That includes at least four of Romney’s top Cabinet officials. Thirty days after they left office, their e-mails were automatically purged from the state’s central computers, wiping out records of decisions on an array of sensitive topics, from health care to raising state revenues.
Romney Cabinet secretaries said in interviews that they were never told by administration or state technology officials that they needed to take any steps to protect their e-mails.
“No one came over to me and said, ‘Do this, do this, do this, do this,’ ’’ said Tim Murphy, who as secretary of Health and Human Services helped formulate the state’s landmark health care law. “I just turned my computer off and went home. That’s the end of it.’’
The gaps in public records came to light as attention has turned to Romney’s years as governor, a cornerstone of his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. The Globe filed formal requests in recent weeks to review e-mails under the state Public Records Law.
The loss of records from the Romney administration may be more extensive than in the Swift and Cellucci administrations. The Globe reported last month that aides in Romney’s executive office also took the unusual step of buying individual desktop computer hard drives and taking them home, removing a large volume of material relating to Romney’s deliberations. That was not done by executive office aides for Swift and Cellucci.
Records maintained by the executive office of the governor can be considered exempt from public release under a 1997 Supreme Judicial Court ruling, which says “the governor is not explicitly included’’ in the state Public Records Law. The Reuters news agency reported this week that breaking an office computer lease by using the individual hard drives cost state taxpayers $100,000.
