A drone monitors a restricted area. Election denier Mike Lindell is touting the use of drone-mounted devices to monitor polling places. (Getty Images)

The Kenton County Board of Elections unanimously voted to explicitly disallow the presence of wireless monitoring devices at polling places on Election Day.?

The meeting’s topic came as the result of discussions that Kenton County Board of Election Chair Gabrielle Summe had at a recent county clerks meeting, where she heard about My Pillow Founder and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s efforts to hawk a device he contends can detect if a voting machine is connected to the internet.

“These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night,” said Summe, the Kenton County clerk.

“I just want to have a prepared way of handling this,” Summe added later in the meeting.?

Uneasily dubbed “WMDs” or “wireless monitoring devices,” the devices are about the size of a hardback novel and can be attached to flying robotic drones or carried by hand. Lindell first presented the device at a right-wing election conspiracy event in August, where he claimed that the devices could be used to uncover election fraud.?

“We’ve been told a lie over years now that the machines are not on the internet,” Lindell said at the event. “… What if I told you that there was a device that’s been made for the first time in history that could tell you that that machine was online?”

Lindell said the devices could be attached to flying drones and flown around polling places to scan the area for Wi-Fi signals and the devices connected to them. He turned one of the devices on at the event, which seemingly detected the audience members’ phone hot spots and other local signals before sorting them into categories. A projector showed the results on the wall behind Lindell.

Lindell claimed that the device would then send the collected data for additional analysis at a “command center” in an undisclosed location.?

It’s unclear from the video alone if the devices can actually detect Wi-Fi signals or if it was a contrivance of the presentation, but the board members all agreed that the usage of such devices at a polling place would be in clear violation of Kentucky law.?

“We can’t allow any chance of interference with the election,” said Kenton County Sheriff Chuck Korzenborn.?

Broadly speaking, photography and other media capture is not allowed at polling locations. Voters are allowed to bring in their smart phones to polling places, and they can take selfies with their ballots. News outlets are also allowed limited use of photography, but most other forms of media capture are illegal.?

Kentucky Revised Statute 117.236 states plainly:?

“No election officer, voter, or other person permitted by law within the voting room, except for challengers appointed under KRS 117.315, shall use paper, telephone, a personal telecommunications device, or a computer or other information technology system for the purpose of creating a checkoff list or otherwise recording the identity of voters within the voting room, except for the official use of the precinct signature roster that is furnished or approved by the State Board of Elections and is otherwise permitted by law.”

The election board will post this law and other prohibitions outside of polling places on Election Day to ensure that voters are apprised of the laws against election interference.?

“You can self take a selfie of yourself with your ballot. That’s it,” said Republican Board of Elections Representative Scott Kimmich. “Nothing else can be photographed. Nothing else can be recorded. And people need to know that. Otherwise, it’s voter intimidation or tampering with the election outcome, and they will be prosecuted.”

Election conspiracy theorists like Lindell have argued that voting machines, contrary to official statements, are connected to the internet, which allows nefarious agents to falsify election results. President Joe Biden’s victory against against former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election is a particular focal point for election conspiracies.?

Although individual cases of voter fraud do occur, most large-scale conspiracy theories that Lindell and his allies like to throw around have been discredited. Still, the theories continue to hold appeal in the right-wing of the Republican Party, and even some local candidates, such as former Erlanger Council Member Steve Knipper, who lost the GOP nomination for Kentucky secretary of state to incumbent Michael Adams this year, have openly endorsed claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.?

Voting machine vendors vary from county to county, but each vendor must pass strict federal and state guidelines before they can be used. Per Kentucky statue, all voting machines in the commonwealth are air-gapped, meaning they lack the technology for internet connectivity. The only three vendors certified in Kentucky are Hart InterCivic, Election Systems & Software and MicroVote. Kenton County uses Electronic Systems & Software machines, the marketing materials of which state they’re never connected to the internet.?

“We all feel very confident that none of our equipment is connected to the Internet or can be accessed by the Internet,” Summe said.?

In spite of this, the board members were aware that most polling places as well as some public places have Wi-Fi infrastructure.?

