tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92207733832495377232024-03-05T05:23:44.418-08:00The Ogulewicz ChroniclesOne Man's Journey Through Springfield Politics Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-32879309689033810742016-08-24T15:11:00.001-07:002021-08-01T12:15:03.813-07:00Back in Print<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7HlJgGvP1Dl_uPRBCsyluKbDU9mnT3qJunmp6HTmz3RWM-lzUlHoWsgIdNjmQ9eFShvcOhPbgYCXjQXu-UVIlxlSBUvi0qX5iGnsKCtTQ27J9T4HVvhSXNeMollyvcs6om_uDBqzwr00/s1600/mitch5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7HlJgGvP1Dl_uPRBCsyluKbDU9mnT3qJunmp6HTmz3RWM-lzUlHoWsgIdNjmQ9eFShvcOhPbgYCXjQXu-UVIlxlSBUvi0qX5iGnsKCtTQ27J9T4HVvhSXNeMollyvcs6om_uDBqzwr00/s400/mitch5.jpg" width="347" /></a></div><p>
<i>The Ogulewicz Chronicles were originally published in 1999/2000 as a serial that ran more or less weekly on <i>Tom Devine's Baystate Objectivist</i> (BSO) website. It tells the tale of the political adventures of Mitch Ogulewicz, a former City Councilor in Springfield, Massachusetts during the 1980's. <i>The Ogulewicz Chronicles</i> have been out of print since 2006, but have now been re-released as of 2016. </i></p><p><i>
No one can claim to fully understand Pioneer Valley politics in general and Springfield in particular without an understanding of what happened in the 1980's. For example, there is a direct line between the events of that decade and the municipal collapse of 2004, which was the worst fiscal crisis in Springfield's history. This true to life political saga begins as Mitch gets out of the service and makes his first forays into the snakepit of Springfield politics:</i></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-43258789221480746142016-08-24T14:42:00.003-07:002021-07-31T12:39:04.264-07:00In the Arena
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA7lTU4RqP5-SpidnBghutU0d9dXUZHZ-KtmoYHbt4B0sS4xtd-o5bXwM2lUN5lrZz-Vzk90TRgU4kuUJiiWpE9Q83phoArd5k1X3GgqA900719NJblkXu30mRHNly_nZ2qTAiuGZ12VM/s1600/og242.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA7lTU4RqP5-SpidnBghutU0d9dXUZHZ-KtmoYHbt4B0sS4xtd-o5bXwM2lUN5lrZz-Vzk90TRgU4kuUJiiWpE9Q83phoArd5k1X3GgqA900719NJblkXu30mRHNly_nZ2qTAiuGZ12VM/s400/og242.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
Like many who served in the armed services during the Vietnam era, Mitch Ogulewicz became increasingly disillusioned with that conflict after his return to civilian life. In fact, Ogulewicz had been skeptical of the United State’s involvement since his college days, when he’d watched the Fulbright hearings on the war on television. Following his discharge, Mitch began participating in activism involving fellow veterans who shared his opposition to the war.</p><p>
One of the most prominent figures in that movement was a decorated combat veteran from Massachusetts named John F. Kerry. In 1982 Kerry was launching a campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and it would be through the Kerry campaign that Ogulewicz was later drawn into the political arena himself.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xiR_V34vrM11QnhBYUjwSeUiNKZAgDZJrdhRtEmD-PItUQjoQuGeKHwpX6rXEFOVOMA-NyJlVt3WsWKvrc73ttdsTL14MuQgYqdM1I5oe5B6AN_IahRry1u8hBeDhS1tyYc4hQofCek/s1600/og31.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xiR_V34vrM11QnhBYUjwSeUiNKZAgDZJrdhRtEmD-PItUQjoQuGeKHwpX6rXEFOVOMA-NyJlVt3WsWKvrc73ttdsTL14MuQgYqdM1I5oe5B6AN_IahRry1u8hBeDhS1tyYc4hQofCek/s1600/og31.gif" /></a></div> The late Neil Phillips (father of the scandal plagued former Police Commissioner Gerald Phillips) invited Ogulewicz to meet Kerry at a fundraiser being held at the home of Attorney Stan Szlachetka. At that event, Mitch met a Kerry operative named Mike Whouley, who several days later contacted Mitch and asked him to be the Western Mass coordinator for the Kerry campaign. Mitch agreed, but had little sense at the time that through this volunteer work he would ultimately establish the political connections that would lead to the launching of his own political career.<p>
One unexpected perk of Mitch’s campaign role was the opportunity to meet some of the Hollywood celebrities who were lending their activism, money and glamour to Kerry's fundraisers. At one Boston event, Mitch met Chevy Chase and Robin Williams. Ogulewicz and his wife Cyndi even got to socialize with the two comedians later that evening. Williams impressed Mitch with his seriousness and reserved manner, which was in sharp contrast to his outrageous stage persona.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqLHVuIKmDyvmlUFb-KXe7EOQFrCjMN7DcwDHY86di4Gc2h36nc6t4nvu_4vAXqnHufvHpRNAn8RaK-6r-pQVYG1yV3pLAGlYv1PJ0qEW_hmT7hhyphenhyphenhjadN4NCMk3jcj6ipKOYAhas4fJY/s1600/robino.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqLHVuIKmDyvmlUFb-KXe7EOQFrCjMN7DcwDHY86di4Gc2h36nc6t4nvu_4vAXqnHufvHpRNAn8RaK-6r-pQVYG1yV3pLAGlYv1PJ0qEW_hmT7hhyphenhyphenhjadN4NCMk3jcj6ipKOYAhas4fJY/s400/robino.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
At one particularly memorable fundraiser, Mitch met the folk band Peter, Paul and Mary, while on another occasion Peter Yarrow of the same group gave a solo concert at a pre-convention party Mitch organized at <i>Tilly’s</i> in downtown Springfield.</p><p>
The night of Kerry’s election victory, then City Councilor (later District Court Judge) Phillip Contant told Springfield Newspaper reporter Carol Malley that Kerry’s victory left Ogulewicz in a good position to enter local politics in Springfield if he wanted to. Malley later listed Mitch among the rising stars of local politics in her political column “Perspectives.” While Mitch was flattered by the mention, he was not yet ready to take the suggestion too seriously.</p><p>
Then in December of ’82, Ogulewicz received a visit from Agawam activist (later Kerry senatorial aide) Jim Shear. Mitch was impressed when Shear presented him with a complete outline of what Shear insisted would be a winning campaign for the City Council. While Mitch was impressed with Shear’s arguments that he could win, he still declined to commit himself to the campaign. Yet, after some soul-searching and discussion with family and friends, Mitch informed Shear that he would be willing to run if two conditions could be met. One was that Mitch, who had two young children at home, would not have to campaign on Sundays, leaving that day completely free to spend with his family. The other was that Jim Shear agree to be his campaign manager. Shear accepted both terms.</p><p>
In January of 1983, Mitch told his friend Paul Robbins (later a well known local political consultant) about his intention to run. To his surprise, Robbins, who knew all about the political culture of Springfield through his former job as an aide to the City Council, tried to discourage Mitch from running. Robbins told Mitch he lacked the right kind of personality to get along in what Robbins described as the dishonest, petty and often backstabbing world of Springfield politics. Robbins told Mitch how he had seen Councilors fight over such things as who was receiving the most publicity, sometimes engaging in shallow, mean-spirited gossip behind one another's back. He told Ogulewicz that frankly he thought Mitch was too honest, too easy-going and not sufficiently devious to survive in the cutthroat environment of Springfield politics. Although taken aback by Robbins appraisal, Mitch refused to believe that things were as bad as Robbins had described. He thanked his friend for his advice, but chose not to heed his warnings.</p><p>
In February of ’83 Mitch stood on the steps of City Hall and announced his candidacy. Coverage of the event led to an amusing media blooper when reporter Sy Becker misspoke as he was cutting to a commercial and announced the upcoming story of “the new candidate for mayor" while a photo of Mitch was shown in the background. Becker quickly apologized to the viewers when he came back from break, but Ogulewicz couldn’t help but laugh when imagining what Richie Neal, who was running for mayor virtually unopposed that year, must have thought had he been watching.</p><p>
Mitch found that he enjoyed campaigning more than he had expected. For one thing, financing the campaign did not prove to be a problem. With lots of small contributors, plus the help of people like John Kerry and Neil Phillips, Atty. Tom Murphy and businessman Phil Hallahan, they succeeded in raising roughly $28,000 dollars. Much of that money was spent on a Shear inspired TV ad that remains to this day one of the most famous political commercials in Valley campaign history.</p><p>
The advertisement played humorously on the wide disparity that exists between the spelling of Mitch’s last name and how it’s pronounced. The ads were simple but effective. First they showed a variety of people from different walks of life mispronouncing Mitch’s name. For example, one scene showed the late South End activist Jim Izzo butchering Mitch's name with a thick Italian accent. Then there followed a series of other people's mispronunciations, until at the end the ad showed Mitch’s then five year old daughter Kristen swinging on a swing and saying “No, it's O-gul-lev-its!” It was the perfect combination of funny and cute, and while some of Mitch's opponents complained that the ad lacked substance, it did an effective job of bringing Mitch the name recognition that he lacked outside of the Hungry Hill and 16 Acres neighborhoods.</p><p>
As in all successful campaigns, there was a lot of good old-fashioned legwork. Door to door campaigning began in Indian Orchard, whose large Polish population Shear hoped would give Ogulewicz a positive reception and a psychological boost. His walking tours soon spread throughout the city, where he frequently ran into some of his opponents. In particular he kept bumping into former mayoral aide Francis Keough, who was also running an aggressive door to door campaign. The two young candidates became friends and sometimes even worked the same street, with Mitch on one side and Keough on the other. Mitch had to attend what seemed like an endless number of coffee hours, nearly 80 in all, and also got some help from John Kerry:.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6meI_ZZCZWK5s0e5zovnQ3voRjTutZlIX6ILO5WcG7jtk75cDgGaCzePS4XTJIQNciUrFX903iw7vFRvhpZbMVZZdbz0N7InzTd1GAAReIyxpPrqEX07gjpHIeL-jDnj9aOWfMifoZk/s1600/kerry.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6meI_ZZCZWK5s0e5zovnQ3voRjTutZlIX6ILO5WcG7jtk75cDgGaCzePS4XTJIQNciUrFX903iw7vFRvhpZbMVZZdbz0N7InzTd1GAAReIyxpPrqEX07gjpHIeL-jDnj9aOWfMifoZk/s400/kerry.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
It was an extraordinarily tough field that Ogulewicz was competing in. There were four openings on the Council, one created by Phil Contant stepping down, another by the retirement of pioneering black councilor Paul Mason, yet another by the departure of Andrew Scibelli, who was leaving to accept the presidency of Springfield Technical Community College. Richard Neal, who was leaving the Council to run for mayor against only token opposition, created a fourth vacancy. The number of vacancies brought out a large field of 24 contenders. Besides Keough, the candidates included School Committeeman William T. Foley, former School Committeeman Nick Gioscia, future School Committeeman Kenneth Shea, popular ex-cop Bobby Brown, Springfield Action Commission director Buddy Langford, Mason Square activist Morris Jones and Pine Point gadfly Al Rivers.</p><p>
