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For those of you who live in Mass I'm sure you are all up to speed on Jeff Perry.
Deval is playing politics here but I like what he did (I would feel the same if Perry was a Democrat).
Quote:
Governor Deval Patrick vetoed $104,000 yesterday destined for the sheriff’s department that hired former state representative and failed GOP congressional candidate Jeffrey D. Perry for a $110,000-a-year position this year.
Patrick said he slashed the funding not because Sheriff James Cummings had hired Perry, but because the position he was hired to fill had been vacant for two years.
The Barnstable line-item was part of a $325 million supplemental budget approved by the Legislature 10 days ago and signed by the governor yesterday.
“I’m going to sign all of it except the appropriation for the Barnstable sheriff,’’ Patrick told reporters as he headed into a meeting with House and Senate leaders. “By all accounts, including his, he has the resources he needs for his operations. We don’t have extra money to spread around.’’
Perry, who narrowly lost a hard-fought campaign against Democrat William Keating in November, was embroiled in a heated controversy during the race over his role as a Wareham police sergeant in the early 1990s in two illegal strip searches of teenage girls by an officer under his command.
Patrick’s veto puts the funding issue back in the hands of the House and Senate, which could reinstate the funds with override votes that require a two-thirds majority. It was not clear last night whether the Legislature, which had inserted the money into the budget after Patrick omitted it, was ready to take on such a controversial issue. A spokesman for House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said no decision has been made.
Perry’s hiring echoed one of the governor’s most serious political missteps in his first term. Patrick drew heavy criticism in early 2009 when he tried to force the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority to hire one of his political allies, then-state senator Marian Walsh, to a $175,000 position that had been empty for years. The public furor over the move forced him to back down.
Cummings, a friend and longtime political supporter of the former legislator, named Perry to the post of special sheriff in January, a position that made him second-in-command of the department. He said he chose Perry because of his eight years of experience as a Beacon Hill lawmaker and his tenure as a police officer.
But Patrick said his decision to veto the funding was based largely on the fact that the position had been vacant for two years and that state, county, and local governments are fiscally strapped. The governor’s first salvo against the sheriff’s department came in January, just after Perry was appointed, when he filed the supplemental budget with spending cuts restored to all of the state’s sheriff’s departments — except Cummings’s office. Each office had previously had its budget trimmed.
“There is no indication he needs that money. There is indication the other sheriffs do,’’ Patrick said, according to the State House News Service.
Cummings, in a statement, said his office has been treated differently than other county sheriff’s departments and that he has not been given a reason by the governor. He said he had responded to Patrick’s request to back up the budget item, but has yet to hear from him.
Perry was never disciplined in the case involving the illegal strip searches by an officer under his command, but the issue became a central theme of Democratic attacks ads. Two weeks before the November election, one of the victims broke her silence, releasing a statement in which she said Perry was unfit for public office because he failed to stop the assault. Perry acknowledged that he was at the scene but said he did not witness the assault.
Cummings rejected the allegations that Perry failed to act on or covered up the assault. He said he had hired a former FBI agent to investigate the matter and was satisfied that Perry had acted properly.
The state Democratic Party sharply criticized Perry’s hiring, noting that Cummings had said he needed more funds to run the jail just days before he hired Perry.
At the time of his hiring, Perry said he wanted to return to public service, having given up the legislative seat he had held since he was elected in 2002. The sheriff’s post would also add a significant boost to Perry’s pension: As a law enforcement official, he could retire at 55 and collect his full benefits. Most state workers must wait until age 65 to get their full pensions.
Perry has said the additional pension benefits were not his interest, but rather, he wanted to return to public safety work.
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That's all fine and dandy, as I like the fact that needless positions and spending are being either denied, or eliminated. I just can't throw any alcolades to the governor since he once tried to create a position for a pal out of thin air. If this were a democrat looking for that job and the associated money I bet it wouldn't be line item vetoed at all. Matter of fact we know it wouldn't (see below). Again, I'm glad he gave the finger to the $104k for that hack job Perry was seaking, but his own personal history proves he's FOS when it comes to crap like this.
Just last month there was this.
Quote:
BIALECKI NAMES FORMER MURRAY CAMPAIGN AIDE TO NEW, $105,000 "GATEWAY" POST
By Matt Murphy
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MARCH 11, 2011….The former director of Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray's political committee has been hired to a new $105,000-a-year job in charge of coordinating the Patrick administration's "Gateway Cities" agenda.
A day after it was announced that Jennifer Murphy would be leaving as director of the Citizens Committee to Elect Tim Murray, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki introduced Murphy as the state's new assistant secretary for gateway cities initiatives.
