When Government Officials Should Not Blog

If you haven’t visited the official blog of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation, it’s branded as a “Commonwealth Conversation” and is intended to enable citizens (or anyone) to interact with the Secretary and senior managers.
While the monotonous content doesn’t hold my interest for its lack of personality, you can scroll through the Typepad-built platform […]

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If you haven’t visited the official blog of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation, it’s branded as a “Commonwealth Conversation” and is intended to enable citizens (or anyone) to interact with the Secretary and senior managers.

While the monotonous content doesn’t hold my interest for its lack of personality, you can scroll through the Typepad-built platform and see sporadic comments. The government is trying to be transparent in the form of a blog. I applaud them for this.

However…

Given that the Secretary of Transportation has an official blog, why is Jim Aloisi causing a ruckus by attacking the Boston Globe on the liberal Blue Mass Group blog?

The Globe story was unfair and inaccurate and clearly designed to take a shot at me through her. That story was disgraceful….

He refers to yesterday’s Globe expose on Carol Aloisi, Jim’s sister, whose former boss was Representative Rachel Kaprelian. Last summer, Kaprelian was appointed as the registrar of motor vehicles, but nobody either told or informed Carol about her job loss, so she continued to collect a salary despite no work.

That Globe piece put shame into the system and questioned Carol’s ethics.

Jim, her brother, the cabinet secretary, was offended and blogged at Blue Mass Group in support of his sister. His words stung many, so the Secretary subsequently apologized this morning and the Globe summarized this afternoon.

Why was he blogging on Blue Mass Group in the first place?

From the bottom post script:

P.S. For those who asked: I never blog, except on bluemass, and i created “eguy” as a user name to reflect my east boston roots.

Based on my experience working in state government, it was common for cabinet officials to write newspaper op-eds–which were vetted by the senior communications directors. Did Aloisi’s communications director not approve his blog post at Blue Mass Group? Or did he, as I am led to believe, create an account and start writing?

In light of the taxpayer-funded “Commonwealth Conversations” blog, isn’t that where Secretary Aloisi should be blogging?

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