Cahill's cloak of silence
THE GOVERNOR doesn't use them. The attorney general doesn't use them. The secretary of state doesn't use them.
But state Treasurer Timothy Cahill sometimes requires people leaving his employ to sign confidentiality and final payments agreements that include ''nondisparagement" clauses. This muzzling of individuals who might best be able to inform the public about any shortcomings in Cahill's operations interferes with the transparency needed for democracy to work. Cahill should stop the practice immediately and release the six former employees from their vow of silence.
An agreement was also signed with a candidate for a position to lead the treasurer's Pension Reserves Investment Board. The applicant withdrew himself from consideration for the position after Governor Romney and others complained that Cahill had not conducted an adequate search for the post. In the pact with Cahill, the applicant agreed not to ''disclose the fact that the benefits described in this agreement were offered to him."
In the case of the six exiting workers who signed agreements, the public has a right to a rigorous, independent audit to determine whether any of them traded their right to speak out in return for hush money compensation that exceeded their accrued wages and vacation pay. The Legislature should consider a statutory way to make sure that other government officials do not use such agreements to keep disgruntled former workers from going public with their opinions.
As a newspaper, we believe that sunshine is almost always healthier than secrecy. While the public might not have a right to demand openness in the corporate world, it does in a constitutional office like the treasurer's. Cahill, who Monday denied that the financial outlays to the departing workers went beyond the employees' earned wages, said the confidentiality agreements are ''not for me personally. It's to protect the Commonwealth."
His general counsel, Grace Lee, justified the agreements by saying that high-level employees in the office are exposed to ''very sensitive information." But it is hard to see how the Commonwealth would have suffered if two departing press secretaries or an employee of the treasurer's Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission left their jobs without gags wrapped tightly around their mouths.
''This flies in the face not of the letter but of the spirit of the open meeting laws," said Pamela H. Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, who said she had never heard of confidentiality agreements before in a government office like Cahill's. ''We need whistle-blowers to know what's going on in government."
The public will have much hidden from it if this practice becomes routine. It has no place in the treasurer's office or anywhere else in government.
