The contributions ranged from as little as $55 from one employee of one firm I looked at, to $18,900 from five employees of another.
There are two points I’d like to make here about these figures:
1. The $166,690 is the total I came up with after searching the Campaign Finance database by “employer.” It is definitely an undercount because it is a total of contributed amounts listed only from employees who identified themselves as employees of specific vendor firms. In filing contribution reports with the Campaign Finance Office, candidate committees only list the employers of the contributors if those employer names have been disclosed to the committees. Often, contributors don’t disclose their employers in making contributions, and there is no legal requirement that they do so, according to an attorney I talked to at the Campaign Finance Office.
That’s why I got a lower total amount contributed since 2001 by all employees of one particular human services vendor than I got when I looked up all contributions from the president of that firm since 2005 alone.
2. While $160,000 may or may not be considered a large figure in the scheme of things, it still appears to be evidence of a “pay-for-play” mentality on Beacon Hill.
You’ll recall that the Independent Counsel’s report in the Probation Department scandal found that a high percentage of people sponsored by key legislators for jobs in the Department had made campaign contributions to them. Moreover, those who contributed were more likely to be hired or promoted in the Department.
The Independent Counsel’s report stated that it wasn’t possible to prove a direct cause and effect between campaign contributions and jobs. Similarly, I’m not able to prove here that campaign contributions from vendors help them get contracts or help them further their agendas on Beacon Hill.
But at the same time, it seems unlikely to me that that five employees of one particular vendor would have contributed $18,900 to politicians in the past 10 years, or that eight employees of another would have contributed at least $11,800, solely out of a sense of political altruism.
The vendor industry in Massachusetts has had close ties to key legislators and members of the administration for decades. In those years the vendors have succeeded in vastly increasing the value of their contracts with the state, and their anti-institutional agenda is largely carrying the day on Beacon Hill.
Family-supported advocacy organizations and individuals, who support developmental centers for the intellectually disabled and who haven’t chosen or been able to pool their political contributions, have been forced to the political sidelines.
Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s money that talks the loudest in our system of government; and whether it’s the defense industry or the insurance industry or the human services provider industry, contributing to political campaigns is the quickest and most effective way to get their voices heard.
It is services for wards of the state, like guardian ad litems for the education of wards of the state, services for inmates who have seen mental health professionals treating those in prison slashed by 50% even though we have more mentally ill folks in prison then in hospitals and their suicides are at an all time high, and have dismantled the community mental health system, to our shame.
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p>Not only is it true these fellow Americans cannot help themselves, but the long term costs and human pain from cutting basic core services like these is incalculable and shameful.
When you say “apply to all executive agencies,” which agencies does it now not apply to? I know about the Office of the Child Advocate – are any other agencies exempt by statute? Is your experience that agencies behave as though they’re exempt from the public records law entirely because they typically invoke one of the other exemptions (deliberative process, for example)? These issues come up pretty often in my practice — transparency don’t come easy. Thanks.
And, yes, I am serious. Zero transparency to the legislature and almost all of the Beacon Hill power structure. No open meetings laws. Almost impossible to get documents. I remember when I was attending the meetings of a Commission concerning an issue I cared about; their idea of “posting their meetings” was a single typed sheet on the 4th floor of the State House taped to the wall by the men’s bathroom. I found a sympathetic staffer to keep a lookout or I would not have had ANYH notice of these meetings.
Tried to do that a couple of times. So time consuming I had to give it up. Hats off to you Dave from Hvad for having the tenacity to stay with.
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p>It is to bad so much influence can be bought for what amounts to pocket change in the overall scheme of things.
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p>
There are links in the post to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance website and the DDS provider list. To get the results, I had to enter each provider name from the DDS website into the OCPF database under “employer” and total up the amounts that came up. I’ll be happy to provide my spreadsheet with the totals to you or anyone else who’s interested.
I want to speak to the broader issue of the power of advocacy by providers, who may or may not contribute to or work on the campaigns of those public officials who fight for increased resources for their programs.
