So I turn on Jim and Margery tonight for some more torture and hear Jim express outrage at Ellen Degeneres’s drag queen/Liza Minnelli joke. Whatever Jim.
But Frankie Wanks Phillips said something that floored me. After the case was made that the probation scandal is highly diluted because of all the powerful people, including Martha Coakley, who made job recommendations to Jack O’Brien The Frankenweiner said, “Nay Nay. This case is about Tom Finneran setting up a new probation department, putting his buddy O’Brien in charge, and doubling the budget all in the name of having a personal jobs program.” Or something like that.
What Frank didn’t tell you, yet he knows well because it came out in recent court filings is that:
1. The court system was given tens of millions of dollars in the budget to bring the computer and technology system up to date.
2. The court system did not spend a dime on that which was mandated but rather bought furniture for itself. It basically stole the money.
3. The court system, like most around the country was instituting the bracelet program on a much wider scale run through the Probation Department, hence a huge increase in the Probation Department Budget. This is the budget increase Phillips refers to.
4. The furniture thing pissed off the legislature and governor to no end and they said “These fuckin’ judges are absolutely useless for anything that doesn’t have a docket number. They could screw-up a one car funeral. But try and tell them that. Fuck them!”
There was no way they were getting to run probation with all this new money and their track record. They needed a probation commissioner with more autonomy.
5. They made it so the Chief Justice of Administration (CJAM) appointed a new Probation Commissioner who had much independent power from the Judges. As for hiring the CJAM had to sign-off on all of them.
6. At the time the CJAM was the late John Irwin. He was being pushed by the SJC to appoint Ronald Corbett, an SJC staffer and probation intellectual with no practical experience.
7. Judge Irwin didn’t want him. He thought he was a “namby pamby” and that is not what the job needed. Instead he went with Finneran pal and experienced probation dude John O’Brien. Corbett became chief of staff for the SJC and they never forgot it.
Frank Phillips leaves out these details to protect the narrative pedaled by his employer, the increasingly irrelevant Boston Globe.
P.S. I was going to add in kudos for Milton Valencia and his Herculean effort in deceiving Globe readers of what really happened in Judge Saylor, IV’s courtroom the other day but the above ran too long. Don’t worry, I will get to it.
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Unless you want Frank Phillips to come to your house and report half-ass coffee talk as gospel truth you will follow me on twitter.