DCR commish resigns amid scandal fallout
Comes after Herald series
A top official at the state’s embattled parks department has stepped down from his post amid the fallout inside a state environmental agency that’s been rocked by questions about cronyism and accusations of political retaliation.
Matthew Sisk, the $112,000-ayear deputy commissioner at the Department of Conservation and Recreation, resigned “effective immediately,” a spokesman confirmed last night in a classic late Friday dump of bad news.
Sisk, a GOP operative who also serves on the Republican state committee, and his boss, DCR commissioner Leo Roy, were suspended for a week last month after throwing a party at a prominent GOP official’s home using taxpayer resources and state staff.
Sisk’s sudden resignation comes after a series of Herald reports showing, among other things, that the DCR has turned into a patronage haven for Gov. Charlie Baker, who has loaded it with nearly a dozen GOP loyalists.
The Herald has also reported the agency is facing a probe of explosive claims that GOP operatives harassed and retaliated against a staffer after her fiance launched a campaign to unseat a Republican state senator. The next day, Baker’s office acknowledged to the paper that it had launched the probe three months after it first learned of the allegations.
“Matthew Sisk has resigned effective immediately. As this is a personnel matter, no other information is available,” Peter Lorenz, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said in a statement.
Lorenz did not say why Sisk resigned, and Sisk did not return a call seeking comment yesterday. State officials could not immediately say if Sisk had submitted a letter of resignation.
State officials have said that the jobs of multiple EEA employees cited in the allegations of political retaliation, including Michael Valanzola, the agency’s chief operating officer, would be “re-evaluated” after the probe wraps up.
Sisk and Roy first came under fire for the July 3 party, when they used state staffers to organize the guest list and shuttled partygoers to the nearby Esplanade using state-leased golf carts driven by state workers.
Baker has also caught flak for hiring his campaign driver as the colonel of the state’s environmental police, which was first reported by the Herald.
And just two days ago, a DCR staffer “mistakenly” sent a tweet from the department’s official Twitter account appearing to back a hotly debated ballot question that would lift the cap on charter schools statewide.
The tweet, which has since been deleted, linked to an editorial urging Bay Staters to vote “yes” on Question 2, which counts Baker as one of its biggest backers.