“That would be kind of hard not to say that any facility that has Wi-Fi available is not going to show up on a device that says there’s an internet connection,” Summe said. “So what is the true purpose of this?”

Summe and others thought that these devices, if they work, could be used to collect data and other information from voters’ smart phones.?

“That’s when I was concerned because the more I thought about it, I thought, well, is it going to interfere with what happens on election day?” Summe said. “Is it intended to modify something? Is it designed to come out with a specific result to prove something…?”

The board concluded that an official statement explicitly disallowing the use of the machines was warranted in case someone was caught trying to use one or if someone asked a poll worker if they could bring one into a polling place.?

The board canceled their normal meeting for next month due to its proximity to Election Day, but the board members will be available to the public all day on Nov. 7 to deal with any issues that may arise.?

To see deadlines on voting and get instructions on the different ways to vote, visit the Kenton County Board of Elections website. The final day to request a mail-in absentee ballot is Oct. 24, 2023.

This article is republished from LINK nky.

The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge spans the Ohio River connecting Covington and Cincinnati. (City of Covington photo via LINK nky.)

Covington Mayor Joe Meyer spoke to Kentucky legislators about the effect of work-from-home labor policies on city finances at a Kentucky House Budget Review Subcommittee meeting last week. He asked the committee members to consider changes to local tax policies that would allow cities to become less reliant on occupational license fees, often referred to as payroll taxes.

“In the long run, the General Assembly needs to come to grips with the reality of the need to diversify revenue options for cities,” Meyer said to the committee. “We need reliable options for sources of revenue to provide the services that are expected by our people.”

Meyer asked the committee to consider legislative alternatives to relying on occupational taxes for cities to fund themselves in the face of changing labor conditions brought about by the pandemic.

Specifically, Meyer discussed how work-from-home policies had siphoned off occupational tax dollars from Covington’s finances, which have historically relied on occupational taxes for revenue.?

“Overnight, our general fund revenue was reduced by 12%,” Meyer said. “Dollar-wise, our general fund… should be about $60, $61, [or] $62 million. It has been reduced this year to $54 million.”

Signs of a problem came earlier this year when the city’s Finance Director, Steve Webb, made a presentation demonstrating that the general fund’s expenses had exceeded its revenue.

Webb attributed the fund deficit to declining payroll tax revenues following the rise of work-from-home policies at the city’s large employers. Specifically, they cited Fidelity Investments, which employs nearly 5,500 people at its office in Covington. Meyer referenced employers generally at the hearing on Wednesday but did not mention Fidelity by name.

This shortfall did not occur in other sections of the city’s budget, most of which were funds used for special projects and programs. Much of the money for those other funds come from grants and other monetary sources unrelated to local tax collection.

Fidelity sent workers home at the onset of the pandemic, but they were allowed to return to the office voluntarily in 2022. Today, employees operate on a hybrid work arrangement with five required in-office days per month. Otherwise, employees are free to work from home, an arrangement many employees still take advantage of, several Fidelity employees told LINK nky.?

As a result, Fidelity began collecting payroll taxes based on where employees were scheduled to work. Many Fidelity employees don’t live in Covington, so if they’re working from home, Fidelity withholds taxes to the jurisdiction where the employees complete their work rather than the jurisdiction where the office is located. Fidelity confirmed this policy in a statement in June.

Covington has made up for the lost revenue by reallocating federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, money to cover expenses. While this has allowed the city to continue functioning, it’s put a hold on all of the special projects on which the city had initially planned to spend the money, which included everything from affordable housing initiatives to expanded IT infrastructure.?

“If it were not for ARPA, we would have had to immediately layoff about 50 city employees,” Meyer said.?

Most of the city’s employees are essential services, including first responders like police and fire as well as maintenance and public works staff.?

“In order not to affect direct services and public safety we would have to eliminate the entire management structure of the city,” if it weren’t for the cushion provided by ARPA, Meyer said.

Moreover, Meyer said that any decline in essential services could temper new economic growth.?

As an alternative, Meyer pointed to a system used in Georgetown in Scott County.?

“We suggest the legislative fix to specifically base a locus for the remission of the occupational license fee to the city in which the business is located,” Meyer said.?

