ABC 40 reported tonight a piece of news from an "inside source" that Governor Deval Patrick has told three Springfield Finance Control Board members that "their services will no longer be needed." Replacements, however, were not named.
Those members are Chairman Alan LeBovidge, Michael "Jake" Jacobson, and Thomas Gloster.
Each of them performed their duties on the board with competence, in my view; Jacobson, especially, exemplified the astuteness, efficiency and thoroughness that has characterized this board in general. Yes, there were some problems, such as with the state’s open meeting law, and difficulties with certain employee raises and bonuses, and some less than smooth public relations experiences such as with the trash fee, but overall I think the toughest work of city recovery was tackled and tackled well.
These folks are big-picture number-crunchers, in part, and not feel-good performers—unless observing skilled number-crunching makes you feel good, which for many Springfield residents could be true under the circumstances. The recent estimates of cost savings on municipal employee health insurance alone is a staggering example of the success of skilled number-crunching.
Control board executive director Philip Puccia summed up those successes at the board’s last meeting: "When you capture the major elements from a cash perspective, what has helped the city," he said, "there’s a million different things. But if I was to boil them down, it would be the changes in health care, it would be in the conservative budgeting of the tax levy, and thirdly, the aggressive collection of taxes. Those were all supported by hundreds of administrative and management things that we’ve been implementing, but those are sort of the big three."
We may be facing the home stretch now, with perhaps just 14 more months of Chapter 169 of the Acts of 2004. Is there some strategy to a restructuring of the board? Possibly some effort to transition back to self-rule through some carefully-selected local appointments to the board? Ah, one can only guess.
If this piece of news turns out to be accurate, and Patrick has better candidates waiting in the wings who can quickly get up to speed, and demonstrate similar capacity and detachment, more power to him—these are critical appointments, especially replacing all three at once. It would be prudent to announce who those candidates are as soon as possible, rather than waiting several weeks to address the matter. Especially if "inside source" is sharing information a little ahead of the press office.
