It got up to 80 degrees F around there today, but that's not important right now: Oracle just cranked it up to broil in a letter threatening to sue our accidental governor and the state Attorney General if they don't cough up former gov. Retread's emails pronto.
California software giant Oracle America has threatened Oregon's governor and attorney general with a lawsuit over former Gov. John Kitzhaber's emails.
Oracle and Oregon are locked in a bitter court battle over who is to blame for the Cover Oregon health exchange debacle. Now the company wants to pry open Kitzhaber's personal email account that was archived in the state's data warehouse.
Retread's been threatening to sue if the emails are released; claiming he didn't intend for them to go to state servers, which is a pretty lame argument when you consider that he sent them to state employees, knowing full well that in doing so, they would be archived. State officials have been playing coy, so Oracle's just upped the ante - and have indicated that they'll sue Retread personally as well.
The state, at Retread's instigation, brought a lot of the mess onto themselves when they filed a fraud/RICO lawsuit against the software giant, claiming that Oracle tried to persuade the state not to hire a systems integrator:
The complaint cites information from an unnamed former employee that Oracle engaged in a concerted effort to persuade the state not to hire a systems integrator, or SI. The former employee said the company engaged in an organized "behind-the-scenes effort" calculated to convince the state that hiring an SI would just cause delay. The company's real concern was that the state's hire of an SI is "just going to cause us trouble," the employee said, according to the suit.
In essence, the state's going with allegations from an un-named former employee when in fact the state's point woman on the failed Obamacare website project stated that it was her decision not to hire a systems integrator.
