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District Attorney Tim Cruz

Inspector General steps in; Town to get computer disks back from DA's office

The Inspector General’s office of the State of Massachusetts has taken possession of 84 computer disks that were confiscated by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office last summer following the town’s audit of its own computer system.

The town will also receive copies of 69 of those disks. Copies of the remaining 15 disks, which contain information from computers within the Wareham Police Department, will be turned over to Interim Police Chief Rick Stanley.

During Tuesday night’s selectmen meeting, Chairman Bruce Sauvageau said Town Counsel received a letter from the District Attorney’s office confirming that the Inspector General’s office will take over investigating what is contained on those disks.

“They are returning all of the disks (to the town),” Sauvageau said.

The news comes as a major victory for the Board of Selectmen, which has battled with the District Attorney Timothy Cruz for nearly eight months over possession of the disks.

According to Sauvageau, the only disks that were reviewed by the District Attorney’s office were those relating to police computers.

“The DA has referred the matter to the IG and the (state) ethics department for further investigation,” Sauvageau said.

The chairman also confirmed previous statements he has made that the Board of Selectmen were cleared of any wrongdoing in initiating and conducting the computer audit.

“There was no finding against us,” Sauvageau said. “When we receive the disks we will need to sit down with Town Counsel and discuss what to do next.”

Sauvageau said the Inspector General’s office will be focusing on two departments in their on-going investigation into alleged corruption (past and present) in Wareham. Although he did not state which departments were involved, the Observer has previously reported that the Wareham Free Library and the town’s Municipal Maintenance Department are the focus of the investigation.

Despite repeated requests from the town, the District Attorney’s office had refused to return the disks and has never officially acknowledged why the computer disks were confiscated last summer from a private digital forensic company hired by the town. The District Attorney convened a Special Grand Jury last July for an unstated reason and called Sauvageau, then-interim town administrator John Sanquinet and Systems Manager Matt Underhill to testify about the purpose and scope of the audit after Board of Assessor Chairman Steve Curry wrote to the District Attorney’s office, complaining that confidential information could be compromised.

The Department of Revenue ruled in the town’s favor on that issue. In a letter to the town, the DOR noted that nearly all assessor records are public.

According to a source, Rep. Susan Williams Gifford wrote a letter of complaint surrounding the audit to the DA on behalf of her husband, Mark, who serves as director of Municipal Maintenance. During an illegally broadcast executive session meeting of the Board of Selectmen, John Cronan said the computers of Mark Gifford and Pollution Control Facility operator Dave Simmons should be audited because they are “two of the biggest rats in town.”

The DA’s office later ruled that the selectmen had violated open meeting law because they had not invited Gifford and Simmons to be present during that meeting. The Board of Selectmen denied violating opening meeting law, claiming they had no way to know in advance that Cronan would make such a remark. They also noted that no further discussion ensued regarding Gifford and Simmons.

The Inspector General’s office has been investigating alleged improprieties within the Municipal Maintenance Department for nearly a year. The investigation widened to include the Wareham Free Library after the Observer reported that as much as $1.5 million may have been embezzled from the library under the direction of former library director/selectman Mary Jane Pillsbury, who died in 2008. According to library sources, the embezzlement scheme began after Pillsbury orchestrated a money-laundering operation in which specific people donating to the library received cash kick-backs. The money was then replenished by selling new books at various book sales, as well as from money taken from the library copy machines. A third method has not been publicly reported.

The alleged enterprise occurred from the early 1990s through 2005.

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Robert Slager - 18 opinions posted

Charter Review Committee meeting on Saturday

    An important public meeting will be held at 1 p.m.. this Saturday at the Wareham Middle School to help town residents make an informed decision at the April Town Meeting: Will you support the Charter Review Committee’s recommendation to change our form of government to that of a town council as our legislative body, with a mayor as our chief executive?
    If this recommendation is passed at Town Meeting it will subsequently be on the ballot for all Wareham voters to make a decision about.
    Find out how that form of town government actually works from those who live in towns under that system. Joe Powers ( Braintree), Donna Holaday (Mayor, Newburyport), Lucien Poyant ( Barnstable) and Dick Silva (Plymouth) will answer your questions.
    Learn how you can continue to get information. Prepare to be at the follow-up meeting on Feb 20, also at the Middle School, when you can express your opinion and make your recommendations.

