85.2 Million Robocalls Made To Area Code 631 In 2020

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 “We’ve had a recent urgent update on your Medicare coverage,” said the robocall. A second followed announcing: “We’ve been trying to reach you concerning your car’s extended warranty.” 

Caller ID won’t help you these days to know it’s a robocall: the phone number and place where the call is supposedly coming from often is listed as a nearby community and sometimes where you live. As I’m writing this column, I received a robocall—the caller ID said it was made from where I live, Sag Harbor—saying: “This is from Social Security administration…Your Social Security number was used in Texas. To get more information, press 1.”

I just called the number that the caller ID listed for the supposed “Social Security administration” and the message was: “The number you dialed is not in service.”

Robocall Index reports that 85.2 million robocalls were made in 2020 to Suffolk County’s 631 area code as of August 20. It says as of August 20 nationally 30.1 billion robocalls were made in 2020. That’s 118.3 million per day, 4.9 million per hour, 1.4 thousand per second, says the website. The country is on its way to the same volume of annual robocalls—58 billion—made in 2019, up from 47.8 billion in 2018.

We bought a new answering machine several years ago but it just provides blocking for a maximum of 250 numbers. Answering machines now would need to be able to block thousands of robocall numbers.

A National Do Not Call Registry took effect in 2003.  But, says the web page titled “Robocalls” of the Federal Trade Commission, it “is designed to stop sales calls from real companies that follow the law. The Registry is a list that tells telemarketers what numbers not to call…Scammers don’t care if you’re on the Registry.”

Both the FTC and Federal Communications Commission on the national level are trying to do something about robocalls. This July, according to the FCC’s web pages covering robocalls, it meted out a $224 million fine for a “telemarketer” who “made approximately 1 billion” calls in a “robocall campaign” claiming to be selling “health insurance” including to those on the Do Not Call List.” The agency says: “Unwanted calls are far and away the biggest consumer complaint to the FCC.”

In New York, there’s a measure “pending” in the State Legislature, originally introduced last year, that could eliminate robocalls in New York. “At the center of the bill is consent,” explains State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor, one of 55 Assembly co-sponsors of the legislation. It is titled the “Robocall Prevention Act” and among its provisions—its central one—is its requirement that a robocall can only be “made with the prior express consent of the called party.”

Also a co-sponsor of the measure is Assemblyman Michael J. Fitzpatrick of St. James.

Who in New York, or the United States, would give her or his consent to receive robocalls? I’d venture nobody, period.

The bill was passed in the Senate in 2019 but wasn’t voted upon in the Assembly, and Mr. Thiele wants action this year.

Consumer Action and Consumers Union, have both been active in taking on robocalls. (Linda Sherry, who earlier was a journalist and editor in Suffolk County, is the director of national priorities of Consumer Action.)

A Consumer Action piece last year titled “The Robocall Scourge” declared: “Those automated telephone calls that deliver pre-recorded messages to your landline or cell phone—aka “robocalls”—are bombarding consumers’ devices at alarming rates…Spoofed robocalls are an increasing problem for phone owners. These calls use fraudulent caller identification information to disguise the caller’s true identity. For instance, a con artist will “spoof,” fake, the name and/or number on a phone’s call display…Spoofing legitimate numbers makes it more likely you will answer the phone and fall for the con.” (The “Robocall Prevention Act” would make this illegal.)

Consumer Action points to “robocall combat tools” noting there “are a slew of call blocker devices available for purchase that you attach to the phone line….Typically, the devices come pre-programmed with thousands of known spam numbers to block, and they allow you to add new numbers as they come in. You can find retailers and product reviews…by doing an online search for ‘landline call blockers.’ Or, your carrier might offer devices on their website, like Verizon.” Also recommended is Nomorobo with its system that “checks each incoming phone number” and, “If you receive a spam call, Nomorobo intercepts…and disconnects it.”

I’d say the ideal remedy is government (it should go national) requiring that a robocall can only be made to a person who gives “prior express consent.” That could end the scourge.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Hundreds Gather In Nesconset To Honor 9/11 First Responders

Hundreds of people attended a ceremony at the 911 Responders Remembered Park Saturday. The September 12th ceremony, an annual event, honors the memory of those who have passed away during the last year from causes directly related to their activity at ground zero. The memorial wall now contains the names of almost 1,700 people of different backgrounds, occupations, religions, gender, ethnicity with one thing in common, they were at ground zero when it was dangerous.