In other words, employers would automatically pull payroll taxes for the place where the business is actually located, whether the employees are working remotely or not.?

Employees who do not complete their work locally can then “apply for [a] refund,” he added.?

“Something as simple as requiring the employer to withhold according to the jurisdiction in which they’re located would solve our problems,” Meyer said. “And it would also be fair to the employees because they would still be able to get their refunds, and it would reduce the administrative burden on the employer.”

This would only be a short-term fix, however.?

“I’m not here in a position to advocate for any specific proposal on how to do this,” Meyer said. “I just want to point out that this is a very real problem, and I do believe that you, the General Assembly, should put itself in the position in the future to evaluate and look at how we can finance local governments better by supporting that constitutional amendment that really gives you all the authority to deal with this.”

Covington and other cities are reliant upon property taxes, payroll taxes and taxes on insurance premiums for revenue. The state levies sales taxes at 6%, but counties and cities do not have the authority to impose additional sales taxes. The state also imposes a flat income tax on residents of 5%.?

Compared to other states, Meyer argued, this tax structure leaves municipalities constrained in how they can collect revenue.?

“Income tax is better than an occupational license fee,” Meyer said. “The sales tax enables us to to deal with economic growth. There are other revenue options out there, and I’m not picking one or the other here. I’m just describing that those are the reality.

“Cincinnati has an income tax, not occupational license fee tax. They have sales taxes, and that’s the environment in which we have to compete.”

Committee member Sen. Robby Mills (R-Henderson) wanted to know what reassurances Meyer could give against local governments abusing additional leeway in how they taxed residents and businesses.?

Meyer responded by saying that there would be electoral consequences for local officials who played fast and loose with taxes.?

“If we began to step out of line with our tax and service policies, we’re directly accountable to those voters,” Meyer said.?

In addition, Meyer said that public referenda could be used to mitigate the risk of over-taxation.?

“Take it to the people; let them vote on it,” Meyer said. “There are a number of variables that can be done there.

“Our issue is this: we have to prepare for the future… We’re still stuck with local government revenue policies that were established 75, 80, 100, 200 years ago. They’re not adequate for whatever the future is, and the only thing all of us will agree on is the future will be different from what we have today.”

Watch a recording of the full committee hearing at the Legislative Research Commission’s YouTube page.

This article is republished from LINK nky.

The commission is seeking input from Kentuckians on how people with mental illness, substance abuse disorders and disabilities could be better served by the legal system. (Getty Images)

The Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health held a town hall at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington Sept. 6. This was the second in a series of town halls the commission will hold throughout the state this year. The next one will be Wednesday in Ashland. (For a full listing, see below.)

“These town hall meetings throughout the state will be analyzed by our staff to identify resources, needs and opportunities for the commission and our community partners to act on and improve experience for those with mental illness, substance use disorder, intellectual or developmental disabilities,” said Kentucky Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Debra Hembree Lambert, who chairs the commission.?

The commission was established in August last year to explore alternative ways the judicial, criminal justice and other state systems interact with people with mental illness, substance abuse problems and disabilities. The town halls are one of the commission’s means of collecting feedback and recommendations from community members and professionals.?

The event was well-attended, and audience members included representatives from local law enforcement, the courts and private mental health and substance abuse agencies, including St. Elizabeth Hospital, Sun Behavioral Health and the Northern Kentucky Area Development District.

Several other officials also attended: Kenton County Attorney Stacy Tapke, Kenton County Circuit Court Clerk John Middleton, Kentucky Court of Appeals Chief Judge Larry Thompson and Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller.?

A panel of commission members headed up the event. It consisted of Lambert, Secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet of Health and Family Services Eric Friedlander, the commission’s Behavioral Health Liaison Jennifer Van Ort-Hazzard and Dr. Katherine Marks from the Kentucky Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities.?

The panel invited people in the audience to share their stories and thoughts of how people with mental illness, substance abuse disorders and disabilities could be better served by the legal system. The hope was that statements given could be used to craft new policies and mechanisms for better serving those populations.?