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p>The State House News Service’s Kyle Cheney got a good headline in the Globe Advocates for elderly, disabled rip $15m cut
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p>
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p>This is what they do……..
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p>And this is what one of them said.
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p>
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p>Now I do not know whether Gary made any personal cash or time contributions to any of the elected official who fight the good fight for the disabled, but I can tell you I hope he did. He and his colleaguesdo a wonderful job advocating for the developmentally disabled.
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p>
He’s one of the vendor advocate guys who is advocating for the closure of the “public option” of residential care in state facilities. He’s got a vested interest, Judy. And he makes a good coin doing it.
Face-to-face. And said that losing the “public option” and cost saving of congregate care was foolish, because once such facilities are allowed to deteriorate and the expert knowledge of staff is lost, it is difficult to impossible to recreate.
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p>Further, folks who were once cared for in “state beds” with real psychological treatment are now, mostly, “cared for” by being imprisioned. The cognitively limited mentally ill are more likely to live out their lives in prison these days with the loss of secure beds when stabilization is needed, and it can take weeks or months to get a secure bed, and so sometimes folks die – either in prison for lack of mental health care or by making the choice to seek “death by cop” or otherwise get out of their pain when they cannot securely get help.
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p>One size does not fit all – and Dave from Harvard’s points do not go away by calling he or I tiresome.
What is Gary’s salary? How much of his time is spent in “advocacy”? What percentage of his agency’s budget is spent on direct care, and what percentage on “advocacy”? How much of the agency’s budget comes from the general fund/tax money, and how much from the United Way? What is the differential between the hourly rates of care providers, and CEOs for that agency? All these things also matter to me.
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p>Also, how much issue advocacy does Gary do where that issue advocacy does not effect his agency’s or the vendor for whom (or for which) he works bottom line?
Amber, we’ve know each other for a loooong time, but your repeated assertions that volunteer advocacy is somehow morally superior to advocacy performed by a person paid by a group of affected persons and their paid caretakers is gettin tiresome.
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p>Forgive me because I really admire your work, paid and volunteer, for system involved children and their families and all the other just causes that cross your path.
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p>If we could somehow get you paid enough to support your family as a professional advocate for these children. the Governor would be well advised to fully fund all the attorneys and all the necessary support services for these families at once. And then point you toward ensuring that the relevant state agencies to advocate that all their implementation plans are fully transparent.
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p>
…watching the revolving door, senators who resign in the middle of their terms, or “retire”, and then make hundreds of thousands of dollars as lobbyists, etc. etc. etc. does help make me feel tired, and I suppose, sound tiresome. Executive staffers who resign, and then become lobbyists for the interests they once oversaw…it happens so very often…and no, I do not see that is the same, morally, as citizens fighting to keep their library, for example.
A life of public service is a moral choice, and people who choose it are sacrificing income that they could get elsewhere. Not all of them, by any means, but certainly a practicing lawyer at a large firm who chooses to run for State Senate, for example, is slowing down their path on the partner track and passing up thousands of dollars as a result.
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p>That same person, years later, may find their political career stalled because they lost a close election and their legal career damaged (by loss of time at work, not by scandal in this example), and guess what, now they have kids bound for college. Hello, lobbying firm. The moral choice is now different: Will this person’s kids have the same opportunities that this person’s parents gave them?
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p>Life sux. And it’s expensive.
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p>
We have a curious government, Judy. We have a government that is cutting bone and leaving fat in place. Really. We have vendor operators making a killing while they’re paying their staff a pittance. We have a state closing down state facilities for people with developmental disabilities, the “public option” while they’re taking decent paying jobs from union workers.
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p>You know what it is for me? I don’t care if an advocate gets paid to do it….as long as he isn’t crying poor mouth, while the truly needy go begging for morsels of aid, including their staff. How much of the vendor’s employees healthcare do you this this state provides? I hear it’s substantial. Expense off the books of the vendors…and right on the backs of the needy.
is from Amber’s wonderful post on the Tax Expenditure budget…lest we forget.