On September 20th, Mitch finished 9th out of the 24 candidates, with popular Atwater activist Betty Montori close at his heels. The top nine are the preferred spots to finish in the primary because under the at-large election system in place at the time, only the top nine finishers are elected in the final election.</p><p>
But while the ninth place finish was very encouraging to Ogulewicz, it hardly insured an ultimate victory. For one thing, the turnout in the final election would be much higher than in the primary, with many voters coming to the polls who had not participated in the runoff. Those November voters might very well have different preferences than those who had participated in the September primary.</p><p>
Still, the fact that Mitch had demonstrated his ability to finish ninth was a heads-up to the city’s movers and shakers, alerting them to the fact that Ogulewicz was a potential new Councilor. That made him suddenly interesting to members of the powers that be who had previously ignored his campaign. Mitch started hearing through the grapevine that there was someone he needed to meet with at the soonest opportunity if he expected to go all the way to victory in November.</p><p>
The name of that person was David Starr.</p><p><br /></p><p>
The 1982 campaign button below from the Ogulewicz Collection is a true rariety. Do you know why?</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDpPSW7JT91BauzpTL8darQwFSVyf6ntA5mIQRj5Y03b6DakrHpaTCUctQDPo-jj53TMhyphenhyphenBYczCMzahF7adkIkc42_WMbj-Zizm2difaTbDQZ7J4UIhsjnNTfi2M7B4KsDbIGC3pympIA/s1600/kingkerry.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDpPSW7JT91BauzpTL8darQwFSVyf6ntA5mIQRj5Y03b6DakrHpaTCUctQDPo-jj53TMhyphenhyphenBYczCMzahF7adkIkc42_WMbj-Zizm2difaTbDQZ7J4UIhsjnNTfi2M7B4KsDbIGC3pympIA/s320/kingkerry.gif" width="320" /></a></div><p>
There never was a King/Kerry campaign because then Governor Edward King was upset in the primary by Michael Dukakis. The buttons that were mistakenly made in anticipation of a King victory became valuable collectibles from a campaign that never actually existed.</p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-65779076325081238222016-08-23T13:23:00.000-07:002019-04-05T12:15:47.583-07:00The People's Choice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWWwsbT7l4tH-CIWjQp8xugbhsKfaVPE6kU27tK4db9dHIroOt1LZMMLZ_ooYgEdtKxnXn96WjBvHnvVStCMnM8Z8re_lMKSI03mJLAtKgIao06YKwk2543Dc-Q-NW4asTKBd3ogWrVWw/s1600/starr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWWwsbT7l4tH-CIWjQp8xugbhsKfaVPE6kU27tK4db9dHIroOt1LZMMLZ_ooYgEdtKxnXn96WjBvHnvVStCMnM8Z8re_lMKSI03mJLAtKgIao06YKwk2543Dc-Q-NW4asTKBd3ogWrVWw/s400/starr.jpg" width="281" height="400" /></a></div>
Everyone kept telling Ogulewicz that he should meet with Springfield Newspapers publisher David Starr. He finally decided he would ask his friends who worked for the paper whether or not he should do as everybody kept advising him. It amused Mitch that if the meeting with Starr was so all-fired important, then why didn’t Starr just call and make an appointment to meet with him? But apparently that was not the way things worked; the unwritten rule was that it had to be the candidate who contacted Starr.<p>
Ogulewicz consulted with <i>Daily News</i> Editor Richard Garvey, who was one of the few holdovers from the days when the paper had been locally owned. Mitch knew Garvey through serving with him on the executive board of the Pioneer Valley Boy Scouts. Garvey explained that ever since the media and real estate conglomerate <i>The Newhouse Corporation</i> had purchased the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> that this was simply the way things were done. Starr, a career <i>Newhouse</i> employee who had been assigned to Springfield in the late 1970’s, had become increasingly active in local politics, which meant he liked to meet personally with the major candidates and advise them on political affairs. It had become known that how well you took his advice could have a major impact on whether or not you received the newspaper’s endorsement.<p>
<i>The Springfield Newspapers</i> at that time consisted of three papers, the <i>Morning Union</i>, the <i>Daily News</i> (which the <i>Newhouse Corporation</i> combined in 1987 to form the <i>Union-News</i>) and the flagship <i>Sunday Republican</i> (whose name contradicted the fact that the <i>Newhouse Corporation</i> was staunchly Democrat). Yet despite the corporate takeover, in 1983 the three papers still retained a little of their original independence. In fact, Garvey assured Mitch that no matter what Starr did or did not do, Mitch could count on the <i>Daily News</i> to endorse him. Garvey suggested that there was little to lose in meeting with Starr and possibly something to gain, since if Starr got a favorable impression of Mitch he might win the endorsements of both the <i>Morning Union</i> and <i>Sunday Republican</i>.<p>
Another of Ogulewicz’s newspaper friends, Don Ebbeling, agreed. Ebbeling wrote “People and Politics,” a collection of tidbits involving political personalities, sort of like today’s “Cries and Whispers” but without the anonymity or mean-spiritedness. Mitch and Ebbeling were friends who sometimes socialized after work, and like Garvey, Ebbeling believed that no harm would be done by meeting with the publisher. So Ogulewicz decided to call Starr's secretary and make an appointment.<p>
What happened at that meeting has been the subject of controversy for nearly two decades. The encounter took place in a conference room in the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> building on Main Street, three weeks before the election. It was between three parties: Ogulewicz, Starr and editor Arnold Freidman, then considered to be Starr’s right hand man. The two newspapermen wore trademark bowties daily, although it was never clear who was copying whom, or whether they were both just coincidentally bowtie afficionados. It was Starr who did most of the talking, although Freidman was feared in some quarters as the suspected author of the paper’s more aggressive, unsigned editorials. If Starr was perceived as the gentleman publisher, then Freidman had a reputation as an aggressive hatchetman.<p>
Upon being introduced to Starr, Ogulewicz found the publisher to be charming and intelligent. David Starr was in many respects a typical liberal Democrat of his generation. He believed in a high level of government intervention in the economy, but would reject the label of socialist. He saw the government as a tool useful in acting on behalf of the disadvantaged and as a stimulus for economic development. Starr was a passionate supporter of the arts and considered being a booster of high culture a duty of the more well-off members of the community such as himself. He also believed that the media should play a role in both political and cultural advancement, and described himself as an “activist editor” who uses his paper to promote noble ends. The problem is that what Starr considered noble ends were not always universally viewed in that light. What he has called “activist” his critics accused of being manipulative and self-serving.<p>
Yet, Ogulewicz went to that meeting with no particular positive or negative preconceptions. He had worked for the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> as a paperboy for all the editions and had always had friends working there, like Garvey, whom he greatly respected, and Ebbeling, whom he considered one of his closest friends. If he had any bias toward the paper it was a positive one, and while he had heard some negative rumors about Starr and Freidman, he personally considered them as just another pair of politically active businessmen that he would have to deal with if he were elected to the Council.<p>
At first the meeting seemed to go well. Starr asked Mitch to elaborate on his political views and why he was running for the Council. Mitch’s conception of public service as a way of giving back to the community that had done so much for him was just the sort of rhetoric that was in tune with Starr’s own strong concept of public duty. Mitch’s mainstream Democrat views were also pleasing to Starr, who was known to dislike extremism of any kind. Mitch had the feeling that he was making a good impression, until just when it appeared that the meeting was winding down, the conversation took an odd turn.<p>
Starr asked Ogulewicz what he thought about the importance of having minority representation on the Council. This was a prominent issue that year because of the retirement of the Council’s only black member, Paul Mason. Mitch told Starr that he felt that it was important to have diversity on the Council, since that would help to insure that all aspects of the community were represented. He explained that as a white middle-class male living in 16 Acres, he could not always feel confident that he understood the day to day realities of life in Springfield's minority communities. That answer appeared to please Starr, who then stunned Ogulewicz by asking, “Would you be willing to publicly endorse Morris Jones for City Council?”<p>
Mo Jones was a black postal worker and community activist whom the newspaper was pushing to replace Mason. Mitch was stunned. He simply couldn’t believe what Starr was asking him to do. Was the publisher really suggesting that he support one of his own opponents - perhaps committing political suicide - on behalf of a candidate Starr supported?<p>
“Uh, well, I think my supporters who have been working for me for the past year might be disappointed if I did that,” Ogulewicz replied. The expression on Starr’s face told Mitch that he had given the wrong answer.<p>
“It is my intention,” Starr explained, “to manipulate and cajole the public into voting for Morris Jones. If you get hurt in the process Mitch, please understand that it is nothing personal.”<p>
The meeting ended with the three exchanging polite good-byes, but Ogulewicz left the building with his head spinning. Was it arrogance, ignorance, aggression or all three that had made Starr think that he could get away with such a request? In any case, Mitch had the feeling that Starr had put him to an important test and that he had failed it.<p>
He was right. While the feisty <i>Daily News</i> gave Ogulewicz their endorsement just as Dick Garvey had promised, the Starr/Freidman dominated <i>Union</i> and <i>Sunday Republican</i> did not. Mitch also suddenly found it difficult to get his press releases published, which had never been a problem in the past. He complained to Dick Garvey about it, who told him he would bring the subject up with political writer Carol Malley. Despite the fact that Mitch had dropped off the releases in person, Garvey reported back later that Malley had inexplicably claimed that she had never received any Ogulewicz press releases.<p>
This version of events as described by Ogulewicz is contested by Mr. Starr. In a rare statement to the <i>Valley Advocate</i>, Starr has publicly denied making the request Mitch described, claiming that he doesn’t operate that way and wouldn’t have said the things Mitch says he did. Arnold Freidman had no comment and is now deceased.<p>
