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Flaherty, Yoon, McCrea charge e-mail coverup
By adamg on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 11:09am
Yoon, Flaherty and McCrea this morning.
The three mayoral candidates today charged Tom Menino and his aides with deliberately covering something up, although exactly what, they couldn't say, since the e-mail doesn't appear to exist.
At a press conference with Flaherty and Yoon outside City Hall, however, McCrea said he would not be surprised if mail related to Dianne Wilkerson's attempt to get a liquor license for a contributor were among the large volumes of mail deleted by Menino aide Michael Kineavey. In an affidavit in the Wilkerson case, the FBI noted extensive contact between the former state senator and City Hall.
This morning, McCrea posted copies of eight e-mails he sent to city officials about the BRA and BC expansion in Brighton that he said were not among the handful of e-mails City Hall gave the Globe as part of its public-records request.
Flaherty said he found Menino's "glitch" explanation (given at a press conference Menino called for the same time) completely unbelievable. "We are not talking about casual inbox maintenance or even technical failure. ... This isn't a virus, folks, this isn't a glitch. This is a coverup."
"There's a new standard for transparency that has been adopted everywhere but Boston," Yoon said, adding the deletions are "only a symptom" of a much larger problem at City Hall.
Flaherty and Yoon today sent letters to state AG Martha Coakley and Suffolk County DA Dan Conley, calling for a formal investigation into the deletions. Flaherty said he wants trained computer experts to check City Hall mail servers for messages - it's sometimes possible to retrieve "deleted" mail.
McCrea didn't sign the letter, because he said his repeated efforts to get something done about Open Meeting Law violations at City Hall (he won a suit against the City Council; has an open request for an investigation by the DA into Licensing Board meetings related to Wilkerson) have convinced him prosecutors in the state aren't all that interested in public record violations.
"We have a chance right now to get rid of the problem" a lot sooner than prosecutors, he said, referring to the Sept. 22 preliminary election.
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Comments
This gonna backfire on
This gonna backfire on Flaherty. He's going to lose the primary over this. You don't throw a man under the bus who takes care of our neighborhoods.
Seriously?
Go write your Menino fanfic somewhere else.
Did you read the other
Did you read the other article in the Sunday globe, about menino's machine and how it takes care of the neighborhoods. That was what has made menino a great mayor. His people get things done. We live in a beautiful city as a result!!!!!!!!!! I don't care if a guy deletes his emails. i care about our streets being safe and clean. If he's the man responsible, he's alright by me.
Clean? mostly. Safe? not even close
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Speak for yourself
I live in a clean, safe neighborhood in Boston.
then whoever maintains
this website is lying. It shows three people shot and killed in the last 365 days.
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Oh, come on
I didn't say it was a 100% perfect neighborhood. But I don't feel scared walking around at night and I don't worry about my daughter when she plays outside.
i know. its completely unfair to cite actual events
Man shot to death in Roslindale 12/03/2008 Murder
Triple shooting leaves one dead in Roslindale 01/16/2008 1:16pm Murder
Teen shot, killed in Roslindale 11/25/2008 Murder
Home invasion 02/25/2009 - 7:00pm
Teen shoots teen 10/20/2008 - 5:00pm
Teen shot in Roslindale 09/07/2008 - 1:00pm
Grazed in the head with a bullet in Roslindale 08/14/2009 - 5:10pm
Three people shot in Roslindale 03/27/2009 Shooting
Woman run down by drag racers on Hyde Park Avenue 05/30/2008
Armed holdup of Roslindale gas station 01/11/2008
Robbed at gunpoint 12/12/2008 - 6:19pm
Food-delivery guy robbed at gunpoint 12/01/2008 - 10:00pm
Assault with a dangerous weapon 07/23/2009 - 9:38pm
Man with machete arrested 01/22/2009 Illegal possession of knives
Assault and battery on a police officer 01/23/2009 - 1:00pm
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Why don't you look at the police stats?
Here (that's a PDF file, in case you don't want to mouse over it first). Compare E-5 (West Roxbury and most of Roslindale, including the part where I live) with the rest of the city.
But, you know, if you're convinced Boston is such a seething hellhole, there are other places you can live.
No, he's FROM West Roxbury...
...and we know what (much of) WR's attitude towards Roslindale is.
;~}
sure Michael
west roxbury elites. LMFAO.
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"Seething hellhole" is YOUR description NOT MINE
You claimed it is safe. I cited actual crimes in the last year. It's up to you to decide if it is safe or not.
I used to live in Roslindale. I like it and I go there often.
That said, I disagree that the city is safe. What is your opinion?
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Safe as compared to what?
Compared to other American cities of similar size (and other relevant demographic factors)? Compared to world cities of similar size, etc?
Compared to a bucolic, upper class suburb?
