I spent too much time yesterday trying to figure out how to upload large deposition files to blogger. Thankfully, WDSU has done a lot of that work for me. They have large portions of Greg Meffert's deposition online and available.
These links are to 'dsu's pdf downloads...
Pages 1-100 are here.
Pages 101-200 are here.
Pages 201-332 are here.
There are other loose bits floating around. As I'm able to corral them in a linkable fashion, I'll be aggregating them here on this post so that everything's all in one place.
And if you find something interesting reading through the deposition, please do drop us a line at WCBF.
Also, if you'd like to sneakily print out a big copy for me on your giant office machine, I will totally not reimburse your company. But I will buy you a beer. Deposition kegger anyone?
UPDATE: Meffert's lawyers have dropped their attempt to reseal the deposition. It is now all completely public and should be available for our reading pleasure shortly.
UPDATE 04/08:
When I started this blog, I always dreamed I'd get reader comments like this:
It's 3:55am and I just completed reading each pdf and started looking for the 1000 page download because I'm a masochist. Summary and observations following.
You have to hand it to the attorney, those suckers can drum on you forever until you're about ready to admit to whatever they want to hear.
In these downloads every once in awhile Greg would have several clever comebacks and really get under the attorneys skin - the comment about the refrigerator was priceless; Greg's a scumball but even I have to admit that was funny.
In short, Greg came off at best as utterly incompetent. He tried to push the image of that he was so overworked and got 300 emails a day I don't remember these things, etc.
The attorney really raked him over the coals of his website reporting his accomplishments with the cameras and made him admit it was BS.
The attorney did try to trap him multiple times into having him explain what other people thought/meant/said without him being there - this didn't work out for the attorney very well.
Greg needs to learn to pause for his attorneys to object, he was far to fast with his answers which I could see him getting himself into further trouble.
As far as Gregs skills as a manager in IT, let me explain no one is this friggin clueless. Greg also shows in several instances he understand budgets, he understands some key technology aspects, etc. But this was one of his pet projects, no one in his position wouldn't brush themselves up on these things due to the cost, the questions they would get asked and the eventual notoriety if it worked.
He practically admitted to writing the RFP for the original vendor of the cameras, which is not a best practice and then for him not to have an email trail about modifications to the RFP and those that need to sign off on the RFP like the City Attorney and other approving authorities/stakeholders for that kind of money and cross department initiative, is ridiculous.
Meffert is using the same old tired politician game, I don't know, I don't recall, I didn't read the entire email, etc. He did have some good counter points about Drake and the budgets, I have my team provide the same info and it has nothing to do with budgets, the are just giving me projections.
There is alot he is hiding, that is for sure and you can tell that by the timing of the contract and the players involved.
Full disclosure: I knew Chris Drake and others at the City Hall IT dept personally during this period and Chris is a heck of a guy. I can assure you Chris was at best a pawn which pretty much is proven in the depo - Chris did what he was told, he's not the brains behind this - that would be Meffert and St. Pierre.
Good stuff. There's nothing like combing through depositions at 4 in the morning... Jury is still out on Mr. Drake though. We'll see how things turn up. It does look to me like Meffert was one of the kingpins, but then again, that's who they were deposing so of course questions are going to be geared toward illuminating his role.
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