From State House News Wire Service–BOSLEY A NO-SHOW IN PATRICK’S DEVELOPMENT CABINET PLAN: Gov. Deval Patrick today announced the creation of his so-called Development Cabinet, but the legislator he’s appointed to helm that Cabinet was conspicuously absent from the press release. Patrick announced he will chair the Cabinet. Asked if Rep. Daniel Bosley, whom Patrick had tapped as his senior adviser for economic development, would serve in the administration, Patrick’s deputy press secretary Cyndi Roy said, “You will have to wait until he makes that announcement to find out.” Bosley (D-North Adams), tapped last month by Gov. Deval Patrick as the coordinator of his Development Cabinet, will hold a press conference in his district at 4 pm, according to his aides. Bosley, while standing in the lobby of Patrick’s office Monday, told the News Service he planned to file bills important to his district and was awaiting information about office space before giving up his House seat. The House on Monday scheduled a special election to fill the seat vacated by Rep. James Leary (D-Worcester), but Bosley has held off on submitting his resignation from the House.
Here’s the link.
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Too bad, but I guess it’s a win all around, and having a “guy” in the Legislature who can speak for Deval will be helpful.
Obviously the “Boz” is getting his pension issues in order. By going into this new year and getting sworn in he gets credit for a full year on his pension calculation with the legislature.
From the Globe:
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[Ed. note: No one argues with Mayor Barrett. He is always right.]
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The commute from North Adams to Beacon Hill is not fun, and Dan has been doing it for many years. (I remember when Rep. Bosley was using his weekly presence in the big city of Boston to obtain obscure beanie baby stuffed animals to bring back for his daughter, who is now an adult!)
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Dan could have gone into the private sector long ago, in any number of capacities, and made tons of money. This is a man who loves the world of public policy, and who has the credentials to do some great things when he makes his next career move.
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I don’t fault Gov. Patrick – he is truly thinking through the best ways to administer now that he has the opportunity to turn his ideas into reality. He took a step back and realized that he didn’t want to delegate this key job. If he did, Dan would have been his first choice.
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Bosley may have been aware that things were in flux, and he wisely waited to submit his resignation to the Speaker until things were pinned down. It would have been nice if there had never been an initial announcement about him taking the position, but there’s no real harm and no foul here.
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Here’s a link to the Berkshire Eagle coverage.
Something he didn’t know when he hired him?
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What came up? Bosley’s anti-gambling stance was no secret.
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Hmmmmmmm. Did the state police background check turn up anything? Did someone whisper something in Deval’s ear? Clearly Bosley was forced aside and thus out.
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Why are the legislative ring leaders of the anti-gambling brigade always from the western part (Springfield area) of the state. (Remeber tony scabelli?)
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I’m just saying.
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and BTW. Bosley is responsible to his constituents and district. Not the Patrick administartion. This idea that Bosley will be doing Deval’s work in the legislature is crap and insincere.
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I am from the Western part of the state, and I am opposed to casino gambling. I’ll tell you why.
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First, the Western part of the state has a lot more poverty than the Eastern part of the state. According to the 2000 census, Hampden County had a 14.7% poverty rate, Norfolk County had 4.6, Middlesex had 4.3%, Bristol had 10.5%. Only Suffolk County had a higher rate (19%), and due to escalating housing prices in Boston, I suspect that has gone down since 2000.
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Second, every proposal has been to put a casino in either Springfield or Holyoke. Both cities have very high poverty rates, and a lot of social problems.
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In my opinion, a nearby casino will make it that much more likely that a poor person with little hope will gamble at a casino. Such people already disproportionately play the lottery, but you can lose a lot more at a casino a lot faster.
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Have you ever been to Atlantic City, or even the area approaching Foxwoods? Not exactly thriving. Casinos do not add to an economy — they take away from an economy. They do not want restaurants popping up around them — they want that those patrons for themselves.
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If a casino goes into Springfield I fear that will be the nail in Springfield’s coffin. People will zip in on the highway, park in the casino parking lot, eat the casino food, shop at the casino shops, and drive away on the highway. Poor people from Springfield will spend more of their income at the casino, and less in the local economy.
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And the money from such a casino will probably be distributed like existing lottery money, so Springfield will bear the problems of the casino and won’t see a proportionate benefit.
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Sure, some low-wage casino jobs will be created, but don’t expect them to go to Springfield residents. I’m sure there will be plenty of pressure to make the elderly casino patrons comfortable, and that means staying away from those “bad dark-skinned minorities, you know, the ones that commit all the crimes” (to be clear, not my view, but one held often by elderly people). The casino will probably instead import people from Eastern Europe, just like Six Flags does.
