Beacon Hill legislators requests not met for Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing

The Baker administration still hadn’t handed over all the documents requested by the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee as of late Monday night for a Tuesday hearing on the deadly failures at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.…

State HouseA file photo

– News from elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added

Beacon Hill legislators requests not met for today’s Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing.

Per an email exchange between the state legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee Co-Chair William Straus and a Department of Transportation representative, Straus indicated that the 1 PM deadline for the document request had “passed over three and a half hours ago.” 

Reviewing documents
A file photo

The co-chair added that while hundreds of documents were still being submitted Monday night, any documents received after 5 PM would not be reviewed or considered for the hearing.

In begrudging fairness to the Department of Transportation and others, it was contemporaneously noted that roughly ten thousand pages of documents had been provided in response to the Joint Transpiration Committee’s ask. 

That and how it was noted that an estimated two million would likely take to comply with the committee’s request, not to mention who only knows if all of these documents could be properly provided in the midst of ongoing investigations of what all has gone wrong at primarily the Registry’s Quincy-based Merit Ratings Board unit.

In any event, it would appear that the joint committee does not care to wait a bit to assure that possibly legally incriminating evidence is duly handled until such time as its public provision might be kosher.

After you. No after you …
An old Columbia Pictures image

That or cares to acknowledge the fact that there was no way that the estimated two million items sought could have actually been properly reviewed in time for today’s photo op of a pandering joint committee hearing.

Today’s joint committee hearing follows last week’s suspended hearing given that several individuals asked to appear said that they would not appear and several other announced they would limit their responses.

One can only reasonably assume that the former set of individuals may have declined to appear based upon advice of personal legal counsel and the latter’s then-announced limits to what they might offer up in response to questions was based upon state attorneys’ recommendations as what best to do while in the middle of ongoing investigations.

Facing a news media gauntlet
A file photo

Even so, the Baker Administration has announced that the requested administration officials will be appearing at today’s hearing.

Further, Governor Charlie Baker himself told reporters yesterday that “… there aren’t going to be any limitations with respect to what they answer.”

At least none imposed by the Baker Administration even if all of the witnesses retain their personal Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer any potentially self-incriminating questions.

Under fire Merit Ratings Board head, head soon on a pike – whatever
A Town of Braintree council member mugshot

And finally, this is the question of whether or not former Registry of Motor Vehicles Registrar Erin Deveney, who resigned over the scandal, will appear. 

Said Joint Transportation Committee Co-Chair William Straus said, “We’ll see.”

Given that Ms Deveney is no longer a state employee, Quincy Quarry can see all sorts of reasons why she might opt to be MIA.

QQ disclaimer

Source: Lawmakers’ requests not met for RMV hearing