I haven’t read the report yet, but it sure sounds bad.
The state’s highest court, armed with a special counsel’s report that details widespread “abuse and systemic corruption” in the state’s Probation Department, said today the senior court officials will move to fire Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien, suspend several of his top deputies and forward the report to prosecutors for potential criminal investigation.
The Supreme Judicial Court’s stunning announcement came as the court unsealed a devastating report from an independent counsel that concluded that O’Brien and other probation leaders “committed pervasive fraud against the Commonwealth” for years, creating a phony hiring process to hide the systematic funneling of hundreds of jobs to politically-connected candidates….
Ware said that literally dozens of probation employees actively participated in “rigging” the interview process to create the appearance of a fair system when, in fact, O’Brien pre-selected candidates for practically every job opening in the 2,000-employee agency down to entry level clerical workers.
I love this example.
At one point, Ware wrote, O’Brien became furious at a probation supervisor because she refused to go along with a plan to hire a former state senator’s son who was both a felon and a former heroin addict. O’Brien hired Douglas MacLean anyway. The supervisor was banished to do audits far from her home.
Awesome. Just the way probation should operate.
The state legislature gets hit as well, though exactly how that side of things will proceed remains unclear.
Ware, in his investigation, also pursued the Spotlight finding that probation was beset with a “pay to play mentality” in which scores of job seekers made contributions to legislators in apparent hopes of favored treatment. Ware said he could not prove that individual politicians got jobs for people directly in exchange for campaign contributions, which could violate state and federal bribe statutes. But he said statistical evidence shows that legislators tried much harder to get jobs for people who gave them campaign contributions. Ware said his job was to investigate problems in probation, leaving it to others to probe whether legislators broke the law, too….
The special counsel makes it clear that O’Brien, a protege of former House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, was supporting legislators’ job candidates in exchange for a bigger probation budget. O’Brien’s political aides methodically kept track of legislators’ favored candidates for jobs, showing that legislative leaders received by far the most patronage hires, Ware found. O’Brien had a separate spreadsheet to keep track of former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi’s candidates, the special counsel reported.
“Generous appropriations for the Probation Department were linked to O’Brien’s willingness to systematize fraudulent hiring and promotion on a pervasive scale,” wrote Ware, noting that the state Legislature gave probation $25.4 million more than the state Trial Court requested between 2006 and 2009….
Ware found that O’Brien’s patronage machine was so extensive that some legislators rated their people on a scale of one to four, often giving the highest rating to people who were also campaign contributors. On one “Sponsor List” compiled for O’Brien, Ware found that 62 percent of the legislator-backed candidates got probation jobs — if they also gave money. But only 25 percent of sponsored candidates who did not give money got probation jobs.
Ware’s report, ultimately, focuses on the Probation Department, leaving many unanswered questions about which legislators were most responsible for boosting probation’s budget and whether they were explicitly trading state money for jobs.
So, there ya go.
Look at Dave from Harvard’s post and research I have to wonder what a “special counsel” would find.
There is no evidence of what you are suggesting. Correlation, to the extent there is any, does not in any event equal causation. You, of all people, should realize that.
I understand your gut reaction carries an “IMHO”, which is the acronymn for ‘in your humble opinion.’
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p>Respectfully, we are both entitled to our opinions; until there is solid investigative reporting in that area (impact of contributions by vendor officers and employers on policy decisions and contracts)what you and I have are our individual experiences, data sets, anecdotes, and partial reporting.
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p>I have used the Office of Campaign and Political Finance a bit, and feel validated as to my inferences. You are correct in that I understand the difference between a reasonable inference, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
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p>So rather than “no evidence” of what I believe I have seen, I would say that there has not been an indepth investigation and report. Different situation entirely. As to the closing of Fernald and the treatment of the Fernald families, and who sees a benefit, I do think the data has been made public sufficient for me to have a valid concern.
AmberPaw has made a statement above that you rejected out-of-hand which I believe is accurate in her assertion that further investigation is required.
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p>Please see the article in the Republican that reveals the “tip” of what she is referring to with abuse of vendors aka “consultants”.
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p>There are procurement laws that these officials seem to be able to avoid when it comes to patronage and nepotism.
