Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Dotting i’s and crossing t’s

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In the spirit of calling attention to all the Senate campaigns’ respective failures to adhere to rules of grammar and follow instructions on filling out forms, this front-page post calls attention to the fact that Martha Coakley booted her financial disclosure form.  By failing to list some of her husband’s assets, Coakley understated her net worth to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars.  Small potatoes, by the standards of the rest of the candidates in the race, all of whom (other than Coakley) strike me as perhaps unexpectedly wealthy.  But there it is — as Matt Viser of the Globe observes, “it was nonetheless a somewhat embarrassing omission for a perceived front-runner who oversees the state’s legal affairs.”

Consider this an open thread for other technical errors by the various Senate campaigns.

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  1. I will say that I did a double take when WBUR or some other outlet reported yesterday that Coakley had no assets greater than $1000.  That did not strike me as particularly credible on its face and somebody should have caught that before it was filed.

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    p>That said, it’s pretty small potatoes.

  2. …if state pension retirement accounts need to be reported on the disclosure form?  ‘Cause for the life of me I cannot understand why someone twenty years older than me, with an income of three times mine, only has a single $12,000 retirement account and zero other assets besides her own home.  The state pension thing is the only thing I can think of, but I don’t know whether or not it’s considered exempt from reporting.  Anyone?

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    p>I mean, either way, this is pretty weird.  

    • The “retirement fund” they are referrring to is a run of the mill 401K that many state and federal employees have in their personal life separate and apart from the state and federal pensions that they will really be retiring on…Coakley has worked as  and ADA  (who are paid crap) as a DA (who are paid better than an ADA but nowhere near as much as a private sector attorney) and as an AG for a term…therefore she will get a state pension based on those years of service…the 401K that everyone is flumoxed about at $12,000 might help pay her electric bill for one year of her retirement….perhaps she can get a loan from Congressman Capuano who went from mayor of Somerville living in a 2-decker to Congress where he can report that he is now a millionaire…not bad work if you can get it.

      • According to the Globe piece, Capuano’s “wealth” and assets are from rental income and rental properties.  As we all know, real estate can appreciate in value, but only makes you a millionaire if you can sell it for millions of dollars.   He could have bought those properties 20 years ago at what were then rock-bottom prices and the form is just showing normal appreciation.  With the high house prices in Massachusetts it’s pretty easy to be a “millionaire” on paper if you own a rental property and/or a vacation home.  

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        p>Now, regarding Coakley’s disclosure…first, she did work in private practice prior to becoming an ADA, so she hasn’t been making an ADA salary since she graduated law school.  Second, according to the Herald salary database, the current Middlesex DA, Gerry Leone makes almost $150,000/year.  Coakley was Middlesex DA for almost 10 years, so even if the current salary isn’t accurate for her entire tenure, she was still likely making a healthy, six figure salary since the late 1990s that continued when she became AG (she may have even taken a pay cut).

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        p>Finally, you mean to tell me that she owns no mutual funds or stocks, has no IRA, doesn’t put money away in CDs or even a measly savings account or money market account?  According to the form instructions all of these must be listed, including those in her husband’s name if they file a joint tax return.

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        p>I don’t make as much as she does, I probably have more expenses than she does, and even I would have assets reportable on the Senate disclosure form.  

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        p>Try filling it out yourself and see how “rich” you look in the eyes of the Senate ethics committee.  You can download the form here, and the instructions here.  They even have a handy little slide show that has pictures and everything that you can download here.

      • Thank you for the clarification on the pension reporting; would you be kind enough to share a link to your cite for that so I can send it to the people in my office with whom I was discussing this earlier today?  (These are people who are obnoxiously obsessive about accuracy.)

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        p>And no thank you for your unnecessary and inaccurate implication that Capuano is rollin’ in dough while Coakley’s been living on ramen noodles for twenty years.  Out of curiosity, I checked this site to see what the annual salary of a ADA is; last year, they were between $78k and $125k.  If that is “getting paid crap” to you, I wanna work where YOU work.  Damn.

        • …and came up with a list of 677 “Assistant District Attorney” and I quickly browsed the first page of salaries and I saw a fair amount salaries of $39,000; $42,000 and on up to a couple of $90,000 and $100,000ish salaries.  Not sure what you were looking at.  

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          p>And please do ignore my tag line…it’s for another post…

          • I’ll go back and rerun my search when I have a minute.  I do know that with the results that came back, I believe some of the salaries were pro-rated as they were part-time so there was algebra involved in figuring out what their full-time equivalent salary would be.  Not saying that’s necessarily the issue here, just pointing it out.  

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            p>And I dig the tagline.  I vote you hang onto it, as it has been the only thing to make me laugh out loud all day.

            • OK, for some reason, when I do the search it returns just the ADAs who work in the MA District Attorney Association Department (screenshot here, purple box emphasis mine).  Your search result of 677 ADAs def. makes more sense than my four, although I’m a little frightened by the workings of that search engine now.  (I didn’t even know there WAS a “District Attorney Association Department”; it would not have occurred to me to search for it.) Bizarre!

              • …I looked under “Assistant District Attorney” and there was a similar on pertaining to 39 people that work 35 hrs…I could find the search you produced under MA, or assistant or District.

                • Hey, if my master scheme to get Capuano elected consists of doctoring data, then posting a direct link to where it can be proven wrong, then agreeing with you that your numbers make more sense, I’m thinkin’ Coakley might not be in bad shape, huh?

  3. The AG only has $12,000 in retirement? That seems overwhelmingly low for someone making over $130,000 a year. What kind of financial mess is she in to have only saved 12k?  

  4. The state retirement system uses mandatory pre-tax withholding and pays into a defined benefit plan.If Martha’s stats employment is as short as her time as AG then $12,000 may be right. If she was a state employee as DA Middlesex and ADA then $12,000 makes no sense. It’s also possible that she didn’t value her state retirementon the form and the $12,000 from another source. IMHO

  5. …I wish we could edit comments after the fact.  I sometimes go through my own comments later and find some really embarassing mistakes such as typos and misspelling homophones.  I really do know better and am actually one of the biggest sticklers for correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax I know.

  6. But many of the short coming of all the campaigns is a DIRECT result of the incredibly short election cycle.  Cap jumps the gun attacking Martha without thinking it out, Khazie can’t spell and bombed his first debate, we’ve painfully watched the private sector Pags perform in public, and Martha skip some boxes.

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    p>This is a 18 month race, about 540 days, compressed into 120 days and I can only imagine the flood of stuff that needs to be done everyday.  Granted it’s like watching local news on a holiday weekend when the interns are running the control room, but I suspect all the campaigns are playing triage and pushing stuff out the door.  Everyweek they add more resources, staff, equipment and volunteers; and everyweek the demand exceeds your growth.

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