstable people they must deal with most every day. Cameras to record their encounters just make sense.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James plans to investigate the Patterson killing. In a report on a separate death this past May, her office recommended that state police get body cameras.

Somebody needs to listen. Legislators?

Online: https://bit.ly/2LTBeSu