As Deval Leaves....

.... Charlie Moves In

Related: The Last Days of Deval

I've been counting them down.

"Deval Patrick leaves a complex legacy" by Michael Levenson, Globe Staff  January 04, 2015

Deval Patrick looked out on Boston Common, presiding not only as the incoming governor but as the leader of a movement that had upended politics. Thousands from across the state cheered and held up cellphone cameras — people of every kind and color, young and old, jubilant multitudes never before seen at the State House.

At his first inauguration under uncommonly fair skies in January 2007, the man who a year earlier had been dismissed as a hopeless romantic with no chance of victory carried with him limitless hope for the future — for better schools, fairer housing, racial healing.

“It’s time for a change,” Patrick declared, “and we are that change.”

Over the next eight years, Patrick delivered on some of those hopes: securing reforms in transportation, education, and ethics, and launching initiatives that stimulated the clean energy and biotechnology industries. He legalized casinos, surprising and disappointing supporters, and was besieged by management problems in health care, child welfare, and unemployment benefits that bruised the faith in government he was determined to restore.

As he prepares to leave office, Patrick leaves behind a deep imprint on the judiciary.

Verdict below.

****************

His influence can also be felt in the halls of power, where a loyal network of former aides now hold high positions in the corporate, lobbying, and nonprofit worlds. But he has also alienated many of his allies in the Legislature, who say Patrick frustrated them with a style that was sometimes highhanded and tone deaf.

“He was absolutely phenomenal in terms of the broad themes,” said Representative David Linsky, a Natick Democrat who worked with Patrick on criminal justice issues. “When I think about where the Commonwealth was eight years ago and where it is now, we’re in great shape in a lot of ways. The failings were in the nitty-gritty of running the state. The problem has been in the basic administration of government.”

The hopes for a new era in state politics — never higher than on inauguration day — were challenged right from the start of his first term when Patrick made good on his promise to bring outsiders into the insiders’ club that is the Massachusetts State House.

The new governor and his politically inexperienced team spent their first three months lurching from crisis to crisis — over the costly new drapes in his office, the upgrading of his official car to a Cadillac, his phone call to vouch for a controversial subprime mortgage lender.

After overhauling his staff, bringing in the kind of seasoned hands he had initially shunned, Patrick regained his footing, scoring a series of legislative victories at the end of his first term. Among those was a bill he championed that expanded the number of charter schools in exchange for $250 million in federal funding from the Obama administration. Rebounding from low poll numbers, he won reelection in 2010, after a campaign that reintroduced voters to his soaring oratory. Days later, he declared he would not seek a third term, making himself a lame duck with more than four years left in office.

Now, as he nears the end of his turbulent turn in office, Patrick says he is eager to take a “long, warm-weather nap” and rejoin the private sector. He remains a historic figure, the first African-American governor in a state with a painful history of racial conflict.

Yet many of his accomplishments have been overshadowed by the management problems that flared in his final years in office, when he also looked overseas for traction, traveling on trade missions.

He has openly contemplated a presidential campaign — maybe after 2016, he says. If he were to run on a national stage, each action he has taken over the past years would be analyzed and scrutinized, and the inevitable tension between his lyrical rhetoric and concrete actions measured and debated. The picture of Patrick’s legacy that emerged would probably be much more complex than he envisioned that first day overlooking the Common, with some promises fulfilled but others slashed or reshaped by the recession and his rocky relationship with legislators.

Yeah, the list I compiled for the last days should torpedo those hopes.

“He never got comfortable with those relationships,” said Daniel O’Connell, who was Patrick’s housing and economic development secretary from 2007 to 2009. “The manual wasn’t there in the governor’s office for how you navigate the Legislature, and that was frustrating, and got more frustrating over time.”

Patrick said he is proud of his record — on the economy, education, and infrastructure — but surprised by how difficult it was to persuade legislators to agree with him.

“I thought substance would be as important — maybe more important — than the performance art part of it,” he said in an interview. “The job really is a blend of the two. And if you get the substance right, but the performance art wrong, or off-key in some way, it’s really hard to get to the substance. And that’s a tough, tough lesson for me.”

Even though he now knows the players at the State House and considers some of them friends after eight years, he said, “I still get treated like an outsider.”

I'm about to step out there now.

First impressions, first victory

As a candidate, Patrick centered his campaign around grand themes of civic engagement and ambitious pledges that appealed to the broad political middle: putting 1,000 new police officers on the street, lowering property taxes.

But in his first three months, the bold vision gave way to a series of miniscandals. The drapes, Cadillac, and phone call to vouch for Ameriquest — as well as his defiant response to criticism — contributed to a sense that Patrick didn’t understand how small controversies could undercut his larger agenda.

For all his experience in the Clinton administration and at Coca-Cola and other corporations, “Beacon Hill was a shocking cultural revelation to him,” O’Connell said.

But that period also saw one of Patrick’s most successful encounters with the Legislature, when the governor, a former civil rights lawyer, delved personally into one of the signal civil rights issues of the era: the battle for same-sex marriage.

OMG!

*************

Back to business

From the dramatic high of the fight over same-sex marriage, with its lofty rhetoric and sense of history, Patrick delved into economic challenges, unaware a recession was about to thwart his boldest plans.

To lower auto insurance costs, he deregulated the market in April 2008 and allowed insurers to compete and set rates.

And now they are bundling them to sell as securities.

Two months later, he signed a bill to funnel $1 billion over 10 years into grants and tax credits for the biotech industry — a major point of pride for Patrick.

It was borrowed money, and I know somebody benefited. 

Later that summer, the governor, a part-time resident of the Berkshires, traveled to the tiny town of Goshen to sign a bill expanding broadband access to Western Massachusetts.

Then the recession hit, causing a historic collapse in revenue for the state. Patrick was forced to abandon his ambitions to build roads and rails and switched into cost-cutting mode.

He increased health insurance copays and deductibles for public employees, instituted furloughs for managers, and persuaded state workers to give up wage increases.

“He needed to get others to agree to things they would not have otherwise done,” said Jay Gonzalez, Patrick’s budget chief at the time. “It worked because people trusted him.”

Then, under pressure to help cities and towns control health care costs, Patrick challenged his allies in the labor movement.

At least they are better defenders than Republicans.

City and town officials wanted Patrick to curb the power of police, fire, and other local unions to negotiate every change in their health plans, allowing managers, for example, to unilaterally raise copays. But that year, Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, had sparked a national firestorm by slashing public employee unions’ bargaining rights.

Patrick tried to find a middle ground. He ordered one aide to talk to labor leaders and another to negotiate with local officials. But they could not reach a consensus. The Legislature passed a bill that local officials supported, but unions said was unfair.

Patrick, determined to remain labor-friendly, decided to negotiate four last-minute changes to appease the unions. The final bill gave unions and managers 30 days to agree to changes in health plans. If they failed, a three-person panel would settle the dispute.

When he signed the bill in July 2011, union leaders and municipal officials stood by his side.

“There wasn’t that acrimony,” Gonzalez said. “That is the kind of management you need in government. It’s management with leadership to build consensus.”

The push for casinos

The most highly scrutinized and, to many, confounding, initiative of Patrick’s tenure was his drive to legalize casinos shortly after taking office in 2007. Here was a liberal who had swept into office aiming for the loftiest goals in civic life moving quickly to embrace an industry that many supporters believed preyed on the vulnerable and ruined livelihoods.

In his interview with the Globe, Patrick did not list the law among his proudest achievements. “It was never a centerpiece of our economic-growth strategy,” he said.

But former aides said casinos, like it or not, will persist as one of Patrick’s most recognizable achievements and, moreover, that he was the driving force behind the bill, effectively overruling his Cabinet members’ concerns.

Not.

O’Connell, then housing and economic development secretary, recalled a meeting in Patrick’s office in 2007 when the governor first broached the idea of bringing casinos to Massachusetts and asked his Cabinet secretaries, “so what do you all think?”

The response was not encouraging.

Health and Human Services Secretary JudyAnn Bigby warned that the mental health system could not handle an increase in gambling addicts, O’Connell recalled. Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke said petty crime would increase around casinos. And O’Connell told the governor that a casino debate would devour so much attention “we’re not going to be able to get anything else done.”

“And so we had our vote,” O’Connell said. “No one said yea or nay, but he heard three people express reservations. And the governor said, ‘We’re going to proceed with this and, Dan, you’re in charge.’ ”

Almost dictatorial.

Patrick argued casinos would generate 20,000 jobs and $2 billion in economic activity. He also told aides he had loved playing the slots at Foxwoods with his late mother, Emily.

See: Foxwoods Folds 

But they won't do that here, right?

“She was enjoying it, and he loved the fact that was she was enjoying it, and personal experiences do color that kind of thing,” O’Connell said.

Patrick’s first attempt to legalize casinos was swiftly rejected by the House speaker, Salvatore F. DiMasi, a staunch gambling opponent, in March 2008.

