A Baker administration staffer may have crossed the line separating political messages from official state communications early Thursday morning by sending a tweet endorsing a statewide ballot initiative from an official Department of Conservation and Recreation account.
The message sent from the official DCR Twitter account read "Melvin Miller of the Bay State Banner agrees: It's time to #LiftTheCap for the sake of the kids." The tweet linked to an editorial in the Bay State Banner written by Miller, the newspaper's editor, in favor of increasing the cap on charter schools. Passage of the charter school question is one of Gov. Charlie Baker's top political goals and is favored by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats.
The errant social media message comes after a series of political incidents rocked Baker's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which has jurisdiction over DCR.
"The Department of Conservation and Recreation does not condone the use of state resources for political purposes; this tweet was mistakenly sent from a state account by a staff member who incorrectly believed he was logged into a personal account in the evening, not during work hours, and was removed as soon as it was discovered," EEA spokesman Peter Lorenz told WGBH News in a statement when asked about the tweet. Lorenz declined to name the staff member who sent the tweet at 12:22 a.m. Thursday.
A Boston Herald story last week reported allegations made by a EEA staffer that she was threatened with professional retribution for her fiance's challenge to a sitting Republican state senator. At DCR, the state's parks department under the broader EEA, a scandal broke out when the agency's head and number two official were caught using state resources to shuttle guests to a VIP party on Boston's Esplanade. And allegations of political patronage arose after reports that Gov. Charlie Baker's former campaign driver is now the leader of the state's environmental police, another EEA department.
This kind of mis-tweet, where a user confuses the account signed-in on a device, is not uncommon. Compared to the most recent travails of Baker's environmental department, this incident could be seen as small potatoes, however it's the exact same variety of potato consistently inviting criticism that Baker's EEA is overly involved in politics.
