Thanks again!

Regarding Sal’s indictment, the problem goes beyond Sal. With the notable exception of the late George Keverian, ALL of the House Speakers from Tommy McGee onward (and doubtless many prior to him) have been corrupt.

At this point, it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the only difference between the current Speaker of the House and a criminal is that the former hasn’t been indicted yet.

The past history of corrupt Speakers makes this more than a coincidence of successive personal failings. There is something about the job (indeed there are several things about it) which bring on the corruption. First and foremost is the immense power the Speaker has over the members – office space and supplies, committee assignments and chairmanships, just to name a few. Second is the undue influence the Speaker has over the legislative process, deciding whether proposed legislation is heard sooner, later or not at all. Third is the extraordinary financial investment that outside interests make in the Speaker, precisely due to the Speaker’s excessive power. Indeed, it would be surprising if a Speaker was *not* corrupt!

The House is a self-governing body. Only you and your peers in the House can change the rules which create this situation; we taxpayers and voters cannot. Unfortunately, the behavior of many of your peers is not much better – a diminished version of the treatment the Speaker receives from outside interests, reflecting members’ more limited influence. The recent ethics legislation (H3853), your peers’ attempt to deal with political corruption, is a case in point.

The legislation defines both lobbying the members executive and legislative branches broadly: anyone whose “regular and usual business” involves lobbying members of either branch, regardless of how much money they receive. However, the bill already has its lobbyists loophole written in: individuals whose lobbying is “incidental” to their daily business are exempt. “Incidental” means that during any one campaign finance reporting quarter, either the lobbyist engaged in less than 10 hours of lobbying OR the lobbyist was paid less than $2,500.

Thus, either keep the lobbying hours down, defer payments till a later period, spread the payments out over several periods, distribute the lobbying among multiple individuals, or have the client pay the firm instead of the lobbyist, and the lobbyist isn’t lobbying.

The bottom line is that we need you and your peers in the House to pass legislation without loopholes. As a group, you need to admit that like most groups, you can’t police yourselves and decide outside group will monitor you. Then you can move on to the business of fixing Massachusetts’ ailing budget.

Sal was indicted by the feds, who are able to use one-party-consent taping. That means that if any party to a conversation knows the conversation is taped, the recording is legal. Massachusetts, on the other hand, allows only all-party consent recording. It is not legal to tape any conversation (with only one exception, and it’s not suspected political corruption,) even with a warrant, unless everyone participating in the conversation realizes the taping is going on. Past attorneys general have asked for this power, with a warrant, but have always been turned down. Adding that was a recommendation of the commission that studied ethics laws recently. It would be nice to see a serious push to get it passed.

The state Ethics and anti-corruption laws that were passed 30 years ago after the Ward Commission investigated the McKee-Berger-Mansueto case have been steadily eroded. That erosion must be reversed.

More generally, people are fed up with all the special privileges held by those in what might elsewhere be low-level jobs. In Massachusetts, toll takers, MBTA employees, etc., are very well paid because they have political sponsors. That’s why they get to retire after 23 years; that’s why they get holidays no one else has ever heard of; that’s why repeated abuse of accidental disability pensions is not stopped; . . . and on and on. It is hard to persuade voters that everything has been cut to the bone when the tickets on the MassPike are handed to you by an employee. Everywhere else in the world, including almost every parking garage, that job is done by a machine. Why would the Pike, of all agencies, continue using human beings? Well, because those employees all have political sponsors.

It will take a serious push to make this change. I have considerable doubts that the Legislature is up to it, but they need to manage somehow.

It’s ridiculous and “head in the sand” posturing to expect the public to respect the claims of independence by officials who must vote on issues that their contributors are interested in. This puts the officials in an untenable position. They are forced to depend for financial support by the very businesses they are elected to tame for the overall public good.

Jim

Then we hear of the influence peddling and problems first with his “friends.” With this indictment, we now find out the money trail — a law firm assistant who indirectly acted as a bag man. This lawyer served as a “consultant” who did no work but collected a regular fee, from which he regularly gave 80 percent to DiMasi.

I do not know whether this arrangement represented bribery or extortion, but it is clearly wrong and unethical by anyone’s standards.

The problem is that now all Legislators are called into disrepute and looked up with suspicion by the public. It becomes more difficult to refer to state house occupamts as “honorable.” Earlier evidence showed that senators are involved in the process as well and two Senators have been forced to resign — one for taking money and the other for sexual aberrations. Governor’s operatives have, at a minimum, gone along.

One positive consequence is that the Legislature will be less likely to pass unwise “reforms” which are not reforms at all, and probably will not be able to pass a casino bill — because of the unsavory characters likely to benefit from legalized casino gambling.

But ethics commissions should be able to make statements using a lower standard of proof–and this should create an additional set of incentives to be ethical–where it is a little easier to shame a leader who might beat the rap in court, then show up in public proclaiming “I was acquitted and therefore innocent!” which is not necessarily true.

“Many of us do feel personally betrayed — no one would have voted for him had all the facts been known.” Might this imply Ethics Commissions should have greater access to documents, so that in the future the Reps have more information before they vote? Might this imply the House should write laws/rules clarifying what is privileged and what isn’t?