Also on today’s menu:
Fuel Assistance For Middle-Income Residents
Attorneys Seek Injunction In Misuse Of Education Funds
Perhaps There Was Something To It After All
Spoiler alert: My story on vulnerabilities in the EZ Pass system will be published later today. A team of cybersecurity experts who test systems for weaknesses were able to obtain usernames and passwords leading to the credentials of every government official in New Hampshire. The Department of Transportation maintains that there are no EZ Pass vulnerabilities.
It was interesting, therefore, to see that — like the Legislature’s decision to use taxpayer money to reimburse people who made risky investments in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme — the Governor and Council have decided to hire the ATOM Group LCC of Portsmouth to pay cyber ransom in cryptocurrency.
The $210,000 contract provides 200 hours of cybersecurity per year for four years and 100 hours of cybersecurity testing and remediation a year through December 2026. The money comes from federal funds provided to the New Hampshire Department of Information Technology whose commissioner, Denis Goulet, said the contract amount is a discount obtained through a public-private partnership forged by the New Hampshire Public Risk Management Exchange (PRIMEX.)
In addition to attempting to provide cybersecurity, the contract calls for the ATOM Group to negotiate with hackers if they succeed in getting through and installing ransomware. “[W]hat the data group and the insurance industry have found is if you have native speakers who speak Chinese, Russian, or whatever country is the origin of the ransomware attack, you have a much better chance of getting your ransom negotiated down, and in some cases, down to nothing,” Goulet said.
If negotiations fail or reach a compromise amount, ATOM Group would pay the ransom from a cryptocurrency fund it keeps for such situations. “If we were to need it, it would be there immediately,” Goulet said. “We would have to reimburse on the value of that crypto but we wouldn’t have to go through all the hoops… [T]his is a way of shortening that time frame” for getting systems operational again.
Fuel Assistance For Middle-Income Residents
The Executive Council this week unanimously approved contracts to use money from the state’s general fund to provide $650 in relief to middle-income residents facing high fuels costs this winter.
Belknap-Merrimack County CAP will distribute $5.4 million; the Manchester area is getting $15 million; Southwest Community Services in Keene is receiving $4.6 million; Dover’s Strafford County CAP is receiving $2.9 million; and Tri-County CAP in Berlin will be receiving roughly $6.2 million. The money will go directly to heat and electric utilities through a $200 credit on electricity and $450 for fuel for those who qualify. (To find out if they qualify, residents will need to provide a copy of their 2021 tax return and a copy of their annual home heating fuel and electric usage history.)
House Speaker Sherman Packard said the credits will benefit middle-income residents who do not qualify for the federal Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program because their income is a bit too high.
Republicans at the news conference also said they might be willing to revisit biomass production in-state, provided it is not cost-prohibitive to the consumer. Governor Chris Sununu had vetoed a bill that would have kept biomass plants operating to help diversify the state’s energy supply, leaving New Hampshire mostly reliant on fossil fuels.
Attorneys Seek Injunction In Misuse Of Education Funds
The Union Leader reports that attorneys in a school funding lawsuit focused on the widely-varying tax rates among New Hampshire communities have filed a motion seeking to stop municipalities from using the excess money raised through a statewide education tax to offset local property taxes.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys say in a filing with the Grafton County Superior Court that such use of the statewide education property tax (SWEPT) is illegal. “Effectively they’re not paying the full amount of SWEPT,” said attorney Natalie LaFlamme who was joined in the action by Andru Volinsky and John Tobin.
Almost two-thirds of school funding comes from local property taxes, with a small percentage coming from the state. Another 10 percent or so comes through the statewide education property tax, which actually is another local property tax, disguised as state funding.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court in its Claremont II decision ruled that New Hampshire’s constitution requires the state to fund its public schools through taxes that are “administered in a manner that is equal in valuation and uniform in rate throughout the State.”
The lawsuit states, “In 1997, the New Hampshire Supreme Court rejected the state education taxing scheme… Now, the State is primed to once again impose a tax using the same mechanisms previously held unconstitutional that will result in some taxpayers paying up to seven times as much for education funding as their wealthier counterparts.”
Perhaps There Was Something To It After All
Federal agents investigating Hunter Biden’s finances related to overseas business ties and consulting work have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase, but it will be up to the U.S. Attorney in Delaware to decide on whether to file such charges.
The investigation into Hunter Biden began in 2018 and became a central focus for then-president Donald Trump during his unsuccessful 2020 reelection effort. Over time, investigators within multiple agencies focused closely on whether Hunter Biden failed to report all of his income, and whether he lied on gun purchase paperwork in 2018.
Agents determined months ago that they had assembled a viable criminal case against Hunter Biden, but it is ultimately up to prosecutors at the Justice Department to decide whether the evidence is strong enough to lead to a likely conviction at trial.
Given the intense political interest in a criminal probe involving the son of a sitting president, Attorney General Merrick Garland has made clear that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, David C. Weiss, who was nominated by Trump in late 2017, is supervising the case.
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