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/d…
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p>And don’t get me started on $58 million that went to Evergreen Solar.
The “premise” of closing the congregate care facilities, some offering state of the art treatments of special facilities like the Green Pool, or Tufts Dental, was quality and equality of community care – not much commitment to THAT, it appears.
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p>Some of us will advocate and weigh in on these services and issues even though we cannot afford pay to play and don’t get paid for our time doing so, at all.
If you do a quick search on the Attorney General’s website you can find out a few facts. Blumenthal is the executive director of Association of Developmental Disability Providers. So he is paid by this association of providers to lobby for these providers, not necessarily the people they serve. Some of the salaries of CEOs of these providers are in the $500K range annually. You’ll have to dig a little deeper into the provider members to get that info. ADDP provides no direct care to anyone. The last filings (2009)indicate Blumenthal’s salary is $164K+. ADDP’s landlord is ARC Mass who also is his paymaster. His salary is bank rolled by ARC Mass and Justice Resource Institute and is reimbursed by ADDP. JRI last filings indicate total receipts (2009) of $91,755,443 of which $86,611,518 was from government/taxpayer sources. I haven’t mentioned various state back bond issues and other special financing arrangements via government sources. The ADDPs 2009 revenue (from members, grants and contributions) was $580+k. Their IRS filings indicated $360+K (more than 1/2 their revenue) was for lobbying expenses. You can draw you own conclusions from the numbers but suffice to say there are huge amounts of government money involved and this is just ONE example there are many many more.
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p>I find the rhetoric that the intentions of these multi-million dollar non-profits as altruistic tiresome.
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p>Regarding ARC Mass, I question any advocates intentions that partners themselves with the state against the people they are supposed to be advocating for which ARC Mass routinly does–been there and seen it with my own eyes. I also question their intentions when they file a brief in federal court in support of substantial cut in DDS budget.
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p>Put this in the for what it worth category. Just the way I see it.
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p>
plans to close the Tufts Dental Center at Fernald, the Arc of Mass. accused the League of “trying to make political hay.” That’s because the Arc and its affiliate, the ADDP, advocate only on behalf of community-based programs, which are the source of the vendors’ funding. And even though the Tufts Dental program primarily serves community-based residents, it has the apparent audacity of being located on the campus of a state developmental center. Therefore, the Fernald League’s sucessful effort to gain another year of life for the Tufts Center was criticized by the Arc.
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p>Family-supported organizations such as COFAR and its affiliate, The Fernald League, have, on the contrary, advocated on behalf of both the developmental centers and the community system. We believe both of those approaches to care of the intellectually disabled are critically important. As Justice 4All says, the developmental centers are none other than the “public option.”
that these agencies also refer to themselves as private, no matter what percentage of their funding is taxpayer derived. It’s pretty clever, really. The political money-go-round. Don’t attend to the needs of the elderly, veterans, or the disabled; dictate your one-size-fits-all “plan” allowing no choice for the client; advocate for a 500k salary for yourself; and have the generous but unsuspecting taxpayers of MA pay for it!
I came into state government when Governor Frank Sargent’s Administration was carrying out very controversial policies of reform and de-institutionalization of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Department of Youth Services, and the Department of Corrections.
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p>I remember the media exposes of “snake pit” like conditions at Belchertown, and Fernald and DYS facilities prompted law suits that resulted in abrupt judicial decision making. One quote below.
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p>
Massachusetts government responded by not only investing in reforming Belchertown but similar institutions in DYS and DMH. but setting up a whole network of community based programs including foster care of “unmanagemable” young people referred by their parents to DYS. (Someday this foster mother will tell that amazing and now amusing tale.)
