The Healey Administration has taken “nothing to see right here people” to a brand new degree because it refused the Herald’s request for info on simply how LaMar Cook dinner, the previous deputy director of Gov. Maura Healey’s western Massachusetts workplace arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking, handed the hiring threshold.
Cook dinner served within the place since 2023 till late final month when he was hit with costs of drug trafficking, in addition to firearms violations.
Taxpayers have questions and deserve solutions. The Herald was on the case and put in a request for info. The response? A brick wall.
State legislation “exempts from public disclosure ‘personnel and medical information or info; additionally every other supplies or information regarding a particularly named particular person, the disclosure of which can represent an unwarranted invasion of non-public privateness,’” a authorized consultant for the State Police cited as justification for not fulfilling the request.
“Case legislation establishes that exempting personnel info from disclosure is important to guard the flexibility of presidency as an entire to perform successfully as an employer,” Siobhan Kelly, the MSP’s deputy chief authorized counsel, continued. “… As such, the background report requested is exempt from disclosure.”
This line is telling: “the flexibility of presidency as an entire to perform successfully as an employer.” Wouldn’t that embrace totally vetting potential workers, checking for felony backgrounds and different purple flags?
We, the individuals, are basically the employers. Our taxes pay public salaries, we vote for leaders trusting that they are going to put the fitting individuals in place. We’ve a giant stake within the recreation.
Cook dinner has pleaded not responsible to the costs.
We’re not the one ones calling for transparency. Republican state lawmakers, led by Home Minority Chief Bradley Jones and Senate Minority Chief Bruce Tarr, say Cook dinner’s drug and firearms costs are “troubling” and that they increase “critical questions” across the effectiveness of the Healey administration’s vetting practices.
They certain do, and Healey should understand this. So why hit the brakes on transparency and accountability and all the opposite buzzwords liberal lawmakers wish to throw round throughout campaigns?
We shouldn’t be shocked. Final month the Herald reported that Healey’s administration now not publishes a public, common accounting of how a lot the state is spending within the present fiscal yr on the emergency shelter system housing homeless households and pregnant girls as a result of a state legislation mandating the information expired.
In seven studies launched since fiscal yr 2026 began July 1, Healey officers quietly stopped together with key sections that documented in real-time how a lot taxpayers had spent on shelter prices, applications designed to maneuver households out of shelter, and municipal helps.
Republican state Sen. Ryan Fattman known as Healey out.
“I feel it might be a disservice to each single individual within the Commonwealth for them simply to go poof,” he stated.
It’s additionally a disservice to residents of the Commonwealth that state officers are arrested on drug trafficking costs, however how they bought employed within the first place stays a thriller.
How do you outline transparency, governor?
