By Jack Sullivan and Bruce Mohl

During an hour-long debate Thursday night between Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and City Councilor Michael Flaherty Jr. on WCVB-TV (Ch. 5), both men got their facts wrong several times. What follows is an attempt to fact-check some of the claims and charges of the two candidates for mayor and give voters more context for their discussion. The fact-checking is based on interviews and reviews of public records wherever possible. CommonWealth encourages readers to comment, offering their own interpretations of what was said during the debate.

YOON: Perhaps the most heated exchange of the night came over Flaherty’s earlier announcement that he intends to name his former mayoral rival, City Councilor Sam Yoon, as his deputy mayor if he is elected. Menino called the Yoon announcement “jobs for votes” and said he wouldn’t do it. “You don’t make appointments and deals during a campaign,” Menino said. Flaherty angrily fired back that the mayor will say anything to stand in the way of progress. “It’s distasteful, quite frankly, and a little mean spirited,” he said. Flaherty also pointed that he had offered the job to Yoon publicly. “That’s the way you’re supposed to do it, according to the law. I followed the rules,” he said.

FACT-CHECK: The law Flaherty was referring to is a state statute that prohibits a candidate from promising public appointments to others, except that the candidate “may announce or define what is his choice or purpose in relation to an election in which he may be called to take part, if elected.” The latter phrase is so poorly worded it’s hard to decipher. The secretary of state’s office, which oversees elections, referred questions about the statute to the attorney general’s office because the law in question is a criminal statute, carrying a penalty of no more than a year in prison or a fine of not more than $1,000. The attorney general’s office said it doesn’t interpret statutes. Natasha Perez, a spokeswoman for Flaherty, said the state statute prohibits backroom deals, but she noted that Flaherty offered the deputy mayor job to Yoon out in the open.

EDUCATION: A West Roxbury father of two said he wanted a lower student-teacher ratio in the Boston Public Schools. Menino responded that the city was doing the best it can given the bad economic times, while Flaherty said more could be done. Menino defended the schools, saying 75 percent of BPS  students go on to college; Flaherty said most of them drop out after the first year. One of the reporters on the panel said there are 8,000 families on waiting lists for charter schools in Boston; Menino said the 8,000 figure was a national number. Menino said he’s cut the BPS droput rate by a third during his time in office. 

FACT-CHECKING: The student-teacher ratio in Boston has been declining slowly, according to city contracts with the Boston Teachers Union. For example, the ratio was 28:1 for fourth grade when Menino first took office and today it is 25:1. The ratio for 9th through 12th grade was 33:1 when Menino took office and today it’s 31:1….Data compiled by the Private Industry Council indicates the percentage of BPS graduates going on to college has increased sharply under Menino, rising from 62 percent in 1993 to 73 percent in 2006. But many of the students who go on to college are not getting degrees. The council tracked the 2,964 students who graduated in 2000 and found that seven years later only a fifth had earned a two-year or a four-year college degree….Menino was mistaken about the waiting list for charter schools. There are an estimated 8,000 children on the waiting list in Boston. Nationally, the number would be much larger….Menino’s claim that he has cut the dropout rate in Boston by a third during his 16 years in office is inaccurate. As CWunbound reported in an earlier fact-checking article, the mayor came up with that number by comparing the average percentage dropout rate during his 16 years in office to the average percentage dropout rate in the preceding 13 years. That is a misleading comparison. The dropout rate during his time in office has changed very little, hovering at around 7 percent and at times going over 9 percent.

CRIME: Flaherty charged that the city’s violent crime rate is high and going higher, and noted that New York City’s crime rate is much lower than Boston’s. “New York City is safer than Boston,” he said. Flaherty also put the spotlight on youth violence. “Youth violent crime is on the way up as the youth population in Boston is on the decline,” he said. A reporter asking questions at the debate brought up a recent study indicating that Emerson College in Boston was rated the college with the highest-crime rate in the nation. Menino questioned the validity of the study, saying he would like to review it. 

FACT-CHECKING: According to FBI statistics for 2008, the most recent available, there were 1,155 violent crimes per 100,000 people in Boston, nearly twice the rate of New York’s 580 violent crimes per 100,000. The murder rate in Boston was 11 per 100,000 while New York City had 6 per 100,000. Raw numbers show that in 2008 Boston reported 6,676 violent crimes compared to New York’s 48,430. New York had 532 murders in 2008, dwarfing the 62 homicide victims in Boston….Flaherty’s staff says his statement that youth violent crime is going up even as the number of youths is going down was based on reports issued by two city councilors. Data we reviewed indicate youth violent crime is increasing, but so is the number of youths. The Boston Indicator Project, put out by The Boston Foundation, released a report in 2006 saying the city’s teen population was at 26,000, the highest in a decade. We looked at US Census data for 10 to 21 year olds, comparing 2000 to 2007, the most recent year available. The data indicates there were 69,813 people in that age range in 2000 and an estimated 102,901 in 2007, an increase of 47 percent. The margin of error on those population estimates is 2.7 percent. Despite the rising number of young people, the median age in Boston is going up. According to Census data, the median age rose from 31.5 in 2000 to 33.2 in 2007, meaning the balance had shifted toward an older population. More striking is the median age of black males in the city. In 2000, the median age was 23.6, but by 2007, that number rose to 27.4….According to the Boston Indicator Project, from 1993 to 2006, overall crime among teenagers declined, according to arrest reports. But violent crimes in that span by teenagers rose 30 percent while property crimes fell 38 percent and so-called quality of life crimes, such as assaults, vandalism and lesser crimes, fell by 22 percent. Crime overall in Boston has been on the decline for 15 years, including a drop of 9 percent from 2006 to 2007. …The study citing Emerson as the college with the highest crime rate was produced by a website called The Daily Beast. Emerson was rated the most crime-ridden campus, but other Massachusetts schools were in the top 25. Tufts was ranked fourth, MIT was ranked fifth, Fitchburg State came in 11th, Springfield College 17th, and Harvard University 20th. The Beast said it based its analysis on statistics reported by the colleges, including crimes on campus and near the campus. The website gave more weight to violent offenses and divided the raw crime score by the number of students on campus to adjust for college size. Andrew Teidmann, vice president for communications at Emerson, said any study comparing campus safety should compare safety on campuses, but he noted the Daily Beast article included crimes that occurred off campus whether they involved students or not. For example, he said, there were 160 assaults and robberies on Boston Common last year, but only six involved Emerson students. Yet Emerson in the study was tagged with all 160 crimes, he said. Teidmann said he gives the study a grade of “F” and notes that journalism professors at his school are using it as a case study on how to take accurate data and reach all the wrong conclusions.

