House Speaker Robert DeLeo says he wants the embattled probation department to remain in the judiciary but is filing a bill that would put a professional administrator in charge of the business side of the courts including hiring and budget oversight.
Gov. Deval Patrick has pushed to move the probation department under his wing and pair it with the parole department. DeLeo dismissed that idea this morning in a speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. He said the report by former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, which recommends a number of reforms for the probation administration, convinced him he’d rather leave probation in the judiciary as long as there is a court administrator with business management acumen and a system that favors qualified candidates over favored candidates.
“I believe that the functions of probation are properly within the judiciary and so, should remain there,” DeLeo said. “As the Harshbarger report found, ‘probation officers act as trusted advisors to the judge …helping to design and impose probationary conditions that are most likely to help the offender avoid both incarceration and re-offense.’ This makes sense to me.”
Mary Beth Heffernan, the secretary of public safety, said the administration would continue to push for a unified system of probation and parole under the same roof.
“We think our proposal provides better public safety, more transparency, more accountability and more efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” Heffernan said. “We believe a unified system should be housed in the executive branch. I fear we will go back to the days of not knowing how may people are on probation, there won’t be accountability, there won’t be as much transparency.”
DeLeo said he will also seek to make the hiring process more transparent in all state agencies by having all recommendations for jobs put in writing and then make those recommendations of the hired candidates a public record.
“A job recommendation is a serious matter,” said DeLeo, who has made several recommendations for positions in the patronage-laden probation department, including his godson. “We all know that a job recommendation from a public official carries weight and I will be the first to say that all recommendations for successful candidates should be transparent.”
DeLeo, who was among a number of powerful pols cited in a scathing report for pushing friends and supporters for jobs in probation, declined to release the recommendation letters he’s written for candidates in the past but said “any of the recommendations I made were good recommendations and I don’t want to take any of those back.”
DeLeo abandoned his earlier stand to place probation under civil service, instead saying he would like a process similar to the State Police where prospects take an exam and only those who score above a certain level are eligible for hiring.
“After having had many discussions about this testing requirement, I have come to believe that this approach offers what I like most about civil service—an objective test—but a test without all the recognized flaws of civil service,” he said.
Heffernan said there was “some common ground” in the speaker’s proposal and Patrick’s plan, citing the merit-based testing as one area. But she said the governor remains adamant that the two agencies work as one to remove any taint of the old ways returning.
“We can’t afford to continue the bifurcated system,” she said.
Harshbarger, who’s leading a task force reviewing all of the judiciary’s administration, said DeLeo’s proposals are “a good first step” and praised DeLeo “for shifting some of his positions, to listening widely and broadly to a range of perspectives.” But Harshbarger said the argument over whether to merge probation and parole is secondary to cleaning up the mess.
“We need to get his right,” Harshbarger said. “We need to do the transformation, we need to move aggressively and that’s what we support, clearing the way on focusing on doing it right rather than where it lands.”