Howie Carr list ping
Posted on 01/08/2010 9:41:48 AM PST by raccoonradio
Former Lynn Mayor Edward J. “Chip” Clancy and his staff, as they prepared to depart City Hall for good, deleted all e-mails and purged electronic files from city computers, says the new mayor, who is fuming over what she says may be a violation of state law.
“I feel this is a very serious breach of the public trust,” said Judith Flanagan Kennedy, Lynn’s new mayor. “I can’t think of a valid reason why e-mails were deleted from the mayor’s office.”
Besides the e-mails, the city is missing key documents - payroll records, contracts and press releases - stored on those computers, Kennedy said.
To her horror, she also found that nearly all paper records were gone, and that just six of 28 file drawers had not been cleaned out as Clancy cleared out.
“I’m angry on behalf of the citizens of Lynn that their public documents have been taken from their public building,” Kennedy said.
After conferring with city lawyers, Kennedy wrote Clancy Dec. 31, the day after learning about the document disappearance, and asked for him to return “copies of e-mails and documents stored on any and all computers in the mayor’s office” within 10 days.
If Clancy doesn’t comply, Kennedy said, she’ll ask Secretary of State William F. Galvin to get involved. Efforts to reach Clancy for comment yesterday were unsuccessful.
Municipal workers are required by state law to save e-mails and other documents.
The new mayor said her discovery reminded her of the scandal that rocked Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s administration this summer.
Galvin found top aide Michael Kineavy deleted e-mails in violation of the state public records law. That case has been referred to the attorney general. Galvin declined to comment for this story.
If Clancy can’t produce the missing documents, then the cash-strapped city by the sea will have to come up with the dough to recover the files, Kennedy said.
Documents weren’t all that was missing, Kennedy alleged. There were no pens, pencils, Post-it notes or paper in the mayor’s office, either.
Kennedy, a Republican, unseated the Democrat Clancy as a write-in candidate in rancorous race.
She eked out a 27-vote margin over Clancy, a former state representative and senator, that survived a recount.
Kennedy refused to speculate on whether the Clancy administration was trying to hide something by tossing e-mail messages and paper files on the way out door.
For now, Kennedy attributes the affair to political hijinks, which she compared to Clinton administration staffers removing all the W’s from White House keyboards before George W. Bush assumed office.
“At least all the J’s, F’s, and K’s were left on computer keybords,” Kennedy said
>>That case has been referred to the attorney general.
Martha Coakley, currently running for Senator. That means nothing will be done. "When you really want to hide something well, just put it in one of Martha Coakley's law books"--Howie Carr
>>Documents weren’t all that was missing, Kennedy alleged. There were no pens, pencils, Post-it notes or paper in the mayor’s office, either. Kennedy, a Republican, unseated the Democrat Clancy as a write-in candidate in rancorous race.
Try not to let this destroy your faith in the integrity of the Democrat party.
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Howie Carr list ping
Since any idiot would know that destroying public records is a crime, I can imagine only that the crimes they were covering up were worse than the crime of destroying public records.
The political swamp of Massachusetts..
Yes, yes, the city I was born in (my parents lived in Nahant but there was no hospital; also since there’s no high school,
I wound up graduating from Lynn Classical)
“...the bathroom water tastes just like gin...” ?
“I’m From Lynn, What Can I Say?”—funny folk singer Don White
More from the Lynn Item
http://itemlive.com/articles/2010/01/05/news/news02.txt
Clancy staff cleans house
By David Liscio / The Daily Item
LYNN - The Clancy administration seemingly adopted a no-file-left-behind policy as it exited City Hall last week, leaving empty drawers and deleted computer databases for incoming Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and her staff.
“It was definitely disappointing,” Claire Cavanagh, Kennedy’s chief of staff, said Monday. “Many of the 20-something file draw(er)s were completely empty and 90 percent of the computer files were deleted.” According to Cavanagh, the absence of mayoral stationary and paper clips is less problematic than the missing electronic and paper files. “Our biggest problem is tracking down deleted computer files and the many paper files that were also discarded. Ninety percent of the hard copy contracts, payroll registers, proclamations, press releases and other public documents were removed,” she said.
Acting on advice of City Solicitor Michael Barry, Kennedy on Dec. 30 sent a certified letter to Clancy, asking that he return the missing public documents.
“As we finalized the transition process last week, my staff and I were taken aback to learn that many documents relative to the mayor’s office were not in the office,” Kennedy said Monday. “I requested and received a legal opinion from the city solicitor, who advised me to send a certified letter to the outgoing mayor, requesting the return of these documents.”
Cavanagh said all but seven of the 24 file drawers in the mayor’s office had been emptied.
“(Clancy) was notified in a nice way,” she added. “We served the letter to him and requested those files be returned within 10 days. Right now we’re waiting for that 10-day period to elapse. We’re hoping his administration will return some of the articles.”
Cavanagh said Kennedy staffers were initially stunned by the absence of office supplies and information files. “Did they leave a lot of supplies? No, they didn’t,” she said. “At first glance, we thought there was absolutely nothing, but the next day the staff found a few pens and pencils.”What gets left behind for the incoming administration varies by outgoing mayor, said Cavanagh, who has worked in Lynn city government for nearly four decades. When the late mayor Patrick McManus left office in 2002, only personal items were removed from his City Hall quarters.
“When Pat left in 2002, the office was intact. There were no hard feelings and no reason for him to discard anything. Can we eventually get back the public documents that are missing? Of course we can, but it would have been better to have everything in order,” Cavanagh said.
“I am hopeful that he will take immediate steps to rectify this situation,” Kennedy said.
This reminds me of the Eddie Murphy movie “The Distinguished Gentleman”.
I used to live near Lynn, Massachusetts (”Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin”). There and in Mass. government generally, no amount of criminality is ever petty enough to remain an untapped resource for enterprising politicians. Usually, outgoing officeholders don’t worry about their replacement, who is likely a Democrat and beholden to the same interests. When the rare GOP member wins something, it might be time for a Shredding and Burning Party.
But of course Mr Clancy is a donkey so it will be seen as a minor blip...
I saw some of the comments on the Lynn Item article and judging by how Clancy was viewed it was amazing he lost by only 27 votes!
Face it. Most Democrat mayors are crooks.
Greetings from the original Sin City.I voted twice for Kennedy. Good riddance to Clancy. Arrogant little(literally) bastard. She is starting off on the right foot. She cut her pay from 120k to 80k. It is symbolic, but aprreciated nonetheless.
My sister went to High School with him at St. Mary’s he was an ahole then.
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin...
The best place to hide evidence of a crime committed in Massachusetts is to hide it under Martha Coakley's nose.
Such is what the ONLY GOP Mayor of a city of any size in MA has to deal with from the corrupt rodentry.
Taking a dump in the dishwasher to surprise the new homeowners huh.
I’m reminded of course of Clinton’s people taking the W’s off all the keyboards in 2001. Where the O’s similarly missing last year? Not that I know of.
Best of luck, as Lynn has been a notorious hive of scum and villiany for over a century. It is the Cicero, IL of New England (although Cicero itself was run by a corrupt REPUBLICAN machine).
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