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p>Of course despite all the efforts and all the money and all the Governors and all the Commissioners, the Commonwealth has never had, or decided to spend the resources to adequately fund those programs and figure out a way to ensure that the private not profit and for profit provider agencies pay their line staff a sustainable wage,
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p>Fifteen years of organized efforts by provider associations and organized labor to reach wage “parity” with state workers has succeeded in tiny increases for direct care workers.
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p>In short there is a lot to do to achieve a happy and appropriate balance between the need for maintaining state run institutions and state run or contracted community based programs.
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p>Meanwhile I do believe that managers and workers deserve a living wage and Executive Directors of multi= million dollar provider agencies deserve 6 figure salaries. It’s a very tough professional job managing dozens of programs, begging the state for adequate funding and never getting it and preparing for your visit from the State Auditor at the same time.
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p>enough
Some tiresome truths need incorporation in the narrative here – such as that one size does not fit all, and that a divide and conquer mentality has been used to pit the public option for congregate care, which is sometimes a life saver against the private options (also called community care) which are also life savers and that ALL of these are funded by the taxpayer and BOTH are needed.
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p>Further, the reality of the Beacon Hill Club, that does not listen, almost ever, to those NOT in the club is something that those of us who are not professional lobbyists do find tiresome, infuriating, and unfair.
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p>But some of us have been around enough to admit life, itself, is often tiresome, infurating, exhausting, AND unfair since there never has been a guarentee of fairness in this life.
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p>So for people like me, often the only respite is The Serenity Prayer and the reality that the Serenity Prayer does not wear out and to keep on fighting I often have to accept losing almost all the time.
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p>And that is why direct care workers don’t get living wages; it is a lot easier to organize workers in congregate facilities and some of us see the drive to privatize as union busting in rainbow robes.
Not exactly sure why it was necessary to drag up the “snake pits” of what is becoming the distant past. It is the past and should remain part of the past. It has nothing to do with the situation today but it always seems to rear its ugly head whenever anyone suggests that a person is better served in a living arrangement like Fernald with all it has to offer rather than a community based living arrangement.
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p>Enough!!
said William Faulkner referring to the South’s struggle freeing itself from it’s history.
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p>And state and local governments rebuilding a humane systm to care for the severely disabled must do everything to ensure their charges safety because of what we all learned from the past. And we must not forget it.
…that the past isn’t “dead” because every time I post links to the Patriot Ledger series, “Retarded at Risk” -which exposes the underbelly of the privatized human services system….I am told that it’s “old news.” This is the system that Governor Patrick wants to put our very disabled, medically fragile loved ones into….so if Fernald and others are considered a “snakepit” then this system should be called a “viper’s den,” no?
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p>http://www.southofboston.net/s…
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p>http://www.southofboston.net/s…
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p>And on that theme..
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p>http://findarticles.com/p/news…
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p>This is a broken system seriously lacking in independent oversight….where vendors are policing themselves…and DDS investigates itself….the state just keeps footing the bill….while profoundly impaired people are being evicted from the “public option” – where they have received residential care and the full spectrum of therapies.
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p>Sorry, Judy…. it’s not enough to say “never forget.” Every time they close a public option facility, the state is forgetting its obligation to these fragile people.
The original post was concerning the political influence of the service providers and had nothing to do with the conditions that existed at institutions 50 years ago. Like I said, it always seems to rear its ugly head whether it is relevant or not.
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p>The Developmental Centers of today are light years from the the institutions of 50 years ago. Your comments do NOTHING but continue the negative images of facilities like Fernald. It seems that is your method since you dragged up another of our darkest moments in history, the struggles of the south when again the post was about lobbying.
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p>But if you must dwell on past horrors, back then people were just dumped in institutions. Didn’t matter what the problems were. There were no other options. So after all the work and money to create options, options designed toward the individual needs of the people, it would seem we are right back where we started, one option-community regardless if it is best option for the individual.
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p>So again what is it that we have learned from history?
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p>
said William Faulkner referring to the South’s struggle freeing itself from it’s history.
