We have it on good authority that Richard de Seve, State employee over at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, only reads and comments on the articles at the Concord Monitor-online, during his breaks. He did, after all, admit this too me, so what better authority can there be? And who am I to doubt the “word “of a long time Public employee, part time UNH professor, and high ranking member of the SEIU/NH-SEA?
That question answers itself, yes?
So I did a little test. I took another look at his last four years worth of comments at the Concord Monitor, and checked the posting times.
My conclusion? That DES either offers its employes a very liberal rotating break schedule that occurs with greater frequency than J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbits stop to eat or Dick de Seve is simply giving himself a “break” to read and or respond to content at the Concord Monitor, on any given work day, whenever the mood strikes him, in any one of these potential time periods.
8:00-8:30, 8;30-9:00, 9:00-9:30, 9:30-10:00, 10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00, 11:00-11:30, 11:30-12:00, *12-12:30, 12:30-1:00, 1:00-1:30, 1:30-2:00, 2:00-2:30, 2:30-3:00, 3:00-3:30, 3:30-4:00, and 4:00-4:30.
*It may comfort you to know, taxpayers, that while there are comments posted between 12:00 and 1:00, that they are few by comparison and extremely rare in the first half of that hour, and almost always in the last ten to fifteen minutes before 1:00 when they do occur. So Dick is making time during one of his “breaks” to eat. We certainly wouldn’t want him to starve on our account now would we? He’d hardly have the energy to write any more comments later in the day if he didn’t buy himself some lunch with part of that $60,000.00 plus per year salary we pay him to “work” at the NH DES.
While that is all wonderful news, you may have sensed that my research has resulted in a more significant concern; that the only time at which taxpayers might reliably expect Mr. de Seve to be doing the people’s business, based on the history of his extensive work at the Concord Monitor, is before he arrives at work or after he has left for the day, when he does not appear to be commenting at all, and unfortunately for us, is no longer on the taxpayer dime.
Food for thought, yes?
So Mr. de Seve is right in agreeing with me when he admits that his commenting history created the wrong perception. It certainly does. It also creates the “perception” that we have been paying him to invest large swaths of time, whenever the urge or opportunity strikes him (or whenever actual work does not manage to interrupt him), to read online news articles all day long and then respond with very partisan left-wing political commentary when he finds it necessary; that no one at DES appears to have noticed, cared, or been capable of prevent him from wasting our tax dollars, and that it very likley would have continued endlessly had we at GraniteGrok not shamed him publicly into stopping, and initiated a 91-A right to know request to determine if it was worse than what appears obvious.
And while the DES might have every right to assume that a “professional “such as Mr. de Seve, who is also a University Professor, was someone worthy of their trust, we can assure you that it is, in fact, worse that what appears obvious. This last bit, to some degree, can be resolved with more certainty once we have the IT traffic records we requested from DES. Information we have asked for through the Right to Know law. Information we are still ‘patiently’ waiting for. But there appears to be some relevant past on-line history as well, to support the claim.
In the mean time, we are happy to remark at length on what we do know and will continue to do so.
