[LINK] New Method of foiling those Pesky Reporter Types with their FOI requests.

Tom Koltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Wed Dec 7 19:23:48 AEDT 2011


American Politicians have developed an interesting way to add money to
the public purse.
Buy new computers for each politicians staffers when their boss moves
on.
Quote/ [From:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-usa-campaign-romney-compute
rs-idUSTRE7B500X20111206]

(Reuters) - Mitt Romney spent nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace
computers in his office at the end of his term as governor of
Massachusetts in 2007 as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his
records secret, Reuters has learned.

The move during the final weeks of Romney's administration was legal but
unusual for a departing governor, Massachusetts officials say.

The effort to purge the records was made a few months before Romney
launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential
nomination in 2008. He is again competing for the party's nomination,
this time to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012.

Five weeks before the first contests in Iowa, Romney has seen his
position as frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates
whittled away in the polls as rival Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of
the House of Representatives, has gained ground.

When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides
bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for
themselves. Also before he left office, the governor's staff had emails
and other electronic communications by Romney's administration wiped
from state servers, state officials say.

Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney's
four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely
what information was erased is unclear.

Republican and Democratic opponents of Romney say the scrubbing of
emails - and a claim by Romney that paper records of his governorship
are not subject to public disclosure - hinder efforts to assess his
performance as a politician and elected official.

As Massachusetts governor, Romney worked with a Democrat-led state house
to close a budget shortfall and signed a healthcare overhaul that
required nearly all state residents to buy insurance or face penalties.

Massachusetts' healthcare law became a model for Obama's nationwide
healthcare program, enacted into law in 2010. As a presidential
candidate, however, Romney has criticized Obama's plan as an overreach
by the federal government.

Massachusetts officials say they have no basis to believe that Romney's
staff violated any state laws or policies in removing his
administration's records.

They acknowledge, however, that state law on maintaining and disclosing
official records is vague and has not been updated to deal with issues
related to digital records and other modern technology.

BUYING UP HARD DRIVES

Romney's spokesmen emphasize that he followed the law and precedent in
deleting the emails, installing new computers in the governor's office
and buying up hard drives.

However, Theresa Dolan, former director of administration for the
governor's office, told Reuters that Romney's efforts to control or wipe
out records from his governorship were unprecedented.

Dolan said that in her 23 years as an aide to successive governors "no
one had ever inquired about, or expressed the desire" to purchase their
computer hard drives before Romney's tenure.

The cleanup of records by Romney's staff before his term ended included
spending $205,000 for a three-year lease on new computers for the
governor's office, according to official documents and state officials.

In signing the lease, Romney aides broke an earlier three-year lease
that provided the same number of computers for about half the cost -
$108,000. Lease documents obtained by Reuters under the state's freedom
of information law indicate that the broken lease still had 18 months to
run.

As a result of the change in leases, the cost to the state for computers
in the governor's office was an additional $97,000.

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney's presidential campaign, referred
questions on the computer leasing deal and records removal to state
officials.

Last week, Saul claimed that Deval Patrick, the present Massachusetts
governor and a Democrat, was encouraging reports about Romney's records
to cast the former governor as secretive. Patrick's office has not
responded to that allegation.

STATE REVIEWING RECORDS LAW

The removal of digital records by Romney's staff, first reported by the
Boston Globe, has sparked a wave of requests for state officials to
release paper records from Romney's governorship that remain in the
state's archives.

Massachusetts officials are now reviewing state law to determine whether
the public should have access to those records.

The issue is clouded by a 1997 state court ruling that could be
interpreted to mean that records of the Massachusetts governor are not
subject to disclosure. Romney has asserted that his records are exempt
from disclosure.

State officials and a longtime Romney adviser have acknowledged that
before leaving office, Romney asked state archives officials for
permission to destroy certain paper records. It is unclear whether his
office notified anyone from the state before destroying electronic
records.

Officials have said the details of Romney's request to remove paper
records, such as what specific documents he wanted to destroy, could be
made public only in response to a request under the state's freedom of
information law. Reuters has filed such a request.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by David Lindsey and David Storey)

/quote




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