Comparisons to Jane Swift’s use of state choppers while she was Lt. Govenor don’t wash – DP’s the Governor for crissakes – he should use the choppers any time he damn well pleases.
Maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see how forcing the Governor of the Commonwealth to drive 2+ hours from North Adams to Boston (or 3+ hours round trip from Boston to Hyannis) to be in the best interests of more efficiency in state government. What’s next – complaining that DP doesn’t take the T from Milton to the State House every day?
Memo to Brad Jones and the rest of our GOP leaders: let’s focus on rebuilding the party and recruiting strong candidates for municipal races (and some special House races) this year, instead of whining because it isn’t Kerry Healy choppering into downtown Boston from Prides Crossing!
I always thought that it was the State Police that behaved shamefully. Nine months after the ONE event, when the Ethics Commission held its hearing, the Staties admitted that THEY had ordered the chopper that weekend, not her, as part of the travel arrangements they routinely made. Why that was never reported is a mystery. However, she was exonerated by Ethics. The only criticism by Ethics was for the use of aides, who had volunteered, to watch her small daughter, for which she reimbursed the state. At the time, I wish the Glob had begun a fearless and searching investigation into Shanon O’Brien’s use of HER aides in the Treasurer’s Office, as she also ahd a daughter of similar age tht she routinely brought to the State House. But of course, that was different.
The only difference between Swift’s use of the chopper and Deval’s was that Swift was using it more for personal reasons- getting home for Thanksgiving- while Deval’s use was somewhat more for official use. Maybe it’s not a significant enough difference to justify Deval’s use, but it is a different scenario than Swift’s.
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p>That said, there really isn’t any reason that the Governor of a state the size Massachusetts should be shuttled around in a helicopter, for what amounts to mundane business. (Heck, I’m pretty sure that there are counties larger than our whole state out in Fly-over Country.) Using the chopper in an emergency to get from “Point A” to the State House, or the Bunker in Framingham, is fine. But, with all due respect to Coakley, DeNucci, and Cahill, using it to get to a couple of swearing-in ceremonies a few score miles apart just doesn’t cut it- the Governor, Auditor, AG, and Treasurer, just aren’t that important to justify the expense.
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p>So Deval should just admit that using the helicopter wasn’t the swiftest idea (maybe it was), reimburse the state, and refrain from using it.
No problem, right? Governors do ceremonial stuff all the time — it’s part of the job. The Berkshires and the Cape should be able to see the Gov on a regular basis without him blowing 2/3 of a day to travel.
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A governor’s time is too valuable to us, the people, to have him limited by travel time. Sure, he can read or make phone calls on car trips, but sometimes it makes more sense to just get out and back quickly. Of course, if Patrick were to start using the chopper for weekend getaways to the Taj Deval (still the best line of Campaign 2006), he would deserve criticism.
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BTW, Swift could have avoided her whole copter controversy if she had just scheduled some kind of official business to coincide with her personal travels.
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For now this is a silly non-story. But if Deval and his team don’t start making news of their own choosing, the press and his opponents will keep finding other things with which to fill the news hole.
I know the Mayor of New York City has access to copters to get around the city, especially when traffic is tied up and there’s an issue in the outer boroughs. I believe the Mayor of LA has one too.
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But in the end, I’m more concerned about all the copters going down in Iraq these days, due to either enemy fire or malfunction, then I am about a Governor going to a part of the state that has often felt neglected.
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Anyway, wiping out that $5 million “tourism” group more than pays for the N Adams trip.
Deval has claimed to be an environmentalist and said moving the state in the “right” direction on the environment was one of his priorities. This rings of the hypocrisy of “environmentalists” that drive SUVs that have never even seen a dirt road, never mind anywhere were the four-wheel drive is needed.
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From the Governor’s Web page:
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According to this article the trip from the museum to the state house was 135 miles and used 100 gallons of fuel. That 1.35 miles per gallon, not very environmentally friendly.
Deval Patrick claims to want to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Yet he continues to exhale the gas thousands of times a day.
while he makes phone calls and reads up on things in the back seat. There’s no rush for him to be at the state house, nor a reason he couldn’t leave early every day if he wants to get home in time to cook dinner. It is a waste of money and bad for the environment. He could even work from home on lots of days.
I’m not really sure what the operational mission of the SP Airwing is — I think it’s only been around for about 10 years or so in it current configuration. One thing that I do know is that the pilots have to fly to keep their skills up — I believe that was a major finding of an investigation conducted after a fatal crash of one of the helos into an MIT boathouse a few years back.
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If it’s official business, I’m not sure what the big deal is.
