Blue Mass Group

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Globe: Patrick Took Several Weeks Off

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Cross-posted from Blue News Tribune.

Brian Mooney reports:

After a busy day at the State House, he traveled 2 1/2 hours on the Massachusetts Turnpike to an early evening, town-hall-style meeting at the bandstand on Main Street in Great Barrington, two towns away from Richmond, site of the Patrick vacation manse.

For the next 28 days, however, Patrick maintained an extremely light schedule and did not set foot in the State House, according to his daily calendars.

Odd. Unusual.

That stretch includes many of the 60 weekdays when his daily calendar was empty during his first two years as governor, indicating that he had no official activities scheduled on those days, according to a Globe review of his schedule.

Patrick’s staff points out that he is always on call and often makes official telephone calls or sends e-mails, even during his down time. Still, the vast majority of the blank weekdays on his calendar corresponded with the governor’s known summer vacations in Richmond each year, which were described in press reports at the time or were clustered around holidays such as Christmas and long weekends.

The empty pages reflect the equivalent of almost six weeks of vacation or other days containing no official activities per year, a benefit beyond the reach of ordinary workers.

Not looking good here.

In addition, before releasing copies of his calendar to the Globe, his staff also deleted a variety of other activities that it said were “political and personal” and thus not duties that the governor is required to disclose.

Patrick’s aides portrayed his Richmond home as almost an extension of his State House office and said his schedule is merely a rough sketch of all his activities. An example of official work performed on quiet days: He has signed 85 bills while staying at his Berkshires home, according to his staff.

Signing bills! How arduous. Plus there is the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Patrick’s state salary is $140,535 a year. Massachusetts has no limit on the amount of time elected officials may take off. But previous governors have taken heat for absenteeism, William F. Weld for his many fishing vacations and Mitt Romney for spending all or part of 219 days out of state in 2006 while he was laying the groundwork for a presidential run.

“To draw conclusions solely from these schedules – without taking into account countless hours meeting with staff, talking to reporters, at his desk sending e-mails, reviewing legislation, crafting policy and remarks, and working on the phone at all hours of the day – paints an incomplete and misleading picture,” Kyle Sullivan, his press secretary said in a prepared statement.

This is a good example of why we need newspapers. The Globe had someone to go through the schedule. Of course, being the Globe, they have to twist the knife.

Patrick’s principal home is in Milton, but one result of his spending so much time at his Richmond retreat is that Western Massachusetts sees a lot more of Patrick than it did previous governors. A recent exception was Jane Swift, a resident of Williamstown, who also scheduled many events in the central and western parts of the state during her stint as acting governor.

In the same story, Patrick went from Weld to Romney to Swift.

Doug Rubin is ever-helpful, of course.

“I’m on the 7:45 call with him every morning where we go over the issues and the schedule of the day,” Rubin said. “I get calls from him all hours of the day and night, and there are days when he’s in the office and doesn’t have public events. I’ve worked with a lot of elected officials in my career, and I can’t remember one who works harder than the governor.”

None of Patrick’s campaigning, both in and outside the state, usually on weekends, on behalf of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is noted on his calendars, nor is his trip to Chicago to celebrate Obama’s historic election on Nov. 4. On his calendar, Election Day and Nov. 5 are empty.

“The political stuff is work; that’s part of his job,” said Rubin. Trips on behalf of Obama benefit the state, he said.

In fairness, Rubin has a bit of a point: the governor has no real free time, he is always the governor. But there’s also no question that he can enjoy relative leisure when he’s far from the State House. There are far fewer calls, and think how many legislators just avoid bothering him.

Moreover, I’m trying to imagine a Romney guy saying, say in 2005, that trips on behalf of Bush benefit the state.

No wonder Terry Murray was so mad when Deval stole her Sunday.

Has the governor jumped the shark? I don’t know, but he’s mounted waterskis while wearing a leather jacket.

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Comments

  1. The days when politicians have to go to the State House and sit in their office for hours are rapidly ending as new technology emerges. What made what Mitt Romney did so egregious is that he abandoned doing state business, too, just giving up on our state midway through his term. Patrick may own a home in Milton, but his family really lives (and intends to stay) in his western mass digs. That’s fine with me, so long as he does his job.

    <

    p>And, for the record, the days in which we all need to be heading for the office are rapidly closing – not just politicians. Indeed, it would be great for the environment if everyone who could would work from home one day a week instead of driving 30-40 minutes to answer phone calls and emails and plug in data in the database or write programming that they could do from anywhere.  

    • Read this 2005 exec summary – year 3 – and still contend that the state was ignored and written off.

      <

      p>Were all inititives successful?  Of course not.  A Republican couldn’t be allowed to merge MHD and MTA!  It was bad enough he got rid of MDC!  But you are charging abandonment, and that just isn’t true.

      <

      p>I am amused that Patrick’s year two and three is being compared to Romney’s year 4.  But hey, at least there’s SOME acknowledgement that the attendance record isn’t what it could be.

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      p>Off topic – this business of the Obama-promotion being good for Mass. – wasn’t that a huge gamble?  Obama didn’t even win the MA primary, and was far from a sure thing as nominee.  If HRC had won, explain how those junkets would have ‘helped Mass.’.  Talk about rewriting history!

  2. Deval’s extensive out-of-state travels for political purposes?  He spent much of spring 2008 ping-ponging around primary and caucus states.  

  3. I think that it is erroneous to claim that 30 days with no scheduled activities in a year amounts to six weeks vacation, because most jobs also give you 10-12 holidays and a smattering of personal days to boot. That means that 30 unscheduled days translates to 10 holidays and 20 vacation days, or just four weeks vacation.

    <

    p>Although there are plenty of cranks out there who probably don’t think that elected officials should have any vacation, I don’t think four weeks is at all unreasonable for the governor of our state, regardless of political party.

    <

    p>I also don’t think that it is fair to a large part of this state to suggest, as the article does, that travel to or appearances in areas outside of Boston are some kind of inefficient waste of time. That’s a very Boston-centric bias.

    • The wording seems to imply 28 consecutive days. Four weeks.

      <

      p>But some clarity would be nice, El Globo.

      • I was more referring to this sentence:

        <

        p>

        The empty pages reflect the equivalent of almost six weeks of vacation or other days containing no official activities per year, a benefit beyond the reach of ordinary workers.

        <

        p>That leads people to believe that the 30 days per year amount to a six week vacation benefit when most people get 2-4 weeks off. However, since many workers get around 10 holidays, that means of the 30, only 20 could be termed “vacation”, and that translates to four weeks.

        <

        p>It is misleading to say “almost six weeks of vacation [or other days]” when it is really four. And again, I don’t have a big problem with a governor taking four weeks of vacation, I think that’s well within the trappings of the office, particularly when a lot of those vacation days appear to be spent on either state business or schmoozing which could ultimately benefit the state.

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