admin

Was Kristy Acevedo Negligent or Incompetent?

Kristy Acevedo holds the title of “Network Administrator” for the City of Lampasas. She and her superior, Monica Wright, are paid quite well ($180,000 in salary and benefits – Pay Group 30 for Monica and 22 for Kristy) to “maintain and troubleshoot all network systems and equipment” (this is taken directly from the City of Lampasas description of her job).

The city spends over $300,000 per year on the IT Department and has spent about $1.5 MILLION DOLLARS on that department over the last six years. They are proposing a huge increase to $374,000 this year alone.

So it’s hard to argue they don’t throw enough money at that department. Hell, Monica had enough cash to blow almost $100,000 on a NO-BID audio/visual system for City Council chambers last year, when she COULD have only spent $34,000, so they are clearly rolling in dough. Perhaps I have simply been right all along in saying they are totally unqualified and in way over their heads. Incompetent, is the word I am looking for here.

Employees of the city serve “at will” and can be dismissed at any time [Section 13.01 of the City Personnel Policy]. One of the many reasons for possible dismissal listed is “Incompetence or Neglect of Duty”

Now, this problem hasn’t even been resolved yet, so the finger pointing can wait until our TWO IT ‘experts’ have fixed their mess….but after the dust has settled, it seems City Council should be looking into how this was allowed to happen and whether our Network Administrator was incompetent or neglectful of her duties. Considering how many days off they get per year, there is about a 20% chance one of them wasn’t even at work last Friday!

The Finley-Spin Begins. Here is a TRUE Ransomware Timeline

City Hall is already starting to spin the narrative on this ransomware attack, so I felt it necessary to start and maintain a timeline of what REALLY transpired and will continue to transpire – with my commentary in brackets:

Friday August 16: Somebody launches a ransomware cyber attack against 22 Texas cities this morning. That same day, multiple Lampasas citizens start questioning why their utility payments aren’t being processed. According to the August 21 Radiogram, “IT Director Monica Wright immediately implemented response protocols for this type of incident.” [This is the spin it took Finley FIVE days to come up with? So the official spin is “thank god Monica was there to slam the barn door shut well AFTER the cow got out, knocked over the lantern and burned down the city…the very same door she left wide open in the first place.]

[The “protocols”! Sounds very sophisticated. Like a James Bond movie. I’d guess the actual “protocol” was Monica voiding the entire contents of her bowels into her underwear, yanking the power cord of her personal computer out of the wall thinking that might help, and then running in tears to Finley’s office sobbing about some “randomware” on her computer. Finley then turns a sickly green color and calls TSM or the state of Texas or SOMEBODY who knows SOMETHING about computers, dammit!!!]

Friday afternoon August 16, Saturday August 17, Sunday August 18: Not a peep from the City about this disaster. At this point, the police and sheriff computer systems had to be down, but that was not made public. I know this because the police system was still down on Tuesday the 20th at 5pm [and yes, I have proof]. I know they will say “we couldn’t make this public since we had a target on our backs”, but that is a pile of nonsense….because remember, the quick-thinking Monica had ALREADY implemented “protocols for this type of incident”…which any moron must assume included chopping all connections with the outside Internet world to prevent further damage….right? [at this point, the City probably hoped to solve this quickly and sweep it under the rug so as to not be completely embarrassed. Thus total radio silence]

Monday August 19: I myself started getting suspicious reading about all the people unable to pay their bills and remembering the attacks in Texas the previous week. Still not a PEEP from the city 72 hours after the incident….and police systems STILL presumably down.

Tuesday August 20: Finley tells a blatant lie to the Radiogram, saying that “a series of unrelated incidences [sic] caused the Sheriff’s Department, Police Department and Utility Department to go offline last Friday and the problem is being corrected.” [Why make this blatant lie? This is why I don’t ever trust a thing Spinley/Finley says. The cat was going to get out of the bag eventually and you know damn good and well the CITY MANAGER knew this was a coordinated attack three days ago – so why tell this complete b.s. about “unrelated incidences [sic]??]

Tuesday August 20: This very blog begins to connect the dots and get info from reliable sources at the city and state level that Lampasas DID get hit – despite Finley’s lie in the Radiogram that very morning. This blog questions Gary and Finley point-blank about it by email around 3:30pm. By 9pm, ACM Gary Cox admits they were hit and federal authorities are involved.

Wednesday August 21: The Radiogram finally prints an official statement from the Police Department that includes all the b.s. Spinley/Finley has produced after five days of polishing this turd. The most laughable part of the Spinley’s yarn is this part:

“While this attack did have some impact on City operations, the City implemented its continuity of operations plan and continued to provide City services with minimal impact to our citizens……As of press time, the City of Lampasas utility department is still offline. They are assuring customers that no cut-offs, or late notices are being processed. They hope to be back on line by Friday morning”.

