Shuler begins first term without smooth handoff
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The transition of power between new U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-North Carolina, and the man he unseated, Charles Taylor, hit a road bump when Shuler’s staff complained that the office’s computers were stripped of their operating systems.
“They’ve been just as difficult as they can be,” Shuler’s chief of staff, Hayden Rogers, told the Citizen-Times.
Rogers said it’s not just a question of Shuler, the former Tennessee and NFL quarterback, being inconvenienced by the outgoing eight-term Republican’s staff. He said constituents who had asked their congressman for help will now have to start all over.
“We have no case files. We don’t even have knowledge that casework was being done for individuals,” he said. “To clean off the operating systems, that’s more than just cleaning the files.”
Taylor’s press secretary said it was question of obeying the law that restricts sharing personal information.
“It’s personal medical information, Social Security information ? that’s not the kind of thing you leave on a computer,” Deborah Potter said.
Salley Collins, spokeswoman for the House Committee on House Administration, said departing members are allowed to clean computer hard drives, but she was unsure whether that included taking off the operating software.
Bruce Peterson, Shuler’s district director, said 11 desktops and four laptops were wiped clean. Only eight will have to be restored ? at a cost of $2,632 ? because the others were older models and will be replaced.
The spat was reminiscent of the change of power between the administrations of presidents Clinton and Bush, when Bush staff members complained that Clinton’s employees had pried the “W” key off some 100 computer keyboards, among other acts of vandalism. Former Clinton aides said that only pranks typical of a change in administrations might have happened.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said Clinton administration workers defaced some equipment and left behind prank messages, but its investigators couldn’t quantify the extent of damages or corroborate some claims by Bush administration officials because records weren’t kept.