Alarm system cover-up revealed by Dispatch

The great City Hall cover-up came uncovered when the Columbus Dispatch broke the locally hushed fact that the alarm system in City Hall is not working, and hasn't worked for some time.

This is worthy of note for two reasons. One is that the City Hall computer guru, Jim Kolb, had sent a memo 2/21/08 which advised several administrators of the problem and said the matter should not be publicly discussed.

Duh. I knew about his memo that day or the next.

Which means so did the Advocate, in all probability, and though it isn't much of a story, it is a bit of the public's business and the Advocate got caught with its pants down - again. That's one aspect.

Another, and what makes it important, is the lack of security expertise that allowed this to happen and appears to be the real reason for the "cover-up" - that nobody wants to step forward and shoulder the blame.

So now that everyone knows there are no panic buttons that work, let's find out why they don't and what's it going to take to fix them. And in the meantime, until things are put in order, how about some assurances that Newark is at least trying to protect its employees?