Charles Chieppo/Mary Z. Connaughton: More corruption comin' up!
BOSTON As we learned during the recent trial about the Massachusetts Probation Department’s job-rigging scheme, there’s a difference between patronage and cooking the books. Patronage is legal; cooking the books to foster patronage and political favoritism will land you in prison.
It’s ironic that only five days after former Massachusetts Probation Commissioner John O’Brien and others were convicted, Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation to expand the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in a boondoggle designed to feed the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s patronage empire and premised on layers of fictional numbers.
On the merits, the $1 billion expansion simply doesn’t make sense. This sums it up: There was a little over 36 million square feet of exhibition space in the United States in 1989. By 2011, that number had nearly doubled to 70.5 million. In the midst of this decades-long convention-space explosion, demand has remained flat at best.
Lest you think that Boston is immune from the trend, the BCEC — touted to be so full that it had to be expanded — is generating less than half the hotel room nights that had been predicted in the 1997 feasibility study on which the decision to build it was based. Before being cannibalized by the BCEC, even the much-smaller Hynes Convention Center had years in which it generated more.
A small group of consultants show up in city after city to prop up the declining convention industry. They made the same claims in such cities as Sacramento, St. Louis and Myrtle Beach, S.C., which got the same or even worse results than were achieved here. Learn from their mistakes? In a 2005 legal deposition, Charles H. Johnson, who conducted the 1997 BCEC study, said, “Once the deal is done, if we’re not engaged, we … give them our report, our final invoice, and wish them good luck.”
But all that can be overlooked to feed the convention center authority’s patronage empire and reward political friends. None of the 80 percent of Massachusetts construction workers who don’t belong to a union will be working on the BCEC expansion, because the legislation includes a union-only project labor agreement.
Security guards also got a piece of the pie: The expansion bill extended the commonwealth’s prevailing wage law to include them.
From the beginning, BCEC expansion has been a case study in government at its worst: A group heavy with tourism industry sycophants was assembled to explore the feasibility of expansion. When they gathered each month, the choir was preached to by convention cheerleaders. After they predictably endorsed expansion, a case made by using unrealistic projections about the convention center authority’s finances and hotel-tax receipts was blessed by state officials disinterested in the substance.
Is it any wonder that the result will be to enhance the ability of politically connected players to dole out jobs and favors to the detriment of the taxpaying public? Time will tell whether it’s all just patronage or it rises to the level of cooking the books.
Charles Chieppo is senior fellow and Mary Z. Connaughton director of finance and administration at the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank.
Paul Steven Stone: The Mass. speaker saga
CAMBRIDGESo here’s the question: Does the position of speaker of the Massachusetts House invite corruption or does it merely attract corrupt politicians?
Or put another way: would former speakers and convicted felons Charles Flaherty, Thomas Finneran and Salvatore DiMasi have put their careers and reputations on the line, risking prison and disbarment, had they not been inebriated on the hubris of Absolute Power that comes with the speaker’s job?
As Lord Acton's saying goes: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely''!
And now, over the last few weeks, we have witnessed our current speaker, Robert DeLeo, appearing as a shadow figure, or unindicted co-conspirator, in the corruption trial of the cabal formerly in charge of that criminal enterprise known as the Massachusetts Probation Department.
In addition to helping his godson become the youngest acting chief probation officer in the commonwealth’s history, Speaker DeLeo was cited by prosecutors for allegedly using the promise of lucrative patronage jobs to help win the speakership in a tight race with Norwood Rep. John Rogers.
Not surprisingly, many of DeLeo’s colleagues and leadership team immediately stepped up to defend the speaker and denounce federal prosecutors. Also no surprise, not a single legislator who voted for DeLeo as speaker after receiving access to Probation Department jobs, saw those jobs as a quid pro quo for their vote. Without any question, they would have voted for DeLeo as speaker in any case. That they’d been given Probation jobs for their friends, relatives and supporters played no role whatsoever.
I believe them. But then again I also believe in Santa Claus and an unbiased U.S. Supreme Court.
Of course, if there’s a legislator dumb enough to admit that he or she sold his vote, according to Massachusetts custom they’d be impeached on the grounds of criminal stupidity rather than for any ethical lapse.
That legislators are so quick and vocal in defending DeLeo merely provides further evidence of the power and privilege accrued to the House speaker. Whether you have legislative goals or a leadership position (and salary) to protect, none of that will be possible without the blessing, support, or good opinion, of the speaker. Those shouting loudest in DeLeo’s support can expect to receive their just rewards in the old familiar ways of Massachusetts politics. Perhaps no longer with jobs for unemployed relatives, but you can bet there’ll be something under the House Xmas tree with their name on the box.
Of course, those defending DeLeo the loudest are probably the same legislators who stood up in 2011 to give a rousing round of applause to visiting former Speakers Flaherty, Finneran and DiMasi.
Apparently, in Massachusetts politics, nothing deserves a standing ovation like heaping shame upon your office.
Paul Steven Stone, a Cambridge-based writer, runs the paulstonesthrow.com site.
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