The legal development which is in the Herald and Globe today is potentially major. The Romney Administration is implicated in securities fraud, because as Mihos said, they made representations to bondholders that the Big Dig was being properly inspected. That sort of due diligence gets you a better interest rate on state bond issues. If A & F said inspections were taking place when they weren’t, that’s a material misreprentation by any definition. A reasonable investor, whose interest the SEC looks after, would want to know that the sky could fall on the major new tunnel in Boston, before lending money to Massachusetts.
One thing’s for sure, you don’t mess with the SEC. You think the IRS, DOR, and ATF are bad?: the SEC is the top dog of bad. (Finger snap here.) The state could face a serious fine, civil liability, and the humiliation of being put in stocks on the trading floor of the bond market for punishment. That is, the amount in interest payments the state owes on its debt is going to go up. Thank you Mitt Romney, don’t let the door hit you on the way out .
This new liaibility for the next Administration to deal with is Romney’s equivalent of a bronx cheer for Massachusetts as he freely indulges his contempt for this state and its values in his last days. It just goes to illuminate the whole “lack of curiousity” angle, which Kerry Healey fits in with neatly. I can only hope John McCain forcefully holds Romney accountable for his mishandling of the Big Dig mess. We’re going to be paying for his mistakes for a long time to come.
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