BACK IN THE boom-boom ’90s, when business lingo ruled, we would have said that the Speaker was caught in a paradigm shift. Today, in the got-naught-oughts, we’ll simply say that Finneran has been caught in the middle of changing trends. When he first became Speaker, he did so as the only apparently authentic fiscal conservative on Beacon Hill. But back then times were good. Finneran could position himself as the one holding the line on budget costs (as he did when he refused to pay for Bob Kraft’s new football stadium), even as he packed the judiciary with costly patronage appointments and refused to take on the state’s powerful unions: Finneran has failed to touch the costly Quinn bill, which pays police officers to take night classes, and refused to ask state workers to contribute more for their health care.

But by leveraging his fiscally conservative credentials for the tax increases last year, he robbed himself of his political identity. As a result, Finneran is no longer the primary anti-tax voice on Beacon Hill. He’s the politician voters blame for freezing the income-tax cut they approved for themselves November 5. Meanwhile, with Romney in the governor’s office thanks largely to a pledge not to raise taxes, those who believe government has a role to play in providing services for the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, and the brutally poor need a champion on Beacon Hill. But after years of being antagonized by Finneran, who among the Commonwealth’s human-services advocates is going to turn to the Speaker as a savior? Even if they were willing to work with him, Finneran is constitutionally and temperamentally unsuited to the role of defender of big government, which is what is needed now as a counterweight to Romney.

This changing dynamic has exposed Finneran’s vulnerabilities. Unable to claim he is the advocate for human services — or even for our cities and towns, many of which rely heavily on the state to fund their public schools and police and fire departments — Finneran now looks merely venal and power-hungry. What else can be said of a Speaker who tries to sneak through $7500 pay raises for seven of his legislative lieutenants at a time when the state is asking Medicaid recipients — some of whom live on little more than $7500 a year — to start paying for some of their medical bills?

All that said, it could be argued that none of this matters, that Finneran is still firmly in control of the House. But as history shows, every control freak eventually loses ... his grip. And recent events show that even that is starting to happen. After easily beating back Rushing’s leadership challenge — his first as Speaker — Finneran vowed to be more responsive to members. Although the composition of his new leadership team (House majority leader Sal DiMasi, Majority Whip Harkins, Assistant Majority Whip Thomas Petrolati of Ludlow, floor leader Gale Candaras of Wilbraham, and Rules Committee chair Angelo Scaccia of Hyde Park) doesn’t reflect substantive changes in Finneran’s leadership style. He still rewards the sycophants and punishes the dissidents. But he has altered the way he leads in one key way: he is now holding more caucuses with his Democratic colleagues.

One such discussion took place last Wednesday morning when rank-and-file members were furious over the pay-increase maneuver and the leadership picks. The caucus took place in rooms A1 and A2 of the State House. According to members who were present, Finneran spoke first, addressing the details of a technical budget-transfer bill. Then the reps spoke. Surprisingly, a number of legislators were openly critical of Finneran and his politics-as-usual handling of the House-leadership pay raise. (Finneran tried to slide the raise through quietly at the end of the legislative session. Representative Jay Kaufman of Lexington heard the House clerk announce a vote on a bill that had been not been previously disclosed, contrary to normal House practice; upcoming legislation is normally kept in a metal box, known as "the can." Kaufman, who’d learned to be vigilant about furtive maneuverings, objected, quickly found that the bill constituted a pay raise, and called for a roll call.) Even more unusual, the chorus of dissatisfaction included moderates who rarely align with the progressive caucus, which had already made its criticism of Finneran known in the January leadership vote.

State Representative Michael Festa of Melrose, for example, who joined the House in 1998 and had aligned himself in the past with other "practical progressives" (and less confrontational) state reps like Marie St. Fleur of Dorchester and David Linsky of Natick, looked directly at the Speaker as he spoke. Taking issue with Finneran’s attempt to sneak through the pay raise and his naming of a new leadership team that looked much like the old one, Festa told Finneran that those who had hoped to engage the Speaker through cooperation had had their hopes dashed. (Some in the Finneran camp maintain new blood has been added to the House leadership. St. Fleur, for instance, was named chair of the Education Committee. Others add that a relative dearth of turnover in the House has opened up few opportunities for up-and-coming legislators.)