[Seriously?? Continued to provide city services with minimal impact? Yeah sure….everything was just fine except all the broken parts. Lol. Then a few sentences later they say the utility department is STILL offline!! AND, they HOPE to have this mess sorted out by Friday!! A FULL WEEK after the attack! (but the impact is limited, lol) That is some serious b.s. spin, right there. Wow. Bill Clinton himself couldn’t have spun dog shit into diamonds that well].

Thursday August 22: Problem still not solved. A source of mine entered city hall and saw our two intrepid IT “experts” looking “quite frazzled”. [Probably the first full week either of them have clocked in years]

Friday August 23: One full week after the attack – problem still not solved. The Lampasas Dispatch Record reports on the attack – and regurgitates much of the same palaver reported in the Radiogram. The Original Lampasshole also makes an official Open Records Request and asks for copies of these “response protocols” and “continuity of operations” plans that were supposedly implemented in the wake of the attack.

Saturday August 24: Tried to log on and use the “Pay Utilities” page….still not up. Eight days and counting!!

Sunday August 25: The “minimal impact” STILL continues – cannot log onto the utilities payment page. How long until they just give in and pay the ransom? Will it come out of Kristy’s paycheck? Do they even know how to buy bitcoin?? We shall see…

Monday August 26th: Systems appear to be back to normal after 10 days. Mayor Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert thanks the City Staff for all their “hard work during the ransomware attack” (page 66). No seriously. She did.

Tuesday September 3rd: City attorney Christy-Jo Brown writes a six page letter to Texas Attorney General pleading their case as to why I should be denied information about the ransomware attack. Yup – keep the taxpaying citizens in the dark. As usual.

Monday September 9th: requests come flooding in for replacement equipment to replace servers and computers ruined in the ransomware attack – currently over $36,000 of equipment is ruined.

When the the clouds of dust settle from this debacle, there needs to be a very PUBLIC and HONEST accounting of what the hell happened. Answers to things like:

How EXACTLY did they get in?
Exactly when did Finley realize this was part of the statewide ransomware attacks and how quickly did he call in the REAL experts?
How long was the police system completely down?
Was ransom demanded? How much? Did the city pay in full?
Which “experts” were called in and how much did they bill the city for this mess?
Where was Kristy Acevedo Friday morning and afternoon? She is not mentioned at all, yet her job is “Network Administrator” and the network was left vulnerable and attacked.

Proposed 2019/2020 Budget Sees IT Department Spending Jump 24%

The IT Department was budgeted $301,143 in the 2018/2019 budget. The new 2019/2020 proposed budget sees that skyrocket 24% to $374,346!! By all means, reward the department that just fell victim to a massive cyber attack…that’s how it works in government.

[For reference, the IT budget was $213,336 back in the 2014/2015 budget – a mere 5 years ago….a total increase of 75% (or 15% per YEAR)]

It appears all my screaming has fallen on deaf ears. What is driving this year’s massive increase in spending? Thankfully not salaries and benefits. Those are barely budging. Small victories.

No, that massive $73,000 increase shows up in two spots:

“Supplies” [line item 5200] is increasing from $63,751 to a whopping $116,758!! A massive $53,000 (83%) increase. I can’t wait to see what THAT gigantic expenditure is….could they already be budgeting in a large ransom payment for the recent cyber attack debacle??

“Maintenance” [line item 5400] is nearly TRIPLING from $12,675 to $37,904. A $26,000 (200%) increase. Another one I can’t wait to see details on….maybe this is payment to the REAL computer experts who had to come in and clean up the mess after the recent successful cyber attacks?? God only knows.

Spending by year in the IT Department (nearly $1.9 million total!)

2019: $374,346 (proposed)
2018: $317,143
2017: $285,727
2016: $277,267
2015: $263,754
2014: $213,366
2013: $179,600

Where has this nearly TWO MILLION DOLLARS gone over the last seven years? Clearly not towards any kind of security infrastructure or up-to-date security training for our two IT ‘experts’.

Ransomware Attack Confirmed By City

It’s official.

According to Assistant City Manager Gary Cox, “the City of Lampasas is one of 22 entities which was affected by a ransomware attack that occurred last Friday. The matter is under investigation by federal law enforcement authorities at this time.”

Wow.

No word on the amount of “ransom” demanded by the perpetrators. I’m sure the Dispatch and Radiogram will be all over this with the details soon (right guys?).