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Finally, the people pushing casinos in Western MA are people who would be in on the take. The late Peter Picknelly was a big backer — he ran the Peter Pan bus lines. Hmm, do you think he was backing them out of altruism for the region, or because he has the bus territory locked up? The local newspaper, the Republican, was a big backer, but it turns out they own a lot of the land that the casino would sit on. Hmm. Objective? I doubt it.
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So if you want to put a casino in Boston, or on the Cape, please feel free to do so, I don’t care. Just don’t plop one in my backyard.
I’m from Boston.
Am I still allowed to oppose idiotic gambling proposals?
Get thee behind me, Flash Wiley!
Sure, I’ll support your opposition any time I can. Any proposal that gives the entire state benefit at the expense of small groups or specific regions needs to be looked at with great care. The fact that we’re “losing money to Connecticut” isn’t strong enough to outweigh the even larger economic suck that a casino would be closer to home.
I like Dan Bosley and I’m intrigued by what might have happened to derail his new appointment, but that’s not the important issue right now.
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The structure announced in December (akin to the Dukakis Development cabinet run by Al Raine) made lots of sense. It requires someone with a small professional staff who physically sits close to the Governor in the State House. It also requires someone who has the governor’s trust and knows that cabinet secretaries can’t simply get their way on development issues by doing an end run and going directly to the governor.
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I hope that Deval is just buying time (and saving face) by saying that he will play this coordinating role himself. That is NOT a solution and I fear that it leaves a major void in the new administration.
Dan would have been a great asset to the administration, so it’s too bad this didn’t work out for all concerned. The Gov CANNOT be the day to day guy on this–simply not enough time in the day for all his other responsibilities (including, God forbid, emergency powers and crises that Governors need to be 100% focused on from time to time). There might be a way forward, and there’s precedent for this: Boz chairs the Economic Development Committee on the House side. The Gov, in an extraordinary display of interbranch collegiality and collaboration, should invite Boz and the Senate Chair to join the weekly development cabinet meetings. As their respective relationships blossom, Boz can become the de facto moderator in the Gov’s absence (and at his request) as well as a senior legislative muse for the process. It’s great to break down silos between the Executive departments, but better still to break down the barns that exist between the Executive and Legislative branches. This would be a very sweet way (not to mention effective way) to do that.
Why wouldn’t it work out as it stands now? Aren’t the cabinet secretaries professional and courteous enough not to need a chaperone other then their boss, the Governor? Given the general acclaim the cabinet has received thus far, I’d think the need for Boz may have subsided for now. There’s enough momentum for change that they most certainly will all have to work together.
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As for working with the legislative committees, I would think you’ll see that happen.
Say there’s a high-priority economic development project for the administration (just for fun, let’s say it combines housing, commercial, retail and open space) and the permit approvals are stalled at DEP and Secretary Bowles, like almost every secretary before him, is “professional and courteous” with his counterpart in the cabinet but doesn’t want to overrule his own staff. Problems like that come up all the time. Are you saying that only Deval himself can speak for the whole administration and has to wait until someone complains to him and then intervene personally to make sure the project gets the consideration it needs? It’s a critically important role that should be filled by a senior person on the Governor’s staff, not by the Governor himself.
But isn’t that what this person is supposed to be doing (see Section 4)? Does this office even exist? I didn’t see anything about it on Mass.gov in the Economic Development section.
Bosley was tasked with doing an important role that has been a huge problem under Weld-lucci. When Romney came in he was told there was no coordination between these areas, and that’s why he created Commonwealth Development and put Foy in charge of coordinating the communications.
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This worked for a while, becuase Foy was good at what he did, and Romney didn’t really care what Foy did because he was too busy setting up his run for the Presidency. The OCD model got national attention (Connecticut is now copying it), but OCD was distant from Romney, and those with business before the cabinet leaders complained that the department heads had no direct access to the governor, so Patrick took OCD apart.
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This worries me first because I hope the Patrick administration keeps their commitment to retaining the good parts of the ‘Smart Growth’ agenda. (They can be reassigned to the Housing / Economic Development secretary, but that does need to happen!) But, second, this worried me because there is nobody, except the Governor, tasked each day from a high-level position to link all these people together and focus them on a common goal.
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So now Patrick says he’s going to do it himself. He’s one step ahead of the old Weld-lucci system, because he isn’t Bill Weld or Paul Cellucci, but he really needs somebody there, in the Governor’s office, with access to him, and a strong relationship with him, that will coordinate the activities of these cabinet departments. So, I hope he works this out.
Sounds like the fella who bought the diner over at the commons and took out all the tables and chairs and put in booths. Said that was better for what? I dunno. Eatin, I guess. So there we sat in the booths and we didn’t like it, knees up to our necks. We wanted the tables back,could stretch out our legs, that was what we were familiar with. Smart aleck, thought he knew better. Some folks like tables and chairs. Don’t care about booths. What’s that got to do with eatin’ a grill cheese sandwich anyways? As long as it was good.