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p>Sheriff Michael Ashe employs his brother and a best friend as “consultants” (they are retirees collecting pensions) for no-bid or perhaps tailored-bid positions making over 90K.
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p>Does anyone have evidence that these tax-funded and apparently perpetually renewed lucrative positions have ever been posted for competitive bid?
Petrolati might believe that “correlation does not in any event equal causation.” Others think “where there’s smoke…there’s fire.”
We need to completely investigate this and turn every stone. Everyone involved who broke the law must be held accountable.
The Ware Report and SJC order describe a situation which tracks the right wing’s worst caricatures about government. As an anti-hate crimes advocate, I have been disappointed for years with the Probation Department’s failure to implement a diversity awareness program mandated by the legislature in 1996. While Ware wouldn’t go so far as to say that public safety was actually imperilled, I have no doubt that political preoccupations at the Probation Dept meant some offenders who might have been stopped reoffended.
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p>It is a sorry situation when the present and immediate two prior Speakers of the House are implicated in the patronage for appropriations scheme. I think that perceived ethical trouble in the House of Representatives is a more plausible reason for the Republican pick-ups which occured almost entirely in that body, than some swing to the right in the electorate.
BTW – the timing of the release of this report is an ethcial question in and of itself – right AFTER the election involving some opposed incumbent candidates.
…they could also be accused of meddling in politics.
Who knows how the voters might react.
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p>BTW – the GOP recently held its annual Middlesex Club dinner, and Jim McKenna gave us several Lincoln quotes as part of the Annual Oration. This one seems a propos –
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p>
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p>That’s what Mass. needs – real facts, and beer.
And not beer bought on Thanksgiving Day. God forbid.
These muddle the ability to separate truth from fiction, and exercise discretion. While I know many on this list love their beer … I do not choose to imbibe alcohol at all for my own reasons.
admonishment to the anti-immigration Know Nothing’s who were attempting to limit immigration.
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p>
but for the average voter it was the perception that counted. I think the report reaches devastating conclusions.
I wait, impatiently, to see how eager our local prosecutors are to pursue this strong evidence of rampant corruption. I wonder if the result will resemble the treatment of Ms. Wilkerson and Mr. Turner, or will instead go the way of Mr. Kineavy.
Pretty much the employment and procurement departments government agencies are really the payoff avenue for services rendered to cronies. Massachusetts state officials aren’t alone. Other states, local and the federal governments do the same.
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p>When I see someone indicted or investigated, my first question is: “Who did he not sufficiently satisfy that had the power to get back at him?”
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p>(Does anyone really believe politicians spend millions on a campaign to get jobs that pay thousands?)
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p>“Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today” –Mahatma Gandhi
The targets of this prosecution, if it ever happens, know exactly where the bodies are buried. They know who they talked to in which legislator’s offices. They know how much money changed hands and what channels it went through. Local prosecutors want this to go away for the same reasons that the Vatican wants secular prosecutions against the enablers of clergy sex abuse to go away — once they begin, the entire edifice comes tumbling down.
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p>The integrity of our local elected prosecutors is about to be sorely tested.
Note that the Turner, Wilkerson, Finneran, and other prosecutions were undertaken by the US Atty.
The AG stays away from anything that can burn. The Feds play their own tune. The hacks at the AG’s office would choose sides and moles, spies, traitors would have a field day inside information with more scandal that the probation department. Wooo!
by her own insatiable political ambition and her paralyzing fear launching into high-profile investigations and prosecutions of political corruption in the state would hinder those ambitions. Of course, since those political ambitions were staunched by the voters of Massachusetts back in January, maybe she will now mobilize the frustrated and demoralized state Assistant AGs who work at the Office’s Political Corruption Bureau.
It makes for almost a comic scene. Now we see how politics really work.
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p>Haven’t been this interested since prosecutors in New York found information that was embarrassing to Eliot Spitzer. Eliot was ratting on the financial sector. Since Eliot had no criminal intention and was using his own money, they leaked the story to the press. The press make good lapdogs for the wealthy – cheaper than hookers.
