Left In Lowell

BMG, Mark Bail, and Dan Dunn have varying opinions on the Boston Globe article about Patrick’s alleged possible deal with lawmakers over control of state agencies in exchange for consideration on the pay of legislative leadership positions. This is a Frank Phillips article, so it could be really useful, or complete bullsh*t; take it with a heavy dose of salt.

What Governor Patrick is trying to do is gain control of the state’s so-called independent (read: unaccountable) agencies, such as the Mass Turnpike Authority. Once upon a time, someone decided that it would make things less “political” if these agencies were not completely part of either elected branch of government; what has resulted is that the voters have no recourse when things like the Big Dig go wrong, because no elected official has real power over them, and therefore cannot be totally blamed and tossed out of office for a better model.

This is the one area where Mitt Romney was actually right - the executive branch needs to be able to control (hire, fire, delegate funds) for these agencies, so that we voters can hold our Governor accountable for how they are run. This doesn’t mean I would have agreed with how Romney would have run those agencies if he’d had control, but his fight to oust Matt Amorello was a fight worth having, even though in my opinion all the Mittster really wanted was to put his own useless hack friends in there. (Every Republican governor before him had done it.)

The legislature is very interested in not giving up the power they do have over those agencies and granting it to the executive. It will take something extraordinary to budge them from the status quo. If this article is actually correct (and again, it’s Phillips…), to some extent we’d be handing more hack power to the leadership in the state House and Senate in exchange for taking some away. We’d be giving DiMasi and Traviglini (and their successors) one more tool to keep “the rest” of the Democratic delegation in line (a bigger reward system for loyalists). Finneran managed an iron fist on the legislature without this perk; do we really want to hand out more ability for someone to repeat Finneran?

A lot of this reads like inside baseball…most of the public tunes right out. But this is an important battle, and needs serious discussion. To be honest, I’d like to see Patrick use his considerable grassroots power to fight this one with legislative pressure from below, rather than negotiate for staying even. Patrick has a way of explaining a problem that makes it understandable and puts on the right emphasis. If he came to us and asked us for help, I think the grassroots have had enough rest. In fact, we’re getting bored. Give us something to do!