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p>And state and local governments rebuilding a humane systm to care for the severely disabled must do everything to ensure their charges safety because of what we all learned from the past. And we must not forget it.
Workers deserve a living wage for what is a difficult job-not that they are getting that. And true enough that it is a difficult job of the executive directors. It takes a lot of savvy to set up an organization and beg for special financing (no interest no payback) arrangements to construct homes (free houses), get guaranteed occupants for those homes from the government and the section 8 subsidies that go with the occupants (a steady guaranteed income stream), broker deals for the issue of state backed, tax exempt bond (real attractive to investors) to finance multiple construction projects, and set up a network of affiliates and subsidiaries to collect rents, charge management fees, rent buildings to itself, and provide all the supports (clinical, therapeutic, occupatinal, etc.)required by the guaranteed disabled occupants. In other words, figure out how to extract money from the public trough from every avenue possible, and cry poor mouth while you do it and at the same time paying for political influence to eliminate any option but the one you created.
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p>
$160,000 over nine years is about $18,000 in contributions per year. Spread over 79 firms is an average of $230 per vendor per year. This is “pay to play?” Really?
but taking an average is somewhat meaningless because some vendors contribute very little and others contribute quite a lot. I was asked to post our spreadsheet. I’ll try to do it here. (In a few cases, additional contributions appeared for the same vendor using different spellings of the company name.)
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p>Vendor name Amount No. employees giving
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p>Central West Region
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p>Alternatives Unlimited 150.00 1
Association for Community Living 130.00 1
Behavioral Health Network 1,785.00 2
The Bridge of Central Mass. 700.00 1
Center for Human Development 825.00 4
Community Health Link 4,000.00 3
Community Options 55.00 1
Dr. Franklin Perkins School 200.00 1
Evergreen Center 8,915.00 2
Human Resources Unlimted 100.00 1
Mental Health Association 2,970.00 3
New England Center for Children 3,150.00 5
Rehabilitative Resources 650.00 3
Servicenet, Inc. 780.00 3
Seven Hills Foundation 3,000.00 6
Sunshine Village 100.00 1
Henry Lee Willis Center 300.00 2
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p>Total Central West 27,810.00 40
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p>Northeast Region
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p>American Training 650.00 4
Bridgewell, Inc. 4,375.00 5
CLASS, Inc. 350.00 1
Crotched Mountain Foundation 1,000.00 1
Fidelity House 100.00 1
LifeLinks, Inc. 400.00 1
MHA of Greater Lowell 400.00 1
Merrimack Educational Center 250.00 1
Minuteman Arc 100.00 1
Morgan Memorial Goodwill Ind. 1,700.00 2
Northeast Family Institute 650.00 2
North Shore Arc 2,825.00 2
Project Cope 1,225.00 1
Shore Collaborative 4,525.00 2
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p>Total Northeast 18,550.00 25
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p>Southeast Region
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p>Anodyne Corp. 250.00 1
Cardinal Cushing Centers 800.00 2
Comprehensive MH Systems 300.00 1
Community Connections 150.00 1
Grow Associates 14,900.00 4
GROW Associates 4,000.00 1
IDDI 2,825.00 2
Judge Rotenberg Center 2,150.00 2
Judge Rotenberg Educational Center 2,850.00 2
Judge Rotenburg Educ Ctr 1,000.00 2
Judge Rotenberg Education Center 375.00 1
Kennedy Donovan Center 350.00 2
Latham Centers 450.00 1
May Institute 2,200.00 6
People, Inc. 700.00 2
Road to Responsibility 440.00 2
Work, Inc. 3,520.00 2
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p>Total Southeast 37,260.00 34.00
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p>Metro Boston Region
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p>Advocates, Inc. 10,220.00 12
Advocates 750.00 1
ADVOCATES INC 7,245.00 7
Bay Cove Human Services 4,825.00 9
BAY COVE HUMAN SERVICES, INC 250.00 1
Beaverbrook Step, Inc. 300.00 1
Best Buddies 2,500.00 1
Charles River Arc 450.00 3
Community Work Services 350.00 1
Cotting School 3,205.00 4
DARE FAMILY SERVICES 1,725.00 2
Dare Family Services, Inc. 500.00 1
Delta Projects 4,880.00 3
DELTA PROJECTS, INC 625.00 1
Dimmock Community Health Center 1,525.00 4
Dimock Center 3,350.00 1
DIMOCK HEALTH CENTER 250.00 1