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p>Wonder what the prosecutors’ payoff was…
that this has been going on for years and years. EVERYONE knows Petro is the Probation Department’s Human Resources Director of western Mass and nothing has been done until now. Even the sainted Sheriff Michael Ashe of Ham-dumb county played patronage with Petrolati. The House needs an enema and corrections needs a patronage analysis across the Commonwealth. Now.
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p>Will Auditor-elect Bump really be a watchdog and dig for the rotten bones?
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p>The arrogance of these unethical people keeps taxpayers in the position of paying their salaries, benefits and pension even after their scams have been exposed rather than them having the shame to step-down, one can only hope for swift justice and severe punishment.
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p>To the corrupt politicians….we accept your resignation and the surrender of your pensions. Now.
And an embarrassment for all of us.
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p>The story crowds more political hacks onto Howie’s stage, including two second generation scoundrels. Doug Maclean, the felon and former heroin addicted whom O’Brien insisted be hired, is the son of Biff Maclean, a former state senator who was convicted on ethics charges. And Christopher Bulger, the Probation Department’s Legal Counsel, for whom the report recommends criminal prosecution, is, of course, the son of William Bulger, the former Senate President, Howie’s Corrupt Midget.
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p>The entire scheme was masterminded by Carr Archenemy Tom Finneran in 2001, when he handed John O’Brien control over the Probation Department. Asked by the Globe (Abstract free, $ for full article)
shortly after the law was enacted whether he was improperly rewarding his friend O’Brien with political favors, Finneran dismissed the theory as “fiction,” and added that he “never discussed budget matters with friends.”
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p>Yeah, and he also never discussed legislative redistricting with his House colleagues.
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p>Anybody could see it coming. Retired District Court Judge James Dolan wrote in a Globe op-ed (Abstract free; $ for full article) shortly after the law was enacted,
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p>So here we are.
Hacks have few friends here, and for what it is worth the editors have labeled the “hack-progressive alliance” staked and sprinkled with holy water in this virtual world, at least.
The report of Special Counsel Ware makes clear that successive Chief Justices for Administration were either complicit (e.g. the late Judge John Irwin)in participating in some of the most egregious examples of permitting Commissioner O’Brien malfeasance or ineffective (e.g., Judges Mulligan and Dortch-Okara)in restraining the Commissioner from running the Probation Department as if it was his personal fiefdom.
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p>Governor Patrick’s admirable call today for the Legislature, to pass legislation to transfer management authority from the judiciary to the executive (Governor’s Office) and combine the Probation and Parole Departments should be adopted by the Legislature ASAP. Of course, the Legislature bears its own share of responsibility for this scandal by failing for many years to undertake effective oversight of the Probation Dept and using the Department as its own fetid patronage dumping ground.
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p>The state judiciary, for its part, has proved it is utterly incapable of effective management and oversight of the Probation Department for nearly two decades. The current Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, as well as their predecessors, have failed to exercise their own authority and oversight over the Administration of the Trial Court and should now also support the proposed shift of political authority and management to the Executive.
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p>Finally, I am curious what will Judges Mulligan and Dortch-Okara, Senate Judiciary Chair Creem, and the suspended Commisioner O’Brien will have to say the victims of crimes committed by criminal offenders on probation whose probation officers just happen to be one of O’Brien’s political patronage hires? I am afraid “No Comment” or “Sorry, Mr./Ms. Crime Victim” just won’t cut it this time.
If all you do is transfer branch of government, isn’t it just as possible that the new people have the same issues?
With all due respect ot everyone who is saying “that’s just the way it works at all elvels of government.” You are just wrong. The issues at probation are orders of magnitude different from what is commonly found in state government. An independent Probation Department that answers directly to the legislature is an occasion for sin as the Catholics would say.
… that ought to have been under the executive office to begin with, if for no other reason that tighter integration with other law enforcement functions. The judiciary ought to concern itself with administration of court cases. An argument can be made that probation is a judicial function. I say it’s a judicial decree, but administratively belongs to the executive branch.
…or laws governing who is eligible for hiring? If O’Brien is the hiring authority without any legal check then I don’t see how we can get worked up on hiring whomever he wants. Otherwise, is the real issue the need for Civil Service Reform like happened a century ago at the federal level and institute a civil service exam or the like?
