Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Deval Patrick’s “public integrity task force”

By

An open letter to our legislators:

As you know, the ethics and integrity of our government have come under urgent scrutiny in the last few weeks. In response, Governor Patrick has formed a “public integrity task force.”

This is a particular interest of mine.  Among other efforts, I, together with two citizen co-plaintiffs, have spent over three and a half years trying to force the Boston City Council to obey the Open Meeting Law.

I am asking you to take an active role in the Governor’s integrity task force effort, although few of you were appointed to it.  

To begin with, I ask you to:

-request that the Governor’s task force hold public hearings across the state;

reach out to your constituents, e.g., hold public forums, crate a hotline (phone and e-mail) for citizen corruption reports;

submit recommendations of your own, and present them in a public forum (newspaper opeds, your web-sites, etc.);

-file legislation to make the legislature subject to the Open Meeting Law and the Public Record Law.

I will be preparing a set of recommendations from my own experience.  

Unfortunately, elected officials tend to wait until corruption bursts out on the public scene before taking action, although many are aware of mis-doings.  I am asking you to take this opportunity to be proactive — because silence is complicity.

Federal law prohibits depriving the public of “fair and honest services.”  This is the real definition of corruption.  This should be the broad scope of ethical reform.

I ask for your response to this message, and I ask you to commit to bold and proactive action.

Shirley Kressel

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. …all committee hearings AND honestly notify the public on the “Great and General Court” website and maybe in both the Boston Herald and Boston Globe of committee hearings, formal, and informal sessions and what is scheduled for them in an open and timely way.

    <

    p>I was shocked when the cable coverage was allowed to die off – and less and less open debate occurred in both houses on Beacon Hill, with Room 348 where leadership lays down the law to the rank and file in the House…and few real votes and debates occur any more.

    <

    p>Far more citizens have cable then will every “livestream” on computers.

    <

    p>Bring back Beacon Hill Cable and cover Committee votes too – and maybe we won’t need “wires” at the Fill-a-buster Restaurant or the 21st Amendment watering hole…

    <

    p>And no, I was not appointed either Shirley!

  2. I’ll take actions to advance these goals… Plus I’d add the restoration of statewide campaign finance reform with public funding of campaigns that MA voters decisively enacted with 68% of the vote back in 1998!!

    <

    p>

    Act fast on ethics
    By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Columnist / November 9, 2008
    COMMENTS (4)
    http://www.boston.com/news/loc…

    Governor, let’s lose the two-month ethics reform deep-think already.

    You can’t afford to wait 60 days for a task force report before you start trying to pull Beacon Hill into line. A little urgency, please.

    What you have up there is a crisis. The State House is a scandal factory that is feeding everybody’s worst fears about state government, and hemorrhaging public trust even faster than money.

    State Senator Dianne Wilkerson has been charged with public corruption. House Speaker Sal DiMasi is being investigated by every watchdog and his dog because a state software contractor paid a couple of million to DiMasi’s close associates. John Rogers, who is jockeying to succeed the speaker, has problems of his own, with allegations that a consultant paid by his campaign turned around and made payments on a house Rogers owned. Still more lawmakers stand accused of other transgressions.

    It’s uglier than even the harshest cynic might have imagined, so ugly that even some legislators are hopping mad. You were right to take a stand last week, and commit yourself to putting an ethics reform package before them.

    But it needs to happen sooner than January.

    http://www.boston.com/news/loc…

  3. require all campaign contributions to be immediately returned if information about donor’s occupation is missing, investigate contributions from multiple employees of a corporation to ensure that they are not receiving direct reimbursement from the corporation (corporate contributions are prohibited).

Archives