Compared to a rural farming community?
not by comparison, by assessment of neighborhhod crime
Adam makes it easy to see crime stats for one year by neighborhood including the details, such as pizza delivery robbery, triple homicide, home invasion, etc.
Look at them for your neighborhood. Does you feel safe in your neighborhood after looking over the type of crime that has occurred there for the last 12 months?
I think 'yes' is a reasonable answer for many people. That said, answer the question if there are places you would choose not to go (or not allow your kids to go) in your neighborhood on foot after dark.
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i think the above posters point, though...
... is that it's all relative. i moved from the city (somerville) to the country (boxborough) six months ago. my police blotter went from stories about stabbings and drug sales to being about somebody finding two babies squirrels and not knowing what to do with them, and somebody else hitting a deer in the road.
by the boxborough standards, the entire city is dangerous and should be avoided. but honestly, when i lived in somerville i felt safe there and rarely had any troubles.
crime stats only tell part of the story about how safe you feel your home is.
Menino has been in office
Menino has been in office for 16 years. The change in crime rates from 2008 to 2009 would occur in years 15 and 16 of his tenure. I guess the fairest thing to do would be to look at overall crime trends in Boston versus crime trends nationwide and in other major cities and see if the crime rate has gone up or down in the past 16 years and either way where the city stands versus other major cities and the nation as a whole. This my friends is why we still need major newspapers to be doing the heavy lifting because that is quite a bit for one person to swallow on their own.
We've walked around most parts of Roslindale....
...after dark. The only place we felt a bit uncomfortable was walking down Hyde Park Blvd going towards West Street (making a big loop walk) -- which was outside Roslindale.
It is safe enough for one to generally act under the assumption that one IS safe.
The Sky, it's falling!
Or in one word, Yes.
You more likely to get hit by a car then be the victim of a crime in most Boston neighborhoods. Ten fold if your white, and not a minority.
Sorry, but fear mongering isn't going to work here on the more educated folk.
Maybe we should worry about great whites in Boston harbor? I, for one, demand to know why the mayor hasn't set up an action plan for this relevant threat!
safe for whom?
What's your point... if white people are much less likely to be victims of crime in Boston neighborhoods, then Boston neighborhoods are safe? Please.
Can you cite a source on the "ten fold" claim?
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Safe can be very subjective
Safe can be very subjective from one block to the next.
I feel very safe, even around the projects in south Boston at night. Same in the South end.
Doesn't mean I'd walk by the Pine Street Inn late at night.
Per capita, for the most part, and for most of the neighborhoods, Boston is a very safe city. This isn't Baltimore or the west side of Chiago. Yes, more can be done, but let's not kid ourselves.
I agree. Am I the only one
I agree.
Am I the only one who doesn't see exactly what they're trying to charge Mumbles with, besides a last minute media frenzy that will hopefully knock him down a few pegs...
I understand the problem, but "Might" and "Maybe" is reaching for it.
It's especially hollow coming from people that have continually, illegally, failed to comply with open meeting laws, even when ordered.
Was looking for reasons to vote against Mumbles, but he increasingly seeming like the lesser of this group of clowns.
I think he'll get my vote.
bad bookkeeping
Most charges of bad bookkeeping from the IRS are because the offenders have destroyed the evidence of their tax evasion.
Someone has to keep track of all the favors and payoffs, and believe me, they know who they have done favors for, and they expect the favor to be returned.
menino supporters only think
menino supporters only think of their own gain, it trickles down from the top. If people think menino cares about them, they should open their eyes, and be aware of who is really benefitting from this administration. Ride around the city, parts of Roxbury, Dorchester, South Boston and the theater district and see what a mess the streets are, broken and strewn with trash. It's not the citizens of Boston who benefit.
I live in south Boston and
I live in south Boston and my streets are not strewn with trash....
Although, the sidewalk is covered in dog shit from yuppies with little rat dogs who don't do the neighborly thing and pick up after themselves.
Excuse the pun, but that's a bunch of crap.
I lived in SB before the complete gentrification and the sidewalks have long been that way. Some residents just couldn't be bothered to change the old ways; you'd never see many of them walking around with a plastic bag to pick up.
it is a bunch of crap
..Either way.
From the size of the offending fecal matter, you can tell it's mostly rat dogs. So yuppies and townies alike, it's still disgusting.
taking care of the neighborhoods
The favoritism and graft you need to engage in to have a business in this city make our job growth weak and our employment prospects so bad. A few poor people get city jobs while the rest are left in the cold, because these deals destroy true business development. Everything has to run through the mayor's office before it can get approved, and his minions take their cut.
I am tired of hearing that Menino and Kennedy and Billy Bulger brought so much money into whatever. They kept much more money out by their controlling central planning mentality when it comes to the private economy.
