Columnists :: City Streets
McCann revelations eye-opening by Shirley Kressel
contributing writerThursday Apr 30, 2009 The April 27 Boston Globe story on Paul McCann, who is collecting a full pension as well as a consulting contract totaling more than his original salary, is eye-opening for several reasons.
During his recent coffee hour in my neighborhood, I asked Mayor Tom Menino for a comment. He said he didn’t know about it and that he had asked the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) director to cancel the contract.
He didn’t know about it? This retirement strategy dates at least back to 1994, when The Boston Globe printed a story on Kane Simonian, the BRA’s first executive director, who got the same golden treatment. The Globe reported then: "Mayor Menino also defended the deal. ’For many years he gave a lot of good service to the people of Boston,’ he said late last week. ’I respect the FinCom [Finance Commision], but this was common knowledge 10 months ago. Where were they then? Mr. Simonian has a historical knowledge of this city like no one else has.’"
So, Menino thought it was all right to break the pension law for old-timers, he admitted that he had known about the unlawful contract for almost a year, and he blamed the Finance Commission - which doesn’t have jurisdiction over the BRA - for not doing anything about it. Now that the same news is out about a person he calls "a true friend," Paul McCann, Menino’s shocked and outraged. The Globe writes: "After being advised of the results of the Globe review, Menino administration spokeswoman Dot Joyce said late Friday that the city’s retirement board will investigate. ’The city and the retirement board will absolutely review this case,’ Joyce said." (The board, while they’re up, should also review the no-bid consulting contracts the mayor has been giving to laid-off City employees; the BRA has no monopoly on double-dipping at City Hall.)
He had the director cancel the contract? Since when does the mayor make contract decisions for the BRA? In the Globe story, Director John Palmieri is quoted to say, "On advice of counsel, we’re going to be suspending the contract of Paul McCann, pending further review." This raises a crucial question: How much accountability does the mayor bear for what the BRA does?
Paul McCann, the point person for this issue, told the Globe that he didn’t notify the BRA of the excessive contract because "he didn’t think the law applied to him."
"Why would I, knowing it was not a legal requirement?" he asked.
Well, one reason might be that he’s a lawyer, and he’s been in the Authority since Genesis. And also, because he used a different excuse for his colleague in 1994, saying, according to that year’s Globe story, that the law didn’t apply to Simonian because "as a military veteran, he is exempt from any law that would reduce his pension." The law still applied, of course; the reduction would be in the contract, not the pension. But as a lawyer, he should know that, too.
Most astoundingly, McCann told the Globe he believes the BRA is "an independent authority and not a government agency covered under the income-limit clause of the law." The BRA certainly believes it is a government agency when it takes property by eminent domain, when it does city planning and zoning, and when it insists it should remain exempt from taxation. And as the state retirement officials point out in the story, "the BRA is a government agency and full-fledged member of the public sector retirement system, which is how McCann qualified for his pension in the first place." If attorney McCann is right he doesn’t qualify for any pension at all!
Director Palmieri was brought in to testify at a recent City Council budget hearing, but he didn’t bring the BRA budget, and he kept telling the council that the BRA is "self-sustaining." How does it sustain itself? On sales and leases of land that it takes from the city without paying, or land it took from private property owners by paying with public funds and kept for itself instead of selling it to developers as intended. By paying none of the Payments in Lieu of Taxes that its enabling law allows the city to collect, on its billions of dollars worth of property. By up-zoning its own land, and land of developers with whom it forms joint ventures, to increase its profits. By selling extensions of expiring property-tax breaks, at huge cost to the city. By occupying the entire ninth floor of City Hall rent-free, space worth over a million dollars a year, while the city departments pay for outside office space. By selling "air rights" owned by the city. By buying up city land for a dollar and selling it for millions. By diverting millions of dollars of state and federal grants meant to help the needy through its mill and skimming off hefty administrative fees. It is "self-sustaining," I testified, in the same way that a tapeworm is self-sustaining. And it sustains itself handsomely, with generous salaries and, evidently, unlawfully generous retirement schemes. An investigation of all its double-dipping would be most productive at this time, while we lay off teachers and police. And the first stop on a fact-finding tour should be the mayor, who approves the BRA’s off-budget revenues, to spare it the public disclosure and accountability that would have toppled it decades ago if people knew what it does to the city.
In 2005, in the course of collecting signatures for a candidate, I traipsed around City Hall Plaza where I might find registered Boston voters in city employ. I approached two such employees, and they snapped: "I’ll only sign for a candidate who will eliminate the BRA."
"But why do you want that?" I asked.
They replied, "Because what goes on up there is criminal."
Maybe this election year, we will actually find out what goes on up there.
Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at Shirley.Kressel@verizon.net.
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