Updated: Massachusetts Gaming Commission Meets In Secret. PR Flack Assures Voters It Is Legal. Wynn Threatens To Sue Mayor Walsh

Posted July 6, 2015 9:00 PM ET; Last updated July 7, 2015 7:42 PM ET

[From article]
In its lawsuit against the Gaming Commission, the city issued subpoenas to eight current and former state police, alleging that troopers assigned to an investigation of Charles Lightbody gave former staties now working as private detectives for Wynn information about the
investigation in the “wire-tap room” at the attorney general’s office.
The Walsh administration yesterday stood by the claims in its motions seeking subpoenas. “We dispute the assertions in the letter and we firmly stand
behind the allegations in the amended complaint,” said Laura Oggeri, the mayor’s spokeswoman.
Lightbody, a convicted felon with mob ties, had an interest in the land Wynn Resorts is planning to use for a casino in Everett. The city sued the Gaming Commission seeking host city status, which could force a renewed license process.
Wynn has denied hiring the former troopers. The judge handling the case agreed to delay the subpoenas until after a hearing on a Gaming Commission motion to dismiss the case.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/wynn_to_mayor_walsh_i_ll_sue_you

Wynn to Mayor Walsh: I’ll sue you!
Threatens defamation fight in casino fight
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
By: Jack Encarnacao
Boston Herald

* * *

[From article]
“Commissioners discuss social matters, organizational structure and morale,” Driscoll said. “The commissioners do not discuss any matter that constitutes public business within the jurisdiction of the commission.”
But former Inspector General Greg Sullivan of the Pioneer Institute said he found that hard to believe.
“You can only talk about Tom Brady and ‘Deflategate’ for so long,” Sullivan told the Herald. “Eventually, the conversation probably drifts around to the subject of Massachusetts gaming.”
At least one commissioners’ lunch even featured a special guest — Frank Fahrenkopf, who had stepped down as president of the American Gaming Association one year before he met for 90 minutes with the MGC on Oct. 22, 2014.
[. . .]



Sullivan told the Herald the Gaming Commission’s structure — where the commissioners all work out of the same office — is a problem.
“It’s vulnerable to violations of the Open Meeting Law because of the design of the agency and the decisions the Legislature made,” said Sullivan. “It’s an inherently problematic situation because of the extremely unusual arrangement whereby the commissioners are full-time employees that work in the same building.”
Some of the datebook information the Herald requested could not be produced.
Stebbins’ calendar from March 2012 through the end of 2013 was “unavailable due to technical issues caused by his BlackBerry,” the MGC told the Herald.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/gaming_commission_racks_up_100_hours_in_secret_meetings

Gaming Commission racks up 100 hours in secret meetings
Panel playing games with open meetings law
Monday, July 6, 2015
By: Chris Cassidy
Boston Herald

State Rep. Skeptical About Olympic Bid For Boston

MA State Rep. Tim Toomey

[From article]
So far, anyone who has dared to question the bid organizers has been met with answers that are the equivalent of “trust us.”

[. . .]
In Boston 2024, we see a small group of people promising us that we will all benefit from their success, and that once they have finished throwing a party for the world’s elite, the rest of us will get a crack at the leftovers the next morning. Those of us who have lived through the era of “trickle-down” economics — and who are still waiting, 30 years later, to see any benefit at all from tax cuts for top earners and deregulation of the financial industry — should be wary of this thinking.
[. . .]

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20141219/NEWS/141216316

Guest Column: Process for Boston Olympic bid is ‘deeply troublesome'
By Rep. Tim Toomey
Posted Dec. 19, 2014 @ 8:16 am
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Changing Cambridge, MA Government, Elections

Posted February 12, 2014 9:16 PM ET; Last updated February 21, 2014 9:55 AM ET

In his two-part statistical analysis of voting in Cambridge, (Rick Snedeker, "Let’s end Proportional Representation in Cambridge," Feb. 11, 2014; and "Exhausted votes and mandates in Cambridge's PR system," Feb. 20, 2014, Cambridge Chronicle) Mr. Snedeker fails to distinguish between the form of City government, Plan E under state law, and the method of elections. He does not mention the reason for the city government charter change in 1940. Some suggest it was corruption. Why is that subject seldom discussed by voters, officials and journalists? Especially in a one party state, even after public officials are jailed. What part of "Power corrupts." do the evolved superior Cambridge population not understand? Have the genes of Cambridge voters been cleansed of mendacity, sadism, greed and common sense? How often are integrity and common sense issues in elections?

The importance of acknowledging the reason for proportional voting is called the Fallacy of Chesterton's Fence. If you do not know the reason for a procedure, process or law, you may not repeal it. But if you understand why the rule or law exists, then you may be allowed to change it.

http://abovethelaw.com/2014/01/the-fallacy-of-chestertons-fence/

In George G. Szpiro's wonderful book, Numbers Rule, the author explains the many forms of elections tried throughout history. None of them are perfect. Some have the opposite of desired results, e.g., eliminating the best candidates. Finally Snedecker does not distinguish between low and high information voters.
Mr. Snedeker's interest in government is noble. Cambridge City government is run by people elected under one system. They are bound to act under another set of laws. How closely do these people exercise their power according to law? City Council meetings indicate the amount of lawlessness of the city government. Motions to suspend the rules are the most frequently heard motion.
There are serious dysfunctions of city, state and U.S. government mechanisms, including elections. But aside from pointing out alleged flaws in the current voting system, according to his standards, he makes no proposals to improve the system. Was this system of voting established for a reason? He does not discuss it.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20140211/NEWS/140219178/?tag=1