There used to be civil service tests in both the state and federal governments. The cry went up in the ’70s that these test discriminated against minorities. The tests went away. No greater amount of minorities were hired, but a greater amount of hacks were.
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p>Oh, the sins committed for social justice…
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p>“The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.” –James A. Garfield
The tests went away because of prop 2 1/2 cuts in 1980.
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p>The voters said “slash taxes” (ignoring the impact), legislators at all levels welcomed the increased “discretion” that their absence created, and this sort of rampant corruption was one obvious result.
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p>I saw it while sitting on the FinCom for the town of Billerica in the early 80s — no funding for tests meant that the lists of those who passed them were useless. That, in turn, meant that existing employees in civil service positions were paid overtime to cover the gap. That, in turn, raised the payroll that the Town Administrator managed. That, in turn, raised the compensation of the Town Administrator. The town employees, the town managers, and all the elected representatives involved benefited mightily. The taxpayers paid the price.
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p>The taxpayers of Billerica cut off their noses to spite their faces — and kept on blocking overrides to “keep taxes low”, perpetuating the abuses.
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p>Whatever sins were committed here weren’t perpetrated in a search for “social justice” — instead, it was plain old greed enabled by ignorance and pandered to by demagoguery.
Another reason for me to not like Prop. 2 1/2:(
and how it makes legislators corrupt. If only we had a higher rate of taxation, they would be so much better
In the town of Billerica, it meant that the taxpayers paid time-and-half and triple-time to licensed operators to keep the public water supply running — for years.
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p>That’s just what happened, Dad, whether it fits your ideology or not.
The meat of the report can be read in a fairly short period of time and I would encourage everyone to do so. In the report it clearly lays out what the hiring rules are and how they were completely subverted. In particular, candidates who scored lower in interviews literally had their scores raised by as many points as was necessary to assure their hiring.
I salute two of the people who stood up to this corruption, Ellen Slaney, who worked for me, and Ed Dalton, who worked with me, at the Wrentham District Court. We all cheered Ellen’s promotion to the Commissioner’s Office–she was one of the best of the best. She and Ed had integrity, as amply demonstrated by the report. Good people were passed over for jobs by far less qualified people, diversity suffered as available positions were filled by unqualified people, and the court budget suffered as unneeded positions were created to feed the budgetary beast. We need to reset the clock and (with credit to Christy Mihos for the idea) index the number of current positions to the number of positions that existed in 2001. When the story first broke this Summer, I proposed a series of reforms, many of which still merit consideration: http://danwinslow.com/position… This is how business is done in Massachusetts government at too many levels. I hope the Legislature chooses to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. There is work to be done.
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p>2. Open Meetings Laws must be made to apply to the Legislature, and executive agencies, and all meetings involving “the public fisc”, as well as procurement and the awarding of contracts funded by taxpayer money or taxpayer debt (bonds).
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p>3. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) laws must be strengthened, and make to apply to the Legislature, and executive agencies.
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p>Whether it is patronage hiring or patronage awarding of contracts, the reality that neither Open Meetings Laws nor FOIA apply to either the executive agencies or the Legislature allows way too much to be done in secret.
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p>And the Chief Presiding Judge of each court should have “hire or fire” over the personnel at that Court. Period.
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p>”Sunlight is the best disinfectant”
Not sure about the other points as they can be overinterpreted in a way that prevents any and all side conversations and subjects every note jotted down on a whim to public inspection. I think there should be some greater openness, but I’m reluctant to just take the current law as applies to cities and towns and say OK, legislature has to follow those rules too. I’m pretty sure FOIA is a federal law which they cannot force on state governments. States would have to adopt their own similar legislation.
You’re right that FOIA ia a federal law. Massachusetts has a similar law, known as the public records law. Chapter 66, section 10. Under Chapter 4, section 7, clause 26, public record is defined in a way that excludes the legislature.
Amber – I’m familiar with executive branch agencies acting as though the law doesn’t apply to them, but it does. Chapter 4, section 7, clause 26 (records “made or received by any officer or employee of any agency, executive office, department, board, commission…etc”). Enforcement is a little tough in my experience – what’s yours?
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p>
Heads should roll, no, scores of heads should roll but I feel it will get squashed. Sure, O’Brien will get fired but this level of corruption is amazing and shame once again on Martha Coakley for sleeping at the switch.
