A lifelong state worker, whose best friend is a senator's dad, has been slapped down in a
$20,000 salary-and-pension grab that could have opened a Pandora's box of similar claims
and a multimillion-dollar rush on the state Treasury....
[Sen. Guy] Glodis and two other Worcester Democrats,
Reps. John Binienda and John Fresolo, worked to move the bill through parliamentary pitfalls....
After a two-month holiday hiatus, House Ways and Means administered its blessing on Jan.
15 and Sena's bill was suddenly fast-tracked through the chamber....
Three weeks later, [Senate Ways & Means Committee
chairman Mark] Montigny, who has his eyes on the Senate presidency, issued his endorsement and the
bill was gaveled through the Senate the same day - under a series of rules suspensions....
But Swift's refusal to sign off puts a spike in the
piece.
The Boston Herald
Jul. 22, 2002
Swift KOs $ grab by pol's pal
They had cake.
Because, of course, it was time to celebrate.
Just moments after a shameful roll call last Friday
that sealed the biggest tax hike in Massachusetts history, the men and women of your state Senate
repaired to the luxurious "reading room" for cake.
"They didn't even do it way back in (the Senate president's) office," said one disgusted
observer, who witnessed the $1.14 billion tax hike vote and its gleeful aftermath. "They had
cake right in the Senate reading room."
The Boston Herald
Jul. 22, 2002
Approving hike was cakewalk
by Cosmo Macero Jr.
The Massachusetts Legislature is finishing its
session in fine fashion. By the time our reps and senators split for the Cape, they will have raised
taxes, cut services and thumbed their nose at voters from all ends of the political spectrum....
Between snubbing the voters who enacted the Clean Elections Law and locking out the
petitioners looking for a vote on gay marriage, the Legislature scotched the tax cuts voters
enacted less than two years ago. This Legislature is nothing if not consistent: consistently
arrogant, consistently undemocratic and consistently contemptuous of the
referendum process. You get the feeling these guys would do away with elections altogether if Finneran
would just tell them how.
The MetroWest Daily News
Jul. 22, 2002
Consistent arrogance from the Legislature this session
By Rick Holmes
Birmingham was not alone in his hypocrisy. Senate minority leader Brian Lees complains that
Republicans are hurt by rules abuse, yet it was he who offered the abusive motion to
adjourn. Representative Jay Kaufman, a critic of procedural underhandedness when
committed by House Speaker Tom Finneran, supported Birmingham's underhandedness
because it suited his views. Senator Cheryl Jacques, normally so passionate about fairness
even for unpopular minorities, had no problem with cheating the amendment's supporters out
of a fair vote. "I'll take a victory on this any way I can get it," she gloated.
The Boston Globe
Jul. 21, 2002
From Bulger's playbook: A travesty on Beacon Hill
By Jeff Jacoby
"I am reading how our Great and General Court has just agreed to hit us with another
$1.2-billion tax hike," Freddy said, "and that does not exactly feel like a fresh breeze off the
water." ...
"But after it has been all said and done," Freddy continued, "we have a budget that gives us
all the opportunity to come up with another $1.2 billion in a tax hike."
"To pay for what we can't afford," I said.
The Salem Evening News
Jul. 22, 2002
Taxes up, services down: Welcome to the Bay State
By Bill Plante
Our out-of-control Legislature has finally run out its reign
of unchallenged arrogance. Journalist and columnists from across the Peoples' Republic of Taxachusetts have finally
recognized what has been wrought, and they are at last speaking out, speaking in unison.
No longer are we a voice in the wilderness.
The Beacon Hill Cabal has had its run; it is now over the
hill and on the downward slope toward retribution.
Because they got away with so much for so long they thought
they always could ... but that's not the way it works. They've finally overstepped. They're no longer fooling anyone. Everyone
realizes now that they too are at risk from this wave of tyranny.
The "Great and General Court" has finally gone too far, too
often.
There has always been a debate among activists and political
operatives over the fruits of the initiative and referendum process. We and twenty-three other states share it. The debate
has always revolved around whether the I&R process contributes to the dearth of candidates for public office; does the escape
valve of making and repealing laws translate into re-electing the same people who created the hardships?