COLUMN: Let’s end Proportional Representation in Cambridge Part 1 of 2
By Rick Snedeker
Cambridge Chronicle
Posted Feb. 11, 2014 @ 4:17 pm

* * *

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20140220/NEWS/140229489/?tag=1

COLUMN: Exhausted votes and mandates in Cambridge's PR system  Part 2 of 2
By Rick Snedeker
Posted Feb. 20, 2014 @ 4:37 pm
Cambridge Chronicle

Galluccio Resigns


http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/22142775/detail.html

Incarcerated Senator Resigns
Galluccio Jailed After Probation Violation
WCVB-TV
POSTED: 5:21 pm EST January 5, 2010
UPDATED: 6:39 pm EST January 5, 2010

WEEKLY ROUNDUP: WHEN THE FALL AIN’T ALL THAT’S LEFT
Recap and analysis of the week in state government

By Jim O’Sullivan
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, NOV. 20, 2009…… How’d you like to be the poor guy who drew the straw this year to take phone calls from the whack jobs and the media, and the whack jobs in the media, at the Cambridge Police Department?

First it was the cop and the professor jumping ugly with each other over the summer, then your guys are driving home a state senator who later in the afternoon rear-ends a minivan, and sitting on that bit of information for three weeks.

On the upside, the Legislature has your back on the Quinn Bill, which means you still get a raise if you go back to school.

CPD’s media department woes notwithstanding, the various distractions flitting on the periphery of the Hill were sidelined Wednesday and elbowed out completely on Thursday, when Gov. Deval Patrick strode into the tumbleweed-riddled pressroom and laid rhetorical waste to the Great and General Court, and told them to get back to work on education, criminal record and fiscal bills. “It's my hope,” the governor said, “that the members will realize that their rules are of their own making, that they have it within their power to work a couple more days or, frankly, as long as it takes, to get this work done.”

Little rankles like a work ethic charge, or being told as a legislator you’ve neglected your “moral obligation,” as Patrick put it Thursday. And it came on the heels of the governor getting in Bob DeLeo’s grill on Wednesday, visiting a charter school hard up against the speaker’s district as he urged the House to pass the education bill, a choice of venue that DeLeo unsolicited later in the day said sounded “fascinating.”

[. . .]

The charge of leaving work with work still to be done also stung since it was lobbed at the tail end of an autumn that was promised by the speaker to be “busy,” but which culminated Wednesday night with lawmakers sending Patrick only one significant piece of legislation: an act turning a pair of dog tracks into off-track betting parlors. A day later, the big guy got a budget remedy that he said came nowhere close to bringing the fiscal year into balance. Then the haymakers commenced. “The vulnerable populations we’re trying to protect they don’t get to look the other way … It’s their services at stake,” Patrick said, knowing right where to plant it.

It’s a contact sport.

“How does it make me feel inside? Sad,” said one senior legislative Democrat, tongue in cheek. “It just makes me feel sad.”

For DeLeo, it was a bit of a regime-shaping week. The governor gave him the opportunity to change his game, and the speaker responded. The speaker’s uncharacteristically sour response, via a spokesman: "Governor Patrick's comments seem to be more about political necessity than ‘moral obligation.’ Speaker DeLeo's obligation is to the Commonwealth's schoolchildren - not Governor Patrick's political calendar."

Among the rank and file, the Thursday press conference was final permission for how you can wage your re-election campaign. Not only will the governor run against them, they now have license to run against him, making for a general lack of coziness at all those Democratic holiday parties, not to mention 2010.

If you’re a freshman rep, you have absolutely no idea what’s going on here. Your bound to a work schedule and agenda set by your higher-ups. There’s a governor from your own party kicking your teeth in, you’re being forced to go on record in favor of and then again defending taxes, and you’re busting tail to rejoin an institution whose recent-past leader is defending himself in court in a trial playing out during election season. Nevermind the Senate, which this week was unusually compliant with gubernatorial desires, giving him the ed bill and a crime package.

So on the ballot next year will be a Republican, an independent, a governor, and the Legislature. Inasmuch as the Republican Party here is largely a punchline, the Democratic Party has essentially dissolved. There is, in terms of cohesion, no party. There are only incumbents.

Which actually works out quite nicely for both sides, if you’re an incumbent without legit competition, of which there currently appears little. The governor gets to run against the perennially low-polling Legislature, and lawmakers get to run against the chronically low-polling governor. Mutually assured reelection.

Sen. Anthony Galluccio has a larger problem. The Cambridge Democrat was bagged for a hit-and-run in October, and the Associated Press broke the news Monday that he got a ride home from cops 13 hours beforehand under suspicion of being inebriated. While the struggle between the House and Senate over whose excessive misbehavior yields more headlines remains unresolved, smart bettors are not discounting the Upper Chamber’s chances. Galluccio said Friday he was going to use the recess to confront personal issues.

[. . .]

Unless there’s something deeper here, the relationship between the governor and the speaker, probably the most crucial one in the building and in state government, appears at least altered. These are two guys who, at Patrick’s fancy, were palling around two weeks ago in the Oval Office, and now they’re working each other over, like Joe DeNucci and Emile Griffith back in the old days.

[. . .]

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