Fiscal Rangers

The non-profit domain name .org is being sold to a private equity firm controlled by apparent middle eastern managers

A South African equity capital firm may be buying the non-profit firm that controls .org internet domain addresses, which could lead to increased fees or censorship, since many leaders in the firm have Arabic names. Read more →

White House creates website to report social media censorship - like Facebook Jail, Twitter shutoffs, etc

The White House has just created a site to report social media censorship, so I reported one example and it works, but is clunky. We include the White House link. Read more →

World's largest website platform, Wordpress.com, Shuts down Islam critic website, Creeping Sharia

Wordpress, the largest internet website platform, and their governing group, Automaticc.com, just shut down CreepingSharia.Wordpress.com, a conservative website critical of Islam. We provide the details and links. May 15, 2019 Read more →

Federal & Florida ADA Compliance laws are wrecking local government transparency and incurring huge costs

Tavares, FL March 11, 2019 Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's). Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information. We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here. The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here. And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands. Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools,... Read more →

Transparency over local government meeting agendas, minutes, videos, etc. is being damaged by ADA compliance lawsuits

Local governments like cities are being sued because their websites are not completely designed to comply with ADA requirements that were written before the internet was created.  For instance, cities cannot post meeting videos if they don't incur the expense to provide captions that software for the blind or deaf can read and translate so they can understand it.  Thus the benefit of transparency for 97% of the populations are shut down for 3% who complain. Read more →

New Technology & Entrepreneur's Group Meeting in Lake County, FL

This isn't our normal subject, but since I am running this group, I thought I would post this. NEWS|Release AbacusTech Technology & Entrepreneurs Association (ATE) Meetings: 1st & 3rd Tuesdays, 6:30 pm Northeast Lake Business Opportunity Center 1520 S. Bay St., Eustis Contact: Vance Jochim 352-638-3578 [email protected] For immediate release — Oct. 10, 2013 New group Meets Tuesday, Oct. 15 to promote technology entrepreneurship by brainstorming and sharing ideas EUSTIS, FL — A new technology-based group, the AbacusTech Technology & Entrepreneurs Association (ATE), is inviting local residents who are interested in learning and sharing ideas about understanding current technologies and creating high-tech products and businesses, to their third meeting. The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at the Northeast Lake Business Opportunity Center, 1520 S. Bay St., Eustis. Meetings will be held on the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays. The purpose of ATE is to help budding technology-minded entrepreneurs by discussing, as a group, the various parts of high-tech startups, to learn what resources are available and to hear from technology businesses as they share their success stories. “There was a need to develop this type of group because I saw very few developed high-tech industries... Read more →

FiscalRangers is now on Twitter

This twitter account will only be for news relevant to the mission of FiscalRangers.com which focuses on local government management and fiscal issues. http://twitter.com/FiscalRanger (note - there is NO "s" at the end of this url) I will slowly start using it this week when attending the various budget votes of different Lake County, FL government agencies, including the Lake County, FL School District (Sept 8th at 5:15 pm in the County Commission chambers in the round courthouse on Main - be there early to get a seat), the County Commission (later in the month in the same room), and the North Lake County Hospital District (Sept 8th, also in County Commission Chambers - be there before 5pm to get a seat). vj Read more →