The ceremony was emotional as the names of 170 people who died this year from 9/11 health related illnesses were read. The reading was followed by the ringing of a bell. Sobbing could be heard and heartbreak could be seen in the faces of the attendees.

Nesconset resident John Feal is the person responsible for the creation of the 911 Responders Remembered Park. Feal was injured while working at ground zero. After recovering from his injury he committed himself to recognizing the efforts of the people who worked at the site whether they acted in an official capacity or as a volunteer. John perservered and the help of others the park officially opened in 2011.

The park considered by John Feal  to be his “legacy”  is so much more, it is a place for remembering the lives of loved ones. 

Visitors often trace the name of a special person, others leave photos and some leave flowers. “Everyone leaves a piece of their heart ” said one attendee who preferred not to give her name.

911 Responders Remembered Park is located at Smithtown Blvd. and Gibbs Pond Rd, Nesconset.

Suffolk Closeup - Are Rate Payers Required To Pay LIPA For Services Not Provided?

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It’s a change in the distribution of electricity and gas that is called Community Choice Aggregation. CCA is a program which a municipality can adopt that covers ratepayers in its area. 

The municipality could require all or some portion of the supply to be generated by renewable sources such as solar and wind. Thus, CCA would encourage the use of renewable energy.

Also, the municipality through a “CCA administrator” could seek competitive bids for electricity and gas. In this way, CCA would facilitate the purchase of energy on the open market so ratepayers would not have to settle for the price set by their area’s utility. 

However, in regard to cost-savings, Lynn Arthur, who has been a leading proponent of CCA on Long Island, says the Long Island Power Authority has undermined that aspect of CCA here. Ms. Arthur, energy chair of the Southampton Town Green Sustainability Advisory Committee, says LIPA is having CCA placed under its “Long Island Choice” program with “an adjustment” charged that would be equivalent to the difference between the price obtained by a CCA and what LIPA’s electricity operator, PSEG Long Island, charges. 

This, says Ms. Arthur, is an exception to how CCA works everywhere else in the state. “In fact, it creates two classes of municipalities—those which would have CCA in its pure form and here on Long Island, having the LIPA version of CCA.” 

“What is the justification,” she asks, “to require residents to pay LIPA for services not provided?” LIPA’s “required payment,” she says, “could significantly impede the Long Island CCA program and therefore undermine a critical renewable energy program.”

However, Justin Bell, vice president of pubic policy and regulatory affairs at LIPA, in answer to my query to LIPA about this said it is an incorrect description of what LIPA has arranged. Bell wrote: “For a CCA customer, energy and other services are procured by the CCA instead of by LIPA. Since LIPA doesn’t have to supply the energy and other services, LIPA gives the CCA and its customers bill credits equal to the market value of those services. This means that a CCA could save money for customers if the CCA is able to procure the energy and other services at below-market prices.”

Mr. Bell further wrote: “Since the CCA gets these services somewhere else, in order to be fair, the utility credits, i.e. deducts, the cost of these services on the bills we send to CCAs and their customers.” He said: “This approach is fair to both customers that buy power through a CCA and those that don’t. Neither has an advantage relative to the other. Any other arrangement—for example, if LIPA gave Choice customers an above-market discount—would be a subsidy from the rest of LIPA customers to CCA customers.”

New York State’s Public Service Commission in 2016 opened up having municipalities 

in the state arrange for CCA programs. More than 100 municipalities have passed enabling legislation providing this. The Town of Southampton was the first on Long Island to do so. 

            Brookhaven Town Supervisor Edward Romaine is a strong supporter of CCAs. 

“CCA is the most powerful way to green the grid quickly,” said Ms. Arthur. “It’s the single biggest action a municipality can take. You can basically take a whole town of people and switch them at one time over to renewable energy. People can do individual renewable energy projects. But to have a whole town switch to renewables, that’s a giant step.”  

