This Month in Corruption: Ex-Manager of Two Towns Pleads Guilty to Variety of Crimes

Monday, July 31, 2017

On Thursday, July 20, Andrew Bisignani pleaded guilty in Essex Superior Court to procurement fraud, destroying public records, municipal bid-rigging and other crimes related to his service, from January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2014, as the town manager first in Saugus and then in Nahant, communities north of Boston.   Judge Timothy Feeley sentenced Bisignani, age 70, to two years of probation, including six months of home confinement to begin after the federal home confinement sentence he’s currently serving is completed in January, 2018.  Judge Feeley also hit Bisignani with a $60,000 fine. 

According to a press release from the office of the Essex County District Attorney, had the case against him gone to trial, evidence would have been introduced “that would have proven that, during his tenure as Town Manager of Saugus and Nahant, Mr. Bisignani orchestrated a misleading scheme that violated many procurement laws pertaining to the expenditure of municipal funds.”
In addition, the press release said, “Bisignani attempted to conceal his wrongdoing by altering and destroying documents that an Essex County Grand Jury had subpoenaed from the Town of Nahant. During the period of the grand jury investigation and service of the subpoena, Bisignani met with one Selectman for the Town of Nahant and discussed whether Bisignani would continue to be employed as Town Administrator.  During the meeting, Bisignani concealed a tape recorder in the room and secretly recorded the meeting.”

The release continued: “The scheme orchestrated by Bisignani…entailed the hiring of choice vendors without, effectively, any public procurement process.  Through the scheme, Bisignani directed the Town of Saugus to pay invoices for projects that were never advertised, not subject to any public bidding, and were identified as so-called ‘emergency’ procurements that were not approved by the Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM).  The invoices approved by Bisignani (1) disclosed only a portion of a project’s cost, (2) designated foreseeable projects as ‘emergency’ work, and (3) did not include payment of prevailing wages.  Bisignani also caused payments for these ‘split invoices’ to be spread out, further concealing the true cost of the projects, and obscuring the necessity that those projects be subject to public bidding and advertising.  Additionally, Bisignani’s purposeful failure to comply with procurement laws caused the Town of Saugus to hire a vendor during a period that the vendor had been barred from providing services to municipalities by the Department of Industrial Accidents.  Moreover, Bisignani also approved multiple payments by the Town of Saugus to vendors for the same services.”
Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett emphasized: “This scheme charged in this case did not just create an unfair playing field, but an almost entirely secret playing field where hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds were spent without any procurement process or transparency.  The effective administration of government depends upon a basic trust that persons with authority over public funds comply with the law.  Mr. Bisignani not only betrayed that trust…but he also thwarted investigators, secretly recorded one of the elected officials to whom he answered, and destroyed Town records in order to conceal his crimes.”

According to a report in “Wicked Local, North of Boston,” Bisignani’s attorney, Tracy Miner, told Judge Feeley that her client accepted responsibility for his actions.  She stressed that Bisignani never benefited personally from the scheme and pointed out that there were no allegations that the work that took place in both towns did not need to be done.
Addressing the court, Bisignani said, in part, “I was not charged with, nor did I plead guilty to, any act of personal gain…My hope is that the citizens of the communities I have served know that I always acted in what I believed to be their best interests; and that they will judge me on the totality of my public service and on my accomplishments attendant thereto.”

Back in February of this year, Bisignani was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Boston, to one year of probation in connection with failing to report more than $375,000 of his income on his federal tax returns from 2010 to 2013.  

The Genius of Brian: Other Reps Loved Him as He Got All He Could for His City

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

I don’t know if they’ll ever put up a statue of Brian Dempsey in Haverhill but they should.

During the seven or so years he chaired the Ways & Means Committee of the Massachusetts House, Dempsey did what Ways & Means chairs have done throughout the history of our republic: he delivered the goods to his district.

As the Eagle Tribune newspaper said in its edition of Sunday, July 23, “The last seven state  budgets authored  by Haverhill Rep. Brian Dempsey gave the city millions of dollars to offset  its debts, boost education and create projects to establish Haverhill as a hub of activity in the Merrimack Valley.”

