City councilor John Burke (D-Beverly) stays on course despite censure

[Ian David]

Q: What do you call 98 Republicans and 1 Democrat under indictment?
A: A bipatrisan scandal.


City councilor John Burke stays on course despite censure
By Steven Rosenberg, Globe Staff | August 5, 2007

John Burke says he's not a typical city councilor. His fellow councilors in Beverly agree, and earlier this summer they demanded he resign, voted to censure him, and stripped him of his position on the council's legal affairs committee.

"I don't think anybody wants to work with him on the board," Paul Guanci, president of the City Council, said of Burke, who is running for reelection to his Ward 3 seat.

At issue is an unsigned letter Burke admitted to sending the City Council in June. The letter encouraged the council to reject Mayor William Scanlon's appointment of Lieutenant Mark Ray as police chief, and detailed allegations that someone related to Ray, a 21-year veteran of the department, and two others were given preferential treatment by Beverly police during investigations.

<snip>

Since the July 2 censure vote, Burke has steadfastly refused to resign, and said his actions were a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment. He said he wrote the letter because he was given the information from Beverly police officers who did not want to be identified publicly. Burke said he didn't sign the letter because he was afraid that the council wouldn't take the allegations seriously.

"The same thing would have happened to me that is happening now; they'd shoot the messenger and not investigate the actual allegations," said Burke.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/05/city_councilor_stays_on_course_despite_censure/

I'm not sure that he's actually done anything wrong.



See also:

Council calls on Burke to resign
By Dan Mac Alpine
Beverly Citizen
Tue Jul 03, 2007, 06:19 PM EDT

Beverly, Mass. -
Council approves censure, expresses no confidence

The City Council called for Ward 3 City Councilor John Burke’s resignation, expressed no confidence in Burke and censured him Monday night before a standing-room-only crowd that clapped and cheered, booed and hissed equally for and against the beleaguered councilor.

Tensions rose among the crowd and at one point a woman shouted at a lean, white-haired man sitting next to her, “Get out of my face! Get out of my face!”

<snip>

Burke has since called for an independent investigation into the allegations.

<snip>

For his part, Burke said the First Amendment right to free speech, which extends to anonymous speech according to a Supreme Court ruling, protected both his actions and the “venomous attacks on me.”

Burke cited the news media’s use of off-the-record comments and anonymous sources as other uses of anonymous information and concluded, “You can censure me, but you can’t silence me,” to mix of applause and boos.


More:
http://www.townonline.com/beverly/news/x844547836


It looks like the key here is that someone in the police department asked him to anonymously convey informtation which turned out to be false?