MA scandals dwarf all bad news – Political Corruption

Marshfield – Ethics scandals, including those that led to the resignations of two state senators and others that will dog other top Beacon Hill figures into the New Year, were pieces of a mosaic that coalesced in the public consciousness into what the capitol press corps named the top story of 2008: corruption on Beacon Hill.

Not even the free-falling economy and the decimated state budget could keep up with the allegedly cash-grabbing and constituent-groping pols this year. While the fiscal news kept getting worse, the police blotter for public officials kept getting longer. Even a Celtics world title in the middle of the calendar couldn’t stem the flow of negativity. Consider that the top five stories of 2008 were, to varying degrees, negative.

To quote Gov. Deval Patrick, the state indeed appeared “awash in cynicism.”

Per tradition, the News Service asked reporters who cover the State House to list the top 10 stories of the year. (Dirty laundry — for a group of people who blow past deadlines for a living, the capitol press corps, tasked with submitting their lists by Dec. 22, proved startlingly adept at, well, blowing past deadlines.)

Bold headlines dominated the year, preventing major stories from cracking the top 10. The expected — but not-yet-materialized domino effect from Barack Obama’s capture of the presidency, revelations that Patrick plans to release and promote a book in 2010, an ice storm that left much of the state powerless for swaths of December, massive public borrowing to improve infrastructure — all of them commanded attention, but none made the top tier.

9. Voters decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.

10. (tie) Former Gov. Romney’s presidential campaign, major tax increases, passage of $1 billion life sciences package.

1. Last week’s getaway day disclosure that Robert Coughlin, a former state rep and Patrick aide, had been fined $10,000 for covertly hustling for a gig with an industry whose tax breaks he was simultaneously helping to write, tied a nice year-end bow on things. In all, the list of public official misbehavior — alleged and otherwise — in 2008 is long and depressing.

It might’ve been Howie Carr’s favorite year, providing the public sector-loathing scribe with enough material that some columns appeared to suggest that, in fact, the pols were in some sort of perverse collusion, eager to boost the career of their longtime tormentor. Some reporters conflated allegations against former Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, that she took $23,500 for work on a liquor license bill, with allegations against former Sen. James Marzilli, accused of sexually assaulting women on several occasions. Both resigned, both await trial.

The Middlesex County register of probate, John Buonomo, resigned after prosecutors charged him with stealing thousands from office copy and cash machines, acts they said were caught on tape. Attorney General Martha Coakley on Dec. 19 announced that a close associate of DiMasi had been indicted on charges he had illegally lobbied for a ticket-resale bill, including sending e-mails to the speaker and Speaker Pro Tem Thomas Petrolati.

Toll collectors were allegedly nailed for pilfering cash from the Pike. House Majority Leader John Rogers battled allegations that money from his campaign account was used by his political consultant to make payments on a vacation home that Rogers owned in what the Norwood Democrat called a joint arrangement. House Financial Services Committee vice-chair Robert Spellane is dealing with allegations of additional campaign finance irregularities. State Rep. Jennifer Callahan said she was verbally threatened and later politically disciplined after backing Rogers over Ways and Means chair Rep. Robert DeLeo in their feud over who gets to succeed DiMasi, claims some of her colleagues dismissed as kooky. The House pursued voting-rule changes after Rep. Charley Murphy was recorded as voting in roll calls on a House budget order. Normally, Murphy’s vigilance in representing the good people of Burlington would have been commended by good-government watchdogs. This was different because he was in St. Croix at the time, meaning someone else was pushing the button.

2. The failure of Patrick’s casino proposal, the culmination of a long battle whose repercussions bore heavily on the progress of other legislation and created uncommon tension between the governor and the speaker, ranked second. Patrick and DiMasi warred over the issue, DiMasi resisting Patrick’s promises of major economic benefits and Patrick calling for more openness in the legislative process.

The subplots were tasty. Other than DiMasi, Patrick’s main critic on the issue was House Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee chair Dan Bosley — the man he’d tried to hire as an economic development adviser.

