BOSTON, — Two top officials from the Department of Conservation and Recreation will be suspended without pay next week for focusing too much on the recreation half of their agency’s name — using state resources to throw a private party.
DCR Commissioner Leo Roy and Deputy Commissioner Matthew Sisk, who used taxpayer money on a private party they threw on Sunday, July 3 at the Beacon Street home of a prominent state Republican Party leader, will be off the job without pay Sept. 2-9, the state confirmed Wednesday.
“I think that the circumstances there are illustrative of what is not acceptable and our administration does not tolerate that kind of behavior,” Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito told the News Service on Wednesday.
Roy and Sisk have paid the state back more than $800 for the state resources they used to plan and host the party, which coincided with the Boston Pops Independence Day dress rehearsal concert at the Esplanade’s Hatch Shell, a DCR property.
The party and expenditure of state money was first reported Tuesday by WCVB investigative reporter Mike Beaudet.
Roy and Sisk used DCR-rented golf carts driven by DCR employees working at the Esplanade to ferry their guests from the party to the Hatch Shell for the Pops concert, according to a memo DCR’s director of administration and finance sent Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton on Tuesday.
“An unknown number of the rented carts, driven by DCR staff, also were used to transport a number of Mr. Roy and Mr. Sisk’s guests on DCR property,” the memo reads.
One DCR assistant spent more than three hours of work time “making phone calls, sending emails, preparing invitations and maintaining a guest list” for the party and a second assistant spent one hour “gathering a guest list, preparing invitations and making phone calls,” according to the memo.
DCR recommended Roy and Sisk reimburse the state $817.23 to cover the costs of the golf carts, the DCR employees who drove the carts, the time state employees spent working on the private event and the state-owned “cardstock, envelopes and stamps” used to print and send invitations to the party.
DCR said the cost estimates are “deliberately overestimated to ensure the Commonwealth is made more than whole.”