The Eagle Tribune cited a number of large, local projects and developments that came to fruition on Dempsey’s watch because he had the power to get them into the state budget.  These included:

  • Harbor Place, a $70-million downtown development “that benefited from more than $40 million from the state.”
  • $24 million in state funds to offset the debt the city incurred in operating the old Hale Hospital
  • A new $61-million middle school complex. (State share: $40 million.)
  • The expansion of Haverhill High School. (State share: $35 million.)
  • The renovation of Haverhill’s downtown commuter rail station. (State share: $6 million.)
  • The construction of a municipal parking garage. (State share: $2 million.)
  • Improvements to two parks and the Bradford Rail Trail. (State share: $2.6 million.)
  • Renovations to Trinity Stadium. (State share: $6 million-plus.)
  • Grants to the  Haverhill Police Department for staffing and equipment.  (More than $1.5 million over three years.)

Discussing the many grants Dempsey helped to secure for programs in the Haverhill public schools, such as the $218,000 recently allocated for equipment to train high school students in health care skills, School Superintendent James Scully told the Eagle Tribune, “Every single year, he helped us get our technology up to date.  If it wasn’t for Brian Dempsey, we’d be light years behind where we are, technology-wise.  Him leaving the House, it’s as if the Coast Guard were to stop patrolling our shores.”

Said Haverhill Mayor James Fiorentini, “…we’re deeply concerned about him leaving.  He’s going to be sorely missed, there’s no doubt about it.”

If someone has ever run for the Massachusetts House promising to do all he could to ingratiate himself with leadership, build relationships with every mover and shaker in sight, strategically work his way up the ladder over a period of years, and put himself, ideally, in position one day to be appointed chair of the Ways & Means Committee so that he could get maximum state dollars for his district, I’m not aware of it.    

First-time candidates for the legislature, I guess, are usually too idealistic and clueless to do that.  Or maybe they’re afraid they’d come across as cynical or crass.  Such concerns are overblown and unhelpful, in my opinion.

As the good people of Haverhill have demonstrated in their mourning over Dempsey’s decision to quit the legislature and head up a big Boston lobbying firm, (where he’ll be able to make some serious money for the first time in his life), the folks in the district always care more about getting goodies from the state than anything else.  Everybody loves a freebie, an extra, a special deal. That goes for me, too.

We the people are in on the game. We know those discretionary state funds are going to be spent somewhere in Massachusetts, so we figure, Why shouldn’t they be spent on something that will make my town better?

To his credit, Dempsey frankly acknowledges the grab-it-when-you-can imperative of legislative service.  “…as chairman (of W&M),” Dempsey told the Eagle Tribune, “you’re in a tremendous position to deliver, and I certainly wasn’t shy about it.  I felt it was Haverhill’s turn and tried to do as much as I could.”

The wonder of our system is that it works as well as it does, most of the time, and that most legislators who reach positions of top leadership do not become ridiculous and obscene in the utilization of the power granted to them via a biennial vote of their peers.  (The majority party votes for a house speaker and a senate president at the beginning of every two-year session; the speaker and president then appoint all of the committee chairs.)   

During his time as chair of Ways & Means, Brian Dempsey was good to his district but he was also as good as he possibly could have been to his colleagues who did not have the power he had come, through fate and luck, to possess.  One way to put it is that he never forgot where he came from….he remained the friendly, warm, open, humble and understanding person he was at 23 when entering the legislature for the first time.  You just had to listen to the three-minute standing ovation Dempsey received when he was introduced by Speaker Bob DeLeo for his farewell speech in the House chamber on Wednesday, July 19 -- an ovation punctuated by whoops and shouts -- to know that was the case.  There was genuine, deep-seated affection for the man across the breadth of that historic room.  I doubt you could find more than a few persons who served with Dempsey who begrudge him having taken care of Haverhill so well when its turn came around.

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Blogster's Miscellany: From Flatterers to Casino Boozing to Angus vs. Scottie

Friday, July 21, 2017

Kissing Not Welcome in this Room.  Here’s another reason to like Tackey Chan, the Quincy rep just appointed House chair of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure: he does not like to be flattered.  As Chan was co-presiding at a meeting of the committee for the first time this past Tuesday, together with Senator Barbara L’Italien of Andover, witness after witness opened his testimony by congratulating Chan on being appointed the House chair, wishing him well in this important new endeavor, etc., and/or predicting confidently Chan’s success at the helm of the committee. Not once did Chan nod, smile, acknowledge or reply to the praise.  I was there for the entire hearing and marveled at how the witnesses kept effusing when it was obvious that Chan did not wish to have his backside kissed.  Could it be that Chan, a graduate of Boston College High School, Brandeis and the New England School of Law, has taken to heart one of my favorite proverbs, coined centuries ago in the Roman Empire: There is no remedy for the bite of sycophant.

