Easton’s former housing director spent hours at work sending flirtatious e-mails to various men, then resigned before an audit last June showed she had badly neglected the apartment buildings she was supposed to manage. By then, Susan Horner had a new job: teaching other housing officials how to improve their performance.
The housing director in Winchester has a second full-time job as a courthouse lawyer, requiring him to be away from the housing authority for 31.5 hours a week the last three years. When the law office learned about Joseph M. Lally’s second job, it froze his pay and launched an audit of his work. But Winchester officials did nothing, saying they’re satisfied Lally gets his town work done on nights and weekends.
Comments
Where's governor Patrick and attorney General Martha coakley, asleep at the wheel......
Patrick is down in Virginia campaigning for Obama. Not much going on up here to deal with, just 500 violent offenders being released because of government oversight issues with the drug lab, and people across the country dead because of government oversight issues in the compounding facility.
The lab problem is being handled by the courts, over which Patrick has no jurisdiction. What, pray tell, do you want him to do about it? If people are being released by the courts, they're being released. Putting them in concentration camps isn't a possibility, so tell us all what you think the executive branch should be doing.
These long standing problems will not stop until Ma. cleans house, and rids itself of nepotism, political favors, and the arogance
that is rampant in our state government officials who feel above the law and the people they serve. Elections should be about wisely choosing our leaders, and actually tossing party affiliations . Politicians must be vetted with thorough background checks. They will afterall, make the decisions which can negatively impact our lives. So far we have struck out with a lot of low lives now spending time in prison. Wan't more of the same? Then keep voting along party lines and blindly choose the losers like we have elected by voting the same losers, and their cronies back into office. This should include those running for federal offices.
Several lessons here: 1) The information I got several years back from USA Today listing Mass as both high cost for nursing homes, and very low quality in terms of care for elders is consistent with the facts of this article which indicate that Mass does not care much about its elders or its poor, 2) A lot of the rhetoric about how much Mass cares is just parochial "kissing the ring" -- its to satisfy liberal secular and religious ideology but there is not much behind it, 3) Mass is one of the lowest states on giving to charity (why give personally when you have the GM of religions focusing on it, 4) Per the article, it seems that women managers can be just as bad as men managers (the grammar is correct, is it not?), 5) Sounds like housing boards should be elminated locally and become a single state board with complete transparency of plans, improvements, incidents that involve safety or needed repairs documented online, salaries, etc; This is hopefully what the Governor is going to propose, 6) The Globe should search out what statistics exist on housing authorities, national or local, and publish it, 7) Surveys and statistics on each local housing authority should be gathered, similar to what is gathered for the performance of various school districts in the state.
One last point: 8) It's obvious that there would have to be lots of people who know about the housing authority situation, and are keeping it quiet; I expect similar problems in many other areas of state and local functioning; Talk to the people who know and then investigate and publicize; The more information that gets out there the harder it is for those who have a vested interest in this behavior to punish those who talk.
The Plan should be over the next 2 - 5 years to privatize all the management of LHA's and overlay strict performance standards that are both monitorable and enforceable. There are many private management companies that already responsibly manage subsidized housing and there is no reason to shift that over to LHA's. On the North Shore alone you have over $1 million in ED salaries, on top of Deputy ED salaries, field managers, etc who could be easiliy replaced with fully accountable private management companies.
that would be no reason NOT to shift managent over
While I'm not opposed to private management, it would have to be gradual because there's a lot of public housing and no private management company would be prepared to take control without an extended time to hire and train people, and find enough managers to run the operation efficiently.
It's easy to say "do it," but doing it is a lot more complex than I or anyone not involved would know.
In addition, a new bureaucracy would have to be created to monitor the performance of the private companies. They can't be just turned loose without oversight. There are bound to be private companies that do a less than satisfactory or flat out poor job.
And lastly, there's the common problem that mixing government and private enterprise often results in graft and corruption. I don't have a solution for that, but some recent scandals (DiMasi, Wilkerson, Turner) involved bribes by businessmen.
Housing Authority scandals. Drug Lab scandals. Parole Board scandals. Compounding Pharmacy scandals. Anyone besides Joan Vennocci starting to see a pattern?
