Blunt's Eckersley Scandal, Day Five

Tim Hoover of the KC Star advances the Scott Eckersley story further today with a news piece that explains in more detail the Blunt administration's prevarications about the existence of emails documents supporting Eckersley's claims. 

Blunt became entangled in his own web of untruth yesterday, when he stated unequivocally that no documents exist that showed Eckersley raised concerns about email retention and reporter Jo Mannies correctly followed up with an indication of having herself seen such documents.

Hoover goes into greater depth about those documents:

­The proof, said Scott Eckersley, the attorney who was fired, is in four pages of e-mails documenting an exchange he had with a fellow attorney on Sept. 20, eight days before he was ousted.­

Those e-mails were part of an inches-thick stack of documents that the administration provided to reporters last week to bolster its argument that Eckersley was fired for poor performance that included outside legal work on state time.

Interesting that Team Blunt has chosen to repeatedly deny the existence of emails and documents that they themselves have already provided to members of the media.  It's as though a parent had given a puppy to a young child only to explain later to the child later that "there are no such things as puppies."  

And it seems as though Blunt and his inner circle know they are lying about much of the factual substance of the Eckersley matter and have therefore, whenever possible, engaged Rich Aubuchon as the designated liar regarding the issue.  We've got Aubuchon again popping up in Hoover's story to tell a reporter what the reporter knows to be false:

Asked Thursday about the Bunch-Eckersley e-mail exchange, AuBuchon said he knew of no e-mail Eckersley sent to Chrismer, Herschel and Martin advising them on saving e-mails.

“I think he’s giving himself too much credit,” AuBuchon said.

Maybe now is an appropriate time to ask a question in need of asking: who the hell is Rich Aubuchon and why is he the one answering questions about what the Governor and his inner circle of staff knew or didn't know?  Does anyone --in the press or in the public-- care the least little bit about what Rich Aubuchon, whom no one ever heard of before the Eckersley scandal, "thinks" about Scott Eckersley or his claims? 

Of course not.  Yet here he is, a non-critical player answering questions for Team Blunt while Chief of Staff Ed Martin --who has never been able to shut his mouth in front of a reporter and who has actual, meaningful knowledge of the subject-- is doing his best Harpo Marx impersonation.

And while Blunt is engaging his staff and underlings in lying about the nuts and bolts specifics of the Eckersley documents, he himself is also busy lying about what the law requires of his office regarding the maintenance of email records.  Blunt has repeatedly suggested that his office's policy on document retention is identical to that required in the Sunshine Law, but evidence proves otherwise.  Hoover's piece illustrates this nicely:

However, a set of guidelines adopted in 2001 by the State Records Commission, which adopts rules for state agencies on how long records must be kept, specifically states “many” e-mails are public records. Blunt, who was secretary of state at the time, was the chairman of the commission.

“E-mail messages that document decisions, policies, procedures, resource expenditures, operations or delivery of services are evidence of official state business,” the guidelines say. “Agencies must ensure that these messages are appropriately stored, organized, scheduled and disposed of according to the approved Records Disposition Schedule.”

According to that schedule, “general correspondence,” which covers most memos and e-mails related to policy, must be kept for three years. Meanwhile, “transitory” e-mails that do not have any “documentary or evidentiary value” may be deleted.

Obviously, the emails which Eckersley and his attorneys have in hand are correspondence related to policy and are therefore clearly indicated as documents that must be retained under the guidelines. Yet Blunt's office have apparently neither retained nor provided those documents to the public.  So Blunt, though presumably aware of the retention schedule since he signed it as Secretary of State in 2001, has over and over told the press that his office has complied with open records laws when the hard evidence clearly falsifies his claim.  

The lying in this circus would be downright humorous if it were not being done by the people responsible for running our state.  This is the inevitable result of the election of a chief executive in Matt Blunt who is too fundamentally dishonest to level with the people of the state of Missouri. 

How ironic that because of Matt Blunt's effort to keep us from learning about what his office was doing we've gotten an even more telling lesson in how his operation works.