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From 18 to 5,018 e-mails
By adamg on Sat, 09/26/2009 - 8:10am
The Globe shows off printouts of the 5,000 extra e-mails the city managed to find belonging to Menino aide de camp Michael Kineavy; says it also found, gosh, some missing e-mails that might be relevant to the federal investigation into indicted ex-Sen. Dianne Wilkerson and her alleged liquor license issues. Says there are far more, but city officials balking at complying with the state open-records law say it would cost $250,000 to recover them.
The Herald, meanwhile, starts reading the messages and tears into Hizzonah for the way he released the paper copies of the e-mail:
Mayor Thomas M. Menino used classic stall tactics and flouted public records laws in the release of e-mails improperly deleted by his top lieutenant, making various payment demands and dumping the public records to reporters after darkness fell outside a locked-up City Hall. ...
Jay Fitzgerald considers the costs:
Some in the adminstration are apparently bellyaching that reproducing the emails is "cost prohibitive." Maybe if they had kept track of emails in the first place and didn't require expensive computer forensics teams to retrieve them, then perhaps the costs might have been a little lower, right guys?
The Outraged Liberal suggests a ritualistic solution:
If Michael Kineavy is as loyal to Boston Mayor Tom Menino as is widely reported, he ought to think about falling on his sword -- today.
Can you say "obstruction of justice"?
The "discovery" of more than 5,000 e-mails previously thought lost -- some related to the federal investigation into City Councilor Chuck Turner and former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson -- adds a whole new life to what Menino has tried to dismiss as an innocent mistake by an overzealous clean freak off a top aide. ...
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Comments
E-Gate is serious: Hold Menino accountable
Now we know: Kineavy was deleting e-mails that relate to the public's business.
In the way we communicate today, this is the contemporary equivalent of shredding mounds of memos and letters. It is not a trivial matter, and even many of us who use e-mail as a lifeline to the world have underestimated what this says about the Menino Administration's lack of commitment to open government.
What this reveals, er, confirms, about the Menino Administration is its arrogance, insularity, and sense of entitlement to a public office. There's no sense of having done something wrong (at this juncture, it would be appropriate for Kineavy to step down), no sense of mea culpa (as in an apology for having made government less accountable). Instead, we get only a petulant 'tude of having been put upon.
Okay, so E-gate doesn't rise to the level of Watergate in terms of an Administration's sins, at least not yet. But it's much more than an election season dust up. It legitimately raises the question of whether this Administration, despite genuine accomplishments, needs to move on.
25 emails a day?
I have a pretty boring, unimportant job. I do, however, get about 70 emails a day - not including google alerts and the like. Are we really meant to believe that the top dog in the mayor's office gets about 25 emails a day???? Where are the rest of them?
I agree
The notion that there was some innocent mistake here in deleting these emails is absolutely incredible. And I find the Menino administration's cavalier treatment of any kind of critique or question insulting as a resident and voter.
So far, nothing illegal has been reported to have been found in the emails that have been turned over, but for me, they do raise some other questions that I hope get taken seriously. Many folks are applauding the Mayor's hands-on delivery of constituent services, but I wonder why the Mayor and his top aide are even involved in any kind of discussion about things like broken lamp posts, for example.
These are basic city services that we all pay for, and yet we have the Mayor, his top aide, neighborhood liaisons, district city councillors, in addition to the Department of Public Works all involved in filling potholes. In other words, we are tolerating the politicization of virtually every decision, no matter how routine, that gets made in City Hall. And accepting colossal waste of finacial resources and human talent. The result, I think, is that the administration is so bogged down in minutae that it can't formulate or articulate a coherent vision for Boston moving forward.
I supported Yoon, and when Sam talked about something so geeky as a city-wide 311 system, what he was talking about was taking politics out of potholes, and freeing up the Mayor and his staff to manage the bigger picture of of Boston's future, rather than managing the Mayor's image.
My Irony Meter is pegged: Paper release of electronic mail
What kind of nitwits do they think we are? What kind of nitwits are they?
From an computer-based records system, from a database management system of some sort, the public records are delivered to journalists on paper.
Just what kind of drugs are these people doing?
Any university undergraduate—okay, graduate student— is comfortable doing searches using EBSCO's products to search hundreds of electronically available periodicals. The searching is what we have come to expect over the last twenty or thirty years: Author, date, keywords, titles, full-text.
If the forensics firm is managing the yield of its investigations using a computer—and you best believe they are—then with a minute fraction of $250k they can pony up a little mysql database permitting our journalists to use a computer to access these data.
Offering this information on paper!, no matter the time of day or location is a shocking, callous insult to the citizenry.