Interesting article until Murphy returned to his now clear obsession to involve and demean Lt. Gov. Murray. Mike McLaughlin has been playing politicians at every level for decades (long before Lt. Gov. Murray was even out of school)...the Boston Globe claims that Mclaughlin was a notorious and well known to be a rogue and system scammer, but that begs the question "Why didn't the Globe reporters and editors expose McLaughlin years ago? Why did they look the other way? McLaughlin used Murray's name (and the names of many dozens of politicians) to line his own pockets unbeknownst to the people he was using...he was a pro at it and got away with it for a very long time...Murray was one of his latest victims, but by no stretch of the immagination was he the only victim. I hope Murray's testimony will send McLaughlin to jail where he belongs...if the Globe had not ignored what they knew years ago, he would already be there!
Congratulations to the Globe, Sean Murphy and Scott Allen for having the, yes, guts to prominently publish yet another story that exposes government for what, all too often, it is; a system run for the state employees benefit, FIRST. Everyone (including the Globe's editorial writers) should remember these series of scandals the next time the Democrat state politicians voice their phony "compassion" for the poor, elderly and disadvantaged. Can any adult look at these scandals and imagine the Democrats who run, and have run for ages, nearly every agency in the state could possibly "care" one iota about anyone but themselves and their bureacrat pals? These people must laugh up their sleeves everytime they utter the "compassion" garbage and manage to sell themselves as virtuous compared to "greedy", private sector, conservatives. At least the greed in the private sector gets exposed and, if the actors are ripping off the public, they lose their jobs and businesses. Here, in government land, no one's EVER held accountible, are they? Not at least until they can move on with a fat pension. Massachusetts Democrats will soon be wailing that they don't have enough revenue and taxes MUST be raised lest the "poor" get shafted. These scandals reveal how completely false that, long time, narrative rings. They won't change, they will never be held accountible and they will ALWAYS need more money. Can anyone be more corrupt than those who use the poor to elevate themselves and, in turn, continously abuse them?
I have held for a long time that before gov't cuts services, fraud and abuse must first be dealt with.
Now why do you suppose all this naughtiness is going on in the Bay State? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Democrats run just about everything? Check it out. I'll bet every one of these thieves is a Democrat with connections to other, more powerful Democrats. It's just the ways are done in Massachusetts, the most corrupt state in the country.
I often consider dropping my Globe subscription when I read the totally partisan stories, attacking Senator Brown or praising Elizabeth Warren, overplaying issues that reflect negatively on Brown and ignoring facts that are bad for Warren. Then they'll come up with some investigate work like this story, and I decide to keep it a while longer. The funny thing is that much of the corruption on Bacon Hill is a direct result of the All Dem, All the time support of the Boston Globe. ( to be clear, if we had 95% Repubs in control the result would be the same).
These are local jobs and the responsibility of local governments. Your town can be clean or your town can be dirty.
This has nothing to do with partisan politics, so anyone claiming that is poorly informed. When I go to the polls to vote for a mayor or councilman, I'm not aware of their party affliliations. Municipal elections are non-partisan.
The solution to the problem is to hold the feet of your local officeholders to the fire. It's obvious from the story that town and city governments are the problem, and that can only be blamed on the voters in that particular town or city.
Thre is a Board responsible for every Housing Authority. In smaller places, 4 of the 5 people are elected with 1 person being the state appointee. I found out from the Chelsea situation that the Board was not elected locally. Sometimes there is a member of the Board representing the tenants. I question how well many of these Boards did their jobs. Did each Board member attend the classes set up by DHCD after they were elected with lawyers and accountants? Did they meet monthly with the outide accountant who monitored the books? Did they sign the Authority checks themeselves or have the Exec. Dir sign all checks? Were there 2 signatures on every check? Did they see the bids for projects and see the project timelines? Did the state DHCD express concerns to their appointed Board member or change the appointed Board member? It was a 5 year term when I was on in a suburb. I was on for 10 years. We also conducted part of every meeting for a year as training of the Board so everyone would develop the same expertise. Being on the Board of a Housing Authority is a lot of work if it is done properly. The Boards are most definitely not managing their Executive Directors!
This is precisely the sort of work that Globe reporters over the years should have spent more time doing: ferreting out abuse by public sector employees. (God knows, Massachusetts is, in the words of a well-known general, a "target-rich environment" for this sort of things.) Instead, these paladins of the Fourth Estate chose (and were permitted by their editors to choose) a different role for themselves: the seemingly more glamorous work of advocacy journalism, which, in the case of Globe reporters, meant currying favor with budding local pols (nearly always "progressive" Democrats) in the hopes of someday having access to the great. The corrupt and broke one-party state that is Massachusetts could not have become what it is had these Globe Ben Bradlee wannabees been doing their jobs.