That's why Sal was set up. I'm not saying he didn't do it; I'm saying that's why it was used against him. He had to be gotten out of the way.

Less than a year later, DiMasi resigned amid a developing corruption scandal and was replaced by Robert A. DeLeo, the son of a horse-track worker. Still, a casino deal bogged down amid Patrick’s refusal to let the tracks open slot machine parlors. After DeLeo relented on that point, Patrick signed the bill in November 2011.

Some supporters remain chagrined.

“There are many who are progressives like myself who would say they are disappointed that we have casino gaming in Massachusetts, and that’s part of his legacy, for better or worse,” said James Aloisi, who was Patrick’s transportation secretary in 2010. “It’s just another way to tax people who can least afford to pay.”

In the interview, Patrick compared casinos to shopping malls, saying the market will decide whether they thrive or fail.

See: High-end malls flourish as others fade

That stings.

“I think it’s going to be good,” he said. “We have a very modest entry into the expansion of gaming and the human costs are real but, I think, limited.”

Rocky relations

It wasn’t until 2013, in the penultimate year of his tenure, that Patrick was able to finally propose something approaching the ambitions he had embraced on the campaign trail in 2006.

His efforts showcased both the strength of his vision and the struggles in his execution.

The timing, at first, looked ripe for a bold move. The recession was over, and Patrick was freed from the political constraints of running for office again.

He set his sights on a $1.9 billion tax increase to fund rail lines from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, stabilize the MBTA, and expand prekindergarten programs.

But legislative leaders said Patrick failed to inform them of his plan before he unveiled it at his State of the Commonwealth address in January 2013.

It is a moment legislators point to again and again to explain Patrick’s troubles navigating the Legislature.

Senate President Therese Murray remembered Janet Wu, a WCVB reporter, stopping her as she walked into the House chamber for Patrick’s speech. “What do you think about it?” Wu asked.

“About what?” Murray recalled saying.

The governor, Murray and DeLeo said, never asked them what kind of tax increase might be viable in a legislative election year.

That mistake, Murray said, reflected how Patrick, coming from the corporate world, sometimes treated the Legislature more like a board of directors than as a coequal branch of government.

“That’s not the way this place works,” Murray said in an interview. “There’s no top down.”

Patrick said the notion that he blindsided lawmakers “has become urban legend.”

“There was a lot of heads-up, a lot of preparation, most especially with the leadership,” he said. “I’m going to leave it at that.”

Some lawmakers were also incensed that Patrick urged them to show “political courage” by raising taxes. “It’s easy to say that when he’s not running for reelection,” said Linsky, the Natick Democrat.

After his speech, Patrick enlisted unions and liberal groups to push for his plan. Then he summoned legislators to his office to make his case.

“He got mad, really mad,” said Linsky, recalling one such meeting. “He couldn’t believe we weren’t going to support these massive tax increases.”

Lawmakers discarded Patrick’s plan — a sweeping proposal that would have raised the income tax, lowered the sales tax, and made more than 40 other changes to the tax code — and approved a 3 cent increase in the gas tax, to raise about $350 million annually.

That would fill budget gaps, but not finance the glittering array of rail and road projects that Patrick had envisioned as a lasting legacy.

After that, relations between the governor and the Legislature “were definitely bruised for a while, no question about it,” said Representative Stephen Kulik, a Worthington Democrat.

DeLeo said he usually worked well with the governor and is proud of the bills they fashioned, from toughening gun and domestic violence laws to legalizing casinos. “He had a fantastic record of accomplishment, quite frankly,” DeLeo said.

Patrick’s toughest critics are often his natural allies — fellow liberals who say he was nearly impossible to work with.

Representative Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, met Patrick in 2005, during the governor’s first campaign, and became one of his earliest supporters.

He participated in conference calls with Patrick every Saturday at 9 a.m. and socialized a few times with him. Kaufman said he anticipated both a friendship and a partnership.

But Kaufman said Patrick stopped reaching out to him after the final conference call of the 2006 campaign.

“There was an abrupt end, and contact has been rare and difficult since then,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Globe.

Kaufman said he remembered how Patrick, after his first meeting in the speaker’s office as governor-elect in 2006, declared that legislators would receive no special consideration if they wanted to work in the administration, but could submit resumes through his transition website, along with everyone else.

Kaufman said that was not a bad policy, but “a little tone deaf” for an incoming governor hoping to build a relationship with lawmakers.

“Our system of government is designed to work best in a partnership between the Executive and the Legislature, but I’ve sadly come to appreciate that Governor Patrick, unlike candidate Patrick, apparently had a hard time embracing that reality,” Kaufman said. “I now think of him as so much more gifted and comfortable speaking TO us, rather than speaking WITH us, and this is enormously disappointing.”

Patrick disputed Kaufman’s account. He said he spoke to Kaufman several times about tax policy. The governor said Kaufman even wanted to support his $1.9 billion tax increase. But like other members of DeLeo’s leadership team, Kaufman ultimately opposed the tax increase because, Patrick said, that’s “what the leadership tells them to do.”

Management problems

In his final years in office, as the next governor’s race began to take shape, Patrick focused less on the Legislature and more on signing executive orders and traveling to promote his agenda.

And then he's rushing around at the end trying to tie up loose ends?

He made more than 14 trips to other states to campaign for President Obama in 2012 and took six international trade missions in his final two years in office, visiting 12 countries, from Colombia to Japan. He helped lure international airlines to Boston, but his voyages added to the perception on Beacon Hill that he was increasingly disengaged with work closer to home.

I only have two words for him: global warming.

“There were times when he was just never here,” said Linsky, motioning out of the window of his office, which overlooks Patrick’s parking spot at the State House.

Over time, some of Patrick’s senior aides left, part of a natural exodus near the end of a governor’s tenure. At the same time, management problems piled up.

The state’s health care website failed, frustrating consumers and costing hundreds of millions of dollars. 

See: Obummercare Will Make You $ick This Year 

In $o many ways.

The Department of Children and Families bungled cases, most prominently by losing track of Jeremiah Oliver, a Fitchburg boy whose body was found on the side of a highway months after he was last seen.

Related: DCF Delaying Records Releases 

Must be why we haven't seen much since.

A new unemployment insurance system was plagued with errors, delaying benefits for thousands of unemployed workers.

I will be touching on that further down.

The licensing of medical marijuana dispensaries was hobbled by incomplete background checks and bureaucratic delays.

I finally tried some, didn't like it, didn't inhale, and didn't do it again.

O’Connell said Patrick struggled to manage the government himself while also fulfilling his promise to hold events every week all across the state.

“Government is awfully hard to run with one guy and he didn’t want to delegate authority,” O’Connell said. “He tried to continue to run the entire government and didn’t surround himself with strong people because he didn’t want strong people around because he was the governor. He was the one who would determine the priorities and the direction of the administration and you just can’t do it all.”

O’Connell also said Patrick was surrounded by aides who worked hard on his campaigns but were poorly suited to government.

“If you don’t pick really strong talent and delegate authority to them, you build up around you a group of individuals who really are there to protect you, as they perceive it, and fulfill your directives, as they hear them, and you get conflict and confusion,” he said.

Linsky pointed out that Patrick had six chiefs of staff in eight years. “And the staff kept getting younger and more inexperienced for a long period of time,” he said.

Patrick dismissed those explanations, but expressed shame at the problems that happened on his watch.

“I’m disappointed by those things and I’m embarrassed by those things,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s right to say there’s a pattern, not when there has been so much good produced by this administration for so many people.”

At DCF, he pointed out, a social worker skipped mandatory visits with Jeremiah Oliver, and two supervisors failed to notice. The health care website and the unemployment benefit system both failed, he said, because private vendors did not deliver results.

“In every case, we have been willing to find, and face, and fix what was wrong, and not brush it under the rug,” he said.

I couldn't help it:

State Lied About Unemployment Website

Check under that rug.

Still popular

In the waning months of his governorship, a majority of voters polled by the Globe found Patrick “about average” compared with other recent governors.

But for a passionate group of Patrick faithful, the promises of his first day overlooking the Common never faded.

Marianne Rutter, 62, a marketing director from Boxborough, first heard Patrick speak at a Democratic town committee meeting in 2005, when he was a political unknown. She “just thought, ‘Wow,’ ” she recalled.

She organized volunteers in her town, and launched a blog with other supporters called “The Deval Experience.”

Looking back on his tenure, she applauds the governor for upholding liberal ideals, by declaring that he would welcome young migrants who had crossed the border illegally from Central America, and by urging Democrats at the party’s 2012 national convention to “grow a backbone.”

“Deval Patrick was, and still is, my original political hero,” she said. “His moral compass was so sound throughout his administration.”

Also see: Longtime aide to Deval Patrick had his trust — and back

And what about the 1,000 new police officers and the cut in property taxes that he promised during those heady days of his first campaign? They never came to pass. Patrick called his failure to deliver property tax relief one of his biggest disappointments. But he said he achieved almost every other objective he had.