It's a strategy
It's a strategy to stall, or at least annoy, critics. And I agree, it is a "shocking, callous insult to the citizenry."
30 years ago
I went to the City Assessor's Office to find out who owned a piece of property. (I was a real estate broker). When I asked the person behind the desk, their answer was "why?".(Even then, this was public information.) Since then, I had heard that things were a bit more transparent over there. Apparently I was mistaken. (Perhaps being unintelligible is deliberate?)
Don't stay quiet
This is nonsense from the Menino machine. I was a big Sam Yoon supporter but we got to all get behind Michael Flaherty now. This machine is corrupt and has to go. The machine's votes are capped. We need to get new voters out in November and Flaherty can win. It's up to everyone now to tell their non-voting friends what these people are doing. Get these people out to vote and we can beat this machine.
time for a Yoon write-in campaign
I was a big Sam Yoon supporter but we got to all get behind Michael Flaherty now.
No. Yoon needs to do a write-in campaign, and people need to aggressively show how Flaherty is more of the same-old same-old and will not bring about change or improvements.
That will hep Menino
Writing in Yoon would be counter-productive. Even a change in person would be some change for the city. We have to get rid of this mayor now! Not in four more years.
30 years and one minute ago
And, just after you left the Assessors Office scratching your head, I showed up at at the next window and said that I wanted to change the occupancy permit of a building.
Just like he was staring at a bug I was told, "You can't."
Every other visit I made in the attempt resulted in the same insolence. Eventually I stopped trying.
Things have gotten better, but, 30 years later, there are still three classes of people in this city: those who know someone, those who servilely accept the minimal service they are offered, and those people who need to get lost.
you actually got there one
you actually got there one minute before him
Yeah, but...
...the next window didn't open for another two minutes.
Personnel issues
The city has a legal obligation to redact any information related to personnel issues etc. I am no defender of this behavior - but it's regrettably understandable that an attorney has to review each of these emails and "black out" any personnel or other information that rightly should remain confidential.
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to do it electronically - but could see it being easier and less time consuming with a Sharpie.
I think the "personnel issues" exemption is kinda b.s.
and is selectively applied. When Menino really needs to fire someone (like Arroyo the bodybuilding firefighter or that racist emailing cop) performance-related "personnel information" gets dispensed like Halloween candy. I doubt employees' home addresses, phone numbers, or social security numbers appear witg any frequency in city emails, so the amount of laborious black-marker redaction necessary is, I think, highly overstated.
Stenographic machine record of the last Council public meeting.
Now is the time to get the stenographic machine record of the last public meeting of Boston City Council at http://www.cityofboston.gov/contact/?id=138 The stenographic machine records more of the proceedings, transactions and Councilors debate than the all too brief arcane Council Minutes.
Please stop
If you see a post about council minutes, by all means jump in. But stop posting about council minutes in discussions that have nothing to do with them.
Thanks.
I get this odd feeling
One of these days we're going to find out that The Zak died from suffocation due to a stenomask wire being wrapped around his neck and we're not going to know if it was auto-erotic asphyxiation or someone on UHub with a keen sense of cruel irony.
Best comment of the week
WIN
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Or ...
Man dies in freak library accident
Crushed when entire stack of encyclopedias collapses on him at BPL main branch
His last words
"Problematic oxygen usage. Please provide...in plain intravenous format..."
Or or...
Man sentenced. Sentence shortened. Shortened man.
Does Cambridge provide stenographic minutes?
You called Dan Rhea on on WBZ a couple of weeks ago and revealed that despite living in Cambridge you have an obsession with Boston's stenographic minutes and didn't know if Cambridge supplies the same. Have you found out if the Cambridge council keeps and disseminates the stenographic machine record of the last public meeting of the Cambridge city council since the stenographic machine records more of the proceedings, transactions and councilors debate than the all too brief arcane Council Minutes.
And by the way - if so, does the stenographer keep the records at his/her house?
What cities and towns have stenographic machine services?...
Thank you! I'm grateful for this interest in the conversation.
It appears Boston City Council is the only Massachusetts city or town council that has a budget for a stenographic machine record of public meetings of the council. Boston City Stenographer emfritch at aol.com fails to retain the stenographic machine record removing it from City Hall, taking it home.
See also Rebecca S. Murray's book
Freedom of Information and Public Records Law in Massachusetts
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/320779256
and
An In-Depth Look at the Scopist Profession
http://www.scopists.com/Scopistry/
Wow. Now I'm voting in mayoral election
Wow. Now I'm voting in the mayoral election. It wasn't on my priority list because I'm ambivalent about both canddidates, but frankly delivering emails by paper is a tipping point with me -- this is way over the line. This is pure contempt of accountability.