Bosley postponed a committee vote on Patrick’s bill when the result was still in doubt, and hours later announced a score that went the way the North Adams Democrat wanted it to. Then, the night the full House voted on the bill, Patrick scooted to New York City to sell a book he’s writing. There were recriminations aplenty, and the whole thing could happen again in 2009 — with fundamentally different dynamics.

3. The state unemployment rate hit a five-year high in November, a third straight month of job losses in a state that has still not returned to its 2001 jobs peak. Sustained foreclosures and a gimpy housing market reflected the state’s inability to stave off the ravages of the global crisis.

For most of the year, fuel prices placed even greater strain on commuters’ wallets, already dealing with slowing income growth, higher food prices, and, for Pike drivers, tolls expected to climb in 2009. The pain is expected to continue. In mid-November, the New England Economic Partnership projected a total loss of 135,000 jobs by the middle of 2010.

The statewide seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate through November was 5.5 percent, up from 3.8 from the prior November. Regional fluctuations were dramatic, with the Lawrence-Methuen-Salem area topping the list at 8.3 percent, nearly twice the Framingham region’s 4.3 percent rate.

4. Inextricable from the economic crisis is the uppercut dealt to the state budget, with the damage for the six-month-old state operating budget still untold. Led by Patrick, a government expansionist, the state delved into the $28.2 billion budget with $1.1 billion in cuts and raids on state reserves. More cuts are likely early in 2009, with local aid on the block, too, after major state safety-net programs bore much of the earlier incisions.

State finance documents project a decline in tax collections of about 3.6 percent for fiscal 2009, instead of the assumed 3.8 percent growth. As capital gains crater, Senate budget chief Steven Panagiotakos has pegged next year’s deficit between $2 billion and $3 billion.

The political implications are major. Patrick has already acknowledged his education reform will be trimmed by the fiscal realities. His property tax relief promise seems terribly jeopardized. The impact of the economic stimulus packages the Legislature passed before Patrick came to office, and those they parceled out to individual industries under his watch, could be sharply curtailed by the recession, as companies from biotech to construction to the film industry feel the pinch. In some quarters, momentum gathered behind increasing the state’s major money-making taxes, including sales and gas, setting up major battles between revenue-seekers and the more fiscally conservative.

DiMasi has shown new receptivity to Patrick’s bid to allow cities and towns to impose more taxes, and Senate President Therese Murray has opted for the “everything is on the table approach.”

5. May brought news that Sen. Edward Kennedy has terminal brain cancer, triggering an outpouring of bipartisan affection for the Senate’s second longest-serving member and one of the icons of liberal political history.

Kennedy’s treatment has allowed him to continue working in the Senate, with occasional appearances, but his long-term prognosis has not changed. The surviving member of the legacy’s most prominent generation, his condition played into a dynamic but fleeting political possibility in Massachusetts: that all of the state’s top three elected positions could open. According to that parlor game, Kennedy could be forced from his seat by his health, or worse, while both Sen. John Kerry and Patrick joined the Obama administration.

As it turned out, none of those three possibilities came to pass. Kennedy delivered a stem-winder at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and many in the party treated it as his valedictory address. Senate President Therese Murray, who got her start in politics as a 12-year-old volunteering for Kennedy’s Senate campaign, summed up the sentiments of many in the state, saying on the day of his diagnosis, “I’m not ready to hang crepe.” Nevertheless, the positioning for a potential Senate opening continued.

6. While DiMasi dealt with questions about his ethics, he worked to quell and eventually learned to live with more trouble in his own House. Emboldened by the year’s worth of unflattering stories about the speaker, both Ways and Means chair Rep. Robert DeLeo and Majority Leader John Rogers, who nominally should be among DiMasi’s staunchest supporters, undermined him throughout the year by lining up votes in the event of his departure.

During formal sessions throughout the year, House members quietly cornered one another, in offices or on the floor, at dinners and in phone conversations, as both sides kept guarded lists of committeds, uncertains and certain nos. A block of progressives with committee posts emerged as the single group firmly loyal to the speaker — a group that counted among others Reps. Byron Rushing, Ruth Balser, Frank Smizik and Jay Kaufman, all of whom had been plucked from the rank-and-file by DiMasi.

