Earlier this month, we started our promise clock to count every day, hour, minute and second the district attorney in Middlesex County, Mass., Gerry Leone, failed to honor a legally binding public records request. Weâve been looking into DA offices that partner with a private company to send threatening and deceptive letters to collect bounced checks. Leone's office is among them.
Leoneâs office sat on the request, even after the stateâs enforcement agency informed the prosecutor that failure to respond "may be a violation of the law."
Weâre happy to report that we received the documents (PDF) on April 20 (five months after our original request and a week after we started the clock). We spent the last several days confirming with Middlesex spokesman Corey Welford that his office included all the relevant documents. Now that we're satisfied, we'll stop the clock, effective the day we received the records.
