Friday, September 11, 2009

Menino knew of Back Room BRA deals and did nothing

Tom Menino has a new video in which he implies that other people, namely Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon do business behind closed doors.

This shows what a hypocrite Tom Menino is. I have posted one of the letters from the McCrea v. Flaherty lawsuit from Councilor Felix Arroyo to Mark Maloney the head of the BRA (appointed by Tom Menino and answering to Tom Menino) telling him to have his meeting in the open, not behind closed doors. In addition, if you look at the CC at the bottom of the page you see that Tom Menino was directly informed of this in 2003.

Councilor Arroyo clearly spells out that he thinks these meetings might be illegal but no one at City Hall did a thing about it, especially Menino.

Did Tom Menino do anything about this? Did he look into it? Did he tell Maloney or Flaherty to stop having these meetings? Of course not, he didn't do anything about it because he does all of his business behind closed doors.

2 comments:

Christopher King said...

My view of last evening's debate coverage:

11 September 2009

KingCast watches Boston Globe ignore Kevin McCrea's simple question to Menino, others: Will you spend one day each week in schools?

"It's a yes or no question," said McCrea.

Nobody offered a specific answer to that question posed at yesterday's Boston Mayoral debate, but the Boston Globe story failed to address it. Just goes to show why I'm glad I don't work for major media because they so rarely print what's germane.

Read Kevin McCrea's blog to understand his theory that with 40% of the budget going to schools, the Mayor should spend one day a week visiting schools to understand problems (and success stories) so that politicians are not caught with their pants down when audits reveal a myriad of problems, i.e. lack of uniforms, unfunded or underattended after school programs, lack of funds for books..... the whole nine yards.

Kevin also fancies constructive solutions to infrastructure problems by mapping out a 25-year plan for road improvements and the like, so that utility companies and the neighborhoods can plan accordingly, minimizing the impact to local businesses and residents. I dunno, makes sense to me.....

posted by Christopher King at 10:39 AM

Michael Pahre said...

As Mayor, Menino is not personally subject to the state's Open Meeting Law. He is exempt. You know the law.

You rightly, however, state that the BRA's Board -- as well as its advisory bodies, I might add -- and the City Council are subject to the OML.

Yoon and Flaherty individually, however, are exempt from the OML, just like Menino is; they are only subject to it when meeting as a quorum of the City Council, as they were in the meetings with the BRA you rightly sued about.

I know that we all like transparency, but we must be careful not to mix up cases where an elected official meets in private in a lawful way with another case where the same elected official violates the law.