It's always been an interesting theoretical debate, but it
has never been resolved. Until now.
Until our elected "representatives" chose to ignore ballot
question results in the wave we have experienced this year.
Beacon Hill pols have chosen the battle, brought it home to
us, have given us no alternative, left us no room to maneuver in that longstanding debate.
Until we elect a legitimate legislature which respects the
oath of office each member swore to uphold and truly represents those who elected them, anything else in meaningless. We've
fallen so far that it will take more than one election cycle to restore representative government here. But in the meantime,
that debate is on hold while we work to rectify the tyranny we collectively allowed to settle in and consolidate itself.
There's a big job ahead. Let's roll up our sleeves, folks,
and get to work
 |
|
Chip Ford |
The Boston Herald
Monday, July 22, 2002
Swift KOs $ grab by pol's pal
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
A lifelong state worker, whose best friend is a senator's
dad, has been slapped down in a $20,000 salary-and-pension grab that could have opened a Pandora's box of similar claims
and a multimillion-dollar rush on the state Treasury.
Francis X. Sena demanded the money after he was accidentally
overpaid by a computer glitch, and persuaded three Worcester lawmakers, including family friend Sen. Guy
Glodis, to push a special bill onto the governor's desk.
After surviving a 16-month legislative odyssey, acting Gov.
Jane Swift refused to sign it Friday, saying it was "an exceedingly ill-advised precedent."
The legislation would have boosted Sena's $1,018.78 weekly
salary at the Division of Industrial Accidents by $150 per week, and given him $20,000 in "back pay" over the four
years since the computer glitch was fixed and his pay was cut.
Had the bill become law, DIA could have faced claims
totaling $125,000 from 11 other workers with similar situations, sources say. Another 200 workers at agencies
statewide could also have made the case, pushing the tab as high as $4 million.
Meanwhile, the state is scrambling to plug a $2.5 billion
deficit, slicing and dicing entire programs.
The trouble began in 1996, when Sena, a 44-year state
employee from Worcester, won a promotion from investigator to "compliance officer," a move that boosted his pension.
While being promoted and given a pay hike, a then-undetected
statewide computer glitch tacked an extra $150 a week onto Sena's pay, a situation that persisted until 1998.
After the glitch, which affected more than 200 workers'
salaries, was discovered and fixed, Sena's weekly pay was reduced by $150, forcing a corresponding reduction in his
pension benefits.
Glodis took up Sena's cause, arguing in a letter to Senate
leaders that an "injustice" had been inflicted on the disabled Vietnam veteran.
The promotion required Sena to go to Boston every day,
adding "approximately 250 miles per week to Fran's commute plus the cost of parking," Glodis said.
That created a "tremendous amount of wear and tear" that may
have been responsible for Sena's two recent heart attacks, Glodis added.
"He turned his life upside down so that his retirement years
would be slightly more secure," Glodis wrote. "After performing his end of the deal for almost three years, DIA
ripped the rug and his future security out from under him."
Glodis and two other Worcester Democrats, Reps. John
Binienda and John Fresolo, worked to move the bill through parliamentary pitfalls.
Fresolo, a second-term, backbencher state rep, put his name
on the piece and filed it. Then Glodis and Binienda, both members of the leadership team, repeatedly resurrected it.
After a two-month holiday hiatus, House Ways and Means
administered its blessing on Jan. 15 and Sena's bill was suddenly fast-tracked through the chamber.
The bill sat paralyzed in the Senate Ways and Means Committee, largely because Wakefield
GOP Sen. Richard Tisei's mother is one of the 11 DIA workers whose pay was also cut
after the glitch.
Glodis intervened on April 23 with a letter to Chairman Mark
Montigny demanding "special consideration."
Three weeks later, Montigny, who has his eyes on the Senate
presidency, issued his endorsement and the bill was gaveled through the Senate the same day - under a series of
rules suspensions.
After languishing so long, the rush was on these past few
weeks, as the Legislature bears down on the July 31 end of formal sessions - after which any lawmaker can kill any bill
with a single objection.