Glen Beck called
he wants his talking points back.
sorry junior
To interrupt your solitaire distraction from psych 101. I've seen it happen up close.
No really, he wants them
No really, he wants them back. Like now.
Your talking points and posts are always out of GOP 101. Is there an original, well though out argument in there? or are you going to start sprouting off about socialist fascists next?
The collected works of em painter
Thank you for following my long and storied career. If the only job of the mayor is to direct the economy with tax money, you will get the kind of campaign we are getting, ie who is best for the unions, who's best for the arts, who is best for the schools, the gays, etc.
The truth is that none of them are very good for these social services, because none of them propose to do anything to generate more money. They're just cutting up the pie in different ways, for different friends. What really is the fight between Menino and Flaherty other than an inside game between factions in City Hall, and their various backers?
Not that I agree with EM very often ...
But you are way off the mark. Sure, he's got some of the talking points down ... but he isn't always on cue - particularly with the local stuff that the GOP would never ever bother with anyway. Not in Massachusetts.
Yeah, but here's the thing
Menino doesn't take care of my neighborhood, because he thinks only students and transients (in other words, people who don't vote) live here. So fuck him.
Too bad it takes a big sniff of scandal....
...to breathe life into this otherwise ho hum mayoral campaign. However, it sure does say something about City Hall that this has been standard practice. The absence of accountability is stunning.
The winner of the day?
The winner of the day? McCrea of course, he goes from sidelines to right up in there in a photo op that will be seen nationwide I am sure. Sure he won't be Mayor but I think this does wonders for his image.
Great for McCrea, terrible
Great for McCrea, terrible for Yoon.
McCrea is picking up votes like a madman. Where are they coming from? Sam Yoon.
McCrea is gonna drag Yoon down and the only two candidates with over a third of the vote on the 23rd will be Mean-o and MFlats, which is fine by me. That will be a hell of a street fight.
Yoon vs. Menino, not so much. All of Flats support will go to Menino and absolutely crush Yoon.
That's nonsense
Everyone knows that Yoon has the best shot of taking down Menino in November. Flaherty's people will even tell you that.
Glomming on
It's really weasely for Flaherty (lesser so for Yoon) to glom onto McCrea like this considering McCrea slapped Flaherty down for an equivalent offense of public openness previously. Now, the three amigos get to look like buddy crusaders but Flaherty's the one who's going to benefit most having the biggest following already.
All this might do is make the runoff Flaherty-Yoon instead of Flaherty-Menino if enough of this scandal zaps Hizzoner down to third. Menino would have to eat a baby in order for McCrea to pass him in the polling.
It's a disappointing truth that these are all still popularity contests and nobody cares about the guy who doesn't shine as much but comes up with all of the interesting and often compelling ideas.
Late in the game, but too early to tell?
We're only a week away from the preliminary vote, but until we see what kind of legs this story develops over the next day or two, it's too early to tell how this will affect the results.
You can bet that the Mayor's very effective operation is redoubling its efforts. If Menino comes out of the prelim with a strong vote, he may be able to tap down this whole thing. However, if he finishes with anything but a strong first, it will get very interesting.
I do not think anyone was
I do not think anyone was ever expecting McCrea to win this time but he sure does look good for his next City Council run. So he benefits and Flaherty/Yoon benefit from him showing up with them as it makes them look cleaner too. I think they are all using each other.
Flaherty took responsiblity
Flaherty took responsiblity for the actions of a legislative body (it wasn't just him). It is called leadership, and the mayor is displaying a lack of one right now.
From what the herald wrote today, Flaherty is the one who called the press conference and ASKED that his opponents join him.
That is leadership.
I am a Flaherty supporter fine, but these are some of the reasons why.
Was Flaherty defending the practice
Was Flaherty defending the practice of circumventing open meeting law or just trying to avoid the penalty of having engaged in it? Because if he was defending the practice, don't expect a city government under Flaherty that is open about its actions.
Of the three challengers, Flaherty strikes me as the one most likely to embrace business as usual patronage style governance.
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Bullshit. Period.
Flaherty did everything in his power to stifle McCrea and the codefendants! Flaherty is a lawyer and knew damn well that his parsing of the Open Meeting rules was garbage. They did head counts to stay under quota to avoid calling it an "official" meeting and then let the BRA members actually "call" the meeting so that it wasn't a "council" meeting!
Even AFTER the judge smacked them all down, Flaherty had the council lawyers file an appeal!
Not once did he want his council to be held accountable for their actions actively skirting the Open Meeting Law until he was basically nailed at all 5 points to the floorboard. His "leadership" in this situation was to try to lead the Council out of direct fire for having been utterly conniving! An example of someone in the Council fighting for meeting the letter of the law was Felix Arroyo. Don't act like Flaherty was trumpeting the charge towards legality when he was the biggest opponent of doing what was right at the time being, you bald-faced liar.
this attaches to Flaherty and not Yoon
When will the City Council name names about this abuse of government authority and lawlessness?