Yet despite having two thirds of the local press urging his defeat, Ogulewicz felt his campaign surging in the final weeks. On Election Day Mitch not only matched his ninth place primary position but moved up two slots to number seven. Election Night was a delirious blur of congratulations, congratulatory handshakes and congratulatory beverages. It was perhaps too much of the latter that led Mitch to get sick out the car window while his wife Cyndi was driving him home from a victory party.<p>
A few days later Mitch’s wife told his friend Don Ebbeling about how Ogulewicz had got sick to his stomach in the middle of Catalina Drive on the way home on Election Night. A few days later, an item no doubt puzzling to most of the public appeared in Ebbeling’s "People and Politics" column. There was a paragraph stating that if anyone on Catalina Drive had found a “package” in the street in front of their house the morning after Election Day, to please return it to Mitch Ogulewicz.<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgz9c6PNSm7BcyB1VrxujqZ5cFCQhPpz9J725RoByrEKHP1RatWvesrdDEmJ-tFDKvaKn1CPMqwbI1n4FDO29Z_JtQY2Au185MY4AivKe2xL_PkagDLr_QygqCsVQsZbhTEFEyvGlr_HQ/s1600/mitchad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgz9c6PNSm7BcyB1VrxujqZ5cFCQhPpz9J725RoByrEKHP1RatWvesrdDEmJ-tFDKvaKn1CPMqwbI1n4FDO29Z_JtQY2Au185MY4AivKe2xL_PkagDLr_QygqCsVQsZbhTEFEyvGlr_HQ/s400/mitchad.jpg" width="400" height="300" /></a></div><p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-18217600356793992592016-08-16T13:16:00.004-07:002021-08-01T12:10:09.718-07:00Baptism by Fire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisp6jy1MAy3xmMCzJIhidJiUwIMfBXTOHsoPS45dhFEmiziEkUf8A2QDX8yW1G2v5sVqhf5RCHo7eDIBGII4lFsYZ8z-L3N36FSEyAhkyD2KH7ZauIPYqTdP03Qk1pA-G-DrcA6qDx_xI/s1600/rosemarie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisp6jy1MAy3xmMCzJIhidJiUwIMfBXTOHsoPS45dhFEmiziEkUf8A2QDX8yW1G2v5sVqhf5RCHo7eDIBGII4lFsYZ8z-L3N36FSEyAhkyD2KH7ZauIPYqTdP03Qk1pA-G-DrcA6qDx_xI/s400/rosemarie.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
Mitch Ogulewicz was hoping that he would have a chance to rest and recuperate from his exhausting election campaign during the time between his victory in November and when he was sworn-in in January. That hope was quickly dashed however, as he found himself thrust almost immediately into the center of his first major controversy. Ironically, the controversy stemmed from the election itself.</p><p>
School Committee member William T. Foley had been promoted by the election to a seat on the City Council. This meant that he had to resign his School Committee seat, thereby creating a vacancy on that body. When vacancies occur on the City Council, they are automatically filled by the highest vote getter among those who were defeated. However, no such provision existed at the time for School Committee vacancies, which required a Joint Session of the Council and School Committee to choose a new member. There were no restrictions on who the Joint Session could select, and as a newly elected Councilor Mitch would be required to vote on Foley’s successor.</p><p>
Voters in the election of ’83 had chosen to remove from office one School Committee member, the Rev. Ronald Peters, and replace him with former State Representative Sean Cahillaine. Yet within a week of Peters' defeat, pressure began to build for the Joint Session to return Peters to the Committee by placing him in Foley’s empty seat. Most of that pressure was coming from the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, who had pushed hard, but unsuccessfully, to elect black postal worker Morris Jones to the City Council. Since the Council’s only black member, Paul Mason, was retiring that year, Jones’ defeat left the Council with an all white membership. Now the defeat of Peters would leave the School Committee membership completely white as well. No sooner did the newspaper make its selection of Peters known, then members of the Joint Session began falling into line.</p><p>
But not Ogulewicz. For one thing, Mitch hardly knew Rev. Peters, and he wanted first of all to acquaint himself with Peters' record. Secondly, while Mitch considered diversity on government bodies to be desirable, Rev. Peters seemed to be being treated as though his skin color was his primary qualification - that and the fact that he had a reputation for always voting with the newspaper. Finally, the voters themselves had removed Peters from his seat. Wasn’t it showing disrespect for the electorate to invalidate the voter’s decision to remove Rev. Peters from office?</p><p>
Mitch went to the School Department and asked the executive secretary to Superintendent Thomas Donahue if he could examine the files on Rev. Peters voting record and the minutes of the School Committee meetings. The secretary expressed surprise at Mitch’s request, saying that no one else who was eligible to vote in the Joint Session had shown any interest in doing research on Peters’ background. What Mitch discovered in Rev. Peters’ record did not impress him. Ogulewicz discovered that Peters had shown up late or left early for 75% of the School Committee meetings, and as a result he had missed over 40% of the School Committee’s roll call votes!</p><p>
In Mitch’s view, the newspaper was attempting to steamroll back into office a man who appeared to take his responsibilities as a public servant very lightly. Yet, no one on the joint committee besides himself was resisting Peters' return. In fact, Mayor-elect Richard Neal informed Mitch that the vote for Peters would occur immediately after the New Year at the Council’s second meeting and that the he wanted the vote to be unanimous. To Mitch the indifferent manner in which the position was being filled by someone who was apparently lax in their duties and seemed to be beholden to the Springfield Newspapers was completely unacceptable. He refused to promise Neal that he would help to make the appointment unanimous.</p><p>
To Ogulewicz, the Peters nomination defied common sense. If the goal was to provide representation for the black community, then how well could they expect to be represented by a person who was not only under the thumb of the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, but who showed up late and left early on the occasions when he bothered to show up at all? Nor was Peters the only person interested in the seat. Western New England College Professor Elinor Hartshorn had expressed a desire to serve and was considered extremely qualified. Also, the voters had clearly expressed at the polls their desire to remove Peters from any further responsibility over the public schools, but somehow that sentiment as expressed by the electorate was being completely ignored.</p><p>
Yet nothing that Ogulewicz could say could sway any of the other Councilors to reconsider Peters nomination, so it looked as though Mitch would be the only one voting against Peters candidacy. That nay vote would be a brave but futile gesture, and Mitch didn’t want his first major issue to be a lost cause. If Peters victory was inevitable, as apparently it was, then at least Mitch could try to insure that Peters would be a better public servant in the future than he had been in the past. Therefore Mitch arranged to meet with Peters at <i>Friendly’s</i> on Riverdale Road in West Springfield. He wasted no time in laying it on the line, if Peters wanted to be chosen by a unanimous vote, then he had better start taking his responsibilities more seriously. Once Peters assured Ogulewicz that he would clean up his act, Mitch agreed to announce that he was withdrawing his objections to Peters candidacy.</p><p>
The Peters controversy taught Mitch several important things. One, it showed him the extent of the power of the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> to set the agenda for the local political scene. It was amazing to Mitch how easily and how quickly his colleagues had caved in as soon as the newspaper made its opinion known. Secondly, by meeting with Peters privately he was able to work out a solution that at least resolved some of the issues that had made his opposition to Peters necessary. This taught him that in spite of overwhelming opposition, it was still possible to be effective behind the scenes. Finally, Mitch also realized something very disturbing – how little the will of the people counted for in Springfield politics. In the final analysis the public had voted to remove a politician from office, only to find that same politician being handed right back to them as their representative, like it or not.</p><p>
Another matter of concern to Ogulewicz as he waited for his inauguration was the role he would have to play in choosing the new City Council President. There were two candidates contending for the Council Presidency that year. One candidate was a young Brian Santaniello, and the other was Rosemarie Coughlan. She had served on the Council for years and had been prominent in the anti-busing movement in the '70's (later she would go on to be elected Hampden County treasurer, a position she held until the county was abolished in 1998). Coughlan had shown Mitch a number of kindnesses over the years, so he was happy to lend her his support for Council President.</p><p>
One day Ogulewicz was visiting the City Council office in City Hall when his fellow Councilor Bob Markel (who was a college professor at American International College) stopped in. Markel and Ogulewicz began discussing the race between Santaniello and Coughlan and to Mitch’s surprise, Markel told him that the contest was over. According to Markel, a majority of the Councilors had already committed to Santaniello. He went on to inform Mitch that a long standing Council tradition required that once a person had attained a majority of the votes for President, it was customary for their opponents to vote for the victor and make it unanimous as a gesture of goodwill. Markel asked whether Mitch intended to honor this tradition and give Santaniello his vote. Having already gotten heat for hesitating to make the Peters nomination unanimous, Mitch said that if that was the custom then he would agree to go along with it.</p><p>
Just then Rosemarie Coughlan came walking into the office. Seeing her, Markel made some excuse to leave and then hurried out the door.</p><p>
“What did he want?” Coughlan asked Mitch, the tone of her voice dripping with suspicion.</p><p>
Mitch explained to her what Markel had said and then expressed his disappointment that she would have to withdraw her candidacy. Coughlan let out a shriek that according to City Hall reporter Carol Malley, “could be heard two floors below.” Considering that City Hall is a building built primarily of stone, that’s yelling pretty loud.</p><p>
“HE DOESN’T HAVE THE VOTES!” she shrieked.</p><p>
Coughlan angrily explained that Mitch had been sandbagged by Markel into committing to Santaniello. She accused Markel of claiming that Santaniello had the votes of Councilors who were actually undecided, and then embellishing his nonsense with a bunch of malarkey about Council traditions. Although Coughlan ran to a phone to try to undo the damage, it was too late. By the time Coughlan could contact the wavering Councilors, Santaniello had successfully used Markel's news of Mitch’s support to win all the undecideds to his side, where they remained even after hearing a last ditch appeal from Coughlan.</p><p>
