– News covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Hockey goons in Quincy’s City Hall?
A Universal Pictures image

Koch Maladministration drops gloves over a warranted rebuke by the State Civil Service Commission.

The reason for the rebuke: the koched-up hiring of Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s son as a Quincy police officer.

In turn, the response by at least one Kochster to the rebuke in what has so far been a very rough 2022 for the Koch Machine given a variety of grave embarrassments over its suspect doings and especially its misdoings has become testy.

Wicked testy.

Pinnochio does what he is told …
An ill-advised Facebook posting

The causal triggering event for the over-the-top temper tantrum?

A regional broadcast news outlet took the Koch Administration to task over its latest rebuke by the State Civil Service Commission over Team Koch’s yet again improper job applicant screening and hiring practices so as to this time see Mayor Koch’s well-down the local Civil Service hiring list of candidates list son end up hired as a Quincy police officer, including improperly kicking a higher-rated applicant to the curb, the mayor’s Chief of Staph Pinnochio Walkbacker cut loose with a new low for him for prevaricating.

A wicked low new low, if not also an all but unhinged screed.

“This ruling is just utterly unfair and littered with factual inaccuracies.  It’s hard to read this as anything but the Commission willing itself to see some kind of exciting, salacious case of favoritism without any evidence to support it,” Walker wrote.  “It muddies the water enough to create a headline while the facts support a fair, honest, and transparent process.  The ruling wants to say that the Mayor’s son was appointed because someone else was bypassed, but it can’t do that because the record is obvious that it did not happen that way.  Had no one been bypassed, the Mayor’s son would still be a police officer today.”

So what for the fact that Civil Sevice Commission’s findings were care of an administrative hearing akin to a court trial and thus duly corroborated.

Particularly odious of Walkbacker was how, lingering COVID-19 safety concerns notwithstanding, he shoveled his bovine byproduct via a written statement and then apparently as well as oh so cowardly did not respond to only proper follow-up questions.

(SMH)
A Paramount Television image

Per a Quincy Quarry balanced and fair review, Walkbacker’s pugnacious statements are fatally flawed, if not also an all but completely bogus false narrative.

For but a few examples, the State Civil Service Commission ruling clearly lays out how the process did not provide a level playing field for the bypassed applicant. 

For example, the commission cited clearly suspect picayune nitpicking over spurious nits as well as sloth to abject disregard as regards duly looking into problems alleged by the applicant review team during the screening process and then kicking to the curb of a higher rated candidate than the mayor’s son. 

Where’s Tommy?
A Quincy Quarry PhotoShop Phun Team graphic

Particularly pointed was how the State Civil Commission viewed the nitpicking of things it viewed as trivial and technical at best as opposed to consequential as well as further found many of them fraught with tortured reasoning at best to often wholly unfounded at worst.

And for another compelling point noted by the Civil Service Commission, a member of the candidate screening team was not only the son of the police chief and thus a nephew of the mayor, but also this screening team member is a cousin of the greased onto the police force mayor’s son.

Further damning is how this koched-up relative on the screening committee was himself found by the Civil Service Commission to have been wrongly advantaged for hiring ahead of several higher on the hiring list veterans.

by at least one Kochster
A Quincy Police Department headshot.

And for the final denouncement of Pinnochio, there is the following “small” problem.

Specifically, Quincy Police Department Chief Paul “The Beav” Keenan unilaterally increased the number of hires from the 18 approved by the State Human Resources Division to as many as 25 hires without state approval and so surely but coincidentally further assuring that his nephew, Mayor Koch’s son, would make the cut.

Accordingly, Quincy Quarry can only properly assign a Four Pinocchios rating to Walkbacker’s ranting per the Washington Post’s fact-checking Pinocchio Test rating scale.

A Four Pinnochio top of the scale rating is succinctly described as “Whoppers” by the Fact Checker
A Fact Checker/Washington Post image

How not to behave with the media
A John Minchillo/AP photo

In turn, as well as on a positive note, a manner of payback may be in process: a solid case could be argued per recent City Council appearances on Zoom that Pinnochio is reminding one of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

That and how Pinnochio violated the first rule for a politician when it comes to interacting with the media: do not try to lie one’s way out of a problem wherein one has no legitimate way out of the underlying jam as such is chum in the water for media news sharks.

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