Town Officials Conceal Subpeonas

A freedom of information request began the unraveling of efforts by town officials to conceal the fact they had received a Grand Jury subpoena for all records related to an investigation of Lou Desso's sewer hook ups, subdivision process, unpaid town fees, late town fees, you name it. The State Attorney General is going to examine all town records and those from other sources in their public corruption investigation.

The Town Clerk has done all she can to conceal the existence of the subpoena by ignoring a FOIL request to see the subpoena. Under the law, the Records Access Officer must respond to any request for records within 5 days by either, providing the records, stating they do not exist, or denying access to the records using specific grounds provided for in the FOIL law.

Instead she ignored the FOIL until faced with an Appeal, answered by saying she couldn't answer because grand jury subpoenas are secret. Not such a brilliant response because first it's a  non compliant response and second, the appeal filed forces the town board itself as designated appeals officers of the town to answer her constructive denial of access publicly, within 10 days of the appeal.

To do so the town board must vote at the next meeting January 10th at 7pm. At that time a public questioning of the board's effort to cover up receipt of the subpoena and keep the public in the dark about the breadth of the inquiry will shed light on the matter.

Another interesting twist is that a town official is apparently in a tither about emails that were deleted related to the subpoena request. One town employee told the Pipeline that the town's IT provider was even called in to no avail.  Ahh but it's unlawful to delete any public records on a town email account under the records preservation laws of the State. While we know the identity of that official, we'll let the folks at town hall figure out who done it and the State AG who will likely want to know all about the destruction of public records and potential obstruction charges.

Stay tuned as the Times Union has just published another front page of the Capital Region story which you can read here.