People were hesitant to speak at first, but eventually, representatives from different service agencies in the region came up to share the things they liked about how the region dealt with mental illness and related issues. Many of the initial comments were laudatory.

“I’m proud to say that I work with Kenton County because it’s one of the most successful counties I’ve seen when it comes to re-entry,” said Gerry Long, the Northern Kentucky liaison for Addiction Recovery Care, a service agency with numerous locations throughout the state.

Long is in active recovery himself, recently celebrating six years of sobriety, and has dedicated his life to helping others get services.

“I’ve worked with a lot of these people in this room,” Long said. “[Kenton County is] light-years above some of the other counties that I work in when it comes to this.”

As more and more people took to the microphone, however, attendees became more comfortable voicing some of their concerns.?

Shuffled between hospitals and jails

Jim Beiting, the CEO of Transitions, a residential treatment center, wanted to see more resources put towards the treatment of gambling addiction, which he said was often overlooked.?

He said that about 24% of the patients who come through Transitions have self-reported struggles with gambling.

“Gambling addiction gets people into the criminal justice system, but there’s not that referral to treatment,” Beiting said, adding that he would like to see more incentives and policy changes to help people who struggle with gambling addiction get proper treatment rather than being thrown around in the justice system.?

Paul Dierig, the population coordinator at the Kenton County Detention Center, was also among the first to highlight some of the shortcomings in the system, particularly with people who had severe, long-term mental illness that made them dangerous to either themselves or others.?

According to Dierig, people with severe mental illness often get shuffled around between hospitals and jails, often with inadequate care.?

“So they’re down [at Eastern State Hospital] for maybe one or two days. They come back with medication, and they go right back to isolation. It’s just a process over and over again,” Deirig said.?

Friedlander agreed.?

“We need intervention before we send law enforcement out, who have 10 hours of training on behavioral health services” Friedlander said. “… We need to support a different way of crisis intervention, a different array of services around behavioral health.”

Friedlander discussed the closing of residential psychiatric facilities in the 1950s and 1960s.?

“The funding never followed,” Friedlander said. “And so we moved the whole population from psychiatric hospitals to corrections, and I think we’ve seen that accumulate and accelerate over the past 50 years.”

Todd Rice, a former police officer and chief deputy jailer at the Kenton County Detention Center, stepped up to say that one of the issues law enforcement encounters is the lack of established facilities for long-term mental health care, even though there are established facilities for substance abuse and other short-term mental health treatment.

“We don’t have any places to take these people,” Rice said. “All we can do is try to reason with them at the scene.”

By Rice’s telling, jails and detention centers are often at a loss for what to do. What’s more, sometimes people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness may not even understand the situation they’re in.

“They don’t understand what they’ve done, yet here we have them at a jail facility throughout the state of Kentucky because we’re full of them,” Rice said.

“We as police officers who are out there on the street need some place else and another tool in our toolbox to help these individuals,” Rice added. “Jail is not the place.”

Laurie Wilson, the social worker for the Campbell County Police Department, added to this criticism by drawing attention to the lack of mandatory follow-up care.?

Wilson is one of a handful of police social workers in the region. Police social workers review police reports daily to see who may benefit from services in lieu of conventional police action. She said that many people she encounters would benefit from consistent longer-term care, but there’s currently no mechanism to mandate people get services.?

Child care, transportation obstacles to recovery

“They might be stable at first on medication, but they’re not getting follow-up care,” Laurie Wilson said. “There’s no forced treatment for that.”

Jessa Green, who works for St. Elizabeth’s Journey Recovery Center, said that child care and transportation are among the biggest barriers for treatment.?

“Especially when you’re talking about these rural counties,” Green said.?

Jay Wilson — a public advocate for Campbell County who was very careful to say that his comments were his own and not necessarily a reflection of the public advocates’ office — wanted to see reforms around the state’s specialty courts and probation system.?

“A lot of people will be offered probation, and they won’t be able to complete it because of their addiction,” Jay Wilson said.?

He added that he believed prosecutors had too much discretionary power in granting access to drug courts and other specialty courts. According to Wilson, one can only get access to drug and mental health court if a prosecutor offers it or if a judge mandates it after someone’s “already violated their probation.”

