The Atlantic Wire - How Mitt Romney Tried to Erase the Evidence of His Governorship

[The Evil Genius]

Another WTF moment.

Why do politicians really think they can get away with this without any backlash?

http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romney-tried-erase-evidence-governorship-102728516.html

How Mitt Romney Tried to Erase the Evidence of His Governorship

By Dashiell Bennett | The Atlantic Wire – 6 hrs ago

Shortly before leaving the governor's office in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney's administration spent nearly $100,000 of state money to purge computer and email records in an unprecedented attempt to wipe out the paper trail of his tenure. His staff took home hard drives from state-owned computers and erased emails and other communications from state servers, complicating current efforts to retrieve and review the records of Romney's four-year term that ended in 2007.

It is not believed that Romney violated any laws, but according to state officials who spoke to Reuters, the move to scrub the digital archive of his administration was unusually thorough. Several members of his staff used their own money to purchase the hard drives of their state computers so that they could take them home after leaving their jobs. The staff also broke an existing lease on office equipment so that they could rent new "clean" computers at the end of their run, a move that cost the state $97,000 in additional funds.

Romney claims that whatever record remains of his time in office — including possible details of what was erased — are not subject to state disclosure laws. However, like regulations governing the destruction of digital records, Massachusetts law is vague on what is and isn't allowed. The court ruling most likely to cover any disclosure ruling is from 1997 (well before most state business was done on email) and the state's official records law has not been updated to deal with digital records, meaning Romney could benefit from Massachusetts' failure to adapt to the 21st Century.

MORE AFTER LINK

[visionary]

I think this is overblown. It's been in the news for weeks if not months now without any really new information coming out.

[PeterMP]

I doubt anybody thought they'd actually completely get away with it. The clearly though believed that the penalty for people knowing they had removed data was less than the penalty of having the data public.

In other words, in general, people will (have to (w/ respect to the legal system where we have real burderns of proof)) assume what they are hiding is not as bad as what they actually did.

[Thiebear]

Its always the cover-up, never the crime.. and in this case the crime is simply being a gov of a liberal state and working well with others.

Then trying to cover it up to your neo-con friends. The 'normal' rest of us don't really care.

the extent to which they went bothers me enough not to trust him higher up.

[Larry]

The impression I get is that evading open government laws is pretty much part of SOP for politicians, now days.

The W administration set up everybody in their administration with email accounts hosted by the RNC. The official government email accounts are covered by laws, mandating that backups be kept, and mandating that the records be public. But the accounts on the RNC servers aren't covered by these laws.

When the media was investigating Sarah Palin, they demanded all of her government email, and discovered that nobody in her administration ever used their government email accounts. Instead, before she even took office, her Chief of Staff directed everybody on staff to set up email accounts on Yahoo and similar sites, and to use those email accounts, to avoid the laws.

The only thing in her official email account was where one subordinate sent her a question about a government personnel matter they were considering, and the Chief of Staff replied (using Sarah's official email account), telling him to use the personal email accounts, instead.

I assume that the Democrats do the same thing, and that I simply haven't read as many complaints about it.

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And, like most things when we're talking about the intersection of Politics and Ethics, (or lack thereof), as long as the voters are willing to tolerate it, it's going to continue, and actually get worse.

[Teller]

We don't want someone who's already implemented Obamacare at the state level. Can't erase that, ya buffoon.