The job, newly created within the Patrick administration for Murphy, will pay a salary of $105,000 and involve "work across the eight cabinet secretariats to develop, coordinate and implement the Patrick-Murray Administration's Gateway Cities agenda to best address the needs and fully maximize the potential of these twenty-four distinct municipalities," according to Bialecki, who is traveling with Gov. Deval Patrick in Israel.
In an e-mail to staff on Friday morning, Bialecki said Murphy will become the "point person" for the administration to build on the work it has done to help revitalize the older so-called Gateway Cities targeted for state assistance to help revitalize those mostly urban, one-time industrial centers like Lowell, Fitchburg, Pittsfield, Worcester, Springfield and Holyoke.
"This will involve creating true city-state partnerships, with each party accepting and executing its respective responsibilities, including the Governor's stated priorities of job creation, closing the achievement gap, health care cost containment, and ending youth violence," Bialecki wrote.
Bialecki noted that the Patrick administration has invested $246.9 million in capital funds to help modernize affordable housing units in the designated cities, and put $7.1 million in federal stimulus funding toward upgrading heating systems in public housing developments for those communities.
Before spending four years working on Murray's political team, Murphy gained experience working in the Legislature, the Hampden County district attorney's office and the city of Springfield.
The announcement of Murphy's hiring came a day after Murray's political committee named Daniel Donahue as her replacement, but declined to elaborate on Murphy's next move.
Last week, the administration similarly announced the hiring of former state Democratic Party executive director Stacey Monahan as chief of staff to Health and Human Services Secretary Judy Ann Bigby on a Friday afternoon, a day after the party named her replacement.
"It's got to be Friday if we're hearing of a Patrick-Murray patronage hire. It's kind of sad to see with everything going on at the Probation Department that patronage is still alive and well in the Patrick-Murray administration," said Tim Buckley, communications director for the Massachusetts Republican Party.
Buckley said that with the state facing deeps gaps between spending and revenue and contemplating cuts to vital programs and services, now is not the time to be creating jobs. "Any time we're adding six figure salaried jobs to state government, it is usually a bad idea, but especially in these times," Buckley said.
-END-
03/11/2011
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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." Leo Tolstoy, 1897
That's all fine and dandy, as I like the fact that needless positions and spending are being either denied, or eliminated. I just can't throw any alcolades to the governor since he once tried to create a position for a pal out of thin air. If this were a democrat looking for that job and the associated money I bet it wouldn't be line item vetoed at all. Matter of fact we know it wouldn't (see below). Again, I'm glad he gave the finger to the $104k for that hack job Perry was seaking, but his own personal history proves he's FOS when it comes to crap like this.
Just last month there was this.
Not happy about the Murphy hiring either. You did see in my OP that I would have felt the same about Perry if he was a Democract.
Not happy about the Murphy hiring either. You did see in my OP that I would have felt the same about Perry if he was a Democract.
Oh I did. I'm in no way pointing anything at you. I think you and I are on the same page with respect to the needless positions and the associated costs. I'm just trying to shed a little light on how politicians, in this case Patrick, tend to operate. It's do as I say, not as I do type policy.
BTW, notice how these failed candidate, career government related job types, always end up with a job paid for by you and me. Cronie politics and patron hiring baby. It's the Massachusetts way.
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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." Leo Tolstoy, 1897
Oh I did. I'm in no way pointing anything at you. I think you and I are on the same page with respect to the needless positions and the associated costs. I'm just trying to shed a little light on how politicians, in this case Patrick, tend to operate. It's do as I say, not as I do type policy.
BTW, notice how these failed candidate, career government related job types, always end up with a job paid for by you and me. Cronie politics and patron hiring baby. It's the Massachusetts way.
You may shoot me for this but I'm looking seriously at public sector positions after being in the private sector all of my working life. Does that make me a bad person?
Back to Mass. Is Mass any worse than any other state when it comes to this kind of stuff? Scott "crush the unions" Walker just did the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
This kind of stuff is why I'm a huge advocate of a legitimate 3rd party.
You may shoot me for this but I'm looking seriously at public sector positions after being in the private sector all of my working life. Does that make me a bad person?
Back to Mass. Is Mass any worse than any other state when it comes to this kind of stuff? Scott "crush the unions" Walker just did the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
This kind of stuff is why I'm a huge advocate of a legitimate 3rd party.
Mass. is pretty bad when it comes to this type of corruption and patronage.
Mass. is pretty bad when it comes to this type of corruption and patronage.
I don't think it's worse than any other State. Mass gets a bad rap as "Taxassachusetts" but based on the current numbers Massachusetts is doing a heck of a lot better than other States right now and our tax burden is middle of the road.
Interesting move by Deval Patrick
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