But Swift's refusal to sign off puts a spike in the piece. A
simple veto would have given lawmakers the option of override.
Return to top
The Boston Herald
Monday, July 22, 2002
Approving hike was cakewalk
by Cosmo Macero Jr.
They had cake.
Because, of course, it was time to celebrate.
Just moments after a shameful roll call last Friday that
sealed the biggest tax hike in Massachusetts history, the men and women of your state Senate repaired to the luxurious
"reading room" for cake.
"They didn't even do it way back in (the Senate president's)
office," said one disgusted observer, who witnessed the $1.14 billion tax hike vote and its gleeful aftermath. "They had
cake right in the Senate reading room."
That's the favorite haunt of Senate President Thomas F.
Birmingham, who has adopted the room right off the Senate floor as his personal press briefing center and TV studio.
The cake moment was dripping with symbolism, even if it was
an alleged birthday bash for Sen. Bob Travaglini (D-East Boston).
Voters have long given up on finding traces of integrity in
the House. It was two years ago this week that the wags there got liquored up during an all-night spending spree - voting for
colleagues on budget items when they weren't even in the building.
One rep was on a jet to a family vacation when his voting
button was pushed three times.
But the Senate, under Birmingham, is supposed to be the body
with big vision. Instead, it has sunk almost to the declasse level of the House, with Senate leaders obsessed with
succession to the president's chair, uninterested in good ideas and blase to almost everything else in the
midst of their tax orgy.
One result: Some of the very issues that Birmingham and his
leadership team have pledged to fight for are suffering from this legislative malaise....
Return to top
The MetroWest Daily News
Monday, July 22, 2002
Consistent arrogance from the Legislature this session
By Rick Holmes
The Massachusetts Legislature is finishing its session in
fine fashion. By the time our reps and senators split for the Cape, they will have raised taxes, cut services and thumbed
their nose at voters from all ends of the political spectrum.
Wednesday, the lawmakers stuck it to 130,000 voters on the
cultural right who had wanted to get a referendum on gay marriage onto the 2004 election ballot. They had followed the
rules laid out in the state Constitution. They had signed petitions asking the Legislature to
consider an amendment which, according to the rules, is supposed to trigger a vote by
the full Legislature, sitting as a constitutional convention. If 25 percent of the lawmakers vote in favor
in two consecutive sessions, the amendment is put to a referendum vote.
But the senate president controls the agenda when the
Legislature meets as a constitutional convention, and Tom Birmingham chose not to follow the Constitution's rules. With
the assent of 137 legislators, he adjourned the session before the proposed amendment could
come up for a vote, stopping a democratic process in its tracks.
To Birmingham and the gay rights supporters who applauded
his action, the democratic process is OK unless it stands in the way of stopping a bad bill. The amendment, they say,
would take away the rights of gay couples, and you shouldn't be able to amend the
Constitution to take away people's rights.
The idea of an unamendable constitution is an interesting
one, but it's an idea, not the law of the Commonwealth. The law of the Commonwealth is the Constitution, and if you don't like
the way it allows people to vote on amendments, change it. If you think there are certain
issues that should be excluded from the citizen petition process, file your own amendment to
fix the process.
In the meantime, the law says you make these decisions by
bringing them to a vote. Someone who uses raw political power to prevent lawful votes on legislation legitimately submitted
is anything but a democrat.
Because Birmingham and his backers were afraid of an
up-and-down vote on the amendment itself, it's hard to know which of those who voted against early adjournment
were taking a stand in favor of democratic process and which favor the
amendment itself.
Let me be clear: I find this amendment discriminatory,
unnecessary and mean. But I feel confident that the people of Massachusetts would vote it down if given a chance. The
campaign might be divisive, as the opponents warn, but fighting for rights is rarely easy. The
campaign could be an affirmation of how far voters have come in terms of respect for gay
and lesbian citizens.
There's a nice symmetry to Birmingham's actions, since his
counterpart on the other side of the Legislature, House Speaker Tom Finneran, has spent the entire session undermining the
referendum process on another issue. Finneran thumbed his nose at the Constitution as well,
even ignoring a Supreme Judicial Court order to fund Clean Elections or vote to repeal it.