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p>They should get the Feds involved and question everyone under oath and charge any liars with perjury. This has got to stop.
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p>How many times have I written diaries here on BMG saying how “we the people” have lost faith in our leaders because they continue to lie and steal and take care of themselves. I talk about how people don’t want to pay more taxes for program “X” because we feel the money we do pay in taxes get wasted on corruption exemplified in this report. When will it stop?
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p>And I have not brought up the Charlie Rangel verdict, but I will now. When I ranted here about Charlie Rangel, his defenders kept “quieting” me by saying, “he deserves a trial”, “He’s innocent until proven guilty”… well now he has been found guilty on 11 violations. Surely the American public will now see a trusted pol guilty of 11 serious ethical violations expelled from Congress, nope, just a slap on the wrist. How many years has he been breaking their rules and maybe some laws and he doesn’t even get fired.
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p>We need to restore our faith in our political leaders and the only way that can happen is for guilty parties (like Rangel and O’Brien…) have to be fired and in-prisoned. Please stop the cronyism too!
“Everybody was doing it” so few will be held accountable even though they all were responsible. Like the corner-cutting in the Big Dig resulting in leaks and falling ceiling panels. One or two people take the fall and the rest scurry free. But let’s see what happens.
…in a year that was problematic for Democrats by constituents who I’m sure were aware of his issues. I’m not sure his offenses rise to the level of expulsion, which requires 2/3, but it sounds like he will be censured and reprimanded at the well of the House.
Good government costs money, and that requires taxes.
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p>It is disingenuous at best to slash taxes below the level of sustainability and then complain because the resulting government is inept, incompetent, and corrupt. If, in private enterprise, you attempt to minimize costs by refusing to pay for competent staff, you will get incompetent staff.
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p>Why would anyone expect government to be any different?
but maybe the differences between Republicans and Democrats are overblown and we share more feelings that we think. Again, this does not apply to all Republicans but many of us will happily pay our taxes, and yes MORE taxes if we felt like it was being used wisely. One of the differences between D’s & R’s might be you guys “abhor the egregious misuse of our taxes”, but want to keep paying them because some might suffer if we cut the, while R’s “abhor the egregious misuse of our taxes” and protest paying any more until something is done about it. I have said it before that we do need to pay more taxes, to build more infrastructure, to prime the economic pump (call it Stimulus…), pay down the deficit… but busting our asses and paying more for these things before you fix the abuses is like bailing out a rowboat with a giant hole in it. Use all your efforts to plug the hole, before you bother trying to bail out the water.
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p>Good government costs money and with all the money we spend on government, it should be good now!
You wrote:
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p>The problem is that our leaky old wooden rowboat doesn’t have a “giant hole in it” — we have some leakage around the keel, its true. The trouble is there is a massive storm around us, the water you see threatening to swamp us is from waves crashing over the gunwales, and we’re still rowing out towards open water into the heart of the storm. We need our captain and crew looking at what’s going on around us and paying attention.
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p>We need to empty the boat. We need to change our course. The leaks, while real, are not the cause of our problems.
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p>Oh, and by the way, we should have replaced the damned boat thirty years ago, when the leaks first started. Instead, we went out and spent the money drinking and carousing. It’s amazing the thing still floats at all.
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p>
…just for your ability to carry on the same metaphorical imagery for so long (plus you make a good point).
I liked your metaphor, not only because it was exciting but you took it to the next level. I agree that instead of a giant hole, it is a leak. And perhaps the responses from people like me are overreactions because we hate the damn leaks so much.
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p>Bottom line is without these leaders screwing us (like the Probation dept and so many other examples…), it would force people like me to concentrate on the larger issues.
Tom
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p>Here we have a report showing how people were hired for positions based on factors other than their qualifications for the job. Appearantly they were hired over other people who, based on the report, may have been more qualified and more competent than those hired. So we don’t seem to have a case here where more money was needed to hire competent people. Rather we have a case where competent people were passed over for less competent, better connected people.
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p>It also appears that the Probation Department was not hurting for budget funding. The Department seems to have done better than most, reportedly in exchange for hiring people as favors to those who helped set the budgets.