And he notes that, despite all the rumors to the contrary, he held true to his commitment to serve out two full terms, something none of his recent predecessors had done.

“I said I was going to do this job and do it until I was done with it after two terms and, though no one believed me, I have stayed and kept that promise,” he said. “I said what it is we wanted to accomplish, and I would say nine out of 10 things we said we would accomplish, we have.”

--more--"

"Governor Deval Patrick’s hits and misses" by Shirley Leung, Globe Staff  December 17, 2014

The year is 2020, and Mitt Romney is speaking at the Republican National Convention. This time, he’s not accepting the presidential nomination, but rather his job is to eviscerate Deval Patrick’s record as governor. Romney ticks off the Democrat’s management lapses: a malfunctioning health insurance website, dead children under state care, scandal at a state lab.

“In Massachusetts, we know Deval Patrick,” Romney says. “He is a fine fellow and great salesman. But as governor, he was a lot more interested in having the job than doing the job.”

Now let’s return to 2014. I am sitting with Patrick in his recently restored State House office, walls bathed in historically accurate Bulfinch green. As he finishes his two terms as governor and flirts with a White House run, I lay out the scenario detailed above. It’s not complete fantasy: Patrick did exactly this to Romney when he ran against Barack Obama in 2012.

So what would Patrick say in his own defense? Plenty.

“Look at the fact that as I leave office we have a 25-year high in employment. Look at the fact that we have nearly universal health care coverage, way ahead of every other state, and that we have bent the cost curve in health insurance premiums,” said Patrick, the words rolling out of him like a well-practiced stump speech. “Look at the fact that the structural deficit that existed when [Romney] left office is gone and we have achieved the highest bond rating in the history of the Commonwealth.”

Bankers.

Say what you will about Patrick’s lack of oversight when it comes to state agencies and the current budget deficit, but on the Massachusetts economy, he can leave Beacon Hill with his head held high. On his watch, the number of jobs increased by 4.1 percent in Massachusetts, compared with 1.7 percent nationally, according to an analysis by a Northeastern University economics professor, Alan Clayton-Matthews.

Mixed messages plus!!!!!

The record is even more remarkable when you consider the Great Recession came smack in the middle of his administration. Now, not everyone will give Patrick much credit — governors don’t have a whole of lot influence over the state economy. What Fed chair Janet Yellen does or what happens in China will affect Massachusetts businesses more.

But Patrick got us to remember just how special we are. 

I've lived with that kind of arrogance my whole life. We're great!

This is not the cheapest or easiest place to do business, but we have a lot of brainpower in Massachusetts, and that’s why your company needs to be here. To get the world to our doorstep, he launched a $1 billion life sciences initiative in his first term. Before, people used to talk about the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston as the two biotech hubs competing to be number one. Today, Boston (including Cambridge) is the undisputed leader. Most major drug companies already have some kind of presence here, and the rest are on the way.

Ask Patrick what he is most proud of when it comes to job creation, and he mentions our innovation economy. He’ll talk your ear off about the state’s clean tech and alternative energy sector — something few people knew even existed eight years ago — and how today there are 100,000 people working in this field.

“Any industry that depends on a concentration of brainpower, we can dominate,” Patrick said. “More and more, when we get this community of thinkers to be a part of our commercial life, the stronger our economic prospects are.”

Patrick took this message on the road, traveling the world on trade missions. The media and critics called them junkets — until we started to see some of the results, most visibly at Logan Airport. The outreach helped lead to the addition of 17 nonstop international flights during his two terms, with 42 operating today. This year alone, nonstop trips to Dubai, Istanbul, and Beijing began out of Boston. Those are game-changing routes for local businesses.

Closer to home, Patrick reined in health care costs by capping insurance rate increases and creating the Health Policy Commission to monitor expenses. While our prices remain among the highest in the country, we no longer face double-digit rate hikes on premiums. Instead, we’re able to live with average base rate increases of roughly 3 percent, according to the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, the trade group for insurers.

Before this piece ends up in some future Patrick campaign propaganda, let’s talk about what the governor didn’t do for business. He likes to boast about how he cut corporate taxes — three times! — but Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, says there is more to the story.

Yes, Patrick lowered the corporate tax rate from 9.5 percent to 8 percent, but it was to offset other tax increases. When all is said and done, businesses collectively pay at least $150 million more annually in taxes, according to Widmer. By that measure, Patrick did no better than Romney in controlling corporate levies.

Patrick also got low marks on economic competitiveness. When he started, Massachusetts ranked 12th in CNBC’s annual survey of America’s Top States for Business; this year we’re at 25.

The cost of doing business remains too high here. Take the price of electricity: We pay twice the national average. Our tax regulation is also too aggressive, according to CFO magazine, which ranks Massachusetts among the worst states for tax collection.

These are perennial complaints that have dogged many administrations. Patrick said he has streamlined state permitting, reducing the wait from an average of two years to less than six months. His administration also simplified or eliminated hundreds of business regulations.

“We are not where we need to be,” he acknowledged. On the tax front, businesses have a lot of trouble navigating our system.

“Should the next governor work on that? Yes,” Patrick said. “But here’s the ticklish thing: You certainly don’t want to appear to be engaging with the [Department of Revenue] in a way that favors any one or another business.”

Other than borrowing a billion for biotech or giving money away to Hollywood, etc, etc.

While Widmer gives Patrick an “A minus” for pushing our innovation economy, he sticks the governor with a “C minus” on economic competitiveness. Widmer, in his two decades as head of the taxpayers foundation, has witnessed five governors, dating to Bill Weld, who have tried to untangle our bureaucracy.

“They all have made efforts trying to remove some regulatory barriers,” Widmer said, but “we remain a very heavily regulated state. Nobody is talking about repealing environment regulations. It’s having it done in a way that is less labyrinthian.”

Patrick needs to leave something for Governor-elect Charlie Baker to do, and for the business community, that seems as good a start as any.

--more--"

Oh, he's leaving him plenty -- and look whose taking the hit:

"Mass. shortfall is closer to $750m, tax group warns; Governor’s aides call analysis misleading" by Joshua Miller, Globe Staff  December 17, 2014

A massive $750 million shortfall, larger than previously estimated, will confront Governor-elect Charlie Baker when he takes office next month, potentially forcing him to make unpopular cuts as he begins his term, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Hmmmmmm!

“He faces a huge fiscal challenge that is more daunting than anything we have seen in an economic recovery in a long time,” said Michael J. Widmer, president of the business-backed group, which has an established presence on Beacon Hill.

Is it recovering or is it not?

The estimate, which advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum said was potentially in range, was vigorously disputed by aides to Governor Deval Patrick.

Widmer’s projection takes into account the $250 million in savings and cuts Patrick has already made to state spending in recent weeks, meaning Widmer’s total estimate of the budget gap is $1 billion.

A discrepancy of the size estimated by Widmer’s group could represent a blow to the legacy of the outgoing governor, who has prided himself on guiding the state ably through the recession during his eight-year tenure, and it could limit Baker’s flexibility as he starts his tenure.

Not really. Once you really look at it, it's a complete failure unless you are part of the select cla$$.

Glen Shor, Patrick’s budget chief, blasted Widmer’s projection, saying it “is incorrect, it’s inflated . . . misleading” and based on assumptions from limited data. 

This administration knows about misleading people. 

Further, Shor said, it fails to take into account likely boosts to this year’s budget, such as leftover money that agencies give back to the state’s general fund at the end of the year. 

Then no need for budget cuts, right?

Last month, Shor announced a much smaller shortfall, pegged by the administration at $329 million of the state’s more than $36 billion budget, which runs from July through June.

In addition to identifying $250 million in cuts and savings, Patrick sent a bill to the Legislature that would close what the administration says is the rest of the currently anticipated gap, about $80 million. The Legislature has indicated, however, that it is unlikely to take action on Patrick’s plan, thereby leaving the problem to be solved when the new governor takes office.

I didn't vote for him, but I am pulling for him.

In an interview, Baker said that he was surprised by Widmer’s “big number” and that he does not know how much the shortfall will actually be.

He declined to discuss specifics of how he might address any budget gap until he takes office, but he reiterated pledges not to raise taxes or cut aid to cities and towns.

He also ruled out taking money from the state’s stabilization fund. That “rainy day’’ account stands at about $1.2 billion and is considered an important metric by the bond-rating agencies that assess the state’s financial health. 

OOOOOH! That's why the state has to sit on dough while making cuts.

Baker underscored that any withdrawal from the fund would have an impact on the next year’s budget. But Baker added that everything else “is going to have to be on the table.”

The governor-elect noted that part of the anticipated budget gap is the result of an automatic cut of the state’s income tax from 5.2 percent to 5.15 percent, which takes effect in January, triggered by growth in state tax revenues exceeding certain benchmarks.

