We’re getting an early taste of the Boston mayor’s race, and it has a decidedly bitter flavor.
Boston should be rolling out the red carpet for candidates who are serious about presenting a vision for the city’s future and challenging the record of an incumbent who has presided virtually unchallenged for 16 years and gives every indication that he’s gearing up to seek an unprecedented fifth term in office. Instead, the message to those who would dare introduce a little democracy to the body politic seems to be: Sit down and shut up.
On the receiving end of that message last week was Sam Yoon, the two-term at-large city councilor and one of three announced candidates for mayor. (The others are City Councilor Michael Flaherty and businessman-activist Kevin McCrea; Mayor Tom Menino says he’s too busy governing to think about campaigns and all that political stuff just yet.) Yoon’s apparent offense was calling a hearing to explore potential reforms that could save the city millions of dollars at a time when Boston faces at least a $100 million budget deficit and the prospect of deep cuts in spending for schools, public safety, and other vital services.
Yoon (screen shot above from his campaign website) has been pushing the idea of management reforms and greater transparency in city government. It’s a good fit with his position as chairman of the council’s Post Audit & Oversight Committee, and when the Boston Finance Commission, an independent city watchdog agency, released a report last month identifying million of dollars in potential savings from various reform measures, Yoon decided to hold a committee hearing to discuss the report and gather input from residents. Among the reforms called for in the FinCom report are consolidation of the number of fire districts to reduce the number high-paid district chief positions, and increasing the number of school assignment zones to lower school transportation costs.
Instead of convening the usual sparsely attended daytime session at City Hall, Yoon decided to hold the March 31 hearing in the evening and take it to Dorchester’s Codman Square, a move that might actually make it possible for residents to attend. All of this may have seemed perfectly reasonable, but the hearing instead constituted a contemptible breach of council manners, according to some of Yoon’s colleagues.
City Councilor Steve Murphy called the premise of the session “fraudulent,” evidently because he felt it stepped on the toes of the council’s Ways and Means Committee, which will conduct formal hearings on the mayor’s budget after it is submitted this week. “It’s confusing and misleading to people,” City Councilor Mark Ciommo, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, further fumed to the Boston Herald. Never mind the fact that review of Boston Finance Commission reports falls explicitly under the purview of the Post Audit committee.
Given the somnolent state of civic engagement in Boston, we should be welcoming any effort to drum up interest in municipal affairs, especially one that puts a spotlight on cost-saving reforms that the administration has dragged its feet on for years. Instead, Yoon’s colleagues seem concerned mostly that he might draw a bit of attention for his efforts. If their comments served as a sharp elbow to Yoon, they no doubt warmed the heart of the mayor, who might wonder whether he’ll need to campaign at all or just let his council yes-men do his bidding.
But not content to leave anything to chance, or to others, the mayor’s staff decided to have their go at the upstart challenger as well. The next-day story in the Herald, complete with poignant picture (see below), reported that Menino aides recruited a wheelchair-bound disabilities activist to the hearing to make the point that Yoon’s session was held in the not-wheelchair-accessible Great Hall in Codman Square. Yoon’s office says they scrambled to try to have a temporary ramp at the building, but couldn’t have one erected in time. “It was a political dirty trick,” Yoon said of the appearance outside the hall of Sergio Goncalves. He called it an effort to detract attention from the Finance Commission recommendations. “I guess it signals some kind of lack of confidence in the administration’s ability to actually enact these basic reforms,” said Yoon.
Reached by phone yesterday, mayoral spokeswoman Dot Joyce disputed the Herald story. Sending Goncalves to the hearing is “not something that anyone in the administration ever endorsed,” she said. “We checked with everyone we know and no one mentioned anything about having sent this guy.” Hmm. There seems to be a little wiggle room there. Someone clearly thought it would be a good idea to have Goncalves show up in order to embarrass Yoon and take the focus off his hearing, and they made sure the Herald knew there would be a good photo to be had of him outside the hall, unable to get in.
The press and Yoon’s colleagues should be holding the administration’s feet to the fire on things like excessive police and fire department overtime, abuse of disability benefits, and other costly practices in need of reform. Instead, the two daily news stories on the hearing (the Globe provided no coverage) were both gotchas aimed at the person convening the session rather than substantive coverage of the issues being raised. And both stories were driven entirely by those interested in having the mayor’s race focus on anything but the mayor’s record and the city’s future.
If this is a preview of what is to come, it could be a very long summer and fall.