Although Santaniello had been favored to win anyway, Ogulewicz felt badly about his role in the derailing of Coughlan’s campaign. What Markel had done to him was undoubtedly clever politics, but was this the manner in which fellow Councilors treated one another? Did Mitch have to be constantly on guard with his colleagues, carefully scrutinizing every word they said against the possibility of some kind of political intrigue? This was not how he had imagined that interacting with his fellow Councilors would be like.</p><p>
Then on December 1st 1983, Mitch picked up the Springfield Daily News and was startled to see his photograph accompanying Carol Malley’s “Perspective” column. He was even more taken aback by the headline:</p><p>
“Brash Novice Has Much to Learn”</p><p>
What followed was a blistering attack on Ogulewicz. Starting out by stating that “there are rules that members must honor” on the Council, she then accused Ogulewicz of having taken a “flying start toward breaking some of those rules.” Malley went on to blast him for his role in the Peters School Committee seat controversy, accusing him of “making a lot of noise” over Rev. Peters even though Peters “appears to have the votes all locked up to replace Foley.” She also blamed Ogulewicz for the ugly incident in the Council office, despite the fact that it was Coughlan who was upset and whose shouts “could be heard two floors below.” The article concluded with a suggestion that Mitch should seek guidance on future issues from Mayor-elect Richard Neal, who according to Malley had generously offered to take the new Councilors “under his wing and give them practical advice.” The real message of the article was clear:</p><p>
Hey Ogulewicz, stop thinking for yourself, join the herd, go along to get along and if you’re ever not sure what to do, ask Richie.</p><p>
Ogulewicz was stunned. He didn’t know quite what to make of it all, so he turned to his newspaper reporter friend Don Ebbeling for advice. Ebbeling told Mitch to ignore Malley’s attacks and simply accept the fact that harsh criticism was sometimes just part of political life. “You’re in the big leagues now!” Ebbeling said. “Just stick to your principles and do what you think is right. As long as you do that, you’ll always come out alright in the end.”</p><p>
Mitch felt heartened by his friend’s comments, but it was still pretty overwhelming how harshly and how soon he had come under attack, already under siege by the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> as the “brash novice” who would not obey “the rules.”</p><p>
It was less than a month after the election, Ogulewicz hadn’t even been sworn in yet. If this was what it was like before he even took office, what could he expect afterwards?</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-89973815363936651542016-08-10T12:43:00.000-07:002019-04-27T13:19:25.092-07:00Friends of the Mayor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRMUCyc13a_Tkk_cCHJWY0bzM0_TjMykEFmNNx8Ohuhcef2J56SD3vBXjMiqNiXprLiFGC-ivevhklVzxXyZh8ap5ZQFL0GvpeokdmVGmlETAup5HyDn8m3AF3Bk1Z76sgAQjsgadjqvE/s1600/maneal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRMUCyc13a_Tkk_cCHJWY0bzM0_TjMykEFmNNx8Ohuhcef2J56SD3vBXjMiqNiXprLiFGC-ivevhklVzxXyZh8ap5ZQFL0GvpeokdmVGmlETAup5HyDn8m3AF3Bk1Z76sgAQjsgadjqvE/s400/maneal.jpg" width="291" height="400" /></a></div><p>
Of the many candidate forums Ogulewicz spoke at during the election campaign of 1983, few made a more lasting impression on him than one that took place at St. John’s Congregationalist, a predominantly black church on Union street. At first there was little to indicate that it would be anything more than a typical "Meet the Candidates" night.<p>
Running for mayor that year virtually unopposed was Mayor Richard Neal. His opponent was William Montana, a mysterious political fringe candidate who didn’t show up for the debate. Neal made a standard two-minute stump speech and then left the building. The forum then turned to the City Council candidates.<p>
With such an unwieldy field of 24 contenders, it was difficult to cover many issues, so to give the event some focus, the candidates were asked to answer only a couple of questions of special concern to the black community. The first of those questions was an inquiry as to why so much taxpayer’s money was being spent on revitalizing the downtown, while so little was being spent in neighborhoods such as Winchester Square (now called Mason Square).<p>
As one by one the two dozen candidates rose to give their two minute replies, the event became a boring drone-a-thon with each contender making vague promises to do more for the neighborhoods, some day, some way, details to be provided later. By the time it was Mitch’s turn, he was sick of all the meaningless blather and decided he would shake things up with a little bit of honesty.<p>
“The reason you receive so little economic development money in comparison to the Downtown business interests," Ogulewicz explained, “ is because you don’t count.”<p>
The audience gasped with surprise at Mitch's blunt honesty.<p>
“If you ever expect to compete with the downtown insiders for a bigger piece of the pie,” he continued, “then you are going to have to be a lot more active, a lot more vocal, and vote in much greater numbers than you currently do. But if you will do your part here in the community, I promise that if I am elected I will do my part in City Hall to make sure the voices of this neighborhood are heard.”<p>
The congregation erupted into loud applause, with shouts of “Amen,” and “Tell it, brother!” After the forum was over activist Roger Williams approached Mitch and asked how he and others could help with the campaign. Prior to that night, Mitch had only a weak campaign organization in the black community, but after that forum and with the help he got from Williams, Ogulewicz was well on his way to a solid showing in the Winchester Square precincts in November.<p>
That candidate forum impressed upon Mitch how the conflict between downtown and the neighborhoods was a sore spot with the voters. It wasn’t just in places like Winchester Square that Mitch heard these complaints. In every neighborhood people seemed to feel that the downtown political insiders were getting all the attention, while the residential areas were being allowed to decline. Mitch felt that there had to be some way to bridge the gulf of alienation that existed between the neighborhoods and City Hall.<p>
Now elected, Ogulewicz was finally in a position to do something about it, and he soon came up with a plan. Ogulewicz realized that part of the problem was that City Council meetings took place at City Hall, meaning that any citizen who wished to participate in their city government had to come downtown. Ogulewicz wanted to see what would happen if somehow people could share their opinions and concerns with a City Councilor without having to go all the way to City Hall. Mitch concluded that the best way to overcome this would be to start holding "office hours" in every neighborhood in the city. State Senators and State Representatives had been holding office hours in the neighborhoods for years, but no City Councilor had ever done so. Mitch wondered what would happen if city residents could just walk down to their local school, library or fire station and greet a City Councilor waiting there to answer their questions and deal with their concerns.<p>
On January 2nd, 1984, Mitchell James Ogulewicz Jr. was sworn in as a City Councilor representing the nearly 350 year old City of Springfield. In the weeks that followed, Mitch set up a schedule of office hours that would bring him into direct contact with every neighborhood in the city. The reaction to his announcement of office hours surprised him. On the one extreme there was Yolly Nahorniak of the Pine Point Community Center, who did everything but hire a brass band and roll out a red carpet for Mitch’s arrival, while at the other extreme was Karen Ledger of Indian Orchard, who seemed to discourage Mitch from coming to her neighborhood. Mitch later heard from some who attended his office hours that Ledger felt that people should come to her civic association if they needed help instead of talking to a City Councilor directly. Her negative, self-serving attitude surprised Mitch, who had expected his office hours to be completely non-controversial. But Ogulewicz was insistent on going into every neighborhood and not allowing petty political turf wars to undermine his access to the citizens he served.<p>
The East Forest Park listening session at Nathan Bill Park turned out to be the largest turnout of all. When Mitch arrived he was amazed to see the entire Community Center packed to the walls. Mitch couldn’t imagine what neighborhood problems could cause the mostly affluent residents of East Forest Park to flock to see him in such numbers.<p>
To Mitch's surprise, it turned out that the public was in an uproar over, of all things, an adult basketball league. According to the chief spokesman for the aggravated citizens, retired police captain Jim Williams, there was this basketball league of guys in their 20’s and 30’s who were using the courts at Nathan Bill Park for their nighttime games. Capt. Williams explained that not only were the games noisy, but there was lots of drinking by both players and spectators, illegally parked cars, blocked driveways and problems with people urinating on lawns and cutting through yards. The neighborhood was very forceful in making it clear to Mitch that they were fed-up with the problems caused by this basketball league.<p>
The entire situation puzzled Ogulewicz. Hadn’t the citizens tried to get the city to enforce the noise, drinking, parking and trespassing ordinances already on the books? Yes, the residents explained, but they had been repeatedly put off or handed promises that never came true. It occurred to Ogulewicz that maybe this was the sort of problem that was best handled outside of official channels. Mitch suspected that there was simply a lack of communication between the East Forest Park community and the leaders of the adult basketball league. Perhaps if he were to talk with the leaders of the league one on one then some sort of accommodation could be worked out that would be satisfactory to all parties. Mitch was given the names of two men whom he didn’t recognize who he was told were the persons who were in charge of the league.<p>
Their names were Kevin Kennedy and Mike Graney.<p>
Ogulewicz contacted both men and asked to meet with them wherever they wished. They told Mitch to meet them at <i>Jilly’s</i>, a popular but tough Parker Street bar notorious for its rowdy clientele. That particular evening, however, the only fisticuffs would be verbal. Over beers, Mitch laid out the neighborhood’s concerns as they had been explained to him by the irate crowd at his East Forest Park office hours. He was taken back by the seeming indifference of Kennedy and Graney to what he was telling them and appeared to be scoffing at what Ogulewicz told them. Wouldn’t they make at least some attempt to accommodate the concerns of the residents, Mitch asked?<p>