!!!!!!!!!!!! 

That doesn't make sense! 

If the economy was ahead of projections more tax revenue should be coming in, thus there should be not a gap but an unexpected surplus!

“What this really says is the Commonwealth has a spending problem that we need to deal with,” Baker said.

They do!

A former state budget chief, Baker described himself during his successful gubernatorial campaign as “a guy who is pretty facile with math.’’ He said Tuesday that whatever its actual size, the gap is a “challenging exercise to be sure, but it’s not impossible” to solve.

So where might Baker be able to make cuts?

Widmer, in an interview at the Taxpayer Foundation headquarters on Washington Street, let out a whistle.

“It’s really tough,” said Widmer, who is soon leaving his post after more than 20 years.

Much of the state budget is dedicated to what are considered nondiscretionary costs.

The Widmer-projected gap of $750 million is based on less-than-expected tax and fee collections and higher-than-anticipated spending, on items such as insurance for state and municipal employees and emergency aid for poor people.

It also includes $106 million in estimated spending unaccounted for in the budget, related to mopping up the state’s bungled health insurance website.

Thanks, Obummer. It already costs over $250 million to fix.

In addition, the $750 million figure includes estimates of how much more money the state will have to pay for the health care services of people who were enrolled in a temporary Medicaid program.

That program was instituted after the state’s health insurance website — for people who do not get insurance through their employer — failed last year after it was changed to comply with the federal health care overhaul.

To make sure people would not lose coverage, Massachusetts placed hundreds of thousands who sought assistance in a temporary, almost all-expenses-paid Medicaid program.

Shor, Patrick’s budget chief, and Emme Schultz, a top state budget official, disputed almost every line of the Taxpayers Foundation analysis.

They said that Widmer’s analysis was based on a mix of incorrect and very incomplete data and that projections were concocted with too little information.

Which is fine, except I trust them over you.

For example, the decline in the state’s tax revenues, which accounts for $43 million of Widmer’s projected shortfall, is calculated just through November although there are seven other months in the fiscal year. And data on how much the temporary Medicaid program will cost the state are incomplete.

Shor and Schultz emphasized that just because something is costing more than expected does not automatically equal a budget gap: Agencies can sometimes reallocate resources within their specific budget. And everything that is budgeted is not always spent. 

Come again? How much more are you sitting on or has been looted, and WHY THE BUDGET CUTS THEN?

Schultz underscored that the analysis did not include reversions, the money that is budgeted but not used and then given back to the state’s general fund.

Give me one, just one example, just one.

Money being given back as budgets are being cut. Looks like a $hell game to me.

“There are just some things we plain-out disagree with,” Shor said.

“It only shows downsides, some overstated, some incorrect, and some we would acknowledge — without offsetting against it some potential upsides,” he said.

But Jim Stergios, executive director of the conservative-leaning Pioneer Institute, said Widmer’s analysis is “absolutely” in range of what is a reasonable estimate.

Noah Berger, the president of the liberal-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, said he believed there was definitely a budget gap beyond the $329 million the Patrick administration has acknowledged. But he said he did not have all the information he needed to make a final analysis of Widmer’s projection.

Berger added there are also expected and potential boosts to the budget that would make a gap smaller, perhaps significantly so.

“I don’t have data to estimate the Medicaid shortfall,” he said. Still, “if the Medicaid numbers are accurate, then this is in the ballpark.”

And that is the guy who would be sympathetic to this administration.

--more--"

About those tax rates:

"Mass. tax rate takes slight dip" by Joshua Miller, Globe Staff  January 01, 2015

The Massachusetts income tax rate dropped from 5.2 percent to 5.15 percent Thursday when the new year dawned.

A goodbye gift from Governor Deval Patrick? A parting favor from Senate President Therese Murray? No. It’s the legacy of voters’ outcry from 14 years ago.

It look them that long to implement the will of the voter? Looks like those pot clinics won't be coming on line anytime soon.

In 2000, voters passed a ballot initiative incrementally knocking the rate down from 5.85 percent to 5 percent. The first ticks downward took place at the beginning of 2001 and 2002. But then the Legislature, facing tough economic times, froze the final tax cut.

Instead, legislators set a series of economic growth thresholds which would — much more slowly than voters intended — lower the tax rate to 5 percent, but only if the state economy was humming along.

Those triggers have been met twice in recent years and were met again in 2014, thus the tax rate drop on Thursday.

Then why/how budget cuts?

However, the change will not have a particularly wallet-fattening effect on average taxpayers.

A single person with two children who rents and makes $45,000 a year will see an average $12 cut in taxes, according to estimates from the state Department of Revenue.

A married couple who owns a home, has two toddlers and $100,000 in income will keep $39 more than they would have under the 2014 rate, the department estimated.

But the change will have a more pronounced impact on the $36 billion-plus state budget.

For the rest of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, Massachusetts will not collect an estimated $70 million in revenue that it would have had the rate stayed the same.

Wouldn't their accounting whizzes have forecast and allowed for that in the budget?

And in the next fiscal year, it will reduce revenue by about $145 million, according to projections from the Patrick administration.

It is important to follow the will of the voters, “but there are serious consequences from a budgetary point of view,” said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Says it all about a Ma$$achu$etts democracy. I was taught and told to believe there was no "but."

The drop in revenue contributes to a significant budget gap — estimated by some outside specialists at a whopping $750 million — that Charlie Baker will face when he becomes governor on Jan. 8.

A Baker spokesman, Billy Pitman, said the fact that the economy is growing is a good sign for the state.

Related: “The story for the Massachusetts economy, if you ignore high levels of unemployment and inequality, is the economy has been performing very well.” 

However, “the massive budget deficit facing the administration points to an underlying spending problem in state government. The governor-elect looks forward to implementing fiscally responsible budget policies to ensure Massachusetts’ economy continues to grow and taxpayers get the breaks they deserve,” Pitman said.

The complicated economic formula for triggering the tax rate drop includes five steps related to state tax revenue growth.

A key one: whether those revenues, adjusted for inflation, increase more than 2.5 percent from one fiscal year to the next.

If revenues increased.....

*********

State Representative Jay R. Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat and the House chairman of the Joint Committee on Revenue, said he understands that the cuts are embedded in the law but also is cognizant of the costs.

“Taxes equal public services; therefore, tax cuts equal a cut in services,” he said, adding that the decrease in revenue will translate into less money for items such as transportation infrastructure, youth jobs programs, and aid to cities and towns.

Of course, a tax increase does not mean increase in services.

“There’s basically no free tax cut,” Kaufman said, and, one way or another, “this one will be paid for.”

Advocates of lower taxes see it very differently.

Barbara Anderson, president of Citizens for Limited Taxation, a Massachusetts group that strongly advocated the 2000 ballot initiative, said the cut was part of a 25-year push to return the income tax rate to 5 percent.

In 1989, the state Legislature voted to increase the tax rate above 5 percent, triggering a long quest to bring it back down to that round number.

“At least they are still trying to honor a quarter-century promise to get it back to 5 percent. We’re not going to thank them,” she said Tuesday. “We’re going to say, ‘It’s about time!’ ”

--more--" 

Now in the midst of the budget cuts we get.... ?????

"Four tech firms line up for new state tax breaks" by Jon Chesto, Globe Staff  December 18, 2014

WTF?

Four fast-growing technology companies will take advantage of a new state incentive program and share $650,000 in tax breaks for the promise of collectively adding 650 jobs by the end of next year.

The program, enacted by the Legislature over the summer as part of a broader economic development package, awards $1,000 in state tax credits for every promised job. Previously, employers needed to show big capital investments, such as new construction or renovations, to get the tax incentives. But the Legislature expanded the definition to allow tax credits to be awarded solely in return for new jobs, largely to help software and other high-tech companies that don’t have massive plants or machinery.

See: Massachusetts' Lost Decade of Jobs

Hey, those are the breaks.

****************

The tech firms were among 18 companies getting state tax breaks totaling $6.2 million and local property tax breaks totaling $20 million, following approval by the Economic Assistance Coordinating Council.

The agency also allowed Great Wolf Resorts, a Wisconsin-based water park operator, to keep $17.2 million in tax breaks that were awarded in March. The New England Regional Council of Carpenters asked the state agency to rescind the incentives, which largely consist of $16.5 million in property tax breaks on new construction, for Great Wolf’s nearly $70 million project in Fitchburg.

The carpenters union opposed the assistance because Great Wolf subcontractors had earlier been found to be operating without workers’ compensation insurance.

The union also took issue with Great Wolf’s use of out-of-state subcontractors.

But Economic Assistance Coordinating Council members said Great Wolf quickly resolved the workers’ comp issues and the company has since met job-creation goals required for the tax breaks....

--more--"

Related:

Innovative tax credits await

Woods Hole to receive $5 million to build better underwater robots

Not that I don't like underwater robots, but....

