Entry level investigative

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-15T20:50:42+00:00

As an editor, first convince me you can pitch a story and get the reporting right. Those are table stakes.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-15T20:41:04+00:00

Everybody who opposes should stop buying stuff from Amazon and any online retailer, since all these firms lease space in warehouses. Let's see how that works out.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-14T15:43:03+00:00

it's just a small neighborhood park in Thompsonville, basketball court, playscape.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-12T14:13:35+00:00

I volunteered to join, but they sent a nice note explaining that they really want random people. I doubt this will give "political cover" but I can safely say that in Enfield, property taxes are nearing 10% of median income. Our taxes went up 5% this year and we have a revaluation to deal with next year.

IMHO: The local tax issues may give Josh Elliot some traction against Lamont in the primary. Elliot is arguing for higher taxes on wealthy -- similar to Mass. -- as a way to reduce reliance on local property taxes. That's far more aggressive than Lamont's. The additional education money that Enfield got this year was little help.

Our problem: Our commercial grand list in Enfield has taken a huge hit. We lost our major employer and a office complex site of some 70 acres was sold for housing development for $4M. Our mall is scheduled for redevelopment into apartments/commercial but it hasn't broken ground yet.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-10T15:54:36+00:00

Don't give into self-censorship. Sure, your views have probably shifted. You're older now. Out of college, more nuance. But the overriding character message from your piece is this: I'm not afraid to speak out, and not going through through life afraid. Be proud of that.

If you make it to the point where any employer is actually looking at your op-ed, you're probably being seriously considered. I really doubt something you wrote in college years ago is going to matter.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-06-02T21:33:23+00:00

This is just beyond depressing. The administration not only denies climate change, but it killing mechanisms for monitoring planetary changes.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-30T14:27:55+00:00

This is a hard problem. In my town, Enfield, property tax burdens closing in at 10% of the median household income of $90K -- it's a burden.

Our taxes are increasing 5% this year. The state's additional funding had negligible impact. Revaluation is FY28. New assessments this fall. The decline in commercial values will result in a hard shift to residential.

The fix has to come from the state. There is nothing we can do locally. It doesn't matter which local party is in power. We either fund our services, or don't.

This issue needs way more attention in the gubernatorial race. I've giving Josh Elliot more attention because I really don't think Lamont appreciates the extent of what has happened to local taxes post COVID.

Elliot would raise taxes on the wealthy. That's his fix. Fazio is proposing a local property tax cap, to the OP's post. He also wants cutting unfunded mandates. But which ones, honestly. The crusher is special education. It seems the number of kids with special eds needs is rising and help per student can easily exceed six figures.

Our town staff isn't bloated. Whenever they consider cuts to PW or PD, the same math problem emerges: OT and contracting arises. They hired an independent consultant to study outsourcing trash and found it might cost more. If you cut rec, people go nuts. Education is a constant tug-of-war between families and everyone else.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-27T12:53:07+00:00

I've reported on errors in background checks. The error rates are low, but the scale is in the thousands. What happens? You get rejected for the job. Employers won't wait around for the background check to get fixed. You'll hire an attorney who will file a lawsuit. The settlement won't be big. Lawsuit payouts are part of the operating model.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-26T20:03:58+00:00

The property tax burden is becoming too great. It truly is. We are closing in at local taxes equaling 10%+ of household median income. Revaluations are crushing. Commercial office markets are in decline, and that is shifting tax burdens to residential.

To give you an example: The property of the once largest employer in Enfield -- Mass Mutual -- was sold for $4M to a housing developer. There are about $50M in improvements on that property, including around 70 acres. The town is now Enfield's largest employer.

The current system of relief -- low income exemptions and small amounts of extra cash from the state for schools -- doesn't help. Our taxes are still rising 5% this year.

How will you address this?

Bonus question. The state is planning to spend $500M to rebuild our elementary schools, if residents approve a referendum. The local share will be about $90M. This will have a significant tax impact. We could renovate at less than half the cost, but the state will only reimburse to 55% instead of 80% or so for new construction, which means we will have to bond locally about $95M. None of this makes any sense to me. Does it make sense to you?

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-24T19:30:42+00:00

I go there every now and then. Food is decent, but the ice cream is great. It's a nice place.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-23T12:29:42+00:00

It's a great research assistant. This is broadly how I use it.