But energy savings is also what makes CCA a good program, she declares. For example, said Ms. Arthur, among the New York State municipalities that have gone ahead with a CCA program has been Westchester County and in the past two years CCA has saved $15 million for the 130,000 ratepayers in Westchester, she said.

As the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority explains on its website: “The purpose of Community Choice Aggregation is to allow participating local governments to procure energy supply service…for…energy customers in the community.” Through a CCA “customers will have the opportunity to have more control to lower their overall energy costs, to spur clean energy innovation and investment, to improve customer choice and value, and to protect the environment, thereby fulfilling an important public purpose.” 

LIPA was created in 1985 and says on its website that it has a “mission to enable clean, reliable, and affordable electric service for our customers.” 

Ms. Arthur says a campaign is being launched to get LIPA to eliminate what she describes as its “fee” plan for participants in a CCA. She says more information is on the website www.choicecommunitypower.com. Says Ms. Arthur: “The power of public pressure is very important.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

It's Quite A Transition From "Face-To-Face" To "Virtual"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 My new semester as a professor at SUNY/College at Old Westbury began this week and I’m teaching online. Most classes at the college are online other than those dependent on campus facilities such as courses utilizing science labs, art studios and media production.

It’s quite a transition from “face-to-face” to “virtual.”

As a college professor—and I’ve been at SUNY/Old Westbury since 1978—I emphasize performance in my teaching. This is, in part, from my own college experience which includes a few boring professors. Also, I think performance might be in my blood. My maternal grandfather, Joseph Hyman, as a child was in the Yiddish theatre troupe of Boris Thomashefsky. My brother, Stefan, is a famous blues guitarist. Our cousin, Steve Grossman, who died last month, was a jazz saxophonist who played with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones. Jon Fadem, a cousin’s son, is an outstanding funk/rock/blues guitarist. 

My barometer for teaching in my first year at Old Westbury was Stephen White.

Stephen couldn’t stand being bored. When a presentation got dull, his eyes would close. Making my teaching lively and interesting and keeping Stephen wide-eyed and engaged became my mission—and model for the next 42 years. He went on to graduate school at Stony Brook University and a promising career, but Stephen, an African-American, was shot dead by a police officer in Nassau County.

I think I do pretty well as a professor. I’ve been regularly promoted, and at SUNY/Old Westbury excellence in teaching is vital for promotion. Also important: writing books—I’ve authored six—and college and community service. I’ve risen up the academic ladder to full professor. 

When the Covid-19 plague hit and we received training at the college for “distance learning” for the rest of the spring semester, and possibly beyond, I wondered how I’d be able to adjust my teaching to online pedagogy. Several decades ago, teaching “remotely” would have been impossible. Now, with advances in computer technology and programs, notably Zoom, and most students computer savvy—far more than me—it can be done. The issue: the need for students to have the essential equipment and Internet access.

Is “online learning” the equal of “face-to-face”? I don’t think so.

I am comfortable with appearing on video online having for five years co-anchored the evening news on the Long Island TV station WSNL-67 and I’m now completing my 30^th year hosting the nationally-aired TV program “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman.”

My major two courses are Investigative Reporting and Environmental Journalism. 

How best to adopt them to online teaching?

In Investigative Reporting my first assignment is students writing essays on a “social injustice” they’ve known. The aim is to help them understand the role a whistleblower often has in the investigative reporting process. As my syllabus says: this will be “an essay you will read to the class on a social injustice you have personally known—an inequity, a wrong that you have personally experienced. Whistleblowers, sources who reach out to investigative journalists, are generally people who have observed corruption, abuses, inequity, unfairness, danger.”

Many of the stories the students tell are heartbreaking, upsetting—and some could be the basis of investigative pieces. For this exercise I have the chairs in the classroom placed in a circle enabling the students to feel support from each other. Will reading their essays from home, told one-by-one through a computer screen, also work? We’ll see.

The course’s next phase involves how to document and present—for print, Internet, radio and TV—the information that was the “conception” for an investigative piece. Then there are lectures and student readings on the history of investigative reporting. 