Dempsey’s Class Filled with Heavyweights. House Ways & Means chair Brian Dempsey, who just resigned from the legislature to take a position at a lobbying firm, gave his farewell speech on the House floor this past Wednesday.  I was not surprised to learn that Dempsey was a popular kid growing up.  He talked of visiting the House chamber for the first time as an 18-year-old student council president at Haverhill High School participating in Student Government Day exercises.  (Getting elected to the legislature has always been a lot like getting elected senior class president -- a popularity contest, pure and simple.) I was surprised at the number of reps now holding leadership positions that were first elected to the House with Dempsey in the elections of 1990, taking office in January, 1991.  As recounted by Dempsey on Wednesday, the class of 1991 contained 46 new state representatives, meaning that almost a quarter of the 200-member House turned over at that time, and that among those freshman reps were: House Speaker Bob DeLeo of Winthrop, House Majority Leader Ron Mariano of Quincy,  Joe Wagner of Chicopee, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies; Tony Cabral, chair of the House Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets; Lou Kafka of Stoughton, the House’s Fourth Division Chair; and William Galvin of Canton, chair of the House Committee on Rules.
He ‘Had No Business Being There.’ (Who Does?) Having caught the political bug at a young age, Dempsey ran for the Haverhill School Committee at age 18 and lost by only 36 votes.  That brush with victory inspired him to run two years later for the Haverhill City Council.  He won that race and, when he sought a second term on the Council, did even better. “I topped the ticket,” he recalled during his farewell speech.  “In those days, the top vote-getter automatically became Council president.  So, there I was at 23, president of the Haverhill City Council.  I probably had no business being council president.”  He soon jumped into a race for an open House seat and was still only 23 when he went to Beacon Hill. There he remained for twenty-six and a half years. Said Dempsey, “I have loved this job so much and I cannot think of a day I did not enjoy coming in to the State House.”

Senate Prez Defers to Conferees on Casino Bar Hours. Our Senate president could teach the folks in Washington a thing or two about compromise.  Asked yesterday by Boston Herald Radio about the provision in the newly crafted FY 2018 state budget that will allow casinos to serve liquor until 4:00 a.m., Stan Rosenberg said, “I told the proponents I wouldn’t support it.  I urged the (House/Senate budget) conference committee not to approve it, and I did what I could, but the conference committee eventually decided to do it.  I wasn’t going to vote against the (final) budget because of that.”
Casino Machinations Predicted Early On.  A State House News Service article yesterday recapitulated the Boston Herald Radio interview with Rosenberg. The SHNS wrote, “Rosenberg said casino companies usually lobby to change the rules after obtaining a license, and he predicted future efforts to allow smoking in casinos, and for lower casino taxes if the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is allowed to build a Taunton casino under federal law.  A tribal casino would pay a lower tax rate than commercial casinos under the 2011 gaming law and a compact negotiated between the Mashpee Wampanoag and the Patrick Administration.”  Rosenberg then said, “These guys applied for a license knowing what the rules were.  They got the license knowing what the rules were.  I warned people in the legislature at the time that this is what happens in every state (where casino gambling has been legalized), and we should protect ourselves against it.”

There’s a Casino Rescue Bill in Our Future.  I wish I had the standing to warn legislators about anything. (Blogging is balm for those denied a pulpit.)  I’d tell them now to expect requests from all Massachusetts casinos, five to ten years hence, to reduce the percentage of gambling profits they’re required by law to give the Commonwealth.  They’ll say they’re not making enough money.  They’ll say increased competition from Connecticut and Rhode Island is hurting their bottom lines.  They’ll say that, if the legislature won’t act swiftly to reduce the state “take,” they’ll have no choice but to start laying people off.  An emergency “casino rescue bill” will be filed at the urging of a coalition of casino industry professionals and labor unions.  By then, given my paltry retirement savings, I’ll probably be working as a greeter at the Wynn Boston Harbor casino in Everett.  I’ll probably be ripe for exploitation in a casino ad campaign.  They’ll give me $500, I’ll say on TV anything they want.  “Hi, I’m John from Melrose.  If the casino rescue bill fails, I’ll be out of a job and eating cat food in a month.  Call your legislators today.  Tell them we need to save our job-producing casinos.  Thank you…and God bless America!”
MA: Driverless Technology’s Worst Nightmare. Back in February, Governor Charlie Baker got the audience laughing during a forum on self-driving vehicles at the winter meetings of the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C.  Noting that several companies devoted to autonomous vehicle technology had set up shop in Massachusetts, he said, “I thought they were doing it because we have a whole lot of smart people who know a lot about technology.  It actually turns out they’re locating in Massachusetts because our winters are horrible and our roads suck.  They basically said, If we can figure out how to move autonomous vehicles safely around the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the City of Boston, we can do it anywhere in the country.”

