No shock: Menino outshines council

13 July 2001

City councilors want to know: Why does the mayor always get good press while they come off badly?

Council President Charles Yancey argues it's because "he's got a million-dollar PR budget."

Perhaps. But money doesn't buy good political instincts and common sense, things the mayor has in surfeit and the council often sorely lacks.

Each year Menino casts about for some issue to enliven the dull summer months. Last year it was summer jobs: Then-Gov. Paul Cellucci vetoed money for the program and Menino had a great time parading around soon-to-be-out-of-work kids and otherwise making the governor's life miserable.

This year Acting Gov. Jane Swift smartly refused to play that game, making sure the mayor early on had all the summer jobs money he needed.

Luckily for Menino, NSTAR - the cryptic name for the electric utility residents once affectionately called "the Edison" - readily served itself up as his next victim.

During June there were a series of power outages in parts of Boston. When customers called NSTAR to complain, they couldn't reach anyone. Frustrated, they called City Hall's hotline. But when hotline staffers tried to reach NSTAR, all they could do was leave voice mail.

The mayor blew up, sending out angry letters to state regulators and the attorney general. The story hit the papers and Menino, once again, was playing a hero's role.

Of course, a city pol like Menino has no formal authority over a state-regulated utility. No matter. Voters still think local governments should solve problems like this, by whatever means they can.

And that's what's happening. Chastened NSTAR boss Thomas May met with Menino on Wednesday. The mayor's office is feeling pretty confident that, next time there's a problem, calls will be answered.

Where was the City Council in all of this? Obsessed with a crisis of its own making.

Angry that the mayor refused its request to allow it to have its own attorney, the council unanimously voted to eliminate all funding for the city's Law Department. It was an eye-for-an-eye thing, done in a fit of petulance by a body that was tired of being dissed by the mayor.

The notion of a "counsel to the council" has a long history, but has been pushed hard over the last year by four councilors: James Kelly, the former president; Yancey, the current president whose election was engineered by Kelly; Peggy Davis-Mullen, who's running against Menino this year; and Chuck Turner, the Roxbury firebrand.

Those four amount to Menino's hard-core opponents as well, meaning there was no way the mayor would sign off on the idea.

So the council zeroed out the Law Department. And that's when the fun began.

The administration took the position that the council couldn't cut the Law Department's budget. It's a debatable point, and some who have looked at it think the council would win in court on the issue.

But so what? In the much more important court of public opinion, the issue was a loser. If the Law Department really had been cut, innocent city employees (read: constituents) were suddenly out of job. More important, critical items - such as the city's legal efforts to stop a new runway from being built at Logan Airport - would come to a halt.

The council was in the absurd position of putting internal politics ahead of the public good.

Most of the councilors had thought that their strategy of cutting the Law Department was a clever piece of symbolism. They figured that a day later the two sides would sit down and resolve the whole thing.

Wrong. The mayor's office knows a good thing when it sees it. The council had stuck its collective head inside a noose and administration staffers were delighted to let the body swing.

This mess has become something like the council's Vietnam: Once in it, no one can figure an easy way out. Some of the more sensible councilors, increasingly aware of just how irrational the council was looking, worked hard to broker a compromise. Eventually the administration said it would approve a new position with the meek title of "legislative analyst." For seven councilors, that small bone was enough. Even so, the deal fell apart, this time, ironically, over a side issue of paying some of the council's legal bills.

Today the city plans to cut paychecks for the Law Department. That itself may provoke a new crisis since, from the council's view, it is illegal now that the department has lost its funds. The outcome - a possible last-minute compromise at a council meeting scheduled today, a lawsuit or something else - was unknown.

What is known is that the council's budgetary tactic has backfired: Instead of gaining the body respect, it's caused it to look foolish. In a week when the mayor stood up for the people against a big, bad utility, the council let itself sucked into the quicksand of a petty power struggle.