I begin the Environmental Journalism course with the issue of environmental justice, also known as environmental racism. For decades, I’ve written and done “Enviro Close-Up” programs about this. A central focus is toxic facilities placed far disproportionately in Black and Latino communities. Next week I’ll show the students online my most recent “Enviro Close-Up” on environmental justice, send them articles to read, and via Zoom we’ll have a discussion. The course includes students doing pieces on environmental issues and an examination of the history of a branch of journalism that started with nature writing and took its contemporary form with Rachel Carson and her landmark 1962 book “Silent Spring” exposing the dangers of pesticides.

My other main teaching activity is running an Internship in Journalism and Media program in which students are placed at newspapers, Internet sites, TV stations and networks, radio stations, magazines and PR firms. (A college internship is how I got into journalism.) 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - The Call For Undergrounding Electric Lines Is Increasing

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Casey Stengel after becoming manager of the Mets famously declared: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” This was 1962 and the Mets’ were on their way to losing 120 games out of 162 that season.

Indeed, Jimmy Breslin wrote a book titled, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year.” In its introduction, Bill Veeck, the owner of several major league baseball teams, said the book would be “preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure.”

PSEG Long Island is being lambasted for its performance in the Tropical Storm Isaias saga of this month. Some 420,000 customers lost electric power. And it took two weeks for full restoration! 

Investigations are now underway including probes by the New York State attorney general, the Department of Public Service and the State Legislature. 

There is no question that the communications system of PSEG LI broke down. Many people couldn’t get through to the utility to find out what was happening. 

Still, for an electric utility to deal with the outages caused by a very severe storm hitting Long Island—that is a “game” no utility can “play” and win. 

Long Island is the most populous island in the United States. And it is heavily treed.

A large storm hitting Long Island with its near dependence on transmitting electricity through lines on poles will mean outages. A huge storm—and with climate change we need to expect more frequent and more very severe storms—means widescale outages.

The solution: underground electric lines.

I wrote a book back in 1985 when the Long Island Lighting Company was the utility here with on its cover a photo of a LILCO pole with the pole and its lines tilted at a 45-degree angle after Hurricane Gloria hit that year. (The book, Power Crazy, was about LILCO’s proposed Shoreham nuclear power plant and its scheme to build seven to 11 nuclear plants on Long Island.)

The book starts with Hurricane Gloria and a LILCO electric outage that caused 700,000 customers to lose electricity, most for more than a week. But service to 96 percent of telephone customers on Long Island was not interrupted, I noted on Page 1.

I quoted New York Telephone spokesperson Bruce W. Reisman telling me how the company “began placing cable underground wherever feasible in the early 1970s…Cost studies clearly indicated to us that it would simply be less costly for us over the long term to place much of our telephone cables underground. It is generally less expensive to maintain a telephone plant when it is underground. This is because underground facilities are less likely to be damaged by falling trees or branches, high winds, ice storms, etc…The majority of our telephone cables on Long Island (69 percent) is now underground. This appears to have benefitted us during Hurricane Gloria. Despite the hurricane, we were able to maintain telephone service for about 96 percent of our more than one million Long Island customers.”

LILCO was replaced by the Long Island Power Authority that initially had its electric service run by KeySpan which was taken over by National Grid—and then Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012. National Grid was blasted for the outages Sandy caused. Governor Andrew Cuomo arranged for National Grid to be replaced by PSEG.

In 2012, writing this column about the need for undergrounding, I quoted then Suffolk Legislator Jay Schneiderman (now Southampton Town supervisor) saying that on Long Island there should be “undergrounding piece-by-piece—especially in areas which, historically, overhead lines haven’t made it in storms.” 

Nationally, the call for undergrounding has increased. Last year, an article on T&D World, a website for utilities, was headlined: “It’s Time for Utilities to Reconsider Undergrounding Power Lines.” It stated that “climate change is unquestionably generating intense, costly storms…a hard fact that utilities must confront.” It said “most utilities opt not to bury power lines due to cost. But leaving so much of our power infrastructure exposed to environmental assault may not be worth the short-term cost savings.”

Undergrounding electric lines is more expensive than stringing lines on poles. But we must consider the huge costs of post-hurricane, post-storm electric restorations—happening over and over again. We must fully recognize, too, the terrible hardships these extended outages cause people. With lines underground the vital “game” of preserving electric service can be won. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.