Saturday’s Boston Herald carried a story that is the kind Mayor Tom Menino loves to see. It chronicled how the city’s new digital constituent service effort, which lets residents file complaints about potholes or burned out street lights using a smart-phone app, now also lets them check online to see what action has been taken on the case. “The city is holding itself publicly accountable,” Chris Osgood, who helps run the city’s office of New Urban Mechanics, told the paper.
Recent Globe stories on the city’s Veterans’ Services Department are the kind Menino hates to see. The stories, including this one from last month describing a department “rife with the potential for waste and fraud” and a follow-up story last week reporting on the indictment of a 12-year department employee on fraud and extortion charges, paint a picture of a completely unaccountable city department being run on ancient systems using index cards to keep records and winks and nods to dole out funds for services.
Which is the real picture of Boston city government? Both, it seems. Nearly two decades after Menino took office as the nuts-and-bolts mayor short on vision but big on delivery of basic municipal services, city government is a frustrating mix of forward-looking innovation and hidebound incompetence. Following last week’s indictment, Menino issued a statement saying the city was implementing a set of reform recommendations in an independent audit of the department. The head of the veterans’ services office has also tendered his resignation.
But the question to ask is not whether the city is taking the appropriate steps in response to the revelations, but rather, why does it take an outside audit to explain to top City Hall honchos what’s going on under their noses?
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Yesterday’s Globe reports on plans by minority activists to push aggresively for redistricting plans that increase minority voting power. One of those leading the effort, Kevin Peterson, wrote this piece recently for CommonWealth‘s website.
The MetroWest Daily News supports an effort to bring better reporting and accounting to tax incentive programs.
Gov. Deval Patrick’s new book, A Reason to Believe, goes on sale and the early reviews are in. CommonWealth’s own Michael Jonas, writing in the Globe, says it isn’t a tell-all book but instead a recounting of the experiences that shaped his values and the idealism in which they are often wrapped. Patrick tells the Worcester Telegram that the book is a thank-you to the many people who have mentored him over the years. And the Herald dispenses with a review and launches the first installment of a three-part series on the missing chapters of his book.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo, who has touted a campaign finance law passed two years ago as a big step toward transparency in government, will not disclose donors who ponied up to his campaign at a big fundraiser last week until he is legally required to do so on July 20, several weeks after the state budget is typically passed. The Globe, just trying to be helpful, thought it would check to see if DeLeo wanted to get ahead of the reporting curve.
Former Attorney General Robert Quinn and lobbyists Judy Meredith and Arline Isaacson top Sal DiMasi‘s defense witness list.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Abington officials are waiting for final local aid numbers but are confident that they can close a half-million dollar budget gap without more layoffs after successive years of massive reductions.
Springfield looks forward to the renovation of the city’s train station.
Worried that heavy snow might cause roofs to collapse, Methuen spent $608,000 clearing the snow off seven school buildings this winter, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy says the city’s salary structure is out of whack. One reason: Her $82,000 salary is $100,000 less than what the schools superintendent makes. The Item has the story.
More than 1,000 Lawrence residents sign a petition calling for Mayor William Lantigua to resign, reports the Eagle-Tribune.
Some public sector unions in Lowell agree to eliminate a costly health plan, which is expected to save the city $1 million annually, the Lowell Sun reports.
Newburyport‘s school superintendent pushes for a Prop. 2 1/2 override.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Former State House News staffer Jim O’Sullivan, now embedded in Washington, sits down with Jon Keller for a chat about what’s happening behind the scenes in the nation’s capital and the difference in political machinations between Beacon Hill and the Capitol.
Does Scott Brown have an obligation to come forth with more information about the staff member at a Cape Cod summer camp who Brown said sexually assaulted him when Brown attended the camp as a youngster? Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, arguing that Brown is entitled to the same right to privacy as any other victim, says no; her colleague Joan Vennochi says yes.
Democratic political wiseguy Michael Goldman goes on NECN to talk about the ramifications – political and real – of the coming federal budget cuts.
The Christian Science Monitor looks at the winners and losers in the budget deal.
The New York Times profiles four of the House’s hardest freshmen hard-liners.
President Barack Obama will parry the GOP’s deficit-reduction plan this week, and taxes are on the table. The Wall Street Journal rounds up the budget compromise that enabled the two sides to stop talking week to week, and start debating long-term.
ELECTION 2012
Massachusetts’s landmark health care reform law turns 5, and all anyone can talk about is how it’s totally ruining Mitt Romney‘s White House dash.Count Doug Rubin among that crowd.
HEALTH CARE
Health officials are concerned that Lazy Cakes brownies and Dream Water, new over-the-counter products that contain melatonin as a sleeping aid for adults, could be mistakenly consumed by hungry children.
Americans spend fewer years in retirement than most people in the world.
TRANSPORTATION
Norton and Mansfield don’t want to talk about how to mitigate a possible South Coast Rail route through their towns, for fear such planning might encourage engineers to actually send the trains their way.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The newly formed Boston Tree Party kicked off its goal to plant 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees in public places around the city yesterday by planting its first pair in the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Via Universal Hub.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
State Rep. Daniel Winslow claims the Patrick administration is eyeing the Bay State Correctional Facility in Norfolk as one of the two prisons they plan to close for cost-savings and wants the public to weigh in at a town hall meeting he is planning.
Want to get the Download delivered immediately to your inbox or Reader? Sign up for the RSS feed.
{ ‘zone’:”mJAY4NgCT2K2tp-f70kl3Q”, ‘mode’:”meter”, ‘customPreCheck’: “preCheckCommonwealth100480″, ‘border’:”1yIHi39324jG-PxW9VMYnG”, ‘debug’:0 } function preCheckCommonwealth100480($) { return 1; }