Patrick’s plan to fund public art deserves new administration’s support

Patrick sends the wrong message with civil legal aid cuts

Increase pay for public office holders

No lame-duck pay hike for Mass. lawmakers

Pay raise package for top Mass. officials in limbo

Whose lame idea was that?

And about that upfront and honest administration:

"Patrick shifts position on worker unionization; In March, legal team opposed labor bid; governor now backs pared version" by Michael Levenson and Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff  December 15, 2014

Seven months before Governor Deval Patrick agreed to transfer 500 state workers into a public employees union, his legal team successfully blocked a similar union effort by arguing it would be contrary to law.

Related: Patrick Protects Political Appointees 

And he broke the law to do it!

Documents obtained by the Globe show that Patrick’s legal team in March opposed an effort by the National Association of Government Employees to represent about 3,000 state employees hired since July 2011. Patrick’s team argued that the positions that NAGE wanted to include had not been part of the union in its 30-year history and that the transfer would deny workers the right to determine their own representation.

Now, Patrick is arguing that extending union protection to another 500 workers is warranted.

But is it legal?

The latest transfer, proposed in October as Patrick prepared to leave office, has been controversial because folding the workers into the union will effectively insulate them from layoffs at a time of transition. Patrick, who has called for emergency spending cuts to eliminate a budget crunch, is about to hand over the corner office to Charlie Baker, a Republican who has promised a thorough review of state government.

Baker has criticized the decision to unionize so many employees, calling it an “11th-hour move to reward political supporters” and “troubling, given the complete lack of transparency regarding the decision and potential implications for agencies crucial to delivering services to the people of Massachusetts.”

Administration officials have said the move will cost about $500,000 but the cost can be absorbed through the existing budgets of various agencies.

More hidden piles of money, or offset with cuts?

At the same time, the governor is seeking cuts in local aid and other areas to close an estimated $329 million budget gap for the year.

An ironic juxtaposition.

Patrick administration officials have strongly defended the transfer, saying it was necessary because the employees had been “improperly classified” as managers.

Even though they were saying the opposite for eight years?

The union had been arguing for years that many state employees were misclassified as managers and should be covered under its collective bargaining agreement. Neither NAGE president David J. Holway nor a spokeswoman returned repeated phone calls for comment.

In the earlier move, records show, a Patrick administration lawyer, Michele M. Heffernan, objected to the scope of the transfer and warned that it would eliminate individual workers’ rights to decide whether they wanted to be in a union.

“Those employees have a right under the law to cast a vote as to whether they choose to be represented by NAGE or would rather not be represented,” Heffernan wrote.

Heffernan also said that increasing the union so dramatically would be unfair to the existing members whose “standing within the unit would be diluted, thus impacting their ability to be effectively represented.”

The Patrick administration prevailed when the Department of Labor Relations, an independent state agency, dismissed NAGE’s petition in March and declined to reconsider it in April.

Despite that earlier victory, the Patrick administration in October, just weeks before the election, decided to unionize 500 positions.

An administration spokeswoman said that the number was based on a careful analysis of the jobs that were misclassified.

The administration eventually provided a list of 500 positions, 60 of them vacant, that would be unionized. The jobs span agencies from the Department of Youth Services to the Department of Public Utilities and include administrative officers, program coordinators, and system programmers, whose jobs puts them at the lower levels of management, several rungs below department heads.

The newly unionized employees will get previously negotiated raises of 3 percent in January, and 3 percent in each of the next two years, though their duties will not change, officials said. The union’s existing members had ratified their contract last summer.

Those would be tax dollars, right?

Asked why Patrick reversed course, a Patrick spokeswoman said the administration had analyzed the union’s claim and decided that it had some merit. Also, the Department of Labor Relations had signaled that NAGE could prevail by pursuing a different route through organizing. The administration wanted to make sure that only appropriate managers were unionized, said spokeswoman Heather Nichols.

“In this administration, when issues arise, we get the facts and deal with them squarely,” Nichols said. “When NAGE began the process of unionizing employees last fall, we wanted to ensure that process was being done in accordance with the law,” she said. “To that end, we initiated a full review of the relevant management positions across state government and found a number of individuals improperly classified as managers. We continue to work closely with NAGE on finalizing the transfer of these employees into the union.”

OMG!! 

See: State Lied About Unemployment Website 

That's getting the facts and dealing with them squarely? 

So what else are they lying about?

An outside labor attorney who often represents employers said that such a negotiation is not uncommon in a case like this, when a union makes it clear it will continue to press its case and the employer could end up ceding more ground.

“It was not a final victory [for the state],” said Laurence J. Donoghue, a partner at Morgan, Brown & Joy LLP, who reviewed the documents for the Globe.

“Any employer is going to use that calculus: What are my chances of winning and how big can I lose, if I lose?”

--more--"

"Governor Patrick taps 150 for state boards; Appointments in final weeks extend his impact" by Andrea Estes and Michael Levenson, Globe Staff  December 29, 2014

After facing months of criticism for failing to fill hundreds of vacancies on state boards and commissions, Governor Deval Patrick is making up for lost time in his final weeks in office, naming 150 to panels that oversee everything from auto emissions to gambling policy.

I don't mean to be quarrelsome, but....

The avalanche of last-minute appointments to the mostly unpaid positions, which include several former Patrick administration staffers and supporters, will in many cases extend the governor’s influence for years after he leaves office by having people loyal to him in key policy-shaping positions.

We have to live with his rotten legacy four years to come?

In waiting until the last minute to fill so many vacancies, Patrick is following something of a tradition. Governor Mitt Romney installed more than 200 Republican activists, current and former state employees, and others to boards and commissions in his final month in office in 2006, including his departing lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey.

“It’s about taking care of people at the end of the administration,” said Marty Linsky, a Harvard University instructor who helped handle appointments for Governor William F. Weld. If the appointees are well qualified, “there’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

No?

Patrick made more than 300 appointments over the last six months, similar to the number of appointees named by Acting Governor Jane Swift during her final six months in 2002.

But Patrick picked up the pace in recent days, in part to ensure that Governor-elect Charlie Baker does not rescind any appointments. Under state law, Baker can undo any appointments made in the final 15 days of Patrick’s tenure, which ends with Baker’s inauguration on Jan. 8.

When Romney took office in 2003, he immediately rescinded 27 lame-duck appointments made by Swift.

Patrick’s appointees include two aides: Jamie Hoag, the governor’s deputy chief counsel, who was named a trustee of Massachusetts Bay Community College, and Rosemary Powers, Patrick’s deputy chief of staff for government affairs. Powers was named to the board of the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, which provides millions of dollars in funding for affordable housing.

He also reappointed Ronald Marlow, an assistant secretary of administration and finance, for a spot on the Mass. Growth Capital Corporation, a Patrick-created agency that provides financing for small businesses.

In addition, Patrick appointed several former or defeated politicians, including former state senator Patricia McGovern, who was named to the Mass. Development Finance Agency board of directors. Former state senator Linda Melconian was named a trustee of Greenfield Community College, while unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor Leland Cheung was appointed to the Mass. Technology Collaborative board.

Other last-minute appointees have no apparent ties to Patrick, including former Boston city councilor and former Suffolk County register of probate Richard Iannella, named to the Boston Finance Commission. He also chose Mayor Dean Mazzarella of Leominster, who criticized Patrick before he took office in 2007 for supporting convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer, for the Joint Labor Management Committee.

Iannella, a member of a well-known political family, said he welcomed a chance to serve in the unpaid position on the Finance Commission, an independent watchdog agency.

Baker has little power to reverse the appointments that Patrick made before his final 15 days in office, but a spokesman said Baker will review the late appointees nonetheless.

“The governor-elect feels the boards and commissions are important bodies and that the people of Massachusetts deserve only qualified individuals to serve on them,” said spokesman Tim Buckley.

Though appointments to boards and commissions can be a way to reward loyalists and influence policy-making, they can also be an administrative headache, forcing the governor’s office to find hundreds of potential appointees, sometimes with specific areas of expertise.

Few of Patrick’s late appointees will get paid positions. Charlene Bonner, elevated to chairman of the Parole Board in November, is one of the few exceptions. She earned $120,000 as a board member this year.

Meanwhile, pension reform in 2009 prevents board members from counting their unpaid board service toward their state pensions, reducing the financial incentive to serve.

Patrick’s office has struggled to keep up with all the vacancies. The Globe found earlier this year that more than one-third of the seats on 640 state boards and commissions tracked by the governor’s office were either vacant or filled by members whose terms had expired.

In some cases, boards had to cancel meetings regularly for lack of enough members to do business, while other boards simply met anyway, leaving votes open to a potential court challenge.

Though Patrick has been working to fill the vacancies, as of Dec. 26, the governor’s office still lists 583 vacancies and 732 holdover board and commission members who are serving beyond the end of their official terms.