Between snubbing the voters who enacted the Clean Elections
Law and locking out the petitioners looking for a vote on gay marriage, the Legislature scotched the tax cuts voters
enacted less than two years ago. This Legislature is nothing if not consistent: consistently
arrogant, consistently undemocratic and consistently contemptuous of the referendum
process. You get the feeling these guys would do away with elections altogether if Finneran
would just tell them how.
Let it not be said, however, that this Legislature lacks a
sense of irony. After repudiating the stated wishes of voters left, right and center; after thumbing their noses at the
Constitution even in the face of Supreme Judicial Court rulings, the Legislature adopted a bogus Clean
Elections compromise that includes putting the issue of publicly financed
campaigns on the November ballot.
Given their record, why would anyone think for a minute
they'll abide by the results of that election?
Return to top
The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 21, 2002
From Bulger's playbook: A travesty on Beacon Hill
By Jeff Jacoby
Thomas Birmingham became the president of the Massachusetts
Senate in January 1996, succeeding the unpleasant William Bulger, whose pet he had been since his political career
began five years earlier. "There's nobody in public life I have more respect for," Birmingham
said at the time, which was a disappointment to the many Massachusetts voters who had
wearied of Bulger's disdainful and dictatorial methods.
One might have thought that after 6-1/2 years into his own
Senate presidency, Birmingham would be over his Bulger worship. But apparently he continues to approach difficult
situations by asking himself, "What would Billy do?" His crude sabotage last
week of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have enshrined the traditional definition of
marriage -- one man plus one woman -- was not just illegal, deceitful, and a slap
in the face of millions of Bay State voters. It was also a page right out of Bulger's playbook.
In 1992, 75,000 voters signed petitions supporting a
term-limits amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution. Under Article 48 of that constitution, their next stop was a joint
session of the Legislature, which is required -- not invited or permitted, but
required -- to put proposed amendments to a vote. If 25 percent of the 200 lawmakers had supported the
measure in two consecutive years, it would have moved forward to the state ballot.
But the amendment never came up. The Legislature voted
106-81 to send it to the bottom of the agenda, accepting Bulger's argument that time was needed to seek an advisory
opinion on its propriety from the Supreme Judicial Court. At every subsequent joint session, Bulger
refused to bring the amendment up -- even after the SJC advised that it was entirely
kosher. Time after time he stonewalled, blocking the vote the constitution mandated. When the
legislative clock ran out, the amendment was dead.
Later Bulger claimed that the vote to temporarily move the
amendment from the agenda had actually been a vote on the merits -- lawmakers "understood the import of the vote they
were casting that day," he said, and intended to kill term limits. It was an obvious lie; everyone in
the State House knew that a vote of 106-81 would not have killed term limits. On
the contrary, it would have kept the amendment alive, since 81 as more than the 25 percent
required.
The sleazy maneuver succeeded. The amendment never made it
to the ballot. Its proponents asked the SJC to order the Legislature to perform its duty, but the justices said they
didn't ave that power. Still, they made it clear that Bulger and his minions had violated the
Constitution: "Efforts to obtain term limits by a constitutional amendment foundered,"
they wrote, "because of the refusal of the Legislature in joint session to take final action on such a
proposal as the Constitution of the Commonwealth directed."
Birmingham had the chance last week to show himself a more
honest public official than his mentor. He chose instead to mimic Bulger's duplicity. He strangled the proposed marriage
amendment by allowing only a vote to adjourn, thereby denying more than 130,000
petitioners the up-or-down vote they were entitled to and wiping his feet on the Constitution
he took an oath to uphold. A Bulger wannabe to the end, Birmingham even
parroted his predecessor's claim that the vote to stab Massachusetts democracy in the back was actually
a vote to effect it. "Today we saw democracy in action," he smirked. "They may not like it,
but they lost 2 to 1."