Guv Concerned About the Poor Truck Drivers.  On a more serious note at that self-driving vehicles confab, Baker urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to consider the “workforce issues” that could result from self-driving trucks and other technologies displacing workers.  “I really think it’s important for us as a country to be thinking far enough ahead on that one that we don’t end up creating just a tremendous amount of economic hardship along the way,” Baker said.  Putting truck drivers permanently out of work is not good social policy but holding back the march of technology is not wise or feasible in the long run; therefore, we’re going to help the displaced truck drivers and their families as they transition to new lines of work, and that support will have to be extensive and long-running.  If Democrats had been thinking like that over the last 10 years, maybe Trump would still be hosting Celebrity Apprentice.
Coming Soon to a Busy Roadway Near You. Driver-less trucks could become a reality much sooner than you think. Jason Seidl, managing director of Cowen and Company, was quoted recently by Railway Age as saying that semi-autonomous Level 3 trucks “will be ubiquitous on America’s highways within 5-10 years,” and that driverless Level 5 vehicles will be common “some time after that.” (Semi-autonomous means a vehicle whose driver may cede control of it on certain technologically-equipped roadways and under certain conditions.  The levels assigned to trucks have to do with the federal Department of Transportation inspections they must undergo.)  Seidel added, “A truck without a driver would no longer be subject to the current 11-hour daily drive time limit, which is in place to protect the public from overtired drivers.  Therefore, a Level 5 truck could cover more mileage, haul more freight and ultimately generate more revenue per day than a truck driven by a human.”  More trucks on the road for longer hours on Massachusetts highways?  I am hoping that some engineer will explain to us how it will not be awful when the Mass Turnpike gets equipped with driverless technology.

What if McQuilken Had Won in ’04?  I appreciate the State House News Service for all the little-but-important things it point outs.  This past Tuesday, for example, it ran an item on how the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery has hired Angus McQuilken, who had been chief of staff to former state senator Cheryl Jacques back in the early 2000s. Jacques resigned in 2004 before her term was up.  Scott Brown, then a little known Republican state rep from Wrentham, ran for the Jacques seat, as did McQuilken, a Democrat. “In 2004, in elections that could have altered the course of political history, McQuilken narrowly lost two state Senate races to Scott Brown,” the SHNS reminded us.  “In a special election, Brown outpolled McQuilken 18,876 to 18,518 before beating him 41,889 to 39,253 in the November general election.”  Only 349 votes separated Brown from McQuilken in their first showdown.  If McQuilken had managed to flip just 175 votes, Brown would not have entered the Massachusetts Senate and would not have been in a position to take on and defeat Martha Coakley in the shocking upset election of 2010 election that produced a successor to Ted Kennedy.   Elizabeth Warren subsequently displaced Brown but Brown’s first close win over McQuilken proved to be a gift that keeps on giving.  Brown was a big Trump supporter last year.  His name recognition and prominence as a former widely hailed Republican U.S. Senator boosted Trump, especially in New Hampshire, where Brown relocated after losing to Warren.  For his campaign services, President Trump appointed Brown U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, unquestionably one of the best jobs on the planet.

Sanchez Possesses the All-Important Trait of a Ways & Means Chair

Monday, July 17, 2017

This past Thursday, July 13, Haverhill’s Brian Dempsey surprised most everybody in the Massachusetts legislature -- and everyone who follows the workings of the legislature -- when word got out that he will soon be resigning from the House and relinquishing the chairmanship of Ways & Means Committee to direct a large Boston lobbying team.  

