Thursday, September 28, 2000

Is it just my imagination or is this state simply turning into a political cesspool?

There was a time - not long ago - when a former federal prosecutor occupied the Corner Office and insisted everything and everyone pass a ``smell test.'' Bill Weld's olfactory senses may not have been perfect, but eventually if it smelled like garbage, it was tossed.

But not any more.

It apparently doesn't matter if federal investigators are breathing down your neck or if you're accused of approving the beating of a member of a rival union. If you're president of Teamsters Union Local 25, like George Cashman, you get to keep your post on the Massport Board of Directors.

And it's not as if this stuff is ancient history. Sure, the complaints and allegations by filmmakers of a pattern of strong-arm tactics and extortion by the union go back lots of films ago. But the most recent allegation - the beating of snack truck driver Susan Christy - happened just last month, according to Tuesday's account by Herald reporter Jack Sullivan.

Has anyone in the Cellucci administration bothered to ask Cashman what did he know and when did he know it?

``The allegations are shocking,'' Cellucci said Tuesday. ``The question is whether they are true and that's a job for the federal investigators.''

So how long will Cellucci wait? How many board decisions will be tainted in the meantime?

The only thing Cellucci has done is to appoint former Superior Court Judge Robert Barton, a respected jurist and former prosecutor, to research relevant state laws and regulations and to interview filmmakers about their experiences.

Determining if Cashman is a thug and ought to remain on a state board apparently is not part of his mandate.

The other great stench arising from Beacon Hill these days, of course, comes from the MBTA Retirement Board, which appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of its own executive director Jack Gallahue.

In this tail-wagging-the-dog operation, it's Gallahue who calls the shots and the shots included giving $7 million in loans to convicted arsonist and all-around nogoodnik Francis Fraine. There are allegations that Gallahue has accepted favors from Fraine (he insists he paid Fraine back for that Super Bowl weekend hotel bill charged to Fraine's credit card) and from the fund's managers. How unfortunate that the fund isn't subject to the state Ethics Commission!

(Let's see: Lt. Gov. Jane Swift has to come up with a $1,250 fine because a staffer did some baby-sitting, but Gallahue can take anything up to and including a hot stove and is home free. Is this a great country or what?)

The Gallahue mess is somewhat tougher to lay at the administration's doorstep - tougher, but not impossible. After all, three of the six members of the board are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the authority, which is, in turn, controlled by the governor. In fact, one current board member is the MBTA's general counsel. And yet just last week the six member board voted 5-1 to give Gallahue a vote of confidence. And we don't know who the only board member with a brain (and a conscience) is because the board isn't subject to the open meeting law either.

And as if to prove the administration is either very forgiving or that the Republican gene pool is really, really thin, the newest appointee to the Office of Administration and Finance is soon-to-be ex-Sen. Henri Rauschenbach of Brewster. Rauschenbach was acquitted in 1995 of charges that he accepted illegal payments from an investment banker in return for setting up meetings with high state officials. He acknowledged getting money and setting up the meetings, but insisted he did it simply because he thought the high-risk investments the banker was pushing were a nifty idea. Stupidity, the jury decided, isn't a crime. Now he gets a $100,000-a-year job at A&F.

Two decades ago the Ward Commission wrapped up its probe of corruption in state building contracts. But not all corruption is of the bricks-and-mortar variety. Some corruption is seeing wrong and doing nothing.

Words penned by the commission chairman, the late John William Ward, are as true today as they were then:

``The single, over-riding thing we have learned is the need for confidence by the citizens of Massachusetts in the conduct of their government. The depth of skepticism, sometimes to the point of outright cynicism, about elected and appointed public officials should be disturbing to private citizens, not just to the politicians. It is a measure of the alienation of people from government and of the erosion of the will to act as citizens.

``To restore general confidence in public life means constant and unceasing attention to the particulars of public life, not grand pronouncements about the general good and civic virtue.''

Constant and unceasing attention. That's a huge responsibility and right now the Cellucci administration is not living up to it.