A Republican group is calling on Gov. Charlie Baker to fire two employees who used state resources to throw a private party on July 3 in Boston.
DCR Commissioner Leo Roy and Deputy Commissioner Matthew Sisk will be suspended without pay next week for using taxpayer money on a private party at the Beacon Street home of a prominent state Republican Party leader, and will be off the job without pay Sept. 2-9, the state confirmed Wednesday.
But the Massachusetts Republican Assembly is urging Baker to fire both men, and asking the Sisk resign from the Republican State Committee.
“It will be the best combined Quarter-of-a-Million dollars the governor ever saved the Commonwealth to see Sisk follow Conroy out the door – and not just to a closet or another desk where they still ‘advise’ the Governor,” Massachusetts Republican Assembly President Mary Lou Daxland said in a statement released late Wednesday night. “Sisk’s actions are totally unacceptable and mar our State Government as well as our State Committee. His actions are an insult to every honest state worker, and it’s a tragedy that these abuses happen while teachers and MBTA workers get laid off because of ‘insufficient revenue,’ we’re told.”
Roy and Sisk used DCR-rented golf carts driven by DCR employees working at the Esplanade to ferry guests from the party to the Hatch Shell for a Boston Pops Independence Day dress rehearsal concert at the Esplanade’s Hatch Shell, a DCR property, 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.
Roy and Sisk have paid the state back more than $800 for the state resources they used to plan and host the party.
“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.
(State House News Service photo by Antonio Caban) 