The House chair of Ways & Means is one of the five most powerful persons on Beacon Hill, the others being the governor, the president of the Senate, the Senate chair of Ways & Means, and the speaker of the house.

For years Dempsey has been seen as the speaker-in-waiting, the man destined to succeed Bob DeLeo when DeLeo decides to step down, whenever that may be. 
The sound of long-held expectations shattering is always loud.  It echoes impressively, like the blast from a large bomb dropped in a mountain range. 

Immediately, speculation began on DeLeo’s choice of a new Ways & Means chair.
Although his name wasn’t mentioned in the initial press accounts, I thought the safe choice was Steve Kulik, the Democrat vice chair of House Ways & Means, who grew up in Newton and has represented a collection of 19 small western towns for 27 years.  Kulik, age 66, has been a faithful No. 2 on Ways & Means for a long time. Promoting him would have enforced the notion that diligence and loyalty are rewarded in the lower branch.

Another potential advantage for the speaker in choosing Kulik, I thought, was that he does not have the political heft of some of the bigfoot House committee chairs who, if gifted now with the chairmanship of Way & Means, would automatically be seen as DeLeo’s hand-picked successor.
Kulik’s elevation to Ways & Means chair, I thought, would also give DeLeo time to evaluate carefully the pros and cons of every other putative speaker on his leadership team and to make at his leisure the painstaking choices required for the development of an optimal plan of succession.        

If, after the 2018 legislative elections, the time came when DeLeo wanted to appoint someone other than Kulik chair of Ways & Means, I thought, DeLeo could assert that Kulik’s leadership of the committee, by mutual understanding, had been provisional from the start and that he’d always had other things, of equal or greater importance, in mind for his esteemed colleague from the Berkshires.
Before leaving the office this past Friday, I went to the web site of our legislative tracking service, MassTrac, and printed out the biography of each of the House committee chairs I considered a strong candidate to succeed Dempsey.  In alphabetical order, they were:

  • Thomas A. Golden of Lowell, Committee on Telecommunication, Utilities and Energy
  • Harold P. Naughton, Jr., of Clinton, Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
  • Jeffrey Sanchez of Boston, Committee on Health Care Financing
  • William M. Straus of Mattapoisett, Committee on Transportation
  • Joseph F. Wagner of Chicopee, Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies

Over the weekend, Speaker DeLeo made his choice of a new chair of Ways & Means and it was…Sanchez! 

The Sanchez news broke Sunday afternoon.  Several accounts last night and this morning described him as a surprise choice, while justly trumpeting that DeLeo has set in motion a chain of events that could culminate in the election of the first Latino to head a branch of the Massachusetts legislature.  Sanchez was born in Puerto Rico and came to the mainland U.S. as a young boy.   
The commentary on Sanchez also centered on his progressive views as a contrast to the usual centrist or conservative inclinations of legislators normally put in charge of the budget process.

I remember the period in 2005 when former House Speaker Sal DiMasi surprised a lot of people by naming Bob DeLeo, then a quiet, deliberately-low-profile chair of the Committee on Bills in Third Reading, chair of Ways & Means.
I remember talking about DeLeo’s promotion one day soon after with a friend and fellow lobbyist, a gentleman who had served with DeLeo in the House and is a member of DeLeo’s “class,” i.e., they both entered the legislature in 1991.

“You’ve known DeLeo a long time,” I said.  “Why do you think he was chosen?”
“Like most things,” my friend said, “it’s kind of simple:  Bobby DeLeo was the only one of Sal’s close friends who can say no to people.”

Saying no is a big part of running Ways & Means.  It’s not easy, it's no fun, being Mr. Bad News, especially when you have to reject pet proposals from persons you've served with for years, men and women you may be very fond of, personally.
Say all you want about Jeff Sanchez being a progressive, which is kind of a complimentary term for liberal.  Sanchez is a progressive.  What's truly salient are two attributes he's exhibited during his chairmanship of Health Care Financing:  he's willing to do the hard and tedious work of mastering the numbers, and he can say no to any colleague seeking his support for a new and ostensibly promising health care initiative if he's not convinced it's worthwhile, financially or operationally.  Sanchez is a hard sell.

Sanchez is also a good man, a serious legislator, and, wonder of wonders, a non-jaded idealist at age 48. 

The Speaker made a good call.