Look at the facts related in this text, and then the silliness in the emphasized sentence.
The governor and his staff have said Patrick officials, as soon as they discovered something was amiss, referred the matter for investigation, canceled the Cognos contract, and recovered the $13 million.
In December 2007, just four months after she awarded the contract to Cognos, Kirwan asked Inspector General Gregory Sullivan to investigate. Her letter left the impression that it was the administration’s decisive action that prompted Sullivan’s probe. She wrote that the Patrick administration notified Sullivan as soon as it was made aware of any “possible irregularities.”
Officials said yesterday that they did not know that the inspector general had already launched a probe before they contacted the office.
Of course, Kirwan’s letter left the impression the Administration started the probe. It’s not like the Secretary of A+F is going to be privy to every investigation the US Attorney considers.
There’s no allegation of corruption here, it merely raises questions, exactly what the paper should be doing if there is unethical, yet legal behavior.
<
p>
<
p>This is the fundamental question the article raises, it’s a legitimate one. The fact that Patrick, Kirwin and Morales are refusing to talk to the paper about this doesn’t make it look any better.
<
p>
<
p>Yet the indictment makes it very clear that they met with the speaker on this very issue. The article doesn’t paint Kirwin as corrupt, it raises the question of whether a contract was awarded because of pressure from the speaker. That’s not necessarily corruption, but if its true and it’s not an isolated problem then it’s clear that the problems of insider politics goes beyond the legislature – which shouldn’t be surprising… the administration is filled with former reps, senators and long time state power brokers – the presumption that the type of behavior DiMasi engaged in couldn’t happen in the Patrick administration is naive at best.
Kirwan seems like was the only official who was offended enough by the smell of this thing to actually to actually push back against it. It is fair to at least question the behavior of at least someone in the administration, from a June 17, 2007 email from Lally to a Cognos exec (p. 21 of indictment):
<
p>
<
p>Who is “her boss”? Doug Rubin? Deval?
in that passage has been identified as David Morales, one of the deputy chiefs of staff.
was he identified?
E.g., this one, and this column.
I guess guestion is whether he was coaching Sal on how to “handle” Kirwan on his own, or as part of a strategy with his boss.
However, there is no indication whatsoever that Morales or anyone else in the administration had any idea of the alleged wrongdoing.