When asked about the three-hour gripe session, Festa refused to comment for the Phoenix. But he offered a critique of the Speaker that, if it catches on, will mean problems for Finneran in the long term. While noting that "signals" of change sent by Finneran last year were "encouraging," he said that Finneran’s actions this year show that little, in fact, has actually changed. Then he listed his disappointments: "The recent choices of the leadership with regard to his appointments. His failure to be inclusive and to encourage more diversity of opinion within the leadership and his attempt to obtain additional compensation for the leadership are both regrettable developments. We need to do a lot more in this House to make things better."

On its own, the emergence of a vocal new anti-Finneran voice doesn’t mean much. The Speaker can still keep a firm grip on the House through the 2004 election cycle. But Festa, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the state Senate in 1990 during the state’s last fiscal crisis, finds a lesson in those events. Back then, riding a tide of anti-tax voter anger, Festa pushed the incumbent, Bulger loyalist Jack Brennan, out of the Democratic Senate primary. But then he, like many legislative candidates that year, lost out to a Republican candidate — Richard Tisei of Wakefield, who is still in office. If the economy fails to improve and the fiscal crisis continues, ill will toward incumbent state legislators could become as acute in 2004 as it was in 1990. "I don’t think the tax thing alone is a problem," says Festa. "But when the level of confidence in the legislature is so low and the people get the sense that business as usual is still the order of the day and we don’t make serious changes in patronage and inefficiencies and are hurting people with cuts [at the same time], that’s a prescription for disaster."

Says Kaufman, a long-time House dissident — and the rep who thwarted Finneran’s pay-raise maneuver: "The absolutely horrific budget cutting we’re going to have to do this year makes our jobs really quite painful." He adds: "If you shut down people’s creativity and ability to participate, and all we’re delivering is discontent, that’s a formula for discontent."

Somewhere in the back of House members’ minds there must be some awareness that Romney has just installed Darrell Crate, an investment banker, as the new chair of the state Republican Party, and Dominick Ianno as the party’s executive director. (Crate, who helped raise roughly $1 million for the lieutenant-governor campaign of Kerry Healey and the Republican Party during the election, not necessarily an easy task, has Romney’s ear. And the 29-year-old peripatetic Ianno, one of the few holdovers from the Weld-Cellucci-Swift era, made an impact during the election with his aggressive research skills.) These are two signs that Romney is following the suggestion of many in the state GOP who say he should cultivate a farm system and recruit his own candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents — something Weld, Cellucci, and Swift failed to do. What this means for incumbent legislators is that many could face their most serious (and in many cases, their only) electoral challenge in years.

It’s not likely that such an effort would yield Romney the 17 House seats he would need to sustain a veto. But the notion that well-financed Republican candidates could challenge them at a time when the public is actually paying attention to politics is enough to make many House members think twice about their actions. "I’ve seen how the depth and breadth of the anger can overwhelm even good legislators," Festa warns.

LAST TUESDAY, Finneran took the heat for the pay-raise maneuver. That night, however, he was the guest of honor at the "King Tom Tonight Show," the roast hosted by Channel 56 that will be aired March 8. The event drew Romney, Boston mayor Tom Menino, and a slew of other power brokers. The next day, coverage was largely laudatory, with anecdotes in the gossip pages of the Globe and Herald. But as mentioned above, Finneran took a drubbing. And not just from Romney. Senator Jack Hart of South Boston, who runs the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast and who left the House to run for Senate last year, said he joined the Senate because he needed a challenge, adding that Finneran only demanded three things from his members — "honesty, integrity, and idolatry." It’s not something Finneran should take lightly. In Shakespeare — as the literary Finneran should know — the jesters are often the only characters who speak the truth. In Finneran’s case, that should be cause for concern.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com