Accusations between the two camps, comically different claims of vote counts and tension in the chamber marked much of the year in the House, ending with DeLeo’s side claiming a wide lead and Rogers quietly working to shore up his base. After summoning his chairs last January for an ear-chewing, DiMasi this January faces uncertainty over how many votes he’ll earn in his promised re-election bid. He left the door open to punishing the members who have clearly flouted his admonitions against hustling votes for would-be successors.

7. November’s state elections marked a low point for the Massachusetts Republican Party. Their 24-member minority dwindled to 21 — barely 10 percent of the Legislature. They passed the second year in a row without any representation in either the 12-member Congressional delegation or in the six constitutional offices.

Then the House GOP started squabbling, prompting House Minority Leader Bradley Jones, who clung to a narrow lead in the face of a challenge from Rep. Lew Evangelidis, to quip, “People say it’s not time for a shootout in the lifeboat. The fact is we’re not in a lifeboat, we’re in the water.”

8. What casinos were to the end of 2007, transportation financing dilemmas have been to the end of 2008. After years of ignored drum-beating, the issue finally surged to the top of the state’s agenda, as a projected $20 billion deficit over 20 years in mere maintenance funding and worsening debt problems at two major quasi-public transportation agencies appeared to force the rubber to the road.

Legislative support began to coalesce behind a gas tax, in part because it seemed more palatable than a $100 million toll hike preliminarily approved by the Turnpike Authority. Patrick chose a mid-December blizzard as the best time to appoint his new transportation chief, James Aloisi, a Big Dig veteran who will be tasked with writing Patrick-s long-delayed transportation reform package. Acrimony between the branches has cropped up over tolls and, earlier in the year, over how much the state should reach out to aid the Turnpike Authority, facing mounting debt problems. But Patrick appears to spy in the size of the problem an opportunity for productive collaboration.

9. Voters’ decision Nov. 4 to remove criminal penalties from possession of under an ounce of marijuana stunned many on Beacon Hill, many of whom appeared more consumed with the failed Question 1, which would have eliminated the state income tax, and the successful Question 3, banning dog racing.

Proponents argued that holding less than an ounce of marijuana should not result in a long-term criminal record, while opponents of softening the state’s drug laws insisted the change would have broader results. At year’s end, the debate dwelt on implementation, as law enforcement authorities said that once the pending law takes effect Jan. 2, there will be significant problems, such as how to cope with a clause that forbids punishment beyond a $100 fine — including for bus drivers, foster parents, and police officers.

10. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, who announced in late 2005 he would not seek re-election and spent much of 2006 out of the state pre-campaigning, hung around for a while in the Republican presidential primary, but in the end couldn’t keep up with a resurgent John McCain. The Belmont Beefcake was badly wounded in Iowa when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took first and then in New Hampshire, where McCain romped. Romney won Michigan, but suffered key losses in South Carolina and Florida, where Romney uttered his unfortunate “Who let the dogs out?” and “You got some bling bling here!” remarks.

The state passed sweeping tax hikes, including a $1-per-cigarette-pack cigarette bump, which proponents said could generate $175 million annually, and a package worth nearly $500 million in new impositions on businesses, with a promised overall corporate rate cut down the road. Other targeted tax hikes passed as well, amounting to what Republicans called the largest collective tax hike in the state’s history.

Patrick’s signature economic development initiative got his signature in June in a heavily stage-managed ceremony at the Joslin Diabetes Center. The $1 billion life sciences incentive was the launching pad for the state’s top figures to travel to an industry convention in San Diego, hoping to make their major investment of taxpayer dollars pay off in increased investment. The bill’s fascinating journey through the legislative process, with heavy revisions and extensive lobbying, saw Patrick’s proposal buffeted by critical lawmakers but, in the end, largely intact.

From the State House News Service staff, have a wonderful holiday season and best wishes for a successful 2009!