On July 12, 2004, the state, seeking to save a few pennies in the financial bloodbath that was the Central Artery project, signed a Memorandum of Agreement empowering a new non-profit, the “Greenway Conservancy,” to take over the care and custody of the newly created Artery-long open space, essentially a glorified median strip that had been touted as the great community reward for all the project-related pain and suffering. The Conservancy was a creature of the Artery Business Committee, a consortium of powerful and politically connected local real-estate interests poised to reap huge benefits in soaring property values.

While the state officials were trying to get something for nothing, the Conservancy leaders were carrying out their long-standing plan to take control over the open space adjoining their properties and manage it so as to benefit their business interests — and to do so without spending their own money. Knowing how politicians work, the Conservancy dangled the prospect of a totally free lunch, with glowing promises of a meticulously manicured park, “clean, green, and excellent,” and, above all, free of undesirables (i.e., homeless people), the holy grail of urban parks in gentrifying cities – all to be paid for by private donors. Free! The politicians leaped at it.

And so the “Stone Soup” fable unfolded. The well-connected Conservancy leaders got the state to prime their free-money machine with a hefty public funding infusion – only as a jump-start, of course. The MoA said plainly, “It is the intent of the Parties that the Conservancy undertake its obligations under this Agreement and the Bylaws without relying on any federal, state or local funding (other than the specific funds committed in this Agreement).“ But that was soon to go by the wayside. The Conservancy operators discovered, upon sharpening their pencils, that, alas, they couldn’t possible make this the best, most clean, green and excellent park just on private donations, and they would need tens of millions of public dollars more to keep the Greenway from becoming a wind-swept wasteland of tumbleweeds (and, by implication – gasp — homeless people). And ever since, the state has been pouring money into this ballooning enterprise, with a show of hand-wringing, while the Conservancy interests worked on perpetuating their hold on public assets.

Now, the Conservancy interests have wangled a long-term commitment for funding and land lease, which will certainly become permanent. And now, dangling a few City dollars as a carrot, Mayor Marty Walsh is getting in on the game, strategically making the state a powerful ally in legalizing the Winthrop Square project, as he files his home rule petition asking the legislators to let the project violate the shadow laws.

But this is a manufactured crisis. There’s no real funding problem here — only incompetence and corrupt politics as usual, at taxpayers’ expense.

With all its hand-wringing, the one thing the state has never been willing to do is to get competitive bids for this maintenance work. (Of course, the Conservancy wouldn’t conduct a genuine bidding process, because that would expose, among other things, the inflated budget they’ve used to justify public funding. )

Nor has the state done an independent audit of the Conservancy, whose publicized budget has ranged, over the years, between $5 and $7 million.

How much does it really take to maintain these few acres?

Here are some rounded numbers from the Conservancy’s IRS Form 990 (most recent available is 2015, at http://bit.ly/2rSzXlj):

They have an annual contract with a sheltered work company that does most of the actual maintenance work for $600,000. They refuse to disclose, or get the company to disclose, how much those workers get paid; it appears that low-pay disabled workers are being used to replace public employees who would get prevailing wages and benefits. They also save money by recruiting 5,000 hours (625 work days) of volunteer work annually.

They reaped a half million dollars from commercial uses of the park, and another half million in income from a $15 million investment fund.

In 2015, the Conservancy’s Executive Director made $250,000; the fundraising director, $150,000; the park operations director, $150,000. (Boston’s mayor made $175,000, city councilors, $88,000, the Boston parks commissioner, $115,000; the governor, $150,000, the state parks commissioner, $130,000.)

Conservancy employee pay and benefits totaled almost $1.3 million, half of the “functional expenses” of $2.5 million. The other half went to “Contracted Services” and “Direct Program Expenses.” That looks like a $2.5 million budget, with only half going into the park.

So it appears that if the state dispensed with the Conservancy and simply paid for the contracted services and direct program expenses, it would cost substantially less than the $2 million the state has been giving them annually.

The Conservancy created itself and was chartered by the state wholly on the promise to fund its work ENTIRELY with private donations (a promise that was broken as soon as the ink was dry on the Memo of Agreement). Over the years, the state has poured into its coffers tens of millions of dollars – when the whole purpose of empowering a Conservancy was to have all the work done with private money (a goal that was then, and still is, naïve and irresponsible). And now, with the new extendable land-lease deal, the state will effectively give them the land.

Why hasn’t the state ever exercised due diligence in auditing and managing this private organization, engaged in doing public work at taxpayers’ expense, before giving away our land and money? Years ago, I used to go and ask this question of state officials and legislators; I was told that this boondoggle, for some reason, has ironclad political protection – probably the Kennedy connections — and no logic could sway them. That seems to be true to this day. I’m very disappointed in Stephanie Pollack, whom I had trusted, from CLF days, to see through, and stand firm against, such boondoggles; this shows the power of the political sausage machine.

The Conservancy’s involvement should be terminated, eliminating this artificial financial burden.

This is a public park, and the state should simply have incorporated it into its parks portfolio. But if the Greenway is going to get a dedicated stream of money (and I don’t know why it should), that should be state money, and a prudent and transparent budget should be publicly reviewed and approved for it every year. And if the work is not going to be done by the state parks work force but by outside contracts, they should be competitively bid, a basic good-government, good-business practice, with a requirement for prevailing-wage labor standards.