At Monday’s Finance Control Board meeting, members of the media waited patiently until the board dismissed to go into executive session to discuss trash fee litigation and labor matters. Then, their time of patience ended, and they descended upon chairman Alan LeBovidge for comments.
CBS3’s Lesley Tanner reported from City Hall that evening, staying late to find out what came of the lengthy executive session. More questions than answers are being posed at this point, as Amherst-based Tom Devine sums up in a post exploring options for governor-elect Deval Patrick, and as a November 27 Business West editorial lays out. From the latter:
The Control Board: Leave it alone. As we’ve said on a few occasions, while much of the hard work has been done with regard to balancing the budget and negotiating labor contracts, the Finance Control Board’s work is far from finished. Changes in the way the city is run need to be institutionalized, and progress must be made on several economic development projects. An intact control board, operating for at least a few more years, represents the best hope for getting these assignments done.
And from the former:
It wouldn’t be surprising if it is a while before we know much about what direction Deval intends to go. He has a whole lot to do in his first months in office, and it would be presumptuous to assume that Springfield would be one of his first orders of business. But the Control Board expires at the end of June 2007, so some basic decisions will have to be made this spring at the latest. Whatever decisions are forthcoming, my short term advice to the new Governor would be this:
Do nothing until you have had a chance to sit down for a lengthy, in-depth conversation with Mayor Charles V. Ryan.
Here’s to hoping that happens sooner rather than later, so some of us can stop our hand-wringing and media-buzzing and move on with greater certainty. Short of any decisions from the governor-elect, however, the next big milestone will emerge from developments next week on the trash fee lawsuit, which has so far triggered a hiring freeze as well as the looming possibility of cuts and layoffs.
