Declarations

School District Ransom

“I don’t know legally if a school district can pay a ransom.”

— Brian Bridwell, business manager for the Jerome School District in Idaho, talked about the Dec. 2017 predicament when district officials found much of its data encrypted. Affected files included a message from the cybercriminal: “If you want your data in a usable form again, you must pay us four bitcoin.”

Staying Put

“We have no plans to relocate Aetna’s operations from Hartford and, in fact, view Hartford as the future location of our center of excellence for the insurance business.”

— Carolyn Castel, vice president of corporate communications for CVS Health Corp., affirmed that Aetna would stay put, despite its previous announcement that it would move to another state after nearly two centuries in Hartford, Conn. The statement was made after CVS officials met with Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and after New York City halted a $9.6 million incentive package to lure Aetna.

Natural Remedy

“Kentuckians are begging for an alternative to opioids and prescriptions. The natural remedy is what they are asking for to help with their illness and ailments.”

— Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, supporting a bill introduced in the state House to legalize medical marijuana in the state. The bill was the result of work by a task force that Grimes led. Kentucky had more than 1,400 drug overdose deaths in 2016, an increase of 39 percent from 2013.

Harmful Toy

“There’s somebody out there who has a toy, and it could cause us harm. … It could have killed those guys.”

— Lt. Col. Eric Schmidt, who works at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, says an aircraft on a Jan. 9 training flight came within about 50 feet of a drone flying at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet. Drone operators need permission to fly within five miles of an airport or military airfield, and drones are limited to a maximum height of 400 feet when flying under aircraft training routes.

Self-Inflicted Problem

“Give me a break on this pivot … The problem we’re trying to fix was self-inflicted by Governor Walker.”

— Wisconsin Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz commented on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s intention to seek a state law to bar insurers from denying a person health coverage due to a pre-existing condition.