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Thursday, April 16, 2009

ProPublica calls out county for not responding to request

What did ProPublica do when one district attorneys' office didn't respond to its public records requests? It wrote a story detailing the possible law violation committed by Middlesex County, Mass., and District Attorney Gerry Leone.
In the course of our investigation into district attorneys’ offices [1] that earn kickbacks from a company that collects bounced checks, we used public records laws to obtains thousands of pages of contracts and budget documents. Only one DA’s office refused to provide records.

That would be Middlesex County, Mass., and District Attorney Gerry Leone.

We filed our first request on Oct. 20, 2008. Leone’s office didn’t respond within the 10-day period required by law, so we turned to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, which monitors compliance with the Massachusetts Public Records Act. For several weeks, we worked with the secretary’s office because no one at Leone’s office would return calls or e-mails.

More here.

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