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Where’s the outrage?
Federal allegations of voting improprieties sully Boston

Boston mayor Thomas Menino’s ability to lull citizens into believing that real problems don’t exist is one of his most potent — and perverse — political tricks. And it appears that’s he’s pulled it off once again.

At issue this time is a lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department alleging that the city has discriminated against Hispanic and Asian-American voters who don’t have full command of English.

Stories outlining the case and providing background dutifully appeared in the city’s dailies. But the outrage that one might expect to accompany the news has, so far, failed to materialize.

If the yahoos who call talk radio are any indication, Menino’s bland and deadpan denials that voting problems even exist are a political plus. If foreign-born people to whom the US government has granted citizenship have problems with English, talk-radio reasoning goes, they shouldn’t be voting anyway. So much for Boston’s being the cradle of liberty.

During the administrations of Menino’s two predecessors, Kevin White and Raymond Flynn, such charges would have rocked City Hall. But Menino’s political apparatus is decidedly shrewd in its maddeningly passive-aggressive way. It instinctively knows that it can get away with proverbial murder because the city’s once feisty and rich political culture has — for the time being — run anemic.

No one — other than his underfunded challenger, City Councilor Maura Hennigan — has the stomach to call Boss Menino to task. That may be good for the incumbent mayor, but it’s bad for Boston.

It’s true that as voting scandals go, this one is small potatoes.

It doesn’t have the high drama of the out-and-out theft that marked Florida’s 2000 George W. Bush–Al Gore presidential race. And it certainly lacks the insidious genius of Bush’s win over Senator John Kerry in Ohio. The Ohio theft will be savored by connoisseurs of political dirty tricks for years to come. Its genius lay in preventing legions of Kerry supporters from voting. (Karl Rove, what an hombre.)

The Justice Department claims that here in Boston, a limited number of voters received improper assistance at the polls from people who wanted them to vote a certain way, or that resources in the form of designated bilingual helpers weren’t available to bridge any confusion at the polls.

It’s a fact of life that unsavory and unacceptable practices sometimes crop up in democratic life. But why not acknowledge them as exceptions, rather than the rule?

A city of Boston’s size and sophistication is rarely hit with a lawsuit such as the one now in play. And whatever the ultimate outcome, it speaks poorly of the current administration that federal government had to play its card of last resort.

The fact of the matter is that the Justice Department has had its eye on Boston for several years. Complaints were made about the conduct of a 2002 primary election in Brighton, and federal monitors kept an eye on the recent special election in Dorchester and Milton to elect a successor to House Speaker Thomas Finneran.

To be fair, the city — especially the new Election Department chair, Geraldine Cuddyer — has been working to solve problems that face immigrant-citizen voters. But that just makes Menino’s stonewalling all that more perplexing.

A plausible reason for the mayor’s big shrug is neighborhood politics. Menino has a laudable record for working with Boston’s various and growing immigrant communities. But the alleged improprieties, if they hold up in federal court, might just reflect poorly on leaders of the Chinese and Latino communities who staunchly support the mayor. Questions have been raised about neighborhoods with many Russian-born residents, but they are not the subjects of the suit.

This, in and of itself, is not a crime. What is a crime — rhetorically speaking — is that Menino may well have allowed a federal suit that could have been avoided so his neighborhood supporters could save proverbial face.

It smacks of small minded-politics driving public policy. Boston deserves better.

RENDERING UNTO CAESAR

The legislation filed by State Senator Marian Walsh of West Roxbury and supported by 32 colleagues (many of whom are cultural conservatives, especially on the hot-button issue of choice), which would require churches to file annual financial statements and list real-estate holdings with the Attorney General’s Division of Public Charities, is a welcome development.

It would introduce a much-needed measure of transparency to believers who financially support their churches. At the same time, it would not infringe in any way upon the ecclesiastical prerogatives of the churches themselves.

It no more violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of separation of church and state than do the zoning laws or building codes to which religious establishments are subject.

Such a measure would have been all but unthinkable before the clergy sex-abuse scandals — which, we are proud to say, the Phoenix helped bring to light — rocked the Catholic Church.

Its very proposal is yet another indication that Catholic lay people are tired of their unresponsive and autocratic leaders.

Belief is certainly a private matter. But tax-exempt contributions are certainly in the public realm. If federal and state tax collectors can demand proof of charitable contributions, then the public should be able to find out what that giving totals.

What are church officials who oppose the measure afraid of? Accountability? That is the only answer.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.


Issue Date: August 12 - 18, 2005
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