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p>To me, this is the sort of report that causes people not to want to pay more for government services because the see money provided to a department in support of allegedly corrupt hiring and staffing practices. This reinforces the view some have of government as being full of waste and connected hires who get their jobs view patronage and not qualifications.
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p>So while there are many areas where great people do great work for the people of MA, this story makes it harder to get additional funding. That, to me, is the biggest crime of the whole story as it is the hard working people in other departments who have already been hurt by the budgetary games played over the years with Probation will be viewed, by some, in the same light as the Probation workers who played the system to their own personal advantage.
I agree that this devastating reports points the way towards a raft of prosecutions needed to address the rampant corruption that permeates both City Hall and Beacon Hill. I do not agree that this has anything to do with Charlie Rangel (or Ted Stevens, or any other accused criminal of either party).
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p>The observation I’m making is that as we slash our taxes lower and lower, we make episodes like this more rather than less likely. If a homeowner hires a cut-rate contractor who walks away with a thousand dollars in their pocket leaving the job undone, the answer is not to find a an even “cheaper” contractor who will do the work for seven hundred. Some jobs require two thousand dollars of work — period.
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p>We need to prosecute people like this in order to raise taxes, as opposed to prosecuting in order to further slash taxes.
We have tons of people in government making 6 figures now, the average salary is higher than ever before and many departments have more people than ever before. Your “cheap” contractor analogy doesn’t fit.
The appropriate comparison is not between what a government worker makes now compared to last year or last administration or last decade, it is instead between what a government worker makes now compared to their other options.
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p>Suppose I’m an aggressive young business woman on a track to get an MBA with top honors from a top B-school (I’m carefully avoiding the mention of any such schools in Cambridge, MA). I’m looking around at my career options. Is the Commonwealth of MA at the top of my list?
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p>I don’t think so.
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p>Suppose I’m a smart young engineer on a track to graduate with a BS in some field from a top engineering school (again, I’m carefully avoiding the mention of any such schools in Cambridge, MA). I’m looking around at my career options. Is the Commonwealth of MA at the top of my list?
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p>I don’t think so.
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p>Suppose I’m an experienced traffic manager for a major railroad, with deep background in planning and operations. Suppose I’ve been with the BNSF Railway for fifteen years, and I’m leaving Fort Worth, Texas because my wife has taken a plum appointment at top Ivy League school in Cambridge. If I look at a position in transportation planning for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, am I looking at a pay increase? Decrease? Lateral transfer? Is the Commonwealth of MA at the top of my list?
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p>I don’t think so.
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p>I think you get my drift.
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p>We are an attractive region with an expensive cost of living (because LOTS of people want to live here) and enormous challenges. Most of us want Massachusetts to stay that way.
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p>I think we, as an electorate, need to seriously re-think what we can and cannot “afford” in taxes.
and I think you’re wrong. Sure the “top” people in those (and other) areas will demand high salaries in normal times, but not now. And government cannot compete for that talent anyway, because it would “break the bank”. Government has to do everything in a systematic nature. So if government wants to hire that “aggressive young business woman on a track to get an MBA with top honors from a top B-school “, they would have to pay her the same rate as they’d pay the 1,000th schlep down on that list since they would be getting the same job. So your intention might be to lure that top performer into government by offering top pay, but you would have to pay all the other people who are NOT top performers and that total would be staggering.
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p>As for the “average” government worker, I think they make as much or more than the private industry equivalent, with much better benefits.
You wrote:
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p>In other words, government can’t afford to hire the top performers, because its ranks are filled with mid- or low-tier workers.
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p>If a private business realized the same thing about its workforce, would it (a) change its pay scales AND its workers or (b) continue to hire mid- and low-tier applicants? If it did the latter, I think that private business would be eaten for lunch in a competitive marketplace.
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p>No business can, over the long haul, get top performance without attracting top talent. Businesses that try end up on the bottom of the food-chain.
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p>I don’t think that’s where we want Massachusetts to land.
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p>Similarly, you wrote:
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p>I think you haven’t sought a position in the public sector.
Harvard Law graduates command handsome salaries when they graduate. Many businesses can’t afford them so they “settle” for lower tiered schools. But let’s say the average Harvard grad gets $160K/year and the lower tiered schools pays $60-75K.
