Remember the Suzanne Bump labor controversy (or not) from last week? The President of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts calls sour grapes on the Romney appointees pushing this story:
The so-called allegations by two commissioners of the state’s labor relations board are clearly sour grapes. Suzanne Bump, Governor Patrick’s incoming labor secretary, is performing a mission to reform a dysfunctional agency to better serve the participants who seek relief at the Labor Relations Commission in accordance with Massachusetts law.
These disgruntled commissioners have created chaos at the commission to the point that I have advised my union members to avoid it if possible, because, in my opinion, it is anti-labor and pro-management.
Well, so far we haven’t seen any follow-up, factually (from the Globe) or legally (from the Ethics Commission, or whomever is supposed to oversee such things). If this stays as it is, chalk it up to another nothing-to-see-here-folks opus from Phillips, Estes and co. We’ll see.
I have questioned some of Deval’s appointments, but Suzanne is not one of them. She is tough, intelligent and always professional.
While a State Representative. Yeah good choice, were all of Deval’s appointees this well vetted?
While a Rep Suzanne Bump accepted $195.82 in food and theater tickets from a John Hancock lobbyist. You can go to this link if you like http://www.mass.gov/…
and read about it. If I did not know better I would say you were trying to makes it sound far worse then it was.
She was fined $600 for accepting more than $50 in gifts from a lobbyist working for the insurance industry. While she served on an insurance committee. It’s pretty straightforward. She settled to avoid further proceedings.
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Those are the facts.
She was chair of the Labor committee through which insurance legislation passed. My bad.
We can go back and forth on this and sadly I doubt we will agree. For those interested in knowing the full story just read the State Ethics Committees report at http://www.mass.gov/…. It is a quick read and makes it clear she accepted gifts, but no legislative favors were returned. Basically the commission said this is not a big deal, but please do not do it again.
to avoid further digging by the Ethics commission. They are like a plea agreement. We will never know if a favor was done. You don’t know that, nor do I. The favor could have come down the road. Facts are, she knew the law, she violated it, and now she is on the hairy edge again.
The facts are in the deposition. Your interpretation is a crime was knowingly committed. My interpretation is a minor infraction occurred. The deposition vindicate would tend to support a minor infraction.
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The only people on the hairy edge are the 2 disgruntled commissioners on the Labor Relations board.
Thanks for bringing it up again.
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yours truly,
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Suzanne Bump
So if this story actually comes to nothing, how do we know that the next purported scandal from the Globe is actually meaningful or not?