The Boston Herald‘s Dave Wedge reports today that the Patrick administration is trying to keep its Washington, DC office going even after the Legislature took away its funding. The reaction is predictable:

“After raising taxes by a billion dollars, the governor is wasting money on a Washington office when he has a congressional delegation full of Democrats,” said Massachusetts GOP spokeswoman Tarah Donoghue.

But [Patrick spokesman Kyle] Sullivan said the office has been key to managing the Bay State’s federal stimulus haul. “Now would be the worst time to close the office down,” he said.

CommonWealth magazine’s Shawn Zeller reported on Patrick’s expansion of the DC office in 2007, a move supported by US Rep. Michael Capuano:

Increased staffing in Washington — Patrick has asked the Legislature for an additional $500,000 in funding for the DC office — combined with better coordination, says Capuano, will ensure that no potential funding opportunities are ignored. “If we find one item that we would have otherwise missed,” he says of the expanded effort, “it can pay for itself tenfold.”