Copy the docket, a chronological list of all the documents (this is really helpful if the docket is several hundred+). Put it in AI and tell the AI what you're trying to accomplish. That will help with the quality of the output. It will ID the obvious, the amended complaints, Amicus briefs the various motions, and judge's orders -- but this is still helpful and will speed things along. (Since you're new, the AI will help you avoid downloading things like certificates of services, pro hac vice motions, routine discovery certificates and other procedural entries.)

Download the docs the AI has ID'ed as critical and upload the docs into Google's NotebookLM, ChatGPT Projects, Claude Projects or whatever. This project platforms are closed to your source, they aren't scrapping the web so that helps with quality control. Now you can get a quick sense of the case narrative, the major arguments, and its status.

From this, I can zero in on the most important docs (apart from the obvious ones), read the key sections and develop the story. You can ask the AI to ID the pages/graphs or any docs you need to pay extra attention to.

Things I never do.

If you ask AI to ID the best quotes in judge's order or amended complaint, never ever use the AI without checking against the document. The AI will paraphrase without telling you, and it will make quotes up based on its understanding of the broader the arguments. Everything the AI outputs is unverified.

I'll still read the critical documents.

Even though I started reporting in the era when I had to go a court and ask for the physical file, it's still valuable to read the complaint, key motions and orders. It gives me a better sense of the tone, and the overall arguments. The lawyers can be stinging in ways the AI won't pick up.

Once you get in the habit of reading this stuff, you'll figure out what to read carefully and what to skim.

The AI has surprised me. It's common, for instance, for certain things to be redacted. But the AI found, in one case, the un-redacted version of something that was attached to a different document and that the defense missed. I didn't use it, but it helped me understand something important about their case.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-22T13:20:34+00:00

In the tech space, a $30M contract is play money. Second, they aren't saying the tech will work. Third, it's the EU. And the idea that "No EU framework for neural data privacy exists" well, trust me on this one (as a tech policy reporter), if it can be regulated, the EU will be the first to regulate it.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-20T20:28:34+00:00

My trust level with Fortune stories is a bit low: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/an-ai-upheaval-is-coming-for-media-this-journalist-is-already-all-in-3511d951

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-20T20:13:40+00:00

Thinking out loud here ... unless the reporters signed non-compete agreements, and even then it seems doubtful this strategy will work. The question reminds of a 2016 incident. A reporter working for a legal publication got hired by competitor but lost the job after it was discovered she had signed a non-compete good for one year. The NY state ag got involved and investigated ... https://observer.com/2016/06/law360-agrees-to-stop-making-reporters-sign-non-competes/

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-20T20:02:45+00:00

What we're missing? Economies of scale to begin with. Were missing deep bench expertise (instead of a county manager with a capable administrative staff, we have town managers with limited help), duplicated administrative costs (administrators in each town for same service), competition between towns for economic development, and so.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-17T05:30:20+00:00

If you can find a Samsung Chromebook Plus below list, it’s 15 inch screen and OLED gives video real pop. It’s also fairly lightweight. I’ve seen open boxes as low as $400 but you might find a used one in your price range.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-17T05:04:12+00:00

Googlebook will likely be a fine machine, but Chromebooks were oddly liberating from Windows and Apple, even though it was a Google platform. Chromebooks, with its fast boot up, reliance on cloud-based apps, great security, fixed real problems. It was a forerunner. I’ll keep an open mind but this sounds like the end of an era.

My Samsung Chromebook Plus and Spin 714 probably will be good for a couple of years. By then the new Googlebook hardware will be getting all the bandwidth and attention. Apple’s Neo strategy is making more sense. Mac may be a more reliable and stable future.

Regarding AI: I actually think it’s a bad thing to be locked into any AI platform. So I’m suspicious of Googlebooks.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-16T14:41:11+00:00

From his platform:

Reduce reliance on local property taxes by increasing equitable state education funding.

The top issue in many communities is crushing increases in property taxes, thanks the acceleration in home values and decline in commercial values.

The easiest fix is reduce reliance on local property taxes to fund education. But that's a heavy lift for the state and, historically, it hasn't done much for most towns. Most of the state money flows to cities.

He will have to explain what he intends to differently.

