First, Debbie Crane alleged that Gov. Mike Easley’s communications officers wanted all emails to his office deleted from their computers, and Department of Transportation public information officer Ernie Seneca admitted he kills almost all his email daily.
Then she confessed to The N&O that a colleague in the Dept. of Health and Human Services was told by the administration to lie about the existance of other certain public records.
Now we hear today from the governor’s own mouth that he has no respect at all for the state’s public records law, after explaining to The N&O what he did with a letter he received from former DHHS secretary Carmen Hooker Odom:
Easley said he recently received a handwritten letter from her
explaining why she didn’t want to talk. When asked for a copy of the
letter, which would be a public record under state law, Easley said he
had dumped it in the trash.“I chunked it,” Easley said. “When I
read something, unless it’s charts or something or budgetary stuff,
when I read it I get rid of it. I throw it away.”
So, how many records in the past eight years or so have been “chunked?” How many of the documents that Carolina Journal and other news organizations have requested have not been provided because (oops!) they were “chunked?”
This is seriously illegal behavior that demands an investigation.