How much are they demanding, if anything? Will the city pay up? Will any heads roll in the IT Department or City Hall for this colossal screw-up?

Stay tuned.

Contacts at State Level Tell Me Lampasas WAS Hit By Malicious Computer Attacks

The birdies are chirping too loudly for me to ignore now. I am told by well-placed sources at the state level that Lampasas WAS on the list of cities hit by the malicious cyber attacks last Friday.

If true, this is a HUGE black eye for City Manager Finley DeGraffenried and our TWO IT ‘experts’ Monica Wright and Kristy Acevedo. For a department which sucks up ~~$300,000~~ $374,000 per year of the city budget, it is highly embarrassing and unacceptable. I ~~love~~ hate to say “I told you so”, but I did tell you so….about 50 times over the last 12 months: our IT Department is an overpaid, under-qualified joke – and now the city is AGAIN paying the price.

There are plenty of clues that I am correct. The most glaring is that even though the attacks happened last Friday the 16th, Finley stated in yesterday’s Radiogram (four days later) that the problem “is being corrected”.

Not “corrected”….but BEING corrected…as in, still NOT corrected.

When a computer problem is not solved four days later, it tells me that either (1) somebody is holding them hostage and they are locked out of their own systems or (2) it is so bad that even the expensive outside REAL computer experts are having trouble figuring it out – which means a LOT of billable hours at about $150 per hour, I’m guessing.

Lampasas City Offices Go Offline On Exact Same Day as Texas Ransomware Attacks…Hmmmmmm

As previously reported, around 20 to 23 cities were hit last Friday August 16th by malware/ransomware attacks. On the EXACT SAME DAY, City of Lampasas offices were reported to go offline.

According to the Radiogram, City Manager Finley DeGraffenried assures us that “a series of unrelated incidences [sic] caused the Lampasas County Sheriff’s Department, the Lampasas City Police Department AND the Lampasas City Utilities Department to go offline last Friday. He stated that technicians were called in, and that the problem is being corrected.”

Well, that is one hell of a coincidence.

I have directly emailed City Manager DeGraffenried AND his assistant Gary Cox to either confirm or deny that this was related to the statewide attacks last Friday. They have not responded.

I DO have a few questions and observations, however:

The “problem” (singular) is being corrected? You just said it was a series of unrelated incidences [sic] (plural). Which is it?

What was the “problem”, exactly? Did somebody spill coffee on multiple keyboards in multiple departments at the exact same time?

Why did “technicians” need to be called in? We have TWO highly paid Information Systems “experts” in a $300,000-per-year IT Department who supposedly handle this kind of thing, no? Who were these technicians? TSM Consulting? Camp Mabry? How much did THAT cost to fix? Is it fixed? Sounds like it isn’t….birdies are chirping right now on Tuesday evening telling me the systems are STILL down.

I look forward to answers to all of these questions, but unfortunately I expect the City to be evasive about the true nature and scope of the problem – seeing as how I have been harping on their IT Department for over a year now. They would love nothing less than to see me proved right.

Was Lampasas’ Inept IT Department Hit by Computer Malware Attack?

Hmmmmmm…..last week I saw an article claiming many cities in Texas were hit by malware attacks. I immediately thought to myself “Lampasas better hope they weren’t one of them, because our IT “experts” are anything but”. Of course, Texas is a huge state with thousands of cities…I figured the odds were highly against it and forgot about the whole thing.

THEN, yesterday and today, I read Facebook posts about computers being down for people trying to pay their utilities here in town since last Friday (see: Lampasas County Breaking News).

Could these two things be related?? Did Lampasas fall victim to a computer malware attack?? This is all total speculation on my part, but it would be quite fitting if the TWO unqualified IT “experts” on the bloated payroll (who I have been railing against for over a year now) left the front door wide open for a cyber attack. Quite fitting indeed.

If so, I would love to be a fly on the wall as Monica Can’t-Wright and her sidekick, Kristy “The Joker” Acevedo run around like headless chickens frantically dialing TSM Consulting to ride to the rescue and fix it all for an exorbitant sum.

Are Local Governments Front-Running New Tax Cap Law To Grab As Much Money As They Can NOW?

Yet another article in the Dispatch about taxes going up – this time at the COUNTY level.

While reading the article, I spotted something quite interesting. Supposedly the reason for the tax increase is for staffing at the new $18 million dollar Taj Mahal jail complex….which has been the subject of some heated discussions. It’s almost as if nobody thought ahead and realized that the $18 million is just the beginning – this also will increase OPERATING costs annually (the same fact that escapes all the boobs yammering for a civic center).

But that’s not the interesting part. Besides the jail money, county officials “are also looking ahead to a year from now, when a new state law about property taxes will take effect.”

