Quincy City Hall Rubber Stamps Rejections of Public Records Requests

Rejected!
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– News about Quincy from Quincy Quarry News.

Quincy’s City Hall rubber stamps its rejections of public records requests.

As should come as no great surprise to Quincy Quarry’s ever-growing legions of loyal readers, the Quarry has well-placed contacts in places both high but mostly low to help it expose the truth which virtually no other media have the stones to exposé.

As such, this latest Quincy Quarry exposé comes care of its intelligence assets within the Massachusetts Office of Secretary of State’s Public Records Division.

“Say what?”
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Among other things, the Public Records Division is mandated to affect what little enforcement authority is possible under Massachusetts all but flaccid public records law and which has repeatedly been given failing marks when it comes to actually seeing  public records made available to the public who ultimately paid for production of these very same government records.

The division’s authority as regards overturning any denied public records requests is thus basically limited to reviewing the validity of public records requests denied by a local or state governmental entity and then sending an all but toothless letter to the denying entity should its denial found to be invalid.

Beacon Hill has closed the gate to transparency
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No fine or other serious sanctions, however, are possible under state public records law.

In turn, in response to public records requests the City of Quincy is unique among the three hundred and fifty-one towns and cities in the Commonwealth as well as all but innumerable state entities: the city has opted to literally rubber stamp its rejections of public records requests with custom, notary-style rubber stamps.

Apparently, the Koch Maladministration has expanded its well-known practice of rubber stamping approvals of whatever projects its favored well-heeled developers want approved as well as the maladministration’s de facto use of City Council members as rubber stamps all but generically.

“Tommy, the PL is taking pictures of our burn unit”
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One stamp notes that the City of Quincy views the request for public records as invalid.

And the city’s other rubber stamp claims that the City of Quincy does not have the record(s) requested.

In any event, the City of Quincy’s rubber stamping of its denials of public records requests is a source of amusement among the state workers otherwise subjected with the often mind-numbing work of processing public records denial complaints.

“Mayor Annoyed”
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Similarly, while the City of Quincy is not among the most frequently complained about denier of records, it is Quincy Quarry’s understanding that the Public Records Division all but invariably rejects Quincy’s denial of records as valid.

Apparently, the City of Quincy’s rubbers do not hold up under pressure.

Then again, such is only to be expected as collectively Quincy Quarry News personnel have a perfect record of seeing that the Public Record Division chide the City of Quincy over its repeated failures to provide duly requested public records.

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