DiCara indicates we need better Mayor & City councilors

Fox guarding the Henhouse:

Former City Councilor Larry Dicara indicated that Boston needs to increase pay to the Mayor and the City Councilors so that we can attract better applicants. Apparently he and the blue ribbon panel don't think we're getting qualified candidates for the job. I, for one, appreciate his honesty that "we need to do better".

Perhaps one of these great leaders will introduce a law that public officials can only receive or vote themselves new pay raises in the last quarter of their term in office so that they can answer to the voters as opposed to immediately after an election.

Funny, in campaigning with these people for 6 months or so, with them talking about how much they love the job, I never once heard them say that they felt the draw of the private sector because of the low pay.

There were fifteen people running for office raising well over a million dollars raised and spent for $70,000 jobs with no power, two graduates from Harvard and they think we need to pay them more to attract better people? How about putting some money in the Boston Public Schools so maybe one day one of them might be qualified enough and make enough money to run for office, as opposed to the candidates (like myself) who went to schools other than those run by the BPS.

One of the most comical aspects of the campaign for me was the constant back stabbing amongst the councilors about the tiny amount of time the others worked. Different stories I heard directly from city councilors:

"Flaherty and Scappiccio are never around they are always practicing law"
"Arroyo is never around, he is always in central or south america"
"Hennigan is only around on Wednesday's"
"I can never find Murphy"
"He stole my idea and didn't give me any credit"

As talked about on Kevin Rothstein's blog, the fact that DiCara is in charge of giving these guys raises is so corrupt and insider that if you wrote a novel about it, no one would believe it. There are so many reasons NYC is growing and Boston is shrinking, but this nepotism is certainly part of the problem, and clearly not part of the solution.