Kennedy and Graney made it clear that they didn’t have to. The pair frankly told Mitch that they were personal friends of the new mayor, Richard Neal, and as such did not have to worry about any interference from City Hall or the neighborhood itself. When Mitch persisted that the people of East Forest Park had a right to protect the serenity of their neighborhood regardless of the political connections of the league’s organizers, Kennedy addressed Mitch in the tone of a person talking to someone who has a hard time understanding reality. “We are close friends of the Mayor,” Kennedy said. “F*** those people.”<p>
When Mitch left <i>Jilly’s</i> that night, after having accomplished nothing, he was very disappointed in what had transpired. Mitch was politically sophisticated enough to understand that a little bit of favoritism by politicians toward personal friends and supporters was only natural and could be overlooked if within reason. But it surpassed all reasonable bounds for Kennedy and Graney to feel that their relationship with the Mayor meant that they could dismiss the public's concerns with a crude obscenity.<p>
But if that was the attitude of the friends of the Mayor toward the legitimate concerns of the residents of East Forest Park, then Mitch concluded that those citizens deserved to know exactly where they stood. When he reported back to the citizens of East Forest Park at another packed meeting at Nathan Bill Park, he spared them nothing. After recounting his fruitless attempts to relate the neighborhood’s concerns to Kennedy and Graney, Mitch told them their final response.<p>
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mitch said, “I hope you will forgive my language, but I believe you should be told precisely what they said. They told me, “F*** those people!”<p>
The audience erupted in shouts of rage! Some residents began calling for ways to raise money for a court action to be taken against the city demanding the enforcement of the local ordinances. While nothing was resolved that night, City Hall was bombarded over the next several days with angry phone calls and threats of legal action. The public outcry threatened to create a major political embarrassment for the newly elected Neal Administration, and so, quietly and without comment, the adult basketball league moved their games elsewhere.<p>
It was a significant political triumph for Mitch on behalf of the people of East Forest Park, but it did not come without a price. The successful resolution of the neighborhood's problems had come at the cost of some of Mitch’s respect for the Neal Administration and his faith in the Administration’s commitment to treat all citizens equally. It had also no doubt strained his own relationship with the Mayor, since in all likelihood Kennedy and Graney had already complained to Neal about the uppity new City Councilor who did not show the proper respect to the Mayor’s friends. Mitch had the suspicion that there was likely to be some kind of political confrontation between himself and Mayor Neal, but little did he guess how soon that confrontation would occur.<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljB-F_FSzZsTyII_tCD8_G0KVH9emi-XPQeIejVbZ2Qtn36vcw5YyKluiSK8dvSIjsuULp7NsgoFHabOEos2S1H02f8g6Xh_Cw72zLwoq3WE4mP73SAg9Qnlj0pD1cDrEIgkCinyTkFE/s1600/mitchneal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljB-F_FSzZsTyII_tCD8_G0KVH9emi-XPQeIejVbZ2Qtn36vcw5YyKluiSK8dvSIjsuULp7NsgoFHabOEos2S1H02f8g6Xh_Cw72zLwoq3WE4mP73SAg9Qnlj0pD1cDrEIgkCinyTkFE/s400/mitchneal.jpg" width="323" height="400" data-original-width="307" data-original-height="380" /></a></div>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-67055663289761105602016-08-09T14:54:00.001-07:002021-08-02T13:37:09.286-07:00Richie's Wrath<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjET6SYai7snhJ7y9uiF13ID0OCOOcn5O6VUc8WoyRVyI4-l3tkgn4_uhzQj-OHBTQ6Drn6p-ijr0Wdkof-qht1ASBIzD6t2xPnL5uapweYqrRNmD6MLR1M2RsX6-rZdDQJMeMbaFDY-aI/s1600/og13a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="400" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjET6SYai7snhJ7y9uiF13ID0OCOOcn5O6VUc8WoyRVyI4-l3tkgn4_uhzQj-OHBTQ6Drn6p-ijr0Wdkof-qht1ASBIzD6t2xPnL5uapweYqrRNmD6MLR1M2RsX6-rZdDQJMeMbaFDY-aI/s400/og13a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>
During the spring and summer of 1984, Mitch Ogulewicz found himself preoccupied with two major issues, both of which would have a long ranging impact on Springfield’s future, political and otherwise.<p>
The first was an issue that has risen repeatedly in Springfield - the return of minor league baseball to the City of Homes. Like thousands of other Springfield residents, Ogulewicz has fond memories of the old Pynchon Park on the Connecticut River and the Eastern League team that played there called the Springfield Giants. He remembered his favorite players, like Juan Marichal, the Alou brothers, Jimmy Ray Hart, Jose Pagan and Tom Haller. Unfortunately, the stadium was less than a financial success and burned down under suspicious circumstances in 1966, never to be rebuilt. Since then politicians from time to time have raised the possibility of bringing back baseball to Springfield, including Mitch Ogulewicz in his campaign of 1983.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6eVqMfsAW1YA1pnYUgvFqe9fiaDu5XtJ5Myu_D-ZxZPEZdoTUmHBsdUg44bkZGkZarTKLRScp9Qr2pAzlsSRfupzMwCq7I0ebJMlpo_eoT2uGP_4jVAnq8jpUO2l0hKZjL9GecMrCkdM/s1600/rneal.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6eVqMfsAW1YA1pnYUgvFqe9fiaDu5XtJ5Myu_D-ZxZPEZdoTUmHBsdUg44bkZGkZarTKLRScp9Qr2pAzlsSRfupzMwCq7I0ebJMlpo_eoT2uGP_4jVAnq8jpUO2l0hKZjL9GecMrCkdM/s1600/rneal.gif" /></a></div> Once elected Ogulewicz was determined that a serious effort be undertaken to discover whether the construction of a new baseball stadium would be feasible. Fortunately, he had an ally for his cause in the new Mayor Richie Neal, who himself had been an enthusiastic fan of the Springfield Giants in his youth.<p>
One day Neal called Ogulewicz and asked him if he would serve as co-chairman of a study committee to look into the feasibility of constructing a new stadium. Mitch was happy to accept and Neal informed him that his co-chairman would be Garry Brown, a sports editor for the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>. Others who served on the committee were John Lyons of the Department of Public Works, mayoral aide Alan Howard, Atty. Thomas Murphy, Paul Stelzer of Monarch Capital Corporation and others. The study committee held frequent meetings over nearly a year, interviewing experts on architecture, sports economics, visiting existing stadiums and gathering citizen input.</p><p>
It is interesting to note that, in sharp contrast to later efforts in 1999-2000 to build a stadium, Mayor Neal and the committee agreed that the stadium should be built completely with private money (aside from minimal public monies for incidental infrastructure work) and they never considered taking land by eminent domain.</p><p>
When their final report was released the following spring, the committee had identified six potential sites for a new stadium (none of which was the <i>Northgate Plaza</i> site that would be considered in the 1990's). Two sites in particular, the Cottage Street landfill and the former location of the Springfield Airport off of Roosevelt Avenue were regarded as especially promising.</p><p>
Unfortunately, the sharp downturn of the local economy in the late 1980’s put an end to the stadium discussions until a decade later, at which time it resurfaced in a radically different form that was heavily dependent upon taxpayer funds and required the forced confiscation of private businesses at <i>Northgate Plaza</i> by eminent domain. By then, the far less controversial and much less divisive proposals of the Ogulewicz/Brown committee had been forgotten.</p><p>
At the same time that Ogulewicz was heading the Mayor’s committee inquiring into the feasibility of a baseball stadium, Mitch found himself drawn into yet another area of controversy. Prominent 16 Acres activist Susan Montigney had contacted Ogulewicz over what she considered to be appalling conditions at 16 Acres Elementary School (now called the Mary Walsh School). At first Mitch was skeptical, but he was soon in total agreement when Montigney took him on a guided tour. The primary problem appeared to be the deplorable condition of the school’s roof, which in one classroom actually had roots crawling across a wall from a sapling that had sprouted on the roof and penetrated the ceiling!</p><p>
As Ogulewicz investigated further, he discovered that the same sorts of problems were present in other schools, with most of the roofs of the city’s schools in a terrible state of deterioration. When it rained, some schools had to put out buckets, waste paper baskets and barrels to catch the rain from leaky roofs and ceilings. The roofing problems were the result of years of neglect, with the city's maintenance funding woefully inadequate to maintain the public's property. Mitch took his concerns to Council President Brian Santaniello, who suggested that the issue be put before the Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee headed by Councilor Francis Keough. The three of them requested that Building Commissioner Charles G. Cook go out and inspect the roofs of the city’s school buildings and then submit a report to the Committee.</p><p>
The report turned out to be a devastating condemnation of the city’s maintenance of its public schools. Of Springfield’s then 39 schools, the roofs of 30 were found to be in need of replacement or major repair. Two schools, Duggan Jr. High and Liberty Elementary, were found to be so bad that they posed a potential safety hazard. The publicity resulting from the report caused a public outcry demanding that immediate action be taken.</p><p>
It was at that point that Ogulewicz received a phone call from the Mayor’s secretary asking him to come by the Mayor’s office. Mitch had no idea what the Mayor wanted to talk to him about, but it was not uncommon for Neal to ask to meet with individual Councilors on one matter or another, although it was seldom arranged so formally. </p><p>When Mitch arrived at City Hall, Mayor Neal invited him inside his office and asked Mitch to be seated. There was a cold formality to the manner in which the Mayor then walked over to the office door and quietly closed it to insure their privacy. Silently, the Mayor took his seat behind his desk. Then to Mitch’s complete shock the Mayor exploded into an obscenity laced tirade against Mitch for having raised the school roof issue.</p><p>
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” the Mayor shouted. “No one can see a f***ing roof! The public only cares about what they can see! No one cares about f***ing roofs! This is not an issue I want to deal with now and you are embarrassing my administration!”</p><p>
Mitch could do nothing but stare at the screaming Mayor in amazement. Then Neal seemed to regain a measure of composure and his voice got low and mean. Leaning closer to Ogulewicz, he pointed his finger an inch from Mitch’s face.</p><p>
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll fix your f***ing roofs. After all this publicity, I have no choice. But I’m warning you Ogulewicz, if I have to lay-off any employees to pay for those f***ing roofs, I’m gonna tell them that it was your fault and that the voters should put all the blame for the layoffs on you!”</p><p>