FIREFIGHTERS: Flaherty faults the mayor for not signing a labor agreement with the firefighters union. Menino says the firefighters are asking for too much pay — a 20 percent salary increase over five years. The union talks are currently in arbitration. In the course of discussing the firefighters, Flaherty, who has been endorsed by the firefighters union, said the city needs to have a dedicated team dealing with hazardous materials, or hazmat, issues because there are more than 5,000 labs in the city. Menino said Boston has five trained hazmat teams and indicated the city doesn’t need a dedicated unit.

FACT-CHECKING: The Boston area is home to countless labs and facilities that work with hazardous materials. In Boston, each of the five hazmat units has between three to five firefighters trained as hazmat technicians in those units, meaning there are as many as 25 firefighters available for a hazmat response at any time. The city can also tap a regional hazmat team staffed by surrounding communities….Flaherty’s claim that there are 5,000 labs in Boston is accurate but overstates the threat of hazmat danger. According to the Environmental Protection Administration, facilities that deal in hazardous materials have to receive a permit. There are 5,066 labs in Boston that have been inspected and permitted, according to the Boston Fire Department. But that number includes all labs that deal in even the most minimal amounts of materials. At one university hospital in the city, there is a 15-floor building with between 15 and 25 labs on each floor. There are 212 so-called Tier 2 facilities, those places that handle large amounts of hazardous material, according to state officials. They include laboratories, photo shops, and dry cleaners.

URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE: Flaherty called for the creation of an urban search and rescue team in Boston, pointing out the closest one is in Beverly. He implied that Boston was negligent by failing to have a similar unit to hunt for survivors in disasters and respond to other full-scale emergencies.

FACT-CHECKING: Flaherty’s claim was misleading. The Beverly unit is the only search and rescue unit in Massachusetts. It is run by the state and funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It covers not only Massachusetts but is deployed nationally. In Massachusetts, the unit has responded to the Danvers chemical explosion in 2006, the collapse of the giant crane at Fore River Shipyard in Braintree in 2005 and was deployed to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004.

CITY EMAILS: Menino claimed the email snafu with an aide was triggered in part by the volume of email the city receives. “There are 10 million emails sent to city government every year,” Menino said. Separately, Flaherty, citing emails released to The Boston Globe, charged that Menino keeps a “naughty list” of people who are in disfavor with him. Menino said no suchy naughty list exists.

FACT-CHECKING: City officials say the claim of 10 million emails was based on the number found in the archive “vault” when officials went searching for the missing emails from Menino aide Michael Kineavy. It includes both emails sent to city agencies from outside as well as all internal email between city employees. As for the naughty list, Flaherty’s claim was based on an email obtained by the Globe in which James W. Hunt III, the city’s chief of environment and energy, said a top union official was “on TMM’s naughty list.” TMM stands for Thomas M. Menino. Hunt, in a telephone interview, said “this is much ado about nothing and a poor choice of words that are getting blown out of proportion.” He said he wrote the email around Christmas-time after bumping into Rich Rogers, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council, at a public event. He said Rogers told him he was on Menino’s “(bleep) list,” but Hunt said he joked that at City Hall they call it the naughty list. Hunt said there is no such list. Rogers, in a telephone interview, confirmed Hunt’s version of events. He said he and the mayor have disagreed on many things over the years but he said he never felt as if he was on any list kept by the mayor. “We’ve had our disagreements, but he’s always willing to move on after a period of time,” he said.

HOMELESSNESS: Menino recounted what the city does to address homelessness and expressed frustration that many homeless people refuse help. Flaherty said he supported setting up old parking meters around the city where people could donate money to help the homeless. “There is a clear cut way we can reduce homelessness and panhandling,” he said.

FACT-CHECKING: Denver developed the parking meter idea originally, urging residents to combat homelessness by donating to the meters rather than giving money directly to panhandlers. Relatively little money was donated to the meters (about $15,000 total over a year-long period, according to one news article on the program), but businesses paid $1,000 sponsorship fees that brought in roughly $100,000. Denver officials did not return phone calls, but some have been quoted in news reports as saying the program itself has done relatively little to reduce homelessness but has curbed panhandling. Jim Greene, director of the city’s emergency shelter commission, said the real need is money for outreach to homeless people, treatment of their medical and psychological problems, and housing. “Parking meters don’t get people off the street. Partnerships focused on housing do,” he said.