Commentary

In This Corner - Robert Slager

No good deed goes unpunished

Of all the cheap, sleazy tactics employed by the hater bloggers in Wareham, this has to be the sleaziest.

Last week I started a Facebook page for the benefit of the community. There was no hidden agenda, as anyone who has visited the page could plainly see. I created the page so people who live or have lived in the area could connect with one another to share stories and photos, to promote their events, businesses and charities, and to have a little fun. I installed a number of applications such as trivia games, horoscopes, and a link to donate to charities around the world. I asked the friends of the page who attend Wareham High School to make yesterday “Pay It Forward” day by doing something nice for somebody else and then having that person return the favor to another.

The Facebook page has nothing to do with either the Wareham Observer newspaper or web site. I haven't posted news stories or commentary there. Heck, I didn’t even list a phone number for the Observer anywhere on the page. I was just trying to do something nice for the people of Wareham. There was no other page like this in town where people young and old alike could come together in celebration of their community.

The popularity of the page absolutely exploded. In less than a week more than 550 people joined as friends. That’s truly remarkable. If I had known there was such a desire for a page like it I would have created one a long time ago.

But the hate bloggers in Wareham simply couldn’t have it. They couldn’t allow the name “Wareham Observer” to be attached to anything positive for the community. So they complained to Facebook that such a page shouldn’t be allowed.

There are two ways to create a Facebook page – as a “personal” page and as a “business” page. I intentionally set it up as a personal page because I wasn’t trying to sell advertising or subscriptions to the Observer. Anyone who has visited the page knows that. I was trying to provide a community service.

But because the page was called “Wareham Observer” the hater bloggers actually contacted Facebook to tell them to take the page down because it wasn’t set up as a “business” page. I’m not making this up. These people actually did this. But that’s not even the worst part. Now they are going around trying to convince people I set the page up so I could look at photos of underaged girls on other people’s pages.

That’s how disgusting these people have become. My jaw almost hit the floor when I read that. So, because I created a Facebook page the entire community can enjoy that makes me some kind of pervert? That’s sick, even for these people.

First of all, any Facebook member can view public photos on other Facebook pages. It doesn’t matter if you have a business page or a personal page. Anyone who currently uses Facebook knows that. My family already has its own Facebook page. If I had the sick inclination to do what these people are suggesting I didn’t need a Wareham Observer page to do it.

Second, these twisted people are claiming I targeted kids to join the page for some nefarious purpose. That’s an outright lie. When the page was launched last Monday I did send invitations to some people I knew in Wareham. That included some members of the Wareham High football team. I have covered the Vikings for five seasons and have gotten to know some of these young men.

Once a page begins to grow Facebook suggests people to add as friends. I took advantage of that feature and sent out some more invitations. Then hundreds of people began to send unsolicited requests to join. As this page was intended for everybody’s use and has no questionable content whatsoever, I approved everybody’s request. I didn’t create the page for my benefit. I did it for the people of Wareham.

But the hate bloggers simply couldn’t tolerate that. It ran contrary to their “Robert Slager is Satan” mantra. So now they’re doing everything possible to have the page removed.

In order to prevent that from happening I took off the name “Wareham Observer” and replaced it with my own. They can’t claim it’s an actual business page anymore so that effectively eliminates a loop hole they were trying to exploit.

It deeply saddens me to have to write a column like this. It saddens me even more that there are people in this town with nothing better to do than try to destroy a positive addition to the community for their own political purposes. Apparently the hate bloggers are terrified that some people might discover that I’m not the embodiment of evil the bloggers claim me to be. Apparently there is no end to their quest to silence every voice in town but their own.

At least one positive thing has come from all this. Many more people now know what the hate bloggers offer this community.

Nothing.

To visit my Facebook page, please click on this link and see for yourself:
http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000711579213

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In This Corner - Robert Slager - 6 opinions posted