From “No Ordinary Leader” to “Business as Usual.” 

It’s hard not to see that as the trajectory Gov. Deval Patrick is on after the latest slap in the face to those expecting more from an administration that pledged to sweep out the culture of patronage and cronyism on Beacon Hill. The new outrage: the appointment yesterday of state Sen. Marian Walsh as the $175,000-a-year assistant director of the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority. [UPDATE: Salary, but not attitude toward patronage hires, adjusted.]

HEFA, a quasi-public authority that helps nonprofit institutions finance capital projects, seemed to be functioning fine without anyone in the assistant director’s position, which has been vacant for more than a dozen years. Yet the administration decided now was the time to fill the post — with the state budget bleeding red ink and talk of new taxes very much in the air — by handing the job to one of candidate Patrick’s earliest backers in the Legislature. Walsh, a West Roxbury Democrat, has served stints as the Senate chair of the taxation and banking committees, but has no formal background or training in the world of nonprofit bonding and debt.

With the state budget for the rest of the current fiscal year alone now as much as $1 billion out of balance, even after previous cuts totaling $2.5 billion, nearly everyone realizes that some form of tax increase is coming, along with more huge cuts in spending. State leaders need residents to view the crisis as something we’re all in together, but the tough times come at a time when public faith in state government is low — and falling.  Stories of outrageous pension abuses by one public official after another, plus corruption and ethics charges on Beacon Hill, are all feeding the distrust of an already cynical citizenry.

To secure any kind of buy-in on new taxes, state leaders have to show that they are serious about taking on sacred cows, ending time-honored practices that enrich the connected crowd, and sharing in the sacrifices they are asking of beleaguered taxpayers whose retirement accounts are in free-fall and whose jobs may be in jeopardy. That’s why Transportation Secretary Jim Aloisi’s recent dismissal of Senate President Therese Murray’s call for “reform before revenue” as a “meaningless slogan” seemed to be the most tin-eared comment that could possibly be made at this time.  (And this from the insider who was hired, despite a Big Dig-stained background, because of his keen grasp of politics and state government?)

It’s also why it struck such a raw nerve to see Patrick hire last month as the state’s new $150,000-a-year “stimulus czar” a guy who gamed the state pension system for the kind of ridiculous windfall the governor has regularly decried as the sort of excess that must end.

News of the Walsh appointment came on the same day the Globe reported that ex-House speaker Sal DiMasi handed out a raft of pay raises and promotions to State House staffers on his way out the door. It’s the kind of news story pairing that begins to make Patrick look much more like he’s part of the problem on Beacon Hill than the cure.