Mar 13 2008
NC GOP Calls for Inquiry on Easley Over Deleted Emails
Linda Daves, chairwoman of the N.C. Republican Party, is calling on Attorney General Roy Cooper to investigate claims that the governor’s office directed state officials to destroy public records.Daves sent a letter to Cooper today asking that he investigate claims by Debbie Crane, who was fired recently as the chief spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, that she and her counterparts at other state agencies were instructed to destroy e-mails they sent to the governor’s office.
This entire DHHS affair gives me a headache. It’s very difficult to follow. So in 2001, a sweeping mental health reform package passes the state legislature with near unanimous support. Easley claims that he did not support these reforms, yet he signed it into law anyway. He says his DHHS director at that time told him she did not support the reforms, yet she was quoted in a letter fully supporting it.
Fast forward to 2008 where the mental health changes have been an utter disaster. Easley has the new director of the DHHS fired after twenty years of service in the state government under the claim that she was insubordinate and did not cooperate with reporters who wanted access to the public records. The fired director claims that most of the communications have been destroyed because the policy of the Easley administration is to trash these internal memos/ emails immediately so that there is no public record. Some employees corroborate Crane’s story, others do not.
The shit has hit the fan and you got everyone in Raleigh playing the blame game. So what really happened? Who knows? Yeah, I think an investigation is at hand. If Easley is orchestrating the destruction of public records, particularly those that might indicate malfeasance, we have an ethics issue here.
