I haven’t been able to figure it out. Baker and Beaton’s string of issues at the embattled EOEEA has been documented here earlier:
- July 3rd party using state resources
- Baker appointing his driver to head the Environmental police
- Politically motivated harassment and job retaliation
That’s quite a string on issues for a department. Baker for his part had immediately waited 3 months to investigate, coincidentally when the Herald started asking questions on the harassment and retaliation claims. So finally the investigation was completed (can’t find any report anywhere) and wouldn’t you know it, they found no job retaliation. Astonishingly the Baker administration is saying that after the office threatened job retaliation, a transfer to a far way Fall River office was all just coincidence. To add to the insult, the crack team doing the investigation concluded that COO Michael Valanzola did nothing wrong but will resign as “his resignation is necessary to restore confidence in the human resources function for the secretariat.”. What a guy.
But they did find lower rung personnel officer Jared Valanzola (yes, they are related) did make threats and was terminated. So if you are following along, personnel department threatened Lewis, but her subsequent transfer wasn’t related. Got it.
Also since that time, the July 3rd party planner Matthew Sisk decided that he wanted to play pretend police, WCVB reported that he was recorded on two occasions tooling around the city with lights and sirens blazing. WCVB also found that Sisk and 4 other members of the Republican State Committee find the EOEEA home. Again, probably coincidence. Charlie was upset at the wannabe cop so Sisk and the fleet manager (for some reason) are both now gone.
What does the EOEEA have to do with Charter Schools you ask? Me too. But this week the official DCR twitter account posted:
The EOEEA refused to release the name of the staff member who posted the tweet, probably for “the sake of the kids”.
EOEEA is officially a dumpster fire, lower rung staff, deputy whatever, fleet manager is not going to cut it Charlie, if a real investigation is not going to happen and those in charge are not held accountable then it’s time for the AG’s office to get involved.
The fleet manager was Sisk’s personal friend. He probably installed the blue lights into a Sisk’s vehicle without the two of them getting the proper authorization.
In a couple years, the Republicans have reached a level of corruption they never even accused of Democrats of overseeing after eight.
Casino Commission conflicts
DCF child deaths
Compounding pharmacy deaths
Annie Dookhan
Medical marijuana dispensary review process
Travel slush fund
Health Connector fiasco
Green Line extension bid process
The Cadillac
The Drapes
Tim Murray
n/t
and that’s the point.
The DCR stuff is small potatoes compared to some of those on this list.
How does “appointing his driver” equate with “fills an entire agency (Probation) with friends and relatives. I didn’t even have that one on the list as it wasn’t exactly executive branch.
People expect Beacon Hill Democrats to be corrupt, they expect Massachusetts Republicans to be a check on that corruption. That argument sort of goes out the window when Baker’s people are also hacks on the public trough. The Howie Car column writes itself.
Of course, I don’t particularly care. Partisans on this site will be arguing about which of the sacrificial lambs is the most progressive in 2018, while you and Porcupine will mock us and say voting against Baker enables DeLeo. The reality is, you’re all going to be wrong. Baker and Beacon Hill Democrats will continue to work together to help corporations like GE, continue socially liberal policies on cultural questions, and defer making hard choices about our long term economic future. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. I have long given up on state politics getting any better.
because that’s the way things work. There’s no evidence it ever has worked in some pure sense. I realize you were not around for the Dukakis years, but they weren’t that great then. There’s really been no golden political age in MA from Gov Winthrop on.
Baker as governor in my view makes things run a little more efficiently and groups that have been (maybe unnecessarily) benefiting will benefit less. Whether the ultimate reuse of that “saved” money goes is unknown.
I still think DCR is almost nothing, and he’s cleaned house and will move past it.
I don’t buy into the golden age theory and have actually attacked it. I think the Judy’s and TBD are coming from a place where they know how much the current system forces the ‘game’ to be one of inches rather than yards, and they are insiders who celebrate the inches as hard fought gains and attack outsiders who demand yards as naive. I don’t doubt they are sincere in their beliefs or that they perceive their particularly means are the only ways to achieve the ends progressives claim to seek.
And I don’t doubt you and porcupine, who incidentally also has direct hill experience like Judy and TBD, feel the same way. That the game is of inches, but of stopping grand bad ideas and managing state government so it doesn’t get too big or too expensive and that this is the best we can expect from a Governor. We had a visionary in Deval who got a lot less done than the game manager in Baker, if we count actual bills passed as the way to keep score.
I still think state government is an undervalued and underappreciated sector when it comes to progressive change. In local Cambridge politics, there was always a push to blame the city council for trends largely out of it’s control (end of rent control and the ballooning of housing costs and managing the fallout from both) and elect or unelect councilors based on how well they were perceived to respond to those trends.
And in national politics there is far too much emphasis, on both partisan sides, of the president as the most important political figure. Thus, Congress has become just another extension of who is and who isn’t president and what party they are. With the days of ticket splitters and mavericks long gone. And thus our one party states are demographically permanent entities which can’t be severely shifted. In that environment, a socially tolerant Republican Governor is the best the the center-right can get in Massachusetts. Just as someone like Gov. Bel Edwards is the best progressives can get in Louisiana. But I think state government can be an agent for change, we just need to train, find, and elect the right people. And it’s less an issue of ideology to me than it is of accountability and integrity.