DIMMOCK COMMUNITY HEALTH CTR 500.00 1
The Edinburg Center 1,925.00 3
Jewish Family & Childrens Svcs 150.00 1
Jewish Family Services 400.00 3
Jewish Vocational Service 1,850.00 5
Justice Resource Institute 11,800.00 8
Lena Park CDC 1,475.00 1
Life Focus Center 1,600.00 2
North Suffolk MH Association 1,875.00 3
Perkins School for the Blind 8,505.00 7
Riverside Community 3,850.00 8
Victory Human Services 300.00 1
Vinfen 5,640.00 9
Waltham Committee 250.00 2
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p>Total Metro Boston 83,070.00 107
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p>Grand totals 166,690.00 206
is $230 per year per vendor. But again, I don’t think averages are meaningful here.
I fear that the analytic approach you’ve taken here, while appealing, leads to a misleading answer. Sadly, I’m not sure the cited data sources allow a more accurate approach.
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p>What you’ve done here is analogous to examining the financial expenditures of lottery winners and discovering that they have, in fact, spent large amounts on playing the lottery. It’s true, but not particularly revealing. An analysis that leads to more insight is to start with the set of all people who have played the lottery, and examine the returns of those players. I think you’ll find that money spent on the lottery is among the worst “investments” a person can make.
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p>In this case, you have looked at the expenditures of vendors who you already know are state vendors. As you observe, “it seems unlikely to me that that five employees of one particular vendor would have contributed $18,900 to politicians in the past 10 years, or that eight employees of another would have contributed at least $11,800, solely out of a sense of political altruism.”
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p>An approach that leads more insight is to look at all parties who made political contributions, and examine what portion of those contributors received jobs or advantageous legislation. I suggest that this analysis should compare those parties who did contribute with those who did not, and then compare the results.
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p>I’m neither supporting nor disputing your contention that “money talks” — I’m instead suggesting that the analysis you’ve presented does not support that assertion.
Considering the number of posts here, it is obvious that Dave has struck a nerve on the issue of political contributions. I see valid points being made by individuals on all sides. Political contributions carry weight, and they are legal. But the comment made by Truth About DMR is the one that seems to be lost in most discussions about any perceived savings of taxpayer dollars in closing down the state instititions:
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p>“It’s interesting … that these agencies also refer to themselves as private, no matter what percentage of their funding is taxpayer derived.”
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p>Whether a dollar is spent directly from state coffers for care at one of the remaining state institutions, at one of the state-operated community homes, or at a privately contracted community home, it is still a tax dollar. It’s simply a shell-game fallacy to state that privatization in and of itself saves tax money when tax dollars fund the privatization.
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p>One more point. Examples of excellent care, of neglect, and abuse can be found in each environment. As a member of COFAR and Advocacy Network, I support community-based (state-operated or privately contracted) and institutional settings. Not because one choice or the other costs X tax dollars, but because family members need the choice to secure proper care for their loved ones.
Glad someone was able to extract that point here because it is the most important. Its unfortunate that it always seems to get lost.
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p>Like you I support all care “options”, community (state-op and vendor) as well as facility based. The focus has to be on what is the best situation for the person.
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p>It is too bad that it has been reduced to a one vs the other battle–it is a great disservice to all the people (of the past) that fought to ensure the creation of choices.
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p>A tax dollar is a tax dollar, and there are huge amounts of tax dollars directed toward the care and treatment of the disabled. Perhaps the right question is why isn’t it enough?