By this time Mitch had recovered enough from his shock over the Mayor’s conduct to respond in kind. Rising angrily from his chair Ogulewicz pointed his finger in Neal’s face precisely as the Mayor had done to him. Neal appeared startled.</p><p>
“Don’t you f***ing tell me you’re gonna lay ANYBODY off,” Ogulewicz shouted, “because the only people you’ve hired since the election are all YOUR F***ING FRIENDS and you’re not gonna fire a f***ing single one of ‘em!”</p><p>
The Mayor had never expected this forceful response and looked extremely uncomfortable, but Ogulewicz wasn’t through yet.</p><p>
“Don’t talk to me about MY roofs because they’re not my f***ing roofs! They’re the roofs that the children of this city sit under everyday and they’re rotting and they’re dangerous and you will not f***ing tell me that I am wrong to point that out or wrong to demand that they be fixed!”</p><p>
This last statement seemed to have an impact on Neal, who for several long seconds simply sat looking down at his desk without speaking. In the silence the tension hung heavily in the air. Mitch didn’t know how to read the expression on the Mayor’s face. Finally Neal muttered something about having nothing else to say, so Ogulewicz quietly showed himself out the door.</p><p>
Leaving City Hall Ogulewicz could hardly believe what had transpired. He was stunned that the Mayor, in response to the discovery of a potential physical threat to the well-being of the city’s schoolchildren, had become enraged because no one could see school roofs and therefore there was no political advantage to fixing them. Even more incredible, Mitch couldn't believe that he had been threatened with political ruin if any of Neal’s friends lost their jobs because of the expense of repairing the roofs. Mitch had to wonder whether it was possible for Richard Neal to consider any issue in anything but self-serving political terms.</p><p>
Ultimately Mayor Neal did direct the members of his Administration to work with the Council and the School Committee to develop a funding schedule for repairing the roofs. However, a comprehensive plan for school maintenance and construction would not be developed until many years later.</p><p>
In the wake of his confrontation with Neal, however, Mitch was discouraged. As far as Ogulewicz was concerned, all he had done was try to address a safety issue brought to his attention by the parents of Springfield school children, a danger which was then later confirmed by the city’s Building Commissioner. If he wasn’t supposed to serve the citizens of Springfield when they came to him with their legitimate concerns, then who or what was he supposed to be serving?</p><p>
Those who expected his servitude would soon make their presence known.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-59424223378024929792016-08-06T12:59:00.001-07:002021-08-03T12:46:15.697-07:00Between Two Worlds
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UIsu3xRB9nygnQJlJ-hgJm2VP6tgZjOIGX9iZRbxKE6ch09KzwKtPYbvqyF1pjSCVsnkZc5RZ5mzQRAbXUw5izvbxMacYiNUXkZfhKLC4wvM_ILiSG_xZSLeik6NC-OZShz7NraLJQA/s1600/og84.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UIsu3xRB9nygnQJlJ-hgJm2VP6tgZjOIGX9iZRbxKE6ch09KzwKtPYbvqyF1pjSCVsnkZc5RZ5mzQRAbXUw5izvbxMacYiNUXkZfhKLC4wvM_ILiSG_xZSLeik6NC-OZShz7NraLJQA/s400/og84.gif" width="400" /></a></div><p>
In the elections for City Council officers which were held in January of 1985, Mitch Ogulewicz was elected by his colleagues to the post of City Council Vice President and Councilor Mary Hurley was elected to replace Brian Santaniello as the Council's President. Yet, the election of officers which elevated Ogulewicz to the Vice Presidency came despite a year of intense political activities that in some ways had alienated Mitch even further from many of the players in the city’s power structure.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfvDzyysWuB8WxtNKKsUYwWLdvz2JngrQxTQ6jvRNfXbJq6KcoaKh4hXQPhkTchSPhXNJEgzhrxcrjMJZJ3tQsOmXb-95ttcUjPwYT5QWRdUGfZF8eFKdBIWYT8d1bOuJQcpBd2SFlsA/s1600/vote84.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfvDzyysWuB8WxtNKKsUYwWLdvz2JngrQxTQ6jvRNfXbJq6KcoaKh4hXQPhkTchSPhXNJEgzhrxcrjMJZJ3tQsOmXb-95ttcUjPwYT5QWRdUGfZF8eFKdBIWYT8d1bOuJQcpBd2SFlsA/s1600/vote84.gif" /></a></div> For one thing, the previous year had been a presidential election year. In 1984 most of the Valley’s Democrats were lining up behind Walter Mondale, who had been Vice President under former President Jimmy Carter. Mitch, however, was supporting Gary Hart, a Colorado Senator who was challenging Mondale for the presidential nomination. Mitch felt that Hart had a better chance of winning than Mondale, who besides being tied to the unpopular Carter Administration had also promised to raise taxes if elected. Ogulewicz felt that Hart represented a fresh face from a younger generation of politicians, so when Ogulewicz, who became Hart’s Western Mass co-chairman, introduced Sen. Hart at a pre-primary rally at Court Square, Mitch praised the Senator in Kennedyesque terms about “passing the torch to a new generation.”<p>
At the same time, Mondale was attacking Hart as being all style and no substance, playing on a popular television commercial of the time in which <i>Wendy’s Hamburgers</i> was critical of their competitors for their skinny burgers. The ads showed a grumpy old lady looking at her hamburger and asking, “Where’s the beef?” Mondale appropriated that same catch phrase on the campaign trail to use as a taunt against Hart.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKYNpGBFQ9fAHQBmfFMzjt0zTPsy9Wxatc4uw_CGcN6WMPf1ZM66Din8wVosTvGWP2hvjE-08vuEl98MjIfE5MptCD3pDPL0fI4vUcMVKjZCy9YkyW8VGMyWw80mqXeTF4ikPYV39ngI/s1600/ogbeef.gif" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKYNpGBFQ9fAHQBmfFMzjt0zTPsy9Wxatc4uw_CGcN6WMPf1ZM66Din8wVosTvGWP2hvjE-08vuEl98MjIfE5MptCD3pDPL0fI4vUcMVKjZCy9YkyW8VGMyWw80mqXeTF4ikPYV39ngI/s200/ogbeef.gif" width="200" /></a></div> In spite of those attacks, Hart went on to win the Massachusetts primary. At the local victory celebration, Ogulewicz, his co-chair Lenny Wagner and a campaign worker posed for a photograph with Hart’s campaign platform between two slices of bread, as if to say, “Here’s the beef!” However, despite winning in Massachusetts, Hart soon lost both his momentum and the nomination to Mondale, who just as Mitch had predicted, went down to a landslide defeat in November to Ronald Reagan.<p>
Although Ogulewicz’s support of Hart had annoyed those among the local power structure who were mostly Mondale backers, it was nothing compared to the negative reaction to Mitch’s role in the U. S. Senate race that year. Incumbent Senator Paul Tsongas shocked the state of Massachusetts when he announced that he would be unable to seek re-election because he had fallen ill with cancer. One night soon afterwards, Mitch received a phone call from Lt. Governor John Kerry, whose campaign for Lt. Governor Mitch had served as Western Massachusetts Chairman. Kerry asked Mitch for his advice on whether he should seek the Senate seat made available by Tsongas stepping down.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqpw7ugbHHWAxjjurNPG_-BKXzMMOfNtGiDQVzkFTr2xo-F69wmQe4JKhZ7NhW329cES9sNwz_lmfuzyJQOGpZ0iB8LWEcWFwqKpiahz7EijH8_4kcGKD-31u5-AuCOthEz369JbZz-w/s1600/mitchkerry.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqpw7ugbHHWAxjjurNPG_-BKXzMMOfNtGiDQVzkFTr2xo-F69wmQe4JKhZ7NhW329cES9sNwz_lmfuzyJQOGpZ0iB8LWEcWFwqKpiahz7EijH8_4kcGKD-31u5-AuCOthEz369JbZz-w/s320/mitchkerry.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>
Ogulewicz advised Kerry not to run, pointing out that Kerry had been Lt. Governor for little more than a year and suggested that it was too soon to seek another office. He warned that running might make Kerry appear opportunistic. Kerry thanked Mitch for his advice, but did not follow it, running for and eventually winning the Senate seat later that year. Once again Mitch agreed to head Kerry’s Western Mass operations. Yet now that Kerry was running from the position of already holding a statewide office, the senatorial campaign was much bigger and more sophisticated than the hard scrabble, grassroots campaign that Mitch had headed the first time Kerry ran. By comparison, Mitch felt that his role was now more ceremonial, with the nuts and bolts of the race being run by paid professionals.</p><p>
Many in Western Massachusetts were passionately opposed to Kerry’s Senate race. That was because Holyoke native David Bartley, a former speaker of the Massachusetts House, was challenging Kerry for the nomination. Bartley was the hometown favorite, and most of the Valley’s power elites aligned themselves staunchly behind him.</p><p>
Ogulewicz felt that he couldn’t get behind the Bartley campaign for a number of reasons. His primary reason was his longtime friendship with John Kerry. David Bartley, on the other hand, was someone he hardly knew. Mitch also disliked what he perceived as Bartley’s lack of commitment to a single political role. Upon leaving the legislature, Bartley had assumed the presidency of Holyoke Community College, despite not having the academic credentials for the job at the time. Bartley had taken a leave of absence at one point to serve in the administration of Governor Ed King and now he was taking yet another leave in order to run for the Senate. Critics wondered whether Bartley had actually retired into academia or if he was using the college merely as a paycheck and a powerbase from which to launch new political agendas.</p><p>
Yet, what really disturbed Mitch was the behavior of some of Bartley’s supporters. He was shocked to hear Bartley backers saying things like calling Kerry a “flag burner" (although he participated in many rallies against the Vietnam War, Kerry denies he ever burned a flag) and in general implied that Kerry was not enough of a patriot to sit in the United States Senate. Mitch was annoyed that Bartley supporters who had never served a minute in the armed services themselves were being critical of Kerry, a decorated combat veteran.</p><p>
As the Kerry/Bartley battle intensified, tempers started to fray and hard feelings began to form. Locally, much of the anger was directed at Mitch, who was thought of as disloyal to the hometown boy for leading the local fight on behalf of Kerry. Mitch tried to explain why he felt that Kerry was the better candidate, but no one would listen or even cut him any slack for being Kerry’s personal friend. As the Kerry campaign surged and the Bartley campaign sagged, Bartley’s supporters became increasingly embittered. Ultimately the race led to tensions with one of Mitch’s colleagues.</p><p>
During the 1983 campaign, Mitch had run an aggressive door to door campaign, which is considered one of the most difficult and sometimes unpleasant ways to campaign because many citizens hate to be bothered at home by politicians and you can end up with many doors being slammed in your face. However, it can be worth the grief to get one on one exposure directly with the voters, who are more likely to remember a personal encounter than a telephone call or an advertisement. The only person matching Mitch’s door knocking pace was former Dimauro mayoral aide Francis Keough. They often ran into each other on the campaign trail and enjoyed talking and joking together about their campaign experiences. When both he and Keough successful got elected, Mitch had looked forward to working with his former campaign buddy.</p><p>