Patrick’s late appointees also include his former lieutenant governor, Timothy P. Murray, who resigned the state’s number-two job under fire in May 2013 to take a job with the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce. In October, Patrick named Murray to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Advisory Council.

He resigns under scandal and this is the.... reward?

Patrick also named nine members to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, which was faulted for lax oversight of the Framingham company blamed for a nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis that killed 64 people in 2012. Patrick fired the director of the pharmacy board, James D. Coffey.

Related: The Meningitis Murders

Also see: US seizes $18.3m linked to 3 ex-pharmacy executives

The most costly legacy of all, it being so fatal.

“We are governing through the last day of the Patrick administration, and that includes continuing to appoint highly qualified individuals to serve on boards and commissions in state government,” explained Jesse Mermell, Patrick’s communication director.

John Walsh, director of Patrick’s political action committee, said the governor’s goal has always been to choose the best person for a job, not to dole out political rewards.

“If you look at his appointments from the beginning of his administration, there wasn’t a tight screen where you had to be a true-blue believer — just that you had to be good for the job,” said Walsh.

I suppose they have to believe it; otherwise, their entire life is called into question.

--more--"

You know how you are paying for all this?

"Final hearing set on rise in state fees; Beaches, parks, skating rinks hit by proposal" by Joshua Miller, Globe Staff  December 28, 2014

Speak now — or perhaps acquiesce to higher fees for your next camping trip in a state forest, day at one of the state’s beaches, or skating session at one of its local rinks.

Looks like we are staying home or going out of state.

The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, which has proposed raising fees for activities such as using a state campground site, parking at a state beach, and renting time on a state-operated ice rink, is holding its final public hearing on fee changes Monday afternoon.

After that hearing, those fees could get the green light from the administration of Governor Deval Patrick, during his final days in office.

Patrick, a Democrat who did not run for a third term, departs Jan. 8 when Governor-elect Charlie Baker, a Republican, is scheduled to take the oath.

A Baker spokesman did not directly reply when asked if the incoming governor — who has repeatedly said he will not raise fees — supported or opposed the proposed increases.

“We will have an opportunity to review all recent actions, including these fee increases, once taking office to determine if they are in the best interests of the individuals, families, and communities who rely on these services,” said Baker spokesman Billy Pitman in statement Sunday.

They don't really need the money, but you know....

DCR, the agency that oversees a variety of Massachusetts natural, cultural, and recreational areas such as Walden Pond and Mount Greylock, held hearings on the proposed fee changes in Boston, West Boylston and Pittsfield in November, according to spokesman Bill Hickey.

The final public hearing is scheduled at 4 p.m. Monday at the agency’s main office at 251 Causeway St. in Boston. The comment period for weighing in on the proposed higher fees began Dec. 5 , and closes at 6 p.m. Monday

DCR has received one comment on the matter so far, Hickey said.

Fee increases include boosting the daily cost of a coastal campsite for state residents from $15 to $22, and ramping up a 50-minute peak-hour rental of a DCR-operated ice rink by a youth hockey organization from $175 to $200.

The agency has put the full set of proposed changes — which include some new fees — online.

Hickey said DCR has not raised fees for years, the proposed changes were the result of an 18-month process. If the new, higher fees were adopted, Massachusetts would be in line with other New England states, he said.

As if that justifies further looting.

“It is important to remember that even with these modest proposed increases, Massachusetts will still be on the lower end of the median in terms of fees,” Hickey said in an e-mail.

The state agency is able to retain a significant chunk of the revenue generated by its fees, with the rest going to the general fund.

“The additional revenue generated from these fee increases will further help DCR maintain our state park system, the ninth largest in the country,” Hickey said, adding that includes staffing, capital improvements, and general park operations.

Although the fee increases could be approved before Patrick leaves office, they would not take effect for at least two weeks — after Baker has taken the reins of state.

During his 2014 campaign for governor, Baker repeatedly said he would not raise taxes or fees.

Baker and his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Martha Coakley, went back and forth over the issue of fees in the race’s final televised debate in late October.

Baker said he would “absolutely” not raise the state income tax.

Then asked about fees, Baker said, “I don’t think we should raise fees.”

A moderator pressed him whether he was saying he “absolutely” would not raise fees and he said, “I’m not going to raise fees.”

Later in the debate, Coakley pushed him on whether he had made a pledge.

“Are you signing that in blood, Charlie — you’re not going to raise fees?” Coakley asked her GOP opponent.

Baker’s reply: “I’m not going to raise fees.”

--more--"

Related: Did Deval Patrick give Milton a helping hand?

It's called the hand of corruption.

Can such things possibly be pardoned?

"Convicted of attempted murder, man pleads for pardon; DA, victim’s kin say man has reformed" by Joshua Miller, Globe Staff  December 23, 2014

More than two decades ago, True-See Allah was convicted of attempted murder in a Boston shooting that left a man paralyzed for life.

On Monday, in an extraordinary scene, some of the state’s top law enforcement officials argued that Allah, who has been out of prison since 1998, deserves a pardon.

They said Allah had served his time, reformed his ways, been forgiven by the victim, and dedicated his life to helping steer at-risk youth and inmates to lives of purpose instead of ones of crime.

“I believe in accountability, but I also believe in redemption,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in testimony before the Governor’s Council, an eight-member panel that approves or denies pardons submitted by the governor. “He is redeemed,” the hard-bitten prosecutor added.

The victim’s widow, on behalf of her and her family, publicly forgave Allah at the hearing.

A top public safety aide to Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, top former Boston Police Department officials, and Andrea J. Cabral, the state’s executive secretary of public safety, also testified in favor of a pardon for Allah, who works for the Suffolk County sheriff’s office helping inmates make the transition from jail to freedom.

“This man exemplifies exactly what the criminal justice system promises if one does the work,” Cabral said, adding that in all her years in law enforcement — as a prosecutor, sheriff, and top state official — she had “never known anyone more deserving of a pardon than True-See Allah.”

Patrick’s submitted the proposed conditional pardon.

--more--"

Related:

"True-See Allah, a former gang member convicted for attempted murder, and Thomas Schoolcraft, a New Hampshire man convicted of breaking and entering as a teenager, will see their records wiped clean following the vote by the council, which has the final say on petitions for pardons."

Another record wiped clean:

"A judge has tentatively approved the settlement of a class action lawsuit aimed at improving the treatment of patients with mental illness at troubled Bridgewater State Hospital, including a drastic reduction in the use of physical restraints and solitary confinement." 

See: Bridgewater As Bad As Ever 

That's the discouraging thing there.

"State deal pledges better care at Bridgewater Hospital" by Michael Rezendes, Globe Staff  December 17, 2014

We've heard all this before, about 20 years ago.

An independent monitoring group will open an office inside troubled Bridgewater State Hospital for the next two years to make sure that prison guards and clinicians continue reducing their use of isolation and physical restraints on mentally ill patients, under a deal with the state that averts a lawsuit.

“The agreement guarantees that over the next couple of years, someone will be in there watching, looking at the data, talking to the patients and staff, and really trying to make sure that people are treated appropriately as patients and not as prisoners,” Christine M. Griffin, the executive director of the federally funded Disability Law Center, which reached the agreement with the Patrick administration, said Tuesday.

The center had threatened to sue Massachusetts for what it said were widespread human rights abuses at Bridgewater, where the Globe has identified three deaths in recent years related to the use of restraints to control patients.

Happened on whose watch?

Under the agreement worked out over the last five months with Governor Deval Patrick, the center will not sue as long as the state follows through on a host of promises of better care, including a plan to move most of the patients to a proposed facility at an undetermined location to be run by the Department of Mental Health.

Carol Higgins O’Brien, Patrick’s newly named Department of Correction commissioner, praised the agreement.

“We look forward to continuing this good work with DLC and other stakeholders to further strengthen care for patients at” Bridgewater State Hospital, she said.

The agreement stops short of meeting one of the Disability Law Center’s central demands: transferring control of the facility from the Department of Correction to the Department of Mental Health. The group released a scathing report in July charging that prison officials are not qualified to run the mental health facility.

However, Patrick has filed a sweeping legislative proposal that includes the establishment of a new, secure facility under the management of the Department of Mental Health for Bridgewater patients who may be violent but are not serving criminal sentences. That represents about 80 percent of the patients being treated at Bridgewater today.

And Griffin said her organization will continue to pursue the goal of transferring control of Bridgewater State Hospital itself when Governor-elect Charles Baker takes office in January. “We made no bones about the fact that we still think this should be a DMH facility,” Griffin said.

Bridgewater State Hospital, a state prison that offers mental health care to men who have come in contact with the criminal justice system, houses a wide array of mental health patients, from dangerous convicted criminals to men charged with minor infractions such as misdemeanor assault and battery who are undergoing psychiatric evaluations for their competency to stand trial.

As of a week ago, only about 58 of Bridgewater’s 265 mental health patients were serving criminal sentences.