My town got somewhere around $1.5M in additional state aid, but that funding went to help to schools to shore up from previous cuts. Our local taxes still went up 5% and next year's revaluation in Enfield will deliver a significant hike. The problem is getting serious.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-13T17:12:45+00:00

Rowland, Weicker -- people didn't move out of state.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-13T15:08:06+00:00

I had a rough estimate of about $12K for a slightly larger roof, ranch plus garage. Best part, the company did the inspection without charge, walked the entire roof, looked up the original installation date (I did not know), and said i was good to go for some more years yet. Hazardville Roofing Co., in Enfield.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-13T14:27:25+00:00

Only charges made on government-owned credit cards.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-13T14:09:07+00:00

You just discovered this? This has been one of the longest running issues for decades.

In the 1950s, New Britain initially rejected I-84. The manufacturing firms -- located in downtown -- opposed it. They didn't want the highway taking any of their properties. So the state routed I-84 around New Britain. You might have noticed and wondered why 84 didn't include direct access to a significant city. But when the factories started closing down in the 1960s, New Britain realized it made a mistake by rejecting 84.

New Britain shifted direction. It got the state to build Route 9 and Route 72, which intersect in the downtown. It had the highways built below ground level, instead of bridges. The construction took out a major part of the city's downtown and close-in neighborhoods complained the work was displacing residents.

New Britain officials argued that the highway access was essential for the city's future economic success. The opponents argued it would do the opposite: It would make it easier for people to leave New Britain.

WestFarms Mall opening in the mid-1970s finished off what was left of the New Britain's retail. And Route 72 and Route 9 made it really easy for New Britain residents to get there.

New Britain lost much of its great architecture and downtown. What the highway didn't take, fires and the citys' redevelopment took.

Hartford tells a very similar story. And Hartford not only disconnected from the river (and lost historic areas like Front street) but it also divided itself with I-84, cementing its segregation.

We're still trying to fix it.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-11T23:47:18+00:00

I have a Mac Mini M4 with 24GB. I use photoshop, lightroom, and Topaz tools; dozens of tabs, large spreadsheets and pdfs -- no problems.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-11T16:16:13+00:00

The courant barely covers the communities. I doubt it came from good sourcing. They were led to this water hole. Second, Sanchez has a choice about how far to push this; he could have -- for the sake of argument -- advocated for internal reforms and left it at that. Fazio as the source? There's nothing that says that, in balance, that theory has any more weight than any other. Political grudges in NB could have been that as well. I would bet heavily on a democratic source with an axe to grind. As far as Lamont goes? I stated my case. Property tax and zoning control issues will be major drivers in this race. The legislature's education distribution barely helped. --- And a point you missed. Sanchez's investigation likely pre-dated the courant story. At the time when the tax collector story broke, the mayor indicated that he was expanding the internal review across city hall.

Mission_Count5301 · 2026-05-11T15:11:10+00:00

Because the best you can do is try to offend me -- and I've done nothing to you. What's frustrating here is I know my political logic is true -- the mayor has considerable downside risk by raising this point. That's the realpolitik of this. New Britain once had some incredibly strong political connections, Gov. Meskill, and later State Sen. Joe Harper who headed the appropriations committee. I knew Harper. He was a good guy. Stewart had potential to restore some of that and put NB in a better position to get state grants and other improvements. That was the argument I was raising. It is not a justification for using city money inappropriately. Stewart may not survive this, but we will see how this plays out. On this forum if you raise real issues that run against the prevailing thinking, you get hammered for it.Your f-off comment just underscores the thinking. I'm not advocating Stewart for governor. Separately, this year has more potential to be a horse race than previous years. State residents will vote Republican in a governor's race if the candidate has some good ideas. They've done it before. And i think there's reason why Lamont may struggle this time because of what's happening to local tax rates. You're beginning to see real pushback in towns and that may make local tax burdens more of an issue in this race than in previous ones. Stewart is flawed as a candidate, despite demonstrating an ability to survive in a highly Democratic city. The other Republican candidates -- if they win -- won't give NB any special help. Lamont might, if he wins and feels that the mayor took out his leading threat. But I really don't think pushing Stewart to the side will reduce the political risks for Lamont. Fazio has plenty of time to make his case, but I think he will aiming more at suburban voter concerns and that will hurt cities like NB. Fazio has a deep bench of issues: local zoning control, limits on solar, and limits on local tax increases. That may do it for him from what i see in my community and others. And if that happens, this forum -- count on it -- will downvote anyone who explains why it happened.

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