It was the same old lie, and for the same old reason. The
vote to adjourn was 137-53, and 53 was more than the needed 25 percent. In other words, if it
had been a vote on the merits, the amendment would have advanced.
Birmingham was not alone in his hypocrisy. Senate minority
leader Brian Lees complains that Republicans are hurt by rules abuse, yet it was he who offered the abusive motion to
adjourn. Representative Jay Kaufman, a critic of procedural underhandedness when
committed by House Speaker Tom Finneran, supported Birmingham's underhandedness
because it suited his views. Senator Cheryl Jacques, normally so passionate about
fairness even for unpopular minorities, had no problem with cheating the amendment's supporters out
of a fair vote. "I'll take a victory on this any way I can get it," she gloated.
You don't have to be an opponent of same-sex marriage to be
dismayed by last week's travesty. Indeed, gay and lesbian advocates should find it particularly unsettling. For if
democracy in Massachusetts now means that full political rights are available only to those
who agree with the kings of Beacon Hill, it is gays, lesbians, and other minorities who have
the most to lose. Birmingham was willing to pervert the rules to kill an amendment they
deeply despised. The next Senate president may be willing to do the same thing to an
amendment they deeply crave.
Return to top
The Salem Evening News
Monday, July 22, 2002
Taxes up, services down: Welcome to the Bay State
By Bill Plante
'"It's hot," I said to Big Freddy as I sat down opposite him
in our usual booth.
"It's supposed to be, it's coffee," he said.
"No, I was referring to the weather," I said.
"It's July," Freddy said. "July is hot. December is cold.
This is not December."
"And you are not reading a calendar," I said.
"I am reading how our Great and General Court has just
agreed to hit us with another $1.2-billion tax hike," Freddy said, "and that does not exactly feel like a fresh breeze off
the water."
"That is a lot of money," I said, "even here in Massachusetts."
"Times are tough," Freddy said. "You want government to do
all those things government does, it costs."
"More than somewhat, as you would say," I said.
"It is all because of the disconnect," Freddy said.
"Disconnect?" I asked.
"Disconnect," Freddy said, "as when you just gotta have
something you can't afford, but you pull this string here, and that string there to get somebody else to pay for it. And,
meanwhile, they want something they can't afford, but they make a deal that if you back them, they'll
back you, and you get together to wheel and deal it through, and once the two of you
get going you run up against the others doing the same thing.
"Finally," he continued, "you put the whole thing together,
and you come up with the shorts, which means you have to put the arm on those out there who you are wheeling and dealing
for, and that's called a budget. The thing is when you've got a bad case of the 'gotta haves,'
you don't look too far down the road about the consequences, and that's what you call 'the
disconnect.'"
"But even with the tax hike, it will still fall short," I
said, "because millions are being cut out of Medicaid."
"It would fall shorter, if you did not put the arm on
everybody for more taxes," Freddy said. "It is down from where it was, which is not something to cheer about up on the Hill,
but it is down because the economy is in the sewer.
"On the other hand," he continued, "that does not mean you
want to give up the goodies. But if something has to go, you make it something like Medicaid because the hospitals won't
really turn somebody really sick away. They've got this pool thing for those who can't pay,
and if worse comes to worse, you pass some emergency help for a hospital about to go
under.
"The thing is, there is always tomorrow," Freddy said,
"which is another day. This is today, which I remind you is about three weeks late because the fiscal year ended three
weeks ago, and the budget still has to go to Jane Swift, who is still the acting governor, you should
pardon the expression."
"Who could veto some of the items," I said.
"And probably will, which takes the heat off those in the
House and Senate who can explain to the folks back home that they tried, but it is all Jane's fault. And if she comes down
too hard in some places, they can override, providing they have Tommy's -- Finneran and
Birmingham, that is -- permission.
"But after it has been all said and done," Freddy continued,
"we have a budget that gives us all the opportunity to come up with another $1.2 billion in a tax hike."
"To pay for what we can't afford," I said.
"Massachusetts is a great state," Freddy said, "because we
care."
Bill Plante's conversation with "Big Freddy" appear every
Monday in this space. His e-mail address is plantejr@southlandtech.net
Return to top
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