The Disability Law Center launched a six-week, on-site investigation into practices at Bridgewater after a series of stories in the Globe, including a detailed account of the death of Joshua K. Messier, a 23-year-old mental health patient sent to Bridgewater for a psychiatric evaluation who died as guards wrestled him into four-point restraints, cuffing his wrists and ankles to a small bed.

After Messier’s death, Bridgewater officials increased the use of four-point restraints by 27 percent at a time when officials at similar institutions in other parts of the country were dramatically reducing their reliance on these tactics, concluding they were dangerous and often harmful to the well-being of mental health patients.

A more recent Globe story recounted the deaths of two more mental health patients — Bradley Burns and Paul Correia — whose deaths were attributed by the state medical examiner’s office to the use of restraints. Burns was held in five-point restraints for 16 months, 23 hours a day, before he died of a heart arrhythmia.

That looks like TORTURE to me.

Under the agreement with the Disability Law Center, the administration has pledged to discontinue the use of five-point restraints — strapping a patient down by chest, wrists, and ankles — altogether and to revise its official policy on the use of seclusion and restraints by mid-January.

Meanwhile, Bridgewater State Hospital officials have replaced existing restraint beds with larger, more comfortable beds, and cut the overall use of restraints by 86 percent and the use of seclusion by 68 percent, since January, according to the Department of Correction.

Other features of the new agreement include:

■ training of prison guards and clinical staff in the proper use of restraints and in ways to calm patients so that restraints aren’t needed.

■ the creation of “cool-down” rooms for agitated patients.

■ increased efforts to transfer Bridgewater patients to existing Department of Mental Health facilities.

“The most significant aspect of the agreement is that they are committing to staying with these reductions in the use of seclusion and restraints,” said Stan Eichner, the Disability Law Center’s litigation director. “That’s what the whole thing was about.”

Still, the Patrick administration has said Bridgewater officials will continue to face significant challenges that can be met only with financial assistance from the Legislature.

They always need more money!

Bridgewater faces a shortage of mental health clinicians compared with facilities run by the Department of Mental Health. At Bridgewater, each psychiatrist is responsible for twice as many patients as psychiatrists at Department of Mental Health facilities, according to the Department of Correction.

In addition, staff members at Bridgewater have faced an increase in the number of assaults by patients as they have relied less on seclusion and restraint to control them.

Maybe they should just take 'em out back and shoot 'em.

Administration officials and lawyers working under Attorney General Martha Coakley also are nearing a settlement of a separate class action lawsuit filed earlier this year on behalf of patients who allegedly endured prolonged seclusion and restraints for weeks or even months at a time. State laws say these measures can be used only in emergencies.

Roderick MacLeish Jr., the attorney representing Bridgewater patients, praised Patrick for reaching an agreement with the Disability Law Center, adding that he expects to reach a settlement next week.

“Notwithstanding the agreement” with the Disability Law Center, MacLeish said, “Bridgewater remains a troubled institution.”

--more--"

This will trouble you, too:

"Report cites rise in cases of child abuse in Mass.; State advocate says data show need for services" by Jenifer B. McKim, New England Center for Investigative Reporting  December 29, 2014

Allegations of child abuse outside of children’s homes rose by 16 percent in Massachusetts in 2013, according to a new state report, providing fresh incentive for Governor-elect Charlie Baker and his administration to keep the focus on vulnerable children after a tumultuous year for child welfare officials....

Gail Garinger, head of the Office of the Child Advocate, said her annual report underscored the need for a larger web of state officials and advocates to be involved in protecting children beyond the embattled Department of Children and Families....

The Department of Children and Families has been under intense scrutiny since the high-profile disappearance and death of 4-year-old Jeremiah Oliver, whose body was discovered in April 2014 along a central Massachusetts highway months after his disappearance. His mother faces charges of child abuse.

The subsequent controversy led to the resignation of the DCF commissioner, Olga Roche. Governor Deval Patrick increased the agency’s budget this year by $14.2 million to $827 million in order to hire more social workers and supervisors and instill other improvements.

I wonder how much of that is being cut back.

Erin Deveney, interim DCF commissioner, said last week in a written statement that the agency already has hired 548 new social workers, supervisors, and managers since January, and she looks forward to “continuing this progress over the coming years.”

The agency has 269 more social workers on staff than it did earlier this year, state officials said.

Billy Pitman, a spokesman for Baker’s transition office, said in a written statement Tuesday that the governor-elect “values the advice and recommendations of the Office of the Child Advocate and the important role the office plays in keeping our children safe.”

Pitman said Marylou Sudders, Baker’s Health and Human Services secretary-designate, has worked closely with the office and “will continue to recruit strong leaders to take on the challenges at hand in order to protect Massachusetts’ most vulnerable.”

Garinger joins a growing number of public officials and child advocates putting pressure on Baker to focus on children’s issues when he takes office in January.

Earlier this month, an appeals court judge upheld a lower court ruling dismissing a lawsuit against the Department of Children and Families, but highlighted the need for the state to make improvements in the way officials protect vulnerable children.

See: Appeals court upholds dismissal of group’s suit against DCF

“The plaintiffs have articulated convincing moral arguments that Massachusetts should do better,” Chief Judge Sandra Lynch wrote in the ruling.

“Improvements in the system must come through the normal state political processes. The problems are now for the Governor and legislature of Massachusetts to resolve.”

Garinger’s report, released earlier this month, is a stark reminder of the dangers faced by at-risk children....

“We can’t just throw money at the issue,’’ but will crow about it any time we do.

--more--"

Rather than pardon him just give him a ride out of state:

Patrick’s proposal could help ride-sharing

"Dozens of taxi drivers and industry supporters decried Governor Deval Patrick’s proposed last-minute regulations for ride-sharing companies Wednesday, calling the process rushed and urging state transportation officials to get drivers for the popular services off the streets. “This is government at its worst,” Stephen Regan, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Regional Taxi Advocacy Group, said at an emotional and raucous public hearing. “This was all done behind the scenes. There has simply been no input.” Battles are raging across the country to regulate companies such as Uber and Lyft."

Uber, Lyft save big by avoiding regulations

State issues initial regulations for ride-sharing operations

"The car service network Uber was expecting its biggest night ever on New Year’s Eve. It warned customers that prices would likely surge to several times normal at certain hours, when rider demand would outstrip the supply of drivers. The price surge certainly came. Some parts of Greater Boston saw fare multipliers of up to six times, turning what is normally a $20 ride into a $120 one, according to the app SurgeProtector, which connects directly to Uber’s system. But drivers in Boston and other cities where Uber operates weren’t happy at the end of the night. Some said in posts that they hit the road because the company said they might make the equivalent of $60 per hour. But the morning after, some drivers complained that the huge response from occasional drivers meant revelers could wait out short-term surges and lock in their rides when fares dropped. “Boston also a bust tonight,” wrote one local Uber driver on the website Reddit. “Like a normal weekend night for me.” Taylor Bennett, an Uber spokeswoman, said the company was “focused on making the driving experience as great as possible for our partners.” She declined to provide local statistics about the number of drivers or rides on New Year’s Eve, but the company said in a post on its blog that it gave 2 million rides that night in cities around the world."

"What the battle boils down to, not surprisingly, is money."

Related: Jewish-Owned Uber Expelled From Spain 

Now I know why Uber is getting so much attention from my jew$paper.

Uber driver is accused in rape, kidnapping of customer

Uber driver charged with rape held without bail

Police offer tips on Uber, other services after assaults

Boston officer denies he assaulted Uber driver

Ex-investigator for RMV indicted on theft, extortion charges

In South Africa, police impound Uber drivers’ autos

New law targets unsafe drivers

Didn't mention Bickoff by name? Must have been an accidental oversight.

Look at what else he is leaving behind:

"Patrick’s selections leave imprint on Mass. judiciary" by David Scharfenberg, Globe Staff  December 21, 2014

Governor Deval Patrick will leave plenty behind when he steps down next month, from the foundations of a multibillion-dollar casino industry to lingering questions about a troubled medical marijuana rollout.

But he may leave his deepest, most enduring imprint on the state’s sprawling judiciary.

In his two terms, Patrick has appointed nearly half of the state’s 411 judges — putting child support disputes, murder trials, and questions of constitutional law in the hands of a substantially more diverse bench for decades to come.

“He’s had a very dramatic impact on the workings of the court system,” said Martin W. Healy, chief operating officer and chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Bar Association. “Much more than any governor in recent history.”

Patrick has had his share of setbacks. Nine of his picks for the bench failed to win confirmation or withdrew in the face of opposition; that’s more scotched nominations than any recent governor has endured. And some of his efforts at criminal justice reform fell flat.

The governor says his failure to coax state legislators into eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes is one of his chief regrets. And advocates say he put too much energy into an essentially bureaucratic struggle: his failed effort to move the scandal-plagued Probation Department out of the judiciary and into the executive branch. 