It didn’t turn out as well as Mitch hoped. Keough was a team player, anxious to get ahead in politics fast. That meant he was usually concerned with positioning himself to be on whatever side was winning. Meanwhile, Mitch was becoming known as a boatrocker who would not sacrifice principle to ambition, which made Mitch's role on the Council almost the exact opposite of Keough's. One day Keough, a passionate Bartley supporter, walked up to Mitch and said something that struck Mitch as odd. “When all this over Mitch,” Keough said, referring to the campaign, “I want you to know that our friendship will be unchanged.” While there was nothing unusual in the exact words that Keough was speaking, there was something disconcerting about the manner in which he was saying them. While the words themselves suggested something nice, the odd tone in which they were spoken struck Mitch as having a facetious manner. In other words, he felt that what Keough really meant was the exact opposite, that Mitch's loyalty to Kerry meant his friendship with Keough was permanently damaged.</p><p>
So once again, Mitch had a hard time dealing with people’s political attitudes. It was almost as if he lived in two different political worlds, one where big issues were at stake on matters of principle, such as in the John Kerry campaign, and another world of petty political mediocrities who fought viciously over local issues. Why did it seem impossible for him to make political choices without his opponents taking personal offense? Was it not possible to disagree without being disagreeable? Mitch rejected this herd mentality in Springfield politics that had virtually everyone blindly going in one direction, with rejection and animosity towards anyone who would not follow. The whole concept was foreign to Mitch’s style of independent thinking. How far were they willing to go in order to enforce political orthodoxy?</p><p>
Mitch was about to discover just how far in a surprisingly unpleasant way.</p><p><br /></p><center><p></p><p></p></center><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYjMvAHck57aAS4qDII8xy3gTEky8RAprASoca7zc9iF1lf8QYtFj6RhOAzzIKNHk_l4ox9Ye9hDfOw0fe-KZI6ObeFcHqnXvY989AwNzfmmMQjQi98xt_kPp7vJcKLcVf-1lmnbDstI/s1600/town.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYjMvAHck57aAS4qDII8xy3gTEky8RAprASoca7zc9iF1lf8QYtFj6RhOAzzIKNHk_l4ox9Ye9hDfOw0fe-KZI6ObeFcHqnXvY989AwNzfmmMQjQi98xt_kPp7vJcKLcVf-1lmnbDstI/s640/town.jpg" width="461" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-30068555446639819122016-08-05T13:39:00.003-07:002021-08-05T15:06:45.074-07:00A New Mandate
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShTomlRb9FJu6-wZ4S6BsRglBK5yCgDnJvVne3V8CMUtisVJ38E529yKbzRSvdnXhU6yimdlupZtYSOv9Wz88UGBCB0JvdVFexMNsXAf8XamFtL4q-wN2v2kBMMyCaubnlAdFYQ2QVeo/s1600/starr.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShTomlRb9FJu6-wZ4S6BsRglBK5yCgDnJvVne3V8CMUtisVJ38E529yKbzRSvdnXhU6yimdlupZtYSOv9Wz88UGBCB0JvdVFexMNsXAf8XamFtL4q-wN2v2kBMMyCaubnlAdFYQ2QVeo/s200/starr.png" width="186" /></a></div><p>
In January of 1985, longtime City Councilor Rose Marie Coughlin resigned from the Council after she was elected Hampden County Treasurer in November of 1984. It was a position she would hold until the Hampden County government was abolished some fourteen years later. Her departure created a vacancy, which according to Council rules meant that the next closest defeated candidate in the last election had first rights of acceptance for the seat. Happy to accept was Morris Jones, a thirty year postal employee and well known Winchester Square (now Mason Square) political activist. The arrival of Jones also ended criticism from some quarters that the City Council consisted of all whites.</p><p>
Jones assumed the office right in the middle of a raging controversy involving the Baystate Medical Center. The hospital wanted to expand and construct new buildings, but the surrounding well-to-do and politically active neighborhood of Atwater Park was opposed, claiming that the new high-rises would spoil their view, increase traffic congestion and lower property values.</p><p>
Whether the hospital would be allowed to expand was uncertain, since many Councilors, including Mitch Ogulewicz, were undecided. Politically it was a hard call, since the angry neighborhood was very politically active with high voter turnouts. On the other hand, the hospital expansion would create hundreds of new jobs and greatly enhance the quality of health care facilities in the city.</p><p>
Adamantly opposed was Councilor Betty Montori, the wife of a prominent physician. In fact, Montori had run for office specifically with the intent of being a “no” vote on the hospital issue. Equally determined to support the project were Councilors Bill Foley, Frank Keough, Brian Santaniello and Vincent DiMonaco. In many ways Vinnie DiMonaco was considered the leader of the pro-hospital advocates. DiMonaco was a former labor union leader, and advocated the expansion because of the construction jobs it would create and the quality medical coverage it would provide for the area. Despite some initial hesitation, Morris Jones also joined the supporters. That left in the undecided category Mitch, Bob Markel and Mary Hurley as the swing votes who held the fate of the hospital in their hands. Because it was a special permit, a total of six votes instead of the usual five was required.</p><p>
With five councilors already in support of the expansion and only one opposed, it was within the power of any of the undecideds to determine the outcome. The three Councilors met on the issue often and it was agreed that if any one of them decided to vote in favor, then the other two would vote yes also. Perhaps somewhat cynically, they felt that if it was going to pass, then there would be no point in voting against the project and incurring the political wrath of the unions and other special interest groups over a lost cause.</p><p>
One day Ogulewicz was in his office at the bank when he received a request to meet with Bank President Karl Walzak. Mitch assumed that it was something to do with routine bank business, and was very much taken aback to discover what the real topic was. Walzak informed Mitch that he had just received a phone call from a very high ranking public figure, urging him to ask Mitch to please vote in favor of the hospital expansion. Mitch was totally surprised and asked Walzak, “Do you mean someone called and asked you to apply pressure on me to vote yes?"</p><p>
The bank President stressed the fact that he was personally indifferent to how Mitch voted on that or any other issue that came before the Council. Walzak also said that he merely felt that Mitch should be aware of the fact that the phone call had been made. Mitch was furious that someone would attempt to pressure him politically through his employer, and demanded to know who had made the call. At first he resisted, but finally Walzak relented and revealed the identity of the attempted blackmailer:</p><p>
David Starr.</p><p>
Mitch considered the discovery that it was the publisher of the daily paper who had applied this pressure as beyond the pale and something that Ogulewicz couldn't overlook. He left work immediately and marched straight down Main Street to the corporate headquarters of the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>. When Mitch arrived, he demanded to speak with the publisher. Ushered into the office, he found Starr was smiling and welcoming.</p><p>
“Mr. Starr,” Mitch said trying to keep his calm, “I need to have a word with you.”</p><p>
“Of course,” Starr replied pleasantly, “and don’t call me Mr. Starr. Call me David.”</p><p>
Mitch was angered by Starr’s friendliness, which he saw as hypocritical considering the phone call he knew Starr had made that morning. It seemed to Ogulewicz indicative of Starr’s arrogant belief that Mitch’s quick arrival at his office apparently meant that Mitch was coming to surrender.</p><p>
“No thank you, Mr. Starr,” Mitch said, rejecting the offer of moving their relationship to a first name basis, “I don’t want to be too friendly with anyone who puts pressure on the place where I work in order to try to force me to vote their way! Frankly, I don’t appreciate the implied threat!”</p><p>
The expression on Starr's face revealed that the publisher was caught completely off-guard. At first Starr tried to deny that he had made the call, but Ogulewicz then asked why Walzak, whom he had known since they were youngsters growing up on Hungry Hill, would lie to him about such a matter. Still Starr continued to insist that he had not made the call. The conversation became very heated, with at one point Mitch’s voice becoming so loud that nearby employees gathered outside Starr’s office, concerned about the shouting they heard coming from inside. Mitch finally stormed out of Starr’s office in a rage, aware that what little friendly relationship he had ever had with Starr was now irreparably damaged.</p><p>
Ironically, despite that ugly incident Mitch ended up voting for the hospital expansion anyway, eventually concluding that the medical needs of the community outweighed the resident’s objections. The other Councilors voted the same way, except for Betty Montori, and the measure passed 8 – 1. Montori suffered for her lone dissenting vote when the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> wrote a strident editorial calling for her defeat in the next election.</p><p>
The Baystate expansion controversy played against the background of the municipal elections of 1985. Mitch felt confident of his re-election, but the field was far from unchallenging. All nine incumbents were seeking re-election, and it was feared that one of them might be ousted by Patricia Corriera, a popular school committee member who was attempting to make the leap to the Council. If she succeeded, which Councilor would she force out? Also on the ballot that year for Council were candidates with famous last names, like Thomas Brunton, nephew of former Mayor Daniel Brunton, and Donald Whitney, son of former State Representative Frederick Whitney. Also running and considered electable was local labor leader Antoinette Pepe and neighborhood activist William Christophori.</p><p>
Despite the ugly incident with Starr, Ogulewicz was amazed to see that he received the endorsement of the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, although its endorsement was so restrained it was almost useless. In a one sentence statement, the paper feebly stated that Mitch had “focused on neighborhoods and is learning how to become an effective Councilor.” With praise like that, who needs insults?</p><p>
As it turned out, the threat from Correria proved unfounded, as all nine Councilors easily won re-election. A surprise victory also occurred in the School Committee race when a candidate who had not done well in the primary went on to win a seat in the general election. His name was Michael J. Albano. Considering all Ogulewicz had to struggle through in his first term, his re-election was a gratifying renewal of his mandate and proof that the public did indeed recognize how hard he had worked for them.</p><p>
