Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Perry getting no love from the base

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Failed congressional candidate Jeff Perry’s appointment – no doubt following a nationwide search – to the long-vacant post of “Special Sheriff” of Barnstable County has gotten miserable reviews from across the political spectrum.  Howie Carr, who during Perry’s campaign for Congress gave him every opportunity to plead his case on the radio, laid into him yesterday (see the bits starting at about 9:00 and 19:00 – and, at 20:40, “let’s face it: it’s a hack job”).  Even RMG, who for the most part vigorously backed Perry even as new revelations made Perry look less and less credible, seems largely unable to stomach these latest developments.

And don’t buy the spin that Perry’s job just replaces David Vieira, who was a deputy sheriff before leaving to join the state legislature.  Vieira was apparently being paid a little over $57,000.  Perry will be pulling in $110,000, nearly twice as much.  And it’s not like Barnstable County couldn’t be putting that money, as well as whatever Sheriff Cummings spent to get someone to tell him what he wanted to hear hire an investigator to look into Perry’s past, to good use:

County Sheriff James Cummings said the county’s so broke he hasn’t been able to hire a correction officer in three years. He’s racking up 5,000 hours a month in overtime. Plus he’s had to cut crucial programs, such as one that keeps tabs on convicted sex offenders.

Oh, and don’t forget that, as Howie pointed out on the radio, if Perry serves in this job for a few years, he will get a major bump in his pension.  Good thing he took the job before Governor Patrick’s pension reform bill becomes law.

As a blogger at Cape Cod Today drolly put it: “Ahackalypse Now!”

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Comments

  1. Incredible

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    p>

    County Sheriff James Cummings said the county’s so broke he hasn’t been able to hire a correction officer in three years. He’s racking up 5,000 hours a month in overtime. Plus he’s had to cut crucial programs, such as one that keeps tabs on convicted sex offenders.

    <

    p>Oh, boy.  Game. Set. Match.

    • surely 2000 hours of OT (one full time position, roughly) is cheaper to fill than paying out the OT.  Why not create (or staff) the position and cut the OT by 2000 hours (ish)?

      • With 2000 hours of overtime divided between the staff, they’ll all be able to afford their $500 annual thank you for their job contribution to the sheriff.

        • But just to clarify those allegations are against Sheriff DiPaola and not Sheriff Cummings.

          • But just to clarify Frank Cousins the Republican sheriff has $47,245.0 in itemized contributions from people with the word “Sheriff” in their employer name. Does that seem a little high to you?

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            p>Have you seen the Cummings contribution report? His OCPF reports are unitemized like DiPaola’s but I imagine you’ve seen them, right?

            • Wasn’t allegedly getting campaign contributions in $500 increments.  He was getting actual cash in envelopes.

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              p>I now see that you could have been talking about campaign contributions and I apologize.  I was thinking about the news that sheriff DiPaola made as a condition of employment the payment of cash to himself.

      • it would be difficult to argue a cost savings even if you include benies.  It’s one FTE, he would have to argue that benefits equals at least half the position’s pay.

      • 2000 hours a year is one FTE, more or less – at 40 hours per week and 4.3 weeks per month, one FTE works 172 hours per month. 5,000 hours per month is almost 30 full time employees!

        • I read “a year” instead of “a month”.  Yowsers!

          <

          p>As to “expressly spelled out in the budget,” it could be.  But somebody puts together the budget, and other folks vote on it.  Why aren’t any of them (or their staff) seeing the opportunity for cost savings?

  2. Apparently, Sheriff Cummings has no money.

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    p>Yet when he endorsed * Jeff Perry for Congress in May of last year, he said,

    Every year Jeff has led the charge to adequately fund the Sheriff’s Office and many public safety measures.  Jeff knows only too well what cuts in public safety can mean to our families and communities.

    <

    p>Maybe the answer is that the pornography line item in the Sheriff’s budget was overspent?

    <

    p>In that case, Representative Perry may have been more accurate than he intended in his farewell speech to the House of Representatives when he said that sometimes government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem (at 4:30).

    <

    p>* Most of the content of Perry’s election website has been moved out. This press release quote comes from a source I can’t link to.      

    • In your pornography link, it says:

      While Cummings declined to say what the punishment would be, he said putting a letter in their file, which would cost each of them their annual $1,000 bonus for good behavior, is the least he will do.

      Am I the only one who thinks this is strange? Are there other jobs that explicitly reward not behaving badly, or is it just Corrections? Maybe the guards were jealous because prisoners get rewarded for good behavior.

  3. Sheriff Cummings says in an interview on WXTK (about 3:00 in) that he already gave Vieira’s duties to three other people, so that line is no doubt bunk.  Another interesting detail from this interview comes when Cummings mentions that he thinks his employees might have had a clue that a “special” hiring was in the works because he ordered a storage room to be cleared in order to make space for Perry’s new office.

  4. Mr. Perry missed out on the good jobs with the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council or Massachusetts higher education outfits?

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