Fall River's electorate: Corrupt or delusional?
St. Anne’s Church in Fall River. The church, whose membership had been declining for years, had recently been the topic of demolition talks but now seems safe. The hilltop church, once home to a large French Canadian parish, may be the best loved building in the city. The brutalist City Hall, below, may be the most hated.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Massachusetts’s system of local control over marijuana businesses that apparently often gives a single municipal official, such as Fall River’s brazen, sleazoid and perhaps crazy mayor, Jasiel Correia II, power to authorize a pot business to open is of course a wide-open door for corruption. In the latest scandal involving the 27-year-old statesman, he’s been arrested on charges that he extorted cannabis companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Corriea has long displayed a love of a fancy, glitzy lifestyle; his wants seem to far exceed his needs.
So it was good to hear Gov. Charlie Baker tell The Boston Globe last week:
“Maybe the state needs to put something in place that says, ‘It needs to actually be a governing entity, not a single person’ because that’s a legit concern.” Yes, a “governing entity’’ acting with transparency.
As disturbing as Mayor Correia is, much blame also goes to those citizens of Fall River who voted for him despite impressive intimations of his greed, immaturity and megalomania and to those who didn’t vote at all in the elections that put him in and kept him in office. Not voting has the effect of a vote – usually for someone you don’t like. Corrupt politicians often reflect a corrupt and/or lazy electorate. Or maybe just depressed….