I presuming the SP pilot is being paid anyway. He’s not on commission, getting paid by the miles flown. The helicoper fuel is already budgeted and paid for. Unless the helicopter is just sitting there and not being used, where is the waste? And if it is just sitting there, why is that?
The SP has other helicopters, so it’s not like he’s tying up the only one in the state, or diverting it from other things that could be considered more important.
What’s the big deal, really.
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I do like the way Patrick is refusing to knuckle under to the rather predictable ways that the Globe and Herald are going after him.
The cops making OT money on extra details is another non-issue issue. They work the time, the contractor pays them for it, so whats it to me? With state projects, I’m sure someone could make the arguement that the contractor then charges the state and the state takes it out of my paycheck. But if the contractors were allowed to used flagmen at Wal-mart wages, would I see a corresponding reduction in my state taxes? I doubt it.
….have a problem with Gov. Patrick using the helicopter but this is one of those partisan bicker points. I spent two days complaining about Scott Brown swearing in front of sophomores. Truly I don’t like what he did but it is also fair to say it ticked me off so much because I don’t much like him. Now the republicans who don’t much care for Deval are gonna bristle for a couple of days over this. Really, there is not much to debate. Either you have a problem with it or you don’t.
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2. Secondly, whenever this state throws a conniption over travel issues, I like to remind people that we’re the only state in the union without a Governor’s home. That’s not a huge issue for Deval Patrick, but at least in Jane Swift’s case it’s hard to crucify her for using a copter – even for personal uses – when she wasn’t given a home in the Boston area to live in to begin with. I’m not saying we need a Governor’s mansion, but a 3 bedroom/2 1/2 bath Governor’s townhouse isn’t all that much to ask for =p
I agree there are far more important issues. It’s the double standard that grates.
Though, as others have said, Swift used hers more for personal reasons, and opened herself up for the nature of her use than anything.
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But it always seemed rather silly to me, the attention at the time and certainly now. Granted, I wasn’t paying as much attention at the time Swift was critisized, I was living in NH I think, but I remember it.
for using especially expensive government-paid transportation for government business, and using especially expensive government-paid transportation for personal reasons.
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It’s similar to why you can deduct business travel between, say, your office and a client, from your federal income taxes, but you can’t deduct commuting costs from your home to your office. People are used to thinking about personal and business travel reimbursement issues as different. Because legally, they are.
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As for the specific incident Jane Swift was criticized for, I think it was largely the symbolism of using that especially expensive taxpayer-subsidized transport to avoid the holiday traffic that so many other taxpayers were stuck sitting in, that angered people so much. It may not seem “fair” if you’re a supporter, but symbolism like that matters. Leaders should understand that. If Gov. Patrick were to use a state helicopter to, say, fly down to Nantucket over July 4th weekend, no government business involved, people might be more annoyed. Unless of course he was clever enough to schedule some government business as part of the trip đŸ™‚ I agree with the poster above that Lt. Gov. Swift might have fared better on this if she’d been able to arrange her schedule so there was government business in the western part of the state to attend to just before the holiday.
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And by the way, in case you’re reading this one, I’m still awaiting a response as to where you got the figure for your claim elsewhere that Gov. Patrick rescinded $879 million in cuts that Romney had made, inaccurately blaming Patrick for the entire current billion-dollar deficit. I’ll repeat here that the figure I saw was $383 million, which is a significant difference of around half a billion dollars.
My friend Peter Porcupine is right that Swift was Gov. at the time of her “copter controversy.” However, now the Herald is taking DP to task for being driven around in a new Cadillac instead of an old Crown Vic. My position remains the same.
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p>As any senior executive in Corporate America will tell you (including Mitt), if you’re comfortable while traveling you can be more productive both en route as well as when you arrive at your destination – and can spend more time in the office due to less time traveling.
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p>Let’s move on!
…Pelosi’s plane issue. Don’t these no-news people have any more pressing issues to deal with?
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I guess not. And that’s why the US is going to hell in a handbasket.
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Common sense is the set of prejudices that one acquires before the age 18. –Albert Einstein
…the Republican party is pretty much dead in Massachusetts, and that, as a result, elections are won in primaries. If you want self-described pseudo-conservatives (Republicans aren’t really conservative, but that’s a matter for another time) to win, you should encourage them to run in the Democratic primaries.
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If the Republican party was only able to put up candidates for some 1/3 of the legislature in the last election, what does that tell you? Heck, in one of the recent US Senatorial elections, the Libertarian nut Carla Howell* did almost at least as well as the Republican Robinson in a US Senatorial election.
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*I call Carla Howell “Annie get your gun.” In virtually every election that she has been in, her campaign starts out with the mantra “small government is beautiful,” and invariably ends up with an appeal to the gun nut lobby. Great way to win an election, no? And Robinson couldn’t even out-draw her.