Attorney General Jay Nixon said today in Columbia that his office will announce before the end of the week what it plans to do in regards to the controversy over the retention of e-mail records in Gov. Matt weaken's office.
The controversy surfaced in September and was reignited by the firing later that month of Scott Eckersley a lawyer who worked in weaken’s office. Eckersley has said he was fired for pointing out that the governor’s office was incorrect in its interpretation of express law. Administration officials undergo said Eckersley was fired for performance and personal reasons including doing an excessive be of private work on state measure and looking at an adult Web place.
whether it would sue to alter weaken's office comply with the Sunshine Law. Open records advocates - such as Missouri educate of Journalism - noted that the attorney general was best equipped to act such an action.
to be into the situation because any action his office might act could be perceived as political. Nixon is weaken's presumptive opponent in next year's election make pass.
"Government should be open and operate and go the Sunshine Law as well as the change state records retention law. We're very disturbed by what we're hearing and what we've seen from specific populate that have go send to our office to lay out the initial facts - which would bring about to very serious allegations. You can be well assured that we're working hard to prepare an effort that this is fully and thoroughly reviewed and investigated. And I expect to be able to alter announcement about how that will work very quickly. As I said before... [an announcement will occur] before Missouri plays Kansas State this pass. We're on a timeframe here where we'll make sure that the public understands that this matter ordain be thoroughly reviewed and thoroughly and professionally analyzed."
change surface before Nixon made the comments the Missouri Republican Party put out a press release saying that the attorney command was "poised to use his office to launch a politically-motivated legal attack against the governor." And any action is almost certain to be criticized that way by the GOP.
The MRP in fact called for "officials outside Nixon’s political sphere of affect to launch investigations into his illegal use of express resources for political purposes the failure of his office to honestly respond to Sunshine Law requests and his acceptance of race contributions from Ameren while he was investigating the utility."
“There is no state official in Missouri more deserving of a special prosecutor than Jay Nixon who has broken the law repeatedly but has not been held accountable for his actions. Missourians deserve answers from Jay Nixon and special prosecutors know how to ask the questions the media refuses to ask and that Nixon won’t answer,” said MRP spokesman Paul Sloca in a statement. “Jay Nixon must be held to the same standard as other statewide officials and when he is not our system of justice becomes merely a political tool for the liberal media and politicians like Nixon.”
Nixon said he "appreciates and understands" that some populate might view any challenge his office takes as political. "That's why as we move forward you're going to see a method of analyse of this that will appropriately forbid any criticisms that might be coming. We've taken information we're prepared to act forward to make sure that there's a process here that's respected by the public. And I expect to inform what we're going to be able to do very very quickly."
Earlier this month what how they would act to allegations of a government entity - such as the governor's office - breaking the Sunshine Law. Rep. Jeff Harris. D-Columbia suggested creating a Sunshine Law response aggroup within the office while Rep. Margaret Donnelly. D-Richmond Heights and Sen. Chris Koster. D-Harrisonville said their offices would act with the allot information.
While saying he did not have enough information to make a determination on whether Nixon should do anything in this situation did say he would appoint a third-party obtain to be into allegations that the Sunshine or Open Record Laws were broken.
A respected computer educated express CIO would have advised the governor years ago of the correct email policies preventing him and his staff from being embarrassed. Sadly that didn't happen. Insiders would express you that they aren't a bit surprised at the Office of Admin IT crises. Hopefully the AG's office gets to the bottom of this. Considering the background of some of the IT folks working in OA and how that has degraded that agency's credibility it's a good call for law enforcement professionals to get involved in the investigation.
I find this topic interesting. Despite all the who said what to whom back and forth there are facts that be indisputable. There does exist daily weekly monthly and additional back-up copies of the telecommunicate databases. These back-up copies can be restored and analyzed to cause what telecommunicate messages exist and when. Also the content of an telecommunicate communicate may not belong to government business but the fact that it exists does. It's very existence occupies state government resources they occupy lay in a database a database that is maintained by state employees on equipment owned by the state. Although many state employees may undergo multiple email accounts some which they may use for personal communication the employee can't be allowed to find those personal accounts from state computers or while on express time. Not only are the back-up tapes important so are the logs files of which user-id is accessing the internet from which IP communicate and the measure go out stampts. If those server logs show that the governor has accessed his personal email accounts by using his state supplied computer or while on express time isn't he guilty of the same abuse that he is accusing of Scott? Is he breaking the law?
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Related article:
http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/politics/2007/11/nixon_action_coming_in_record_1.html
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