E-Mail This Article to a Friend The price of freedom (continued)

Don’t mess with UMass

Back on Beacon Hill, politics remains more about contacts than cash, it seems. Billy Bulger has left the campus, but the University of Massachusetts still has a little pull left on Beacon Hill, judging by its hijacking of the public-construction-reform bill.

Several members of the construction-reform commission (who wish not to be identified) have told the Phoenix the tale that unfolded in the last two months, after the bill had been hammered out in a lengthy series of meetings. In June, university officials came forward for the first time and insisted that the commission continue the UMass Medical Center’s long-standing exemption from public-bidding regulations. The commission held a special meeting on June 29 to hear the plea — but instead heard a demand to exempt the entire university. UMass representatives argued that the new processes — designed to save taxpayer money and ensure against fly-by-night subcontractors — would cause delays that would cost the school its federal grants, killing construction projects.

It turns out, in fact, that UMass has been getting around the state’s public-bidding requirements for several years. In 1998 — while Bulger headed the school — the legislature rewrote the laws to exempt projects that use "nongovernmental sources" of funding. UMass interprets this to include student fees, rents, bonds, and so forth. The Associated Subcontractors of Massachusetts sued, but the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the school’s favor last month.

The commission tried to push ahead with the bill, but found it blocked by a group of UMass-friendly legislators, including House Speaker Tom Flaherty and Senate president Robert Travaglini. "That UMass came out so late was disconcerting after we had so actively sought out everyone’s input," says one commission member.

Following the university’s demands, many closed-door meetings ensued with the commission’s co-chairs, State Representative Martin Walsh and State Senator Dianne Wilkerson. (One commissioner described the two legislators as "pissed off.") To get the bill released, they ultimately had to rewrite the definition of "nongovernmental sources" to include, against all common sense, the federal government.

This wording is, in the words of one commission member, "a very big open door" that could end up exempting billions of dollars’ worth of public-construction projects from the state’s bidding regulations. "This is when politics gets in the way of good legislation," the member says.

Green no more?

Sometimes politics gets in the way of good politics. That is, political concerns cause a politician to avoid a topic that could work to his advantage. Some believe that happened at the Democratic National Convention, when John Kerry’s focus on "strength" led him to omit a potentially powerful issue: the environment. George W. Bush’s environmental record is not only dismal, it is a major liability, according to polls. This is clearly a dividing issue, on which most voters are against him once they know the facts.

But voters did not learn about them by tuning into the convention, particularly in prime time. John Edwards never mentioned the environment in his speech. Neither did keynoter Barack Obama. John Kerry devoted about 70 of his 5159 words to environmental issues. (And, due to a pronunciation slip, he appeared to blame asthma in Harlem on "hair pollution.")

"A lot of the more-traditional conservation issues were not as prevalent at the convention," says Aimée Christensen, executive director of Environment 2004. She points out that the environment did get onto the FleetCenter stage — but only when nobody was watching. Deb Callahan, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), became the first environmental-organization leader to address a major-party convention when she spoke on Tuesday afternoon. Environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned his careful nonpartisanship to give a speech Wednesday afternoon. And several others, including Al Gore, made sharp comments about corporate polluters and global warming in their speeches.

Further away from the stage, the issue enjoyed greater emphasis. Obama spoke at an outdoor rally for the environment on Tuesday, and LCV recruitment was "extraordinarily successful," according to spokesperson Chuck Porcari. Another rally on Thursday at the Copley Marriott drew a crowd of 300. Kerry has included environmental matters in his stump speech both before and after the convention. So why not during prime time?

Whatever the reason, it may have cost him a golden opportunity. "This is a great issue" for Kerry and the Democrats, Christensen says. "According to the pollsters, it’s the best way to separate Kerry and Bush for the voter." A Yale University poll released in May claims that 84 percent of Americans say the environment will be a factor in their vote, and two-thirds think the US government does too little. Large majorities favor stricter emissions and pollution standards — including a startling 90 percent of independents.

Porcari says that clean-air legislation, pediatric asthma, mercury levels in water, and energy independence have proven extremely popular topics during LCV’s Environmental Voting Project, which has knocked on nearly a quarter-million doors thus far. "There’s a whole series of environmental issues that matter to swing voters," Porcari says. "It resonates on the cul-de-sacs and main streets."

Christensen says she finds the mainstream media unwilling to discuss the environment as a political topic. But she agrees that they would have to if Kerry were to make it a central theme. He could have done so last week, but, for reasons known only to him, chose not to.

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com