Allston e-mails latest focus of Menino, Flaherty saga

(NECN: Scot Yount, Boston, Mass.) - There is another e-mail controversy at City Hall in Boston. Today, candidate for mayor, Michael Flaherty, is pointing to e-mails from a Boston city official about a proposed development in Boston's Allston neighborhood. The latest in the Boston e-mail scandal involves the Boston Redevelopment Authority. City Councilor Sam Yoon and mayoral candidate Michael Flaherty seized on recently disclosed e-mails written by Jay Rourke, a senior project manager at the BRA. In them, Rourke apparently disparages residents who turn up at meetings regarding a proposed apartment complex in the area and development by Harvard University. The e-mails obtained by Allston activist Harry Mattison are posted on his Allston community blog. In one, Rourke writes "let them play their games," and in another, "why do we continue to meet with these people?" <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/10/flaherty_blasts.html" target="_blank">Click here to read more from the Globe.</a> Both Yoon and Flaherty have said the BRA is nothing, but a puppet of the Menino administration, and should be done away with. The mayor says the BRA has done a good job, both in present projects and in the future. Menino bristles at the accusation that the BRA is a failure of his administration. He acknowledges the poor taste of the e-mails, and says action has been taken.