City hollow

Tom Menino is short-handed at a bad time

by Michael Crowley

What's going on at Boston City Hall? It's been three months now that our quintessentially detail-oriented mayor, Tom Menino, has been running his great metropolis without a chief of staff, a low-profile but vastly important post whose occupant is described by some as nothing less than the deputy mayor.

Meanwhile, several other desks have emptied out at City Hall, where the heads of four key city agencies -- John Eade of Inspectional Services, Bruce Rossley of Cultural Affairs, Lorraine Downey of the environmental department, and Charles Grigsby of Neighborhood Development -- have called it quits (or, in Downey's case, been ousted) since September. For three months Menino has been making assurances that replacements are imminent, and yet none have come.

The mayor and his allies breezily dismiss this sudden slew of vacancies, and the curious delay in filling them, as nothing more than standard turnover. But the situation does revive long-standing suspicions that Tom Menino's City Hall isn't all it could be. With notable exceptions -- namely, police chief Paul Evans and schools superintendent Thomas Payzant -- Menino's administration has never been an epicenter of ambition or innovation. A proudly self-described "nuts and bolts" mayor, Menino has often been criticized for not bringing in the type of bright bulbs who illuminated previous City Halls -- the Barney Franks, Ira Jacksons, and Micho Springs of old. That truth, combined with the latest exits, led the Boston Globe to bemoan a "brain drain" at City Hall back in September.

Relax, say the mayor's people, it's all very routine. Turnover is natural, especially given that several of the emigrants were City Hall veterans. Lucrative private-sector salaries have been vacuuming up the best people. As for the delay in filling the jobs, they call it a testament to the mayor's insistence on finding top talent. "He's deliberate about these things," says one Menino adviser. "He'd rather get the best person."

Maybe. But in some cases, like that of Cultural Affairs, it's been almost four months since Menino knew jobs would be opening. In others, Menino has made false predictions about imminent hires (in late October, for instance, the Globe reported the mayor as saying that a new chief of staff announcement was just a week or two away). Both facts suggest the headhunting hasn't gone smoothly. Although few are willing to acknowledge it on the record, most City Hall watchers agree that the mayor is a notoriously difficult boss, a temperamental control freak who hates to be outshined.

"No decision is made without Menino signing off or having a major role," says one City Hall source. "You have no latitude. There's a frustration that there's only so much you can do before you have to move on."

Adds city councilor at large Peggy Davis-Mullen, one of Menino's few outspoken critics: "I definitely believe that whether it's been [former Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) chief] Marisa Lago or Lorraine Downey, when there have been talented, independent thinkers they have not lasted a long time. I don't think that independence is valued and encouraged." (More evidence of such complaints: a recent Boston Globe report on Menino's increasingly tense relations -- which he denies -- with the current BRA director, Tom O'Brien, and even with police chief Evans).

Menino's camp seems unfazed by such criticism, however. After all, as 1999 gets under way, Menino enjoys political supremacy in Boston. All his public adversaries together wouldn't fill a Hyundai. Crime is blissfully low. The city is growing and developing. And even if the schools are still an open sore, Menino may be the most popular pol in the state. Unsurprisingly, then, there's no detectable public concern over an undermanned City Hall.

"If the city were in some sort of economic or managerial crisis, I would say that this is a disaster waiting to happen. The fact of the matter is that we're in good times and the wheels of city government seem to turn on just fine," says former city councilor John Nucci. "The mayor might be tough to work for, but he's delivering results. I'm not sure that the people who live in the neighborhoods of Boston particularly care if the mayor is tough to work for." If "Long Live the King" is the public mood, why worry about a little disorder within the trapezoidal palace?

But to say that people don't care about a problem isn't the same as saying it doesn't matter. Menino has cruised along thus far, reaping the rewards of an economic boom, but he's been wary of reforms that could streamline the city's budgets and provide more-efficient services. "There is a kind of stasis right now," says the City Hall source. "There's nothing dramatic going on. Menino has not seized upon any initiative to remake the way the city delivers public services. It is true that he drives around and picks up the cell phone and says, 'This pothole, that pothole, that light,' but at the end of the day nothing's changed in the way things get done."

And the mayor is only now beginning the most challenging phase of his mayoralty. In 1999, several long-discussed plans for major city development will assume more tangible form. Witness this week's unveiling of a revised master plan for the Seaport District. As he weighs development proposals from the Back Bay to the Fenway to South Boston and Roxbury, Menino is talking about nothing less than remaking the city. And yet, as Davis-Mullen notes, he is doing so with something of a skeleton cabinet.

Which raises another possible explanation for the hiring delays. Says Davis-Mullen: "There's a part of me that thinks this is not by accident -- that it is a very small handful of people who make most of the decisions, and that by not naming the chiefs, [the power] still remains in that small inner circle of decision-makers."

"Doesn't it strike people as alarming that there are major department heads missing when he's talking about building a new city -- which has major traffic, environmental, and cultural components to it?" adds the councilor. "You've got the Red Sox, the Millennium project, City Hall Plaza, the Seaport. You don't have decisions being made like this without permanent department heads in place unless it's intentional. Are we gonna wait until everything's planned and built?"

Even if no calculated scheme is afoot, the net result is the same. Major decisions about the future of the city are being shaped by troublingly few voices at City Hall. Whatever the reasons for the delay in filling the empty posts -- Menino's reputation for heavy-handedness, competition from the private sector, or the rigorousness of the search itself -- let's hope we see some bright new faces soon. With a public largely unversed in the complicated details of big development proposals, the last thing Boston's residents need is even less debate around the conference tables at City Hall.

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.