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p>The Department of Justice needs to hire 250 new lawyers every year. You are proposing that in order to get the “top performer” the government should pay the competitive salary of $160K. But they can’t offer person “A” $160K without offering the 250th person they hire from the lower tiered school $160K as well. Multiply this scenario times every government job and you just spent the GDP.
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p>The government cannot afford to hire the top performers since we have a pay scale which does not allow the flexibility to do so.
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p>BTW, many many businesses cannot afford to hire the $160K Harvard lawyer either and will happily hire the lower school graduates.
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p>No I have never sought a position in the government but I know many who do and have. They are doing well. Did you need me to post some salaries from the Herald? I posted salaries on BMG of Probation Department managers making over $100K before the story even broke. Did you read about the guy who used to be a plasterer before he became a Probation department worker making $88K? Average teacher pay in Boston (for 9 months of work) is $74K. Did you notice how many Sate and Boston police officers make over $100K?
that there’s no way government can compete with the private sector for talent, why was Charlie Baker’s campaign theme that the state should be run like a business?
Even given your examples, why don’t private entities have the same dilemma in terms of having to pay even the less talented people the amount that was offered to attract top talent? The government could post the vacancy as “salary commensurate with experience”.
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p>Also, you say top government people could demand high salaries in normal times, but not now, yet you often seem to defend high pay of corporate top people even in these times.
If company “X” wants to hire 5 people, they will pay those 5 people whatever it takes (and no more). So they will pay first year lawyers (or engineers) the $100K for the MIT grad and $45K for the UMASS grad. The Government doesn’t have that option.
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p>When I said …
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p>
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p>I meant that even the top performers coming out of school are taking lesser paying jobs (anywhere) just because of supply/demand of the current market. I wasn’t talking about government people. To me the risk of these very high paying jobs in government is the abuse and protection afforded to these workers who become untouchable because of unions. In private companies you see high performers paid high money, and if these workers lose their “luster” and become less valuable, they are often the first to go in downsizing since their high pay check will only last for as long as their high value. In government, this high salary would persist until retirement, regardless of how they actually perform.
anyone in the Bush administration ever got- so we’re seeing some progress, no?
Yes, two wrongs make a right!
Apparently, unless there is a provable connection between a campaign contribution and a job, this graft is not illegal. It should be. Here’s a list of the main abusers of this system;
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p>Everyone of these disgraceful politicians, and any other abusers of the system, should be at minimum censured and called upon to resign their position. We can’t just send the probation department to the executive branch and just pretend that these guys aren’t corrupt.
…to somehow figure out how to prohibit legislators from ever talking to hiring authorities, even the person a legislator has in mind might genuinely be qualified? Not sure how to enforce this.
for the purpose of influencing hiring decisions. They can write reference letters like everyone else, and they should be able speak to hiring authorities if they are contacted by the authority for a verbal reference. However, allowing this kind of conduct by a legislature results in corruption and waste. Is this a third world country or something? Corruption feeds the cynics and government haters. If government can and should play a positive role in the lives of its citizens, then it must be as clean as we can possibly make it.
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p>You enforce this in the same way that all ethics violations are enforced. If an applicant for a job or a hiring authority believes that a violation has occurred then they contact the state ethics board.
The SJC went as far as it could within the separation of powers to order that prosecutions take place. Criminal statutes have been violated given Ware’s findings, e.g. fundraising at the state cafeteria. It would be extraordinary and very disappointing indeed if Martha Coakely failed to follow through with appropriate prosecutions. The interesting question is whether we see meaningful legislative follow-up; of that I’m skeptical.
With Petrolati lined up to play a crucial role in leading redistricting while playing a leading role in this masterpiece by Ware, will there be any efforts undertaken by DeLeo to reassign the redistricting lead to someone other than Petrolati?
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p>I would argue that it would behoove DeLeo to remove the potential distraction that Petrolati could become from the redistricting process, but will DeLeo see it this way and shift course relatively late in the process (but still early enough to make the change). Only time will tell.
of this system. He should be stripped of the speakership. Scapegoating Petrolati isn’t good enough.