Pat Markey had barely taken his seat on the Springfield Library and Museums Association's library advisory committee when all hell broke loose.
In early 2003, at the second meeting he attended, the SLMA—the private organization that for decades had run the city's library system as well as the museums at the Quadrangle—announced that it was shutting down three neighborhood library branches due to an alleged shortage of funds. At the next meeting, the chairman of the SLMA's board assured members that a fast-circulating rumor that the group was about to sell off the Mason Square branch was false.
That very afternoon, however, the SLMA signed a deal selling the library to the Urban League.
Markey was furious; how could the SLMA, entrusted with some of Springfield's most treasured institutions and funded largely with taxpayer dollars, make such sweeping decisions without public input? Why did it not seek the counsel of—or, at the very least, give honest answers to—the citizens' board put in place to advise the SLMA on major decisions?
Disgusted, Markey resigned from the advisory committee. So did another committee member, Joan Ryan, the wife of former mayor Charlie Ryan. But they did not go away. Long frustrated by their sense that SLMA had become an insiders' club with little regard for the public that it was supposed to serve, activists launched a successful campaign for the city to take control of its libraries. Charlie Ryan stepped forward as the effort's leader.
It was during the campaign, Markey says, that he came to know Ryan, and developed a tremendous respect for him. "We talked about how empowering righteous indignation could be, and how he enjoyed tilting at windmills," Markey recalls with a laugh.
The liking was mutual. In the midst of the library campaign, Ryan jumped into the mayor's race and was re-elected to the post he'd held 40 years before. He promptly hired Markey as city solicitor. Markey went on to sue the SLMA, contending that the group had no right to sell the Mason Square library, and won a settlement for the city.
Markey returned to private practice after two years at City Hall, but he's remained part of the Ryan administration, serving on the Retirement Board and as chairman of the Library Commission. This summer, he announced his candidacy for the City Council. His chances look good: Markey finished second in September's preliminary election, and he clearly draws support from the same influential pool of voters who put Ryan in office.
Markey offers a compelling case for why Springfield voters would do well to elect him. A good place to start would be the succinct list of qualifications he gave in a recent interview—a list that, sadly, distinguishes him from many of the people positioning themselves to lead the city at this crucial moment in its history: "I love the city. I can say 'No.' I don't care if people I don't like don't like me."
That independence, in a city that has been damaged financially and in the quality of its political processes by cronyism, is a quality that has won Markey much respect. Indeed, while Markey has yet to serve a day in elected office, some backers speak of him as future mayoral material, an obvious choice to succeed his political mentor, Ryan.
Something else distinguishes Markey from many of his peers: while many middle-class families have been leaving Springfield for the suburbs, he and his wife Jennifer, both of whom grew up in the city, moved back.
Markey left Springfield for college, followed by two years in Paraguay with the Peace Corps, then law school. He landed what he calls a "dream job" in D.C., as a civil rights prosecutor for the Justice Department. But when he and Jennifer were expecting their first child, the long hours and travel became less appealing, and they decided to return to Springfield to be near family and slow down their pace of life.
The Markeys wanted their kids (they now have three) to grow up in a place where not everyone was exactly like them. "The diversity of Springfield was a big draw for us," Markey says. "I think exposing our kids to that diversity is as valuable as giving them a Deerfield education."
Markey took the city solicitor job expecting it to be a part-time position that would allow him to split his time between City Hall and his private firm, but the city job soon took up the bulk of his time. A seat on the City Council, Markey says, would allow him to serve the city in a more workable way. "I wanted to participate in a way that was manageable to [my family] personally and to me professionally," he says.
Markey speaks kindly of the sitting City Council—"I like the current councilors, and I think they're capable," he offers—although it's clear he sees much lacking there. "I would like to change the City Council from a declaration-making body to a body concerned with policy," Markey says.
While Markey doesn't name names, he does speak generally of the problems created when councilors are so concerned with maintaining their seats, or so focused on the next seat they'd like to hold, that they eschew real work for crowd-pleasing but empty stances. "That's the flaw in our process, that good candidates aren't necessarily good leaders," he says. "They'll benefit from having a lawyer who has experience reading budgets, who can and does read the law."
In the years prior to the Ryan administration—when Springfield sank into the financial mess that led the state to impose the Finance Control Board—the budget submitted to the Council by the mayor each year showed a spending plan but not revenue, Markey notes. "It was crazy for them not to demand [revenue figures]," he says.
Enterprising councilors could have found that information on the city's local aid documents, known as "cherry sheets." If they had, Markey adds, they would have seen that Ryan's predecessor, Mike Albano, was basing spending on the expectation of collecting 99 percent of tax revenue—while, in reality, the city was only collecting 92 or 93 percent.
