Suspended, and likely to be soon ousted, commissioner of Probation John O’Brien is fighting back.
O’Brien’s attorney, Paul Flavin, went on “Greater Boston” last night to repeat his allegations that he gave scores of notes from a variety of officials other than legislators thanking his client for helping someone they know get jobs. Flavin, as he told theBoston Herald yesterday, said not one of those notes made it into even a footnote in the scathing Ware report that has shaken the Probation Department and Beacon Hill to their cores.
“I think they keyed in on those points that they wanted to key in on,” Flavin tells host Emily Rooney.
Flavin says his client is being made out to be the scapegoat and, because he has lifetime tenure, Chief Justice of Administration and Management Robert Mulligan is looking for cause to fire him. Flavin says Mulligan is being “disingenuous” because he was one of the ones who wrote a thank you note to O’Brien after a relative was hired.
Flavin’s offensive forced independent counsel Paul Ware and his colleague, Kevin Martin, to explain to Jim Braude why they didn’t include the thank you notes in their probation report.
Scott Harshbarger, who followed Flavin on “Greater Boston,” said there’s some merit to the lawyer’s claim O’Brien was not alone and said the task force he is chairing will look at the wider picture of who knew what and did what and when.
The Herald, meanwhile, has been looking for a way to stake a claim of their own in the story, and seems to have found it by being the anti-Boston Globe, offering Flavin an alternative to the paper that has been beating the drum about O’Brien and his legislative ties. Flavin told the Herald that top aides to Gov. Deval Patrick lobbied the department for jobs. Patrick’s aides went right to the guys in charge of O’Brien’s sponsor lists. While the Herald doesn’t name names, it is similar to a report byCommonWealth in early October identifying two of Patrick’s aides whose name showed up on O’Brien’s list of sponsors making calls on behalf of four potential probation candidates.
The Herald also reports Acting Probation Commissioner Ronald Corbett canceled an interview appointment yesterday, after the paper started asking about donations he’d made to Sal DiMasi, Tom Finneran, Robert Travaglini, Mark Montigny andEugene O’Flaherty – all of whom have been identified as probation patronage heavyweights. CommonWealth also reported in September that Corbett, who has been tasked by the Supreme Judicial Court to use Ware’s report as a template for cleaning up probation, had made at least $2,350 in donations to many of the pols in the report.
It appears this story will only get hotter as the days get colder and the man at the center of the storm has no intention of going quietly into the good night.
–JACK SULLIVAN
EDUCATION
University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees chairman Robert Manning quit abruptly yesterday, the Globe reports. The speculation: he didn’t appreciate meddling by Gov. Deval Patrick and his education secretary, Paul Reville, as the board conducts a search for a new university president. The governor’s office says the abrupt departure has absolutely nothing to do with the escalating political fight over the board’s search for a new university president. Meanwhile, the Outraged Liberal is bemused by the notion Patrick is being accused of trying to politicize the UMass board, which once hired the former Senate President to lead the university and was greasing the skids to make way for a one-time congressman in the same post.
The Salem News says the state must renew its commitment to fund special education, which is a budget buster for cities and towns.
The superintendent of the Lynn schools tells the Item that a student was placed in timeout after allegedly kicking an elementary school teacher, knocking her out.
To avoid school closings, the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts argues that Mayor Thomas Menino should step in to help the Boston Public Schools close a $63 million budget gap.
The Globe reports on a Boston Foundation-sponsored study being released today that finds health care spending has so drained school budgets in the state that we’re losing ground in sticking with the promise of the 1993 ed reform law to fund adequately all districts in the state. More on the study from WBUR.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Bridgewater officials are scrambling to find a way out of returning $600,000 to the state they received for a “smart growth” development that never got off the ground, the Brockton Enterprise reports.
North Adams leans against a meals tax – unlike most of its neighbors.
LIABILITY
The Standard Times talks to some New Bedford area homeowners, businesses, and legal experts about what to expect in the first winter since the state’s highest court ruled in July owners can be sued for “unnatural” accumulation of snow and ice they don’t properly clear.
Snow you don’t! Newton aldermen come under fire for a proposal to fine residents if they fail to remove snow from sidewalks within 24 hours after a storm.
PUBLIC SAFETY
The Marblehead police force is under fire for handling of accident, the Salem News reports.
David Boeri, on WBUR, reports on a federal prosecutor who allegedly broke the law.
ENERGY
Patriots owner Robert Kraft wants to put a wind turbine in a Gillette Stadium parking lot.
While eastern Mass grouses about Cape Wind, the 10-turbine wind farm on Hancock’s Brodie Mountain in the Berkshires is on the verge of being up and running.
BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
Joan Vennochi finds a lot not to like about State Street Corp.‘s recent announcement of 1,400 layoffs while reporting a big bump in profits. Kind of helps explain the idea of a “jobless recovery.”
WASHINGTON
House Republicans, who have been urging budgetary restraint in the face of an ever-expanding budget deficit, have elevateda pork barrel king to the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee.
Textbook case: New Republic writer Noam Scheiber believes that Patrick’s victory holds important lessons for his BFF Barack Obama as he marches toward his own re-lection campaign. Via Political Wire.
TAX CUTS
Matt Viser accommodates all the members of the state’s US House delegation who want to vent on how mad they are over thetax deal Obama cut. Best quotes on the president’s alleged poor negotiating skills come from the two members auditioning for a 2012 run at Scott Brown. “We punted on third down,” says Steve Lynch. If he brought the president along to help him buy a car, says Mike Capuano, “I’ll end up paying more, and it won’t have a radio in it.” No word on whether they high-fived each other afterwards on their snappy saucing of the prez.
On the Globe op-ed page, the Atlantic‘s Joshua Green suggests Obama did the best he could – and that he got the stimulus-averse Republican to agree to some serious stimulus spending.
Lobbyists and legislators are scrambling to stuff a bill re-authorizing the Bush tax cuts with as many outside sections as will fit.
What might have been: Christine O’Donnell, the one-time Delaware Senate candidate who grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory for the GOP, placed the tax cut deal on the same “tragedy” level as the attack on Pearl Harbor and Elizabeth Edwards’s death from cancer. The Hill via The Weekly Standard.
OTHER STATE’S POLITICS
No girly man: California Gov-elect Jerry Brown calls a town-meeting for state lawmakers to break the very bad news about the Golden State’s fiscal crisis. First order of business is making painful budget cuts to trim a $25 billion deficit.
HOMELESSNESS
New York City officials are running a clinical trial of sorts, but in this case, their control group will be residents who are in danger of becoming homeless, but will be denied aid, as a way of measuring the effectiveness of the aid that does get doled out.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
One Major League Baseball team confirms the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. So now it’s officially official.
The Atlantic wonders: Are Republicans trying to bankrupt the states?
MISCELLANY
You might have toxic money in your wallet, the Eagle-Tribune reports.