On state board, Healey opposed criminal checks
Voted to limit CORI access
Lieutenant Governor Kerry M. Healey, who as a candidate for governor is pushing to open up the state's criminal records, voted a half-dozen times to limit access to such records when she served on a state board that hears from businesses and social agencies seeking to screen potential employees.
The votes, from 2000 to 2002, occurred when Healey, then a private citizen, served on the Criminal History Systems Board. The cases involved requests from organizations that wanted to check for criminal backgrounds for potential workers, including those dealing with vulnerable populations such as the mentally retarded, the elderly, and public housing residents.
The state board oversees the Criminal Offender Record Information database and decides who will have access to it. Thousands of organizations have access to CORI records. But under state procedures, organizations and individuals that do not have access must submit an application to the board to obtain CORI checks. The board weighs the privacy of the employees against the organization's need to protect other employees, their clients, and the public.
Healey's votes to keep the records off-limits are in sharp contrast to her stance in the campaign, in which she has pummeled Democratic rival Deval L. Patrick for supporting some restrictions on access to CORI. She has said she would push to change the law to increase public access to the records, and she says Patrick's support for some restrictions is evidence he is ``soft on crime."
Patrick has said he would favor some restrictions on access to CORI, saying that the records are sometimes inaccurate and also hinder efforts by convicted criminals to start a new life after they have paid their debt to society.
Healey has been insistent during the campaign. ``There is no benefit to hiding someone's criminal history," Healey told the Globe late last month. ``It should be made more widely available, not restricted, as Deval Patrick has suggested."
Minutes of the board reviewed by the Globe, however, show that at least a half-dozen times at meetings of the Criminal History Systems Board, Healey voted to deny or restrict access to CORI records to businesses and nonprofit and government agencies that had applied to the board to have access to the system when hiring employees, according to minutes of the meetings reviewed by the Globe. She served as the personal privacy representative on the board.
Late yesterday, Healey's campaign released a statement to the Globe saying her ``experience on the board gave her a firsthand look at how the CORI system does not serve the best interests of employers."
``Based on the nature of her position to uphold CORI laws, the lieutenant governor became aware of the need for change within the system and that criminal records must be made more available to employers," said Laura Nicoll, her campaign spokesperson. ``Deval Patrick still doesn't get it. He wants to hide this information from employers."
But her actions on the board appear to contradict her public statements.
On April 18, 2001, the board approved an application from the local chapter of Best Buddies, a national organization that links intellectually disabled people with nondisabled peers. The application was approved 8 to 2, but Healey was one of two members who voted against it.
The group said it needed access to records of the volunteers who want to participate in their programs. ``People with intellectual disabilities are a very vulnerable population," said Audrey Katz, the executive director for the Massachusetts chapter of Best Buddies. ``We have to make sure volunteers are there for the right reason."
A month after the Best Buddies application was approved, Healey opposed an application from Adult Day Care Center Inc., which said it needed to check the backgrounds of potential clients to avoid accepting people who would put other participants at risk. The vote was again 8 to 2 to approve the application.
Healey also voted with the majority when the board opposed a request by the city of Holyoke's Licensing Board for access to the CORI records of applicants for public lodging licenses. The Holyoke agency said it was more likely that landlords with criminal histories would rent to tenants with criminal backgrounds.
In an interview yesterday, Mayor Michael J. Sullivan of Holyoke said that if had the Criminal History Systems Board had approved the licensing board's application, city officials would have known the criminal history of a convicted pedophile before he was hired to manage a homeless shelter run by a nonprofit agency. The man is currently under investigation by local police.
``I suspect we would not given him a license to run a shelter," Sullivan said, ``and, at the least, we could known who was being hired." Sullivan, a Democrat, has endorsed Patrick, but four years ago broke party ranks to endorse Mitt Romney and Healey.
Healey also opposed several businesses seeking CORI access to screen financial personnel. She supported an effort on the board to restrict a company that developed software for public safety agencies to screen only those workers who worked on public safety programs.
While she promotes herself as a career criminologist, Healey's appointment to the board was her first official involvement in the Massachusetts criminal justice system.
Yet she missed more than half of the board's meetings in the two years she served; she skipped every session between August 2001 and 2002, when she resigned to run for lieutenant governor. 