E-Mail This Article to a Friend Grinding to a halt DiMasi’s House slows down, another virtual race develops, and Deval Patrick delays the inevitable BY ADAM REILLY

TOM FINNERAN LEFT. Sal DiMasi took over. There were new rules, new committees, new leaders. For a few months, the Massachusetts House of Representatives seemed almost dynamic.

Not anymore. According to the House Clerk’s Office, less than half of the approximately 4100 pieces of legislation filed since December have been referred to committee for further consideration. And the hearing process, usually already moving briskly by March, is just now building momentum. Even if things suddenly pick up — for example, if the bills orphaned in the House Clerk’s Office all find homes soon — the House will still be off to a noticeably slow start.

What’s responsible? To some extent, the recent inertia stems from the very changes DiMasi made when he succeeded Finneran as Speaker. DiMasi didn’t reinvent the House (see "Leftward Ho?", News and Features, February 11), but he radically altered it, and any revamped institution needs extra time before it functions smoothly.

But DiMasi’s shakeup isn’t the only explanation. Some legislators link the general sluggishness in the House to lingering resentment among some members of Finneran’s old leadership team. Many Finneran loyalists initially backed John Rogers, now the House majority leader, for the post of Speaker; when DiMasi got his leadership position, they lost theirs. Now some of them are pushing back, in quintessential Massachusetts fashion, by keeping their old offices as long as possible and refusing to give up their cadre of legislative aides. In other words, they’ve started a group pissing match.

"Most members, including some of the old guard, have come to understand that the place was really dysfunctional before," one legislator says. "But there are a handful of people who were removed from positions of power who seem to think there was a grave injustice done, and they’re making life difficult by insisting upon retaining privileges they don’t deserve."

This entrenchment, in turn, has kept several newly promoted legislators from moving into their new office space, and limited their ability to hire new staff. (Committee chairs and vice-chairs frequently have multiple staffers, while back-benchers generally have one. Since the House is under an informal hiring freeze, the former leaders’ insistence on keeping their assistants is preventing their replacements from hiring needed employees.) Until these changes are made, the symbolic shift from Finneran to DiMasi will remain incomplete. So will the House’s functional transformation. And so, says a second legislator, a "level of frustration" in the House seems likely to fester.

Now might be a good time for DiMasi — who had a reputation as something of an enforcer under Finneran — to prod his recalcitrant colleagues a bit. But given DiMasi’s own desire to create a warmer, fuzzier House ethos, the Speaker may be reluctant to draw a line in the sand over something as petty as office space.

Still, if DiMasi wants to retain control of his chamber, he may have no choice. Consider a recent House debate over abstinence-only sex-ed programs. During the debate, Eugene O’Flaherty of Chelsea — who was once mentioned as another possible successor to Finneran, and is ideologically simpatico with the relatively conservative Rogers — aggressively took a position at odds with DiMasi’s. (DiMasi backed spending federal funding for abstinence-only programs outside the classroom; O’Flaherty sided with Governor Mitt Romney, who wants all such programs to be classroom-based, to the exclusion of non-abstinence sex ed in Bay State schools; see "Feeling the Burn, Mitt?", This Just In, March 4.) DiMasi did not rein O’Flaherty in; instead, he let him speak his piece.

"Sal did not seem to mind, and that’s probably a healthy thing," the first legislator says. "We finally have a Speaker who’s not bothered by people, even within his own leadership team, stepping out against his agenda. But it raises the question: how long will he let people do that? And will Rogers and O’Flaherty try to create a point of opposition within the Democratic leadership?"

Not everything is bleak in the House. Under the leadership of Bob DeLeo, the newly constituted Ways and Means Committee is making steady progress on this year’s budget, and most members seemingly continue to think highly of DiMasi. Still, the Speaker may need to ask himself: where does tolerance end and indulgence begin?