Bad piece in the Globe today, built on faulty logic. DiMasi wanted to enrich himself at taxpayer expense, and the Globe paints the people he talked to in the Patrick Administration, like Secretary Kirwan, as if they were corrupt even though Kirwan and other officials reported suspicious behavior to the Inspector General.
It is just absurd to run those insinuating questions from the Republicans at the top of the story. Reporting DiMasi to the IG is an example of good ethics. Yesterday’s story was good journalism, but today the Globe is trying to push the story way beyond the indictment, beyond the evidence, and beyond logic.
Look at the facts related in this text, and then the silliness in the emphasized sentence.
The governor and his staff have said Patrick officials, as soon as they discovered something was amiss, referred the matter for investigation, canceled the Cognos contract, and recovered the $13 million.In December 2007, just four months after she awarded the contract to Cognos, Kirwan asked Inspector General Gregory Sullivan to investigate. Her letter left the impression that it was the administration’s decisive action that prompted Sullivan’s probe. She wrote that the Patrick administration notified Sullivan as soon as it was made aware of any “possible irregularities.”
Officials said yesterday that they did not know that the inspector general had already launched a probe before they contacted the office.
Of course, Kirwan’s letter left the impression the Administration started the probe. It’s not like the Secretary of A+F is going to be privy to every investigation the US Attorney considers.
Discuss
7 Comments . Comments are closed.I hope Kirwin has thicker skin than you two
There's no allegation of corruption here, it merely raises questions, exactly what the paper should be doing if there is unethical, yet legal behavior.
This is the fundamental question the article raises, it's a legitimate one. The fact that Patrick, Kirwin and Morales are refusing to talk to the paper about this doesn't make it look any better.
Yet the indictment makes it very clear that they met with the speaker on this very issue. The article doesn't paint Kirwin as corrupt, it raises the question of whether a contract was awarded because of pressure from the speaker. That's not necessarily corruption, but if its true and it's not an isolated problem then it's clear that the problems of insider politics goes beyond the legislature - which shouldn't be surprising... the administration is filled with former reps, senators and long time state power brokers - the presumption that the type of behavior DiMasi engaged in couldn't happen in the Patrick administration is naive at best.
From reading the indictment
Kirwan seems like was the only official who was offended enough by the smell of this thing to actually to actually push back against it. It is fair to at least question the behavior of at least someone in the administration, from a June 17, 2007 email from Lally to a Cognos exec (p. 21 of indictment):
Who is "her boss"? Doug Rubin? Deval?
$quot;Her boss$quot;
in that passage has been identified as David Morales, one of the deputy chiefs of staff.
where
was he identified?
Globe stories
E.g., this one, and this column.
thanks, missed that
I guess guestion is whether he was coaching Sal on how to "handle" Kirwan on his own, or as part of a strategy with his boss.
That remains publicly unknown, AFAIK.
However, there is no indication whatsoever that Morales or anyone else in the administration had any idea of the alleged wrongdoing.
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