http://www.9news.com/news/top-articl...?storyid=79369
200 state workers part of plan to buy Rockies tickets with EOC computers
written by: Jeffrey Wolf , Web Producer
reported by: Deborah Sherman , Investigative Reporter
CENTENNIAL – A 9Wants to Know investigation has uncovered a plan by 200 state workers to buy Rockies World Series tickets using fast, state-owned supercomputers.
The computers are at the Colorado Emergency Operations Center in Centennial.
The plan was hatched in an e-mail sent out on Friday morning. The e-mail says they were going to start at around 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning. The tickets are set to go on sale on ColoradoRockies.com on Monday at 10 a.m.
The e-mail was sent at 11:41 a.m. on Friday by David Holm, who had recently been the acting director of the Division of Emergency Management.
The e-mail was sent to all employees in his department, the Department of Local Affairs.
The e-mail states that Susan Kirkpatrick, the executive director of the Department of Local Affairs, has approved their plan to buy World Series tickets on the state's computers.
"I need volunteers to help push the buttons in attempting access. You will need to use break time, lunch time or leave time to do this and the only real perk I can offer right now is that if someone does not pay for their tickets within 3 days, you will get first crack at them," said Holm in the e-mail.
Holm says they will be using the personal credit cards from Kirkpatrick and Holm, and not their own.
The plan was to buy tickets until they were sold out or when the department had as many as it wanted.
Click here to read the entire e-mail.
The Colorado EOC opened two years ago. There are at least 30 computers in the center, which are supposed to be used by local, federal and state officials in emergencies.
The group Colorado Ethics Watch says the computers should not be used for personal gain.
"Even if it were open to all state employees, it's still a misuse of public resources. Taxpayers did not invest in an emergency response center so that state employees could use it for their own personal advantage and buy baseball tickets," said Chantelle Taylor with Colorado Ethics Watch.
9Wants to Know spoke with Kirkpatrick and she said the plan has now been squashed.
She said in retrospect, it was not the best idea to use the EOC computers, even though her IT personnel told her it would not compromise security.
Kirkpatrick says that means state employees will now buy Rockies like everyone else on Monday. She said they are allowed to use the state computer they normally use because she doesn't want them leaving work.
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