Tuesday, September 7, 2010

What's City Hall hiding?

From the NY Post:

Political operative John Haggerty Jr. may stand accused of swiping $750,000 from Mayor Bloomberg, but that doesn't mean City Hall is ready to disclose any more details about him than it has to.

Responding to a Freedom of Information request filed by The Post seven months ago, the mayor's office last week provided just nine e-mail exchanges between Haggerty and mayoral aides in all of 2008 and 2009.

There were other e-mails that the mayor's refuses to release on the grounds of "personal privacy."

They're so private, in fact, officials won't even say how many e-mails are being withheld.

That's a stricter policy than was in force in 2007, when the mayor's former Albany lobbyist, Anthony (Skip) Piscitelli, was discovered to have violated ethics rules by contacting administration officials in 127 e-mails soon after he left while representing private clients.

Back then, the mayor's office declined to release 62 of the e-mails, claiming they weren't government-related. But at least they gave out the numbers.

The skimpy exchanges that were provided with Haggerty indicate he was close as could be to top mayoral aides.

Of course, that was before this year's stunning indictment, in which the Manhattan DA's Office charged Haggerty with stealing $750,000 in Bloomberg money that was meant for the Independence Party's Election Day poll-watching operations.

3 comments:

Suzannah B. Troy artist said...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Suzannahartist#p/a/u/0/lo8G6ClkP48
If it was you or I we would be forced to turn over the emails and our computers seized. So nice to be king of NY. In this YouTube I call for the FBI and the Justice Dept. to investigate.

Anonymous said...

I'll tell you what City Hall could be hiding : the mayor's office could be hiding the fact that ''regular'' campaign expenses were being paid out of the mayor's personal account, and not his campaign committee account. The amounts that his campaign certified or disclosed were not the full amounts that the mayor spent on his reƫlection campaign. Haggerty, some say, was a campaign ''volunteer.'' If that is so, why did it have to be that Haggerty had to be paid ? How many other ''volunteers'' were paid ? And of that, how many were paid from private accounts, which payments were never disclosed ? If other payments were never disclosed, that would explain what the mayor could be hiding.

Anonymous said...

that's why i regularly back up my city emails to a flash drive. so when they decide to demote or get rid of me, i can easily support my claim of retaliation.