See: Sentencing This Blog to Probation

But Patrick’s signature push, adding more women and minorities to the bench, is widely considered a success.

“The governor was committed to diversity, in the very best sense of that word, but only with extremely well-qualified people,” said Margaret Marshall, a former Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court chief justice, a Republican appointee who was the first woman to lead the state’s high court.

Related: Free speech, press: Discuss

A focus on courtroom diversity can invite controversy.

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor faced criticism for her comment that a “wise Latina with the richness of her experiences” could be expected to reach a better conclusion than a white male judge. But in left-leaning Massachusetts, Patrick’s push to add more minority judges to the bench has provoked only scattered, private complaint.

His bigger problem came midway through his first term, when critics said the state’s first black governor had not yet done enough to diversify the bench — lagging behind his GOP predecessors in the appointment of black and Latino judges.

At the time, Patrick acknowledged his then-meager number of minority appointments was “not good enough.” But he urged patience. “I’ve been at this two years,” he told the Globe in an interview in December 2008. “At the end of eight or 12 years, judge the record. All right?”

Since then, the governor has appointed the Supreme Judicial Court’s first black chief justice, Roderick L. Ireland (since retired), its first black woman, Geraldine S. Hines, its first Asian-American, Fernande R.V. Duffly, and its first openly gay jurist, Barbara A. Lenk.

When new Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants took the oath of office in July, he marveled at the diversity of the SJC, calling it “a court where two justices have a spouse named Deborah, one justice a man, the other a woman.” He said his own appointment marked “two historic firsts: the first Jewish chief justice and the first chief justice to play soccer in the over-the-hill league.”

For all his focus on diversity, though, Patrick’s picks for the judiciary — from the SJC down to the district courts — still do not reflect the state’s demographics.

Forty-four percent of his 190 appointments are women, while 52 percent of Massachusetts is female. Seventeen percent of his picks are members of minority groups, while 20 percent of the state’s population is of color.

But his appointments do make for a substantially more varied group than his immediate predecessors’ — especially when it comes to gender.

Of the 65 appointments Governor Mitt Romney made during his single term in office, 13 percent were minorities and 28 percent were women, according to data compiled by the Joint Bar Committee on Judicial Appointments, a group of lawyers that vets governors’ nominees for judgeships. Acting Governor Jane Swift’s picks, during her short tenure, were 9 percent minority and 20 percent female.

Patrick, who worked as a corporate and civil rights lawyer before winning the governor’s office, also sought a broad range of legal experience, naming dozens of lawyers in private practice to the bench, a handful of public defenders, and a sprinkling of academics.

Prosecutors, who dominated the rolls of Romney’s picks, played a comparatively small role under Patrick, accounting for just 16 percent of his selections. Healy, of the Massachusetts Bar Association, said the governor’s practice of looking for nominees beyond the offices of district attorneys, the Massachusetts attorney general, and the US attorney amounted to a significant break with tradition.

Prosecutors, he said, are considered safe selections: They are well-vetted and come with built-in law-and-order credentials. “This governor has taken more of a bold step and said, ‘I want a bench that reflects not only the diversity of Massachusetts, but the diversity of the legal community,’ ” Healy said.

Patrick, in an interview last week, said he sought not just technical skill, but judges who would have a good touch with those who appear before the court. “People’s sense of justice depends on more than whether the facts were fairly found and the law was rightly applied,” he said. “It also has to do with whether they feel heard.”

Observers say it’s not entirely clear how Patrick’s judicial philosophy will play out on the bench. Gary Klein, a prominent Boston housing lawyer, said the Supreme Judicial Court has sent conflicting signals on consumer law, for instance.

But there is a broad consensus that the governor, who named five of the seven current members of the SJC, has built on a long tradition of well-regarded, generally liberal high courts.

Since Patrick named his first chief justice in 2010, the SJC has barred police from ordering people out of parked cars simply because they smell marijuana, struck down life sentences without parole for juveniles, and ruled that lenders cannot foreclose on homes without the proper paperwork.

The foreclosure decision, issued in 2011, was called a potential game-changer at the time. Many mortgages were bundled into investments before the financial crash, leaving a messy, twisted paper trail and — with the ruling — the possibility, many thought, that thousands of people could avoid losing their homes. But Klein, the housing lawyer, said it hasn’t blocked as many foreclosures as anticipated.

Wow, what a surprise.

Indeed, none of the SJC’s recent rulings have had the national impact of its Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision in 2003, which made Massachusetts the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. But the SJC is still considered one of the most important state supreme courts in the country.

A study published in the University of California Davis Law Review in 2007, taking decades of decisions into account, ranked the SJC the nation’s sixth-most influential state high court, behind panels in California, Washington, New Jersey, Kansas, and Minnesota.

Patrick’s chance to install a majority of the SJC and to fill so many seats in the broader judiciary is, in part, a function of longevity. He is the first governor to serve two full terms since Michael Dukakis in the 1980s.

But he also benefited from a steady stream of judicial retirements, including a surge this year brought on by a bump in retirement benefits. “Megabucks, lottery — he won the judicial selection lottery,” said Daniel B. Winslow, a former district court judge and legal counsel for Romney.

Not all of Patrick’s picks went through.

In 2010, for instance, nominee David Aptaker withdrew his candidacy after failing to disclose campaign contributions to a former state senator battling sexual assault charges and a former register of probate convicted of stealing money from state copying machines.

The governor also had a run-in with one high-profile selection.

Just weeks after Patrick appointed Ireland chief justice of the SJC, the judge published an opinion article in the Globe arguing that the Probation Department, embroiled in a patronage scandal, should remain a part of the judiciary.

That put him in direct conflict with Patrick, who was urging lawmakers to move probation into the executive branch and merge it with parole in a bid to create a more effective, seemless service.

An awkward private meeting between governor and appointee did little to change the situation. And Ireland, in a highly unusual move, later appeared with House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo at a press conference to advocate for his position.

Probation, in the end, remained in the judiciary. And John Larivee, chief executive of Community Resources for Justice, which advocates for criminal justice reform, says Patrick may have expended too much political capital on the fight. “That seemed to become the focal point of criminal justice reform,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s all that important.”

Probation, he said, can function equally well within the judiciary or the executive branch.

Larivee added that the governor leaves some critical work undone: completing the proposed overhaul of Bridgewater State Hospital, a Department of Correction facility that has come under fire for the death of three mental health patients; improving the women’s prison in Framingham; and eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses.

But he acknowledged the political difficulty of outlawing mandatory minimums altogether; district attorneys strongly oppose the idea. And he credited the governor with signing legislation that shrunk the length of some of them.

Larivee and other criminal justice reform advocates also praise Patrick for legislation that seals a person’s felony conviction and makes it unavailable to prospective employers after 10 years, instead of the 15 years designated under previous law. The measure, designed to make it easier for former convicts to get jobs, also shortened the waiting period for sealing misdemeanors to five years from 10.

This change in the state’s Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law, which Patrick had proposed during his first campaign, did not draw universal praise, though. Business interests said it hampered their ability to make good hiring decisions. At least one district attorney was a vocal opponent. And even a few Democratic legislators objected.

“I feel very strongly that we should be strengthening the CORI law and not making it more weak, and I feel that’s what this does, absolutely weaken the CORI law,’’ Representative James R. Miceli, a Wilmington Democrat, said after the vote. “People who have a history might end up in positions where they shouldn’t be.’’

The full impact of CORI reform, like much of Patrick’s judicial legacy, will only be known in time.

--more--"

"At portrait unveiling, supporters pay tribute to Patrick" by Joshua Miller, Globe Staff  January 04, 2015

Corinne Wingard, the 72-year-old Agawam resident, lauded Governor Deval Patrick for his integrity and authenticity, said his oratory and his message of change during his initial campaign for governor had drawn her into politics for the first time, and praised what she called his fulfilled promise to govern for all of Massachusetts.

“I think the governor has helped so many people in this state — people nobody ever paid attention to before,” Wingard said, her voice marbled with emotion.

Hundreds of supporters, many with similarly positive feelings toward Patrick, gathered Sunday for a celebration of his eight years in office, an affirmation of his accomplishments, and the unveiling of his official portrait.

The gala, which included the public unveiling and a private reception, marked the beginning of a flurry of final gubernatorial activities before Patrick hands over power to Republican Governor-elect Charlie Baker at noon Thursday....

--more--"

Related:

Protesters interrupt Patrick speech at celebration

They booed him as he walked out.

Obama praises Patrick during farewell radio show

As he prepares to take his leave, Deval Patrick ponders his role as the state’s first black governor

Patrick defends ouster of sex offender registry board’s head

Diane Patrick has made her role her own by opening up

Governor Patrick’s daughter gets engaged 

Others leaving with him:

Mass. Health Connector chief stepping down

Murray to launch business development venture

Patrick taps prosecutor to fill Bristol DA seat

Baker may override the move next week.