Trustee Keyes accuses Oakland Township Clerk and employees of malfeasance. Malfeasance, noun; intentionally doing something either legally or morally wrong which one had no right to do. It always involves dishonesty, illegality, or knowingly exceeding authority for improper reasons.
When Oakland Township Board of Trustees met on Tuesday, 9/10/13, a resident brought forth the question about how a withheld, confidential FOIA document had been leaked to a website. Trustee Keyes immediately attempted to place blame on Karen Riley, Township Clerk, as well as all township personnel, with her statements.
Trustee Keyes: “During the course of the FOIA, as you all know there was more than 9000 documents were generated I can’t speak for myself but I was not the only trustee on this board that went to Clerk Riley because they were, we had extreme concerns of these over 9000 pages being left in an open, unlocked, unsecured room for weeks and when you say in your letter about document control policy we requested that to be done and we had the same questions that you have. And they sat there for weeks.” (All ‘umms’ omitted for brevity)
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Supervisor Gonser felt the need to clarify: “All the documents that were withheld were retained by the attorney, they were not left open…”
Clearly, Trustee Keyes’ statement attempts to implicate Clerk Riley, as well as all members of the Township staff.
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To accuse Clerk Riley is absurd. Karen Riley is competent, thorough and moreover, has integrity. To accuse township personnel of leaving important or confidential documents unsecured is also ridiculous. As a Township, we have excellent personnel running the township offices. It makes this citizen wonder why Trustee Keyes would make such wild accusations, and was so quick to assign blame to Clerk Riley and the entire Township staff.
As I understand it, the confidential, withheld documents were kept by Dan Kelly, not in the Township offices. However, in Trustee Keyes’ fantasy world, the following would have had to happen.
A Township employee or some other visitor would have had to enter the room, find the FOIA documents AND locate the 1 of 9000 documents, that wasn’t even there.
It does make one wonder why Trustee Keyes was so quick to implicate the township staff and cast aspersions on Clerk Riley.