Markey would like to see the City Council become a more efficient body, starting with the way it takes up new proposals. Right now, proposals are typically introduced to the full Council, then are often sent to committee for review (or, in the case of controversial proposals the council is too skittish to address, to die). "The committees are where work should actually happen," says Markey, who thinks proposals should first be introduced at the committee level, where the details can be hammered out before they come to the full Council.
And, Markey says, committees need to meet on a regular schedule. Right now, they meet on an ad-hoc basis, "which means they meet a lot before the elections," he says.
"The folks that are on the Council now just need some leadership. They need someone to step up and say, 'Here's a plan,'" Markey says. He names incumbents Tim Rooke and Bruce Stebbins, and fellow challenger Karen Powell, as potential like-minded allies.
There's a lot riding on the City Council during the next term. The Control Board is set to leave in the summer of 2009, restoring to the Council much of the power it lost when the board was created. Markey is full of praise for what the board and the Ryan administration have achieved. "They've done a terrific job with the budget, and making the budget public," he says. "The turn-around is remarkable. City government is functioning much more efficiently.
"But," he adds, "that could disappear" under poor leadership: "I think the [Legislature] will be more willing to take off the training wheels if the City Council is populated with responsible legislators. I think I could be one of those responsible legislators."
One thing that makes Markey optimistic about Springfield's future is the support it receives from Gov. Deval Patrick, including a recent $12.5 million aid package.
"It's absolutely terrific to have a governor who continues to visit Western Massachusetts and cares about Springfield long after the election," Markey says. The first indication that Patrick took Springfield and its needs seriously, he says, was his appointment of venture capitalist/education reformer Chris Gabrieli to head the Control Board.
Still, there is one notable issue on which where Markey disagrees with Patrick: the casino issue. "I'm not a big fan of casinos. I don't think that's real economic development," he says. Markey doubts New England can support any more of the "resort"-style casinos Patrick is pitching, and notes that they would hurt existing businesses, like restaurants, shops and sports teams.
"It's important between now and the time the Control Board leaves to get real economic development in place," Markey says. That could include luring businesses by offering tax incentives that might hurt the city's bottom line in the short run but would reap longer-term benefits.
Springfield also needs to prepare for what Markey sees as a looming crisis in its public retirement system. Markey sat for two years on the city's Retirement Board (he resigned from that board and the library commission this summer to avoid the apparently legal but sticky situation of raising campaign funds while serving on city boards). Right now, he notes, the city pays about $30 million a year—roughly one-quarter of what it receives from property taxes—into the retirement system. But the aging of the baby boom generation, plus early retirement packages offered by the city in recent years to ease the pressure on its annual budgets, mean the city will have to drastically increase that contribution over the next 20 years or so, to about $60 million a year.
"The day of reckoning is coming, and I'm not sure what we're going to do to address it, unless we expand our economy rapidly," Markey says. "The tax base is not expanding fast enough."
The Control Board has taken positive steps to bolster the retirement fund, including moving it into the state system, which yields higher returns. And the board's recent decision to make the annual payment into the fund in one lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year, rather than on a monthly basis, will allow the fund to reap more interest over the course of the year.
Still, Markey expects more will need to be done. "One taboo no one talks about: we can't have people retiring at age 42 and collecting retirement benefits for 35 years," he says. Springfield is not the only community facing this crisis, says Markey, who suggests one solution might be an across-the-board raising of the retirement age.
It's hard to imagine many candidates who, just weeks before Election Day, would risk infuriating city employees and retirees by suggesting a change to their pension program.
But that's what Markey's supporters value in him: his intellectual honesty; his ability to focus on real problems, even uncomfortable ones, and his willingness to explore real solutions, even unpopular ones. Also appealing is his independence from the Springfield Newspapers, which has longed maintained undue influence over city pols eager for positive headlines and terrified of negative ones. Markey, in contrast, directly took on the newspaper's bigwigs—notably, its president, David Starr—when he sued the SLMA, of which Starr is a long-time and highly influential board member.
Markey supports the ballot question that would establish ward representation to the City Council as a way to ensure that councilors feel directly responsible to the neighborhoods, especially those that historically have lacked political sway. Ward representation would also free some candidates from the burden of raising tens of thousands of dollars to mount a city-wide campaign. "The money aspect of it is not only corrupting; it's also very limiting," he says. "If it costs $40,000 to get elected, you're not going to get the best people running."
If the system does change, however, Markey expects he'd run for one of the remaining at-large seats. "It's true that you can get elected without getting a vote outside of East Forest Park and Forest Park, but I don't want to do that," he says. "I want to represent the whole city."
mturner@valleyadvocate.com