For those of you who don’t know it, Texas recently passed Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 3. This bill will “require many cities, counties and other taxing units to hold an election if they wish to raise 3.5% more property tax revenue than the previous year. Since the 1980s, taxing units have been constrained to 8% annual property tax growth.”

That previous 8% level is known as the “rollback rate” – the maximum percentage a city or county can raise the rate without an election. Going forward, these poor babies will have to make do with only a 3.5% increase every year instead of the old 8%. How will they ever make ends meet???

Anyways, those words “rollback rate” made me recall an interesting snippet from the other recent Dispatch article about Mayor Talbert raising the CITY tax rates this week – they were raised to .42 from .395218 which, according to the Dispatch article, is “just below the rollback cap that applies to Lampasas for the upcoming fiscal year.”

What an amazing coincidence! On August 16th, the Dispatch has an article about the CITY raising taxes right up to the rollback limit…and now on August 20th, the COUNTY is front page news saying “officials are looking ahead to a year from now when a new state law about property taxes will go into effect.”

It’s ALMOST is if, I don’t know, these politicians and government-types are grabbing the absolute maximum amount of cash from the taxpayers before an excellent law takes effect next year limiting their future theft.

Democrats Change Mind on Border Wall After Realizing It Will Keep People From Leaving When We Switch to Socialism

U.S.—The nation’s Democratic leaders announced Tuesday they are reversing course on Trump’s proposed border wall, since “it will keep people in once we switch to socialism.”

“We thought the border wall was a bad, racist idea,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “But then this light bulb turned on over my head. It was actually just a light bulb though, not an actual idea, which was disappointing. But that got me thinking about trying to have an idea. And I got an idea: when we switch to socialism, everyone’s gonna try to run away. But what if there’s a big, solid object along the border? Then they can’t run away. I mean, they could try to climb, but we could shoot them.”

Senator Bernie Sanders said in his experience, walls are “absolutely necessary” to keep a socialist country’s citizens from fleeing. “The Soviets had it right: big wall in Berlin, the symbolic Iron Curtain, shooting people who try to flee. It’s all necessary to a healthy socialist state.” Besides, Sanders added, politicians like him would be exempt from the “no running away” rule and he could fly out any time he wanted on a government plane.

Dems suggested maybe the border wall could use some upgrades such as landmines on the U.S. side, outposts with guards armed with AK-47s, and attack dogs. It will also need to be extended to surround the entire country and “maybe also a big dome around the top.”

Talbert Spouts a Lot of Hilarious B.S. to Justify Tax Increases

Well, Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert certainly has a sense of humor. This was evident with the ridiculous excuse she gave for increasing the tax rate 6.5% recently.

According to the Lampasas Dispatch, Talbert said “residents now receive a greater level of services than they did years ago, the last time the tax rate increased.”

I’ve been around here since 2011 – the last time the RATES were supposedly increased – and if there is a greater level of service since then, you sure sneaked it past me.

Unless by “services” you mean the service of taking huge piles of $100 bills from taxpayers/citizens and setting them on fire in a spectacular orgy of waste and incompetence.

You know – like the $1.5 million you blew remodeling Old City Hall, which was your signature vanity project. The waste included canceling a $34,000 A/V system that was properly bid on by Broadcast Works and instead blowing nearly $100,000 on a NO-BID A/V contract with Azbell Electronics.

That kind of service?

Or maybe the service she is referring to is taking the lowest bid of $96,000 for the Old City Hall elevator and throwing it in the trash bin and instead paying $126,000 for said elevator (which is currently 6 months past its installation date).

Maybe the “service” is blowing over $1,000,000.00 on a “Business Park” which remains an empty 165-acre weed patch used for nothing but dumping bodies?

A mayor who wastes six-figure and seven-figure sums over and over is not a mayor who is worried about money, obviously. Yet here we are a year later, and she is fine with jacking up property taxes over TWELVE PERCENT**….ready to blame the huge increase on “increased city services” instead of the piles of money wasted over the last few years on her pet projects.

** How do I get a 12% increase? Well, the average taxable value of a Lampasas residence increased over 6% last year – from $92,110 to $97,904…(must be all those newly-minted Corvive pyramid scheme millionaires in town bidding up mansions!!)

In fact, property VALUATIONS have been climbing ever since that same year of 2011 – a fact Talbert ignores when she tries to put lipstick on this pig by claiming RATES haven’t been raised since 2011. Tack on another 6.3% RATE increase on that increase valuation, and voila: over 12%.

While Talbert may be hilarious with her ridiculous explanations, in the end the joke is on the taxpayer who pays for her mistakes. As usual.