You Are Here: The Nanny State, Public Records

When former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney left office in 2007, he and his staff purchased their state-issued computer hard drives and erased most of the electronic files from the server. It included e-mails, and other private records. Current Governor Deval Patrick was left without any digital records of anything Romney did as Governor in 2006, and was unable to meet public records requests filed during Romney's presidential campaign. Massachusetts public records law states, Romney was able to do all of this legally. 

"When the Massachusetts legislature passed our public records law, they made it applicable to various state agencies commissions, cities, and towns, but not applicable to the legislatures themselves and certainly did not clearly state that it was applicable to the Governor - Jonathan Albano, lawyer at Bingham Mccutchen and Public records expert"

Listen and find out about the Nanny state, Massachusetts, and how much information is not public.