The Boston Herald is unaccustomed to any heavy lifting or in-depth research, but sometimes gets things right as they appear to have done this time.
At what point do incestuous practices cease?
What ethics reform?
By Erin Smith and Chris Cassidy
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
The Bay State’s ballyhooed ethics overhaul isn’t passing the “smell test,” according to government watchdogs, as a Herald review found a whopping two-thirds of newly promoted chief probation officers in the scandal-ravaged department have relatives on the state payroll.
All told, 81 of the 320 staffers hired or promoted in the patronage-ridden trial court in the past year have at least one relative who works for the state, as did 10 of the 15 newly promoted chief probation officers.
“Those numbers would indicate that the old adage of it’s not what you know but who you know is still alive and well and operating in our one-party state,” said House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading).
Jones (R-North Reading) said he’d expect some family ties in the expansive court agency, but the startling numbers “don’t pass the initial smell test. ... It’s proof that old habits die hard.”
Among the promoted chief probation officers, one has family ties to a North Shore district court judge, another to a State House court officer and a third to a western Massachusetts sheriff.
The devastating 2010 Ware Report detailed “systemic abuse and corruption” within the state’s Probation Department — where dozens of employees won their jobs after donating to lawmakers’ political coffers.
A grand jury has been probing the patronage-plagued hiring process.
The family-friendly hires and promotions over the past year should be a wake-up call for the judiciary, said David Tuerck, executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute.
“It appears that the leaders within the court system need to start identifying the reason that this sort of patronage is allowed to go on and to start attempting to root it out,” he said.
Trial court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said last night the agency began hiring again this year after a four-year freeze and jobs were awarded on merit.
“The hiring process followed the recommendations of the Harshbarger Task Force on Hiring and Promotions, including updated job descriptions, expanded recruitment and experience-based interviews to evaluate and assess candidates based solely on merit,” Kenney said in a statement.
Beacon Hill leaders have been touting their ethics reform law, claiming it would clean up the courts and curb patronage in the Probation Department by requiring state bosses to wait until the final round of interviews before weighing written recommendations by elected officials.
Anti-nepotism reforms also require state job candidates to disclose all close relatives on the public payroll.
Gov. Deval Patrick signed the disclosure requirement into law Aug. 4, 2011, but the Herald reported last month that state officials were failing to ask new hires to disclose any close relatives collecting state paychecks.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1061168522&srvc=rss&utm_source=Morning+10%2F18&utm_campaign=ML+afternoon+1&utm_medium=email
All told, 81 of the 320 staffers hired or promoted in the patronage-ridden trial court in the past year have at least one relative who works for the state, as did 10 of the 15 newly promoted chief probation officers.
“Those numbers would indicate that the old adage of it’s not what you know but who you know is still alive and well and operating in our one-party state,” said House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading).
Photo by Nancy Lane (file)
House Minority Leader Brad Jones
Jones (R-North Reading) said he’d expect some family ties in the expansive court agency, but the startling numbers “don’t pass the initial smell test. ... It’s proof that old habits die hard.”
Among the promoted chief probation officers, one has family ties to a North Shore district court judge, another to a State House court officer and a third to a western Massachusetts sheriff.
The devastating 2010 Ware Report detailed “systemic abuse and corruption” within the state’s Probation Department — where dozens of employees won their jobs after donating to lawmakers’ political coffers.
A grand jury has been probing the patronage-plagued hiring process.
The family-friendly hires and promotions over the past year should be a wake-up call for the judiciary, said David Tuerck, executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute.
“It appears that the leaders within the court system need to start identifying the reason that this sort of patronage is allowed to go on and to start attempting to root it out,” he said.
Trial court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said last night the agency began hiring again this year after a four-year freeze and jobs were awarded on merit.
“The hiring process followed the recommendations of the Harshbarger Task Force on Hiring and Promotions, including updated job descriptions, expanded recruitment and experience-based interviews to evaluate and assess candidates based solely on merit,” Kenney said in a statement.
Beacon Hill leaders have been touting their ethics reform law, claiming it would clean up the courts and curb patronage in the Probation Department by requiring state bosses to wait until the final round of interviews before weighing written recommendations by elected officials.
Anti-nepotism reforms also require state job candidates to disclose all close relatives on the public payroll.
Gov. Deval Patrick signed the disclosure requirement into law Aug. 4, 2011, but the Herald reported last month that state officials were failing to ask new hires to disclose any close relatives collecting state paychecks.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1061168522&srvc=rss&utm_source=Morning+10%2F18&utm_campaign=ML+afternoon+1&utm_medium=email
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