Wilson wanted to see the power taken out of prosecutors’ hands and put in the hands of the courts generally.

“For instance, the courts can say, you know what, due to these circumstances for this one person, they deserve drug court or mental health court over and above that additional supervision and help rather than just going to probation,” Wilson said.

“I don’t blame parole officers for not being social workers,” he added. “They’re not. They’re not equipped and tasked to deal with the immense struggles that some of my clients face.”

“These are really important conversations,” Friedlander said. “So I don’t want you to feel that what you share would fall on deaf ears. … We know we have things we can improve.”

This article is republished from LINK nky.

The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge spans the Ohio River connecting Covington and Cincinnati. (City of Covington photo via LINK nky.)

The city of Covington has attributed its recent budget shortfalls to rising work-from-home policies.?

Covington’s finance director Steve Webb disclosed during a presentation at a city commission meeting on May 23 that the city’s general fund’s expenditures had exceeded its revenue for the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

The city’s finance department attributed the budget shortfall to declining payroll tax revenues following the rise of work-from-home policies at the city’s large employers. Specifically, they cited Fidelity Investments, which employs nearly 5,500 people at its office in Covington.

“We fall off the pace due to the implications of remote work situation with our largest employers,” said Webb at last week’s meeting. “As remote work has become normalized, these employers are now withholding and remitting portions of the occupational license tax to the jurisdictions where their employees are physically working.”

This shortfall did not occur in other sections of the city’s budget, most of which were funds used for special projects and programs. Much of the money for those other funds come from grants and other monetary sources unrelated to local tax collection.

Payroll tax has historically been a large chunk of Covington’s revenue and has accounted for 45% of the general fund’s revenue for the 2023 fiscal year thus far.?

For the 2022 fiscal year ending on June 30, 2022, payroll taxes and similar licensing fees accounted for about two-thirds of the fund’s revenue.?

This is not the first time the general fund has experienced a deficit. Expenditures have exceeded revenues for the two preceding quarters of the fiscal year.

The fund was also in deficit at the end of the last fiscal year and the end of the 2017 fiscal year, according to annual comprehensive financial reports from the city.?

A spokesperson from Fidelity confirmed that the company changed its tax withholding policy late last year to collect taxes for the locality where employees are scheduled to work.?

“Payroll taxes are deducted based on an associate’s scheduled location of work and designated for that geographic location accordingly,” the Fidelity spokesperson said. “As working trends continue to evolve, we will continue to assess this situation to ensure we and our associates are meeting our tax obligations accurately.”

Like many businesses, Fidelity changed its labor policies at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow employees to work from home.?

In spring 2020, management sent all but essential workers home to abide by shelter-in-place orders. Sources from within Fidelity indicate that the company had about 3,000 Covington employees at that time.?

Workers were allowed to return to the office voluntarily in 2022. Today employees operate on a hybrid work arrangement with five required in-office days per month. Otherwise, employees are free to work from home, an arrangement many employees still take advantage of, several employees said.?

The largest expense for Covington’s general fund since 2017 has been public safety costs, including salaries and benefits for firefighters and police, and has consistently taken up about 60% of the general fund’s expenditures.

Webb did not mention work-from-home policies in his presentation to the board in February.?

The comprehensive report for the 2022 fiscal year suggested that payroll tax collections were up.?

“Revenue from the payroll tax was far ahead of schedule as of October,” said the finance department in an email. “In fact, it was running on a pace to finish the fiscal year some $2.5 million ahead of projections.”

By the end of the calendar year, the email went on to say, growth had tapered off. By January, the city had noticed that payroll tax receipts had “dropped below the budgeted pace.”

St. Elizabeth, another large regional employer, spoke with LINK nky about their work arrangements and confirmed a hybrid work arrangement for many of its employees as well. St. Elizabeth’s Covington employee count is considerably smaller than Fidelity’s; however, employing only about 150 people in Covington. Other large employers in the city did not respond to calls to comment.?

The City Commission will take up the issue of next year’s budget at a special meeting this Saturday, June 3, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street. The meeting is open to the public.

This article is republished from LINK nky.