HIT: To the program held at Auburn High School designed to give information to men and women interested in running for local school district board of education seats.

It's no secret that there's generally been a shortage of candidates for local elected offices in recent years, and one reason may be the difficulty in getting information on how to run and what the job involves. Hopefully, programs like the one held last weekend answered some questions and ultimately helped steer a few more people into running for a seat on the school board.

The more choices voters have, the more debate and discussion there is on the key issues facing the public.

HIT: To all of the local teams that took part in the Odyssey of the Mind state championships Saturday in Binghamton, and especially to the four teams that qualified for a spot in the world finals to be held in Iowa late next month.

The trip to the world tournament is the culmination of countless hours of practice, clearly a huge accomplishment for each of the individual students on these teams.

We urge the community to now be on the lookout for opportunities to help these teams raise funds for the journey to the Midwest.

MISS: To the over-the-top spin machines in Albany, which last week may have set a new record for the amount of redundant and, ultimately, unnecessary press releases.

Whether is was the majority or minority party, the Assembly or the Senate, every group in the Legislature flooded news media e-mail accounts with scores of press releases claiming their side was vastly superior to the other.

One of the state Legislature's biggest problems is that there's always far too much public posturing and far too little actually governing going on.