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To clarify, Yoon took office in 2006
Thanks for pointing this out. Lumping Yoon into the open meeting violations has been making me a little crazy. Yoon wasn't in office yet when the violations occurred, and was not named in the lawsuit. McCrea keeps implicating Yoon by saying that he and Flaherty paid to fight the lawsuit. But the statement is misleading and disingenuous, in that it implies some wrong-doing on Yoon's part. The city did fight the lawsuit, yes, and it cost some money, also yes, but McCrea's statements are leading people to the entirely false conclusion that Yoon had done something wrong. He hasn't.
The Public Record Law is a Law for a Reason
Notwithstanding that we don't know what was in those e-mails -- they could've been completely harmless or otherwise -- the public records law exists to ensure transparency in government. I don't think this is damning of the Mayor himself, but the aides in these articles should be held accountable. Excuses like the "Mayor does right by the neighborhoods" should not translate into meaning his aides can break the law.
Fire the aides or demote them and you have my vote again, Mr. Mayor.
If and when they ask Michael
If and when they ask Michael Kineavy to leave, they are admitting wrong doing. That won't happen because the Mayor thinks he is above all of these charges. He is only accountable to us, the voters. We can send him a message next week in the preliminary election.
Today was big because it shows that no matter who gets past the prelim (my vote is for Flaherty), if Menino is in the fight, the other candidates will back each other to beat him. That should be scary for the Mayor.
How is this not damning?
Either you set a standard of public records or you don't. Menino's defense is either: 1) he doesn't understand email well enough to know that it's part of the public record or 2) he hasn't pointed out to his top aides that deleting public records is illegal.
Either he doesn't understand 21st century communications or he was OK with this. Neither of these options are acceptable to me.
Will Kevin start dreaming BIG?
Hmmm. If Kevin loses the preliminary, does he then go for US Senate? He already has the blue blazer and red tie ...
Flaherty next AG?
As a former prosecutor (if he was good) I suspect he'd aim at the AG spot if front-runner Coakley glides into Kennedy's seat.
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Something else to hang around the mayor's neck
If he wants to be the head of the entire city with the BRA directly under his wing...then it's time to saddle him with another embarrassment (one that McCrea has been on top of since 2005).
People should be hearing more about Christine Colley, deputy director of "Compliance" at the BRA. Her office has YET to do what she was hired to accomplish even after the Herald smacked her upside the head in early July with her lack of ability to perform the most BASIC aspect of her job for the past FIVE years!!
So here is a question for
So here is a question for you all. Why is Michael Flaherty, at the age of 40, sporting a head of white hair?
maybe the same reason
other people go bald at age 25. i don't think "stress" is more likely than genetics.
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Another reason for prematurely grey/white hair
Thyroid problems (both my wife and I had this happen to us -- my father still has mostly black hair). ;~}
OK. I am not judging, it
OK. I am not judging, it actually looks good on him but I was floored when I found out he and Yoon were about the same age.
flaherty has been fighting
flaherty has been fighting the fight for 10 years.
yoon has been in office for less than 4.
So does that mean that they
So does that mean that they are not the same age?
Clerks Office. City Stenographer. City Messenger.
The Boston City Hall culture is one of deflecting enquiries that relate to public records and sunshine open meetings. The City Clerks Office, City Clerk, Assistant City Clerk, the hundred or so Boston City Council staff, Council Central Staff, Council Staff Director, the City Messenger and City Stenographer routinely deflect.
The Council Staff Director emotionally extorts by threatening to remove your email address from Council communications email lists if enquiry for public records continue. The City Clerks Office censors Council minutes to an all too brief arcane format that makes it too difficult to interpret the proceedings, transactions and Councilors' debate.
The City Stenographer uses out of date software and keeps the stenographic machine record at home not at City Hall.
More up to date scopistry professionals use stenographic software that has features like closed captioning for Council webcasts that would make public meetings accessible for folks with hearing loss. More up to date scopistry professionals stenographic software would cost less than what the City Budget alots for the City Stenographer.
The City Stenographer has been grandfathered in for too long without effectively reaching out to competing stenographic and scopist professionals that do it better, cost less and are ethical about public records.
A new City Clerk and Council Staff Director are needed more up to date about technological advances, more up to date about municipal software.
What does the City Messenger really do?... other than deflect access to the City Departments Annual Reports kept on shelves at Boston City Council. A knowledgeable journalist, an effective reporter would look into the ethics of the people in these roles of our municipal government.
Posts. Multiple accounts. Problematic forum usage.
Please provide, in plain ASCII text, explanation as to why there are posts on Universal Hub originating from several accounts, all of which are obviously Don Saklad.
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