Yet as Mitch looked forward to his second term, he was innocently unaware of the political storms that lay ahead.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-41419568906642920372016-08-03T13:30:00.005-07:002021-08-06T13:15:17.186-07:00Robbed!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhtSDRy8qMcBYil_zi7kn6nnlupyI4nkwpFf3s1lpPCRy6wy7kxBwZpu1ItiOoNBDcV97zG5E6tB95Q2nPxnYHMMZGGu1tgaIqKt_udDC8plWcclqr72voDGCn0zwtIoFAYGLG-QGiZA/s1600/markel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhtSDRy8qMcBYil_zi7kn6nnlupyI4nkwpFf3s1lpPCRy6wy7kxBwZpu1ItiOoNBDcV97zG5E6tB95Q2nPxnYHMMZGGu1tgaIqKt_udDC8plWcclqr72voDGCn0zwtIoFAYGLG-QGiZA/s400/markel.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
In the aftermath of Ogulewicz’s re-election victory, speculation began almost immediately over whether Mitch would run for the Council Presidency. He had already served as Vice-President under Mary Hurley, and now with Hurley showing no interest in seeking another term, it seemed natural that as her Vice-President Mitch should succeed her.</p><p>
In fact, the votes for an Ogulewicz presidency came together on election night, when Hurley officially endorsed Ogulewicz as her successor. He had already received the endorsements of Councilors Robert Markel, Brian Santaniello and Betty Montori, so with Mitch voting for himself, that gave him the five votes necessary to put a lock on the Council Presidency. However at one point during the election night revelry, Hurley took Ogulewicz to one side and whispered to him privately, “Get yourself a sixth vote.” Mitch told her he didn’t know what she meant, since on a nine member body only five votes were needed for a majority. “Don’t trust Markel!” Hurley warned, but would say no more.</p><p>
Mitch remembered the unpleasant run-in with Markel he had soon after he was elected to his first term, an incident in which Markel had deceived him into inadvertently derailing the presidential ambitions of former Councilor Rose Marie Coughlin. Yet Mitch had been pretty much a greenhorn back then and hardly knew Councilor Markel. Mitch now had what he felt was a solid working relationship with him, and felt he had little to fear from Markel’s sometimes Machiavellian ways. With his election seemingly assured, Mitch began setting an agenda for the new Council, and intended to make some significant changes.</p><p>
As much as he admired the dedication of Mary Hurley, she was hardly an anti-establishment figure and had served during her presidency pretty much in harmony with Springfield's powers that be. On the contrary, Mitch was becoming more and more disillusioned with the city’s political power structure. Ogulewicz was determined to be more reform minded during his presidency, especially regarding opening up the process to become more accessible and transparent for the average citizen. Unknown to Mitch, there were people maneuvering behind the scenes who wanted keep things just the way they were.</p><p>
Shortly before Ogulewicz was to be elevated to the presidency by a formal vote, <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> reporter Susannah Pugh called and asked for Mitch’s comment on some startling news. According to Pugh, Robert Markel had formally announced that he was seeking the Council Presidency, and that furthermore, he claimed to already have the commitments of five councilors! Mitch was dumbfounded and immediately got on the phone to Markel. Robert Markel admitted everything, telling Mitch that he had lined up the votes of machine insiders Francis Keough, Bill Foley, and Morris Jones. Generally independent Councilor Vincent DiMonaco had also been brought onboard. With his own vote, Markel would become the new Council President.</p><p>
“Bob, you are absolutely unbelievable!” Mitch exclaimed, along with some other, more colorful comments. Ogulewicz told Markel that if he wanted the presidency he should have told Mitch so at the beginning and not gone scheming behind his back. Although Mitch wanted the position, he was not willing to get into a big, ugly fight over it and would have deferred to the more senior member Markel if he had simply been asked. Now Mitch felt that he had been publicly embarrassed, since it had been reported in the media for weeks that Ogulewicz would be the new Council leader. Now it wasn’t going to happen because Markel had stolen the presidency in a backstabbing backroom deal.</p><p>
Since there appeared to be nothing he could do about it anyway, Mitch decided to accept what had occurred as gracefully as possible, yet felt disillusioned by what had happened. Vincent DiMonaco, the dean of the Council who sometimes liked to imagine himself as Mitch’s mentor, tried to console Mitch by explaining that it was all just politics and praised Ogulewicz for the mature way he had accepted the unexpected defeat. DiMonaco admitted to Mitch that it had been himself, in concert with the <i>Springfield Newspaper’s</i> Arnold Friedman, who had put together the coalition to elect Markel. Vinnie chuckled over the fact that Markel had always lacked the ambition to become President in his eight years on the Council, but took the post only after it had been orchestrated for him by the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>.</p><p>
DiMonaco also confided that at one point he had approached Councilor Brian Santaniello and asked him to defect, considering Santaniello to be the weakest link in Mitch’s coalition. Mitch was gratified when DiMonaco said that Santaniello had indignantly refused, insisting that he would never betray his word to another Councilor. Santaniello did so even though he probably would have been rewarded by Markel with a plum committee assignment had he betrayed Mitch. Although Ogulewicz and Santaniello were not political allies on many issues, Mitch would always respect Santaniello for the loyalty and courage he had shown despite the intense pressure that he was under to betray him. In the end Ogulewicz decided it was best to just put the entire incident behind him, resigning himself to working with Markel as best he could (but never quite trusting him) and instead focus his attention on carrying out his duties to his constituents.</p><p>
One day Mitch brought a proposal to Councilor Betty Montori to allow the City Council meetings to be televised on cable TV. Today, when virtually every legislative body on every level of government is televised routinely, it is hard to appreciate what a radical idea this seemed like at the time. A special committee was formed to look into the proposal, with Ogulewicz and Montori serving as its co-chairpersons and Building Department head Gene Laino, City Clerk Bill Metzger and Brian Lambert of Continental Cable serving as committee members. Francis Gagnon of the Historic Commission was also onboard to help insure the preservation of the historical integrity of the Council chamber if cameras were installed.</p><p>
Council meetings in those days were run quite loosely, with an informality that many feared wouldn’t appear very flattering on television. As Vinnie DiMonaco remarked to the <i>Springfield Morning Union</i>, “After some of the proceedings we’ve had in here, this council would not be long in office if meetings were televised.” Indeed, there were real reservations about whether the Springfield City Council was ready to be prime time players. As City Hall reporter Carol Malley wrote in her political column “Perspectives”:</p><p>
“For instance, if the full chamber were in view at all times, councilors might feel obligated to remain in their seats throughout the meeting, which would mean that they would have to listen to debate and testimony rather than walk around chatting with the public, with city officials, and with each other. It would also limit the number of times they leave to make telephone calls or check on the Red Sox score. It might also decrease the number of trips to the bathroom, which became a source of laughter Monday night when one councilor was looking for a missing colleague. It might also limit the chatting, fooling around and laughter that now highlights Council meetings.”</p><p>
Mitch believed that the people’s right to know how their elected representatives conducted the public’s business outweighed any concerns over whatever inconveniences or personal embarrassments televising the meetings might cause. Under Ogulewicz’s leadership, the Special Committee voted to recommend that the meetings be televised on a regular basis. Soon the full Council adopted the recommendations by a vote of 8 to 1, with Vincent DiMonaco casting the sole dissenting vote. The first televised meeting went off without a hitch, despite taunting from Vinnie that many Councilors appeared to have bought fancy new outfits for their television debut.</p><p>
Yet as Mitch was soon to discover, the new openness he was working to bring to city government would have its critics - critics who had no intention of having their behind the scenes power threatened and who would act aggressively to defend it. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-13769901663800024422016-07-26T14:28:00.002-07:002021-08-07T12:27:24.016-07:00Square Slugfest
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOW0mW_IXj3ChNCM3OpdughQ1ObO8zeRuVgptpzKrSi0Pg-sqPjcQAAb42Ogcy2T4c9SyskUOcgH201d46tHeTEohTnBcQVsCmdwrJiPXDZd17T5tg0Y2o_ddQY0DjA0wf7MdJ7dVfUoA/s1600/keough.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOW0mW_IXj3ChNCM3OpdughQ1ObO8zeRuVgptpzKrSi0Pg-sqPjcQAAb42Ogcy2T4c9SyskUOcgH201d46tHeTEohTnBcQVsCmdwrJiPXDZd17T5tg0Y2o_ddQY0DjA0wf7MdJ7dVfUoA/s400/keough.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><p>
In February of 1986, the Springfield political scene was in an uproar over an article that appeared in the <i>Springfield Morning Union</i> by political reporter John Appleton. In that article, Appleton reported that State Representative Raymond Jordan, the only black representative from Western Massachusetts, would be facing the strongest challenge to his seat since he was first elected in 1974.</p><p>
That challenger was Ogulewicz’s City Council colleague Francis Keough.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMhJb3hoUqYDKjfukosXJZNb5BEvveYAywFoUSuwVqLM5Papu2oQki_TBsfWQmyCJYhodBzzw-AxpBs_eV6pSUCD5plqXJEav8LOdeo2LdXCNvmRcWqo6UWOIzx1hRCq-f62sEAxg-iPg/s1600/ogulewicz12b.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMhJb3hoUqYDKjfukosXJZNb5BEvveYAywFoUSuwVqLM5Papu2oQki_TBsfWQmyCJYhodBzzw-AxpBs_eV6pSUCD5plqXJEav8LOdeo2LdXCNvmRcWqo6UWOIzx1hRCq-f62sEAxg-iPg/s320/ogulewicz12b.gif" width="320" /></a></div><p>
Today the district containing Mason Square (at that time known as Winchester Square) is overwhelmingly populated by minorities, particularly African-Americans. In 1986, the district was about 50% white and much more diverse demographically than today. As Jordan himself described the district in the Appleton story, “You have half with the highest income, best educated people in Springfield, and in the other half you have the second lowest incomes and education. One half is predominantly pro-life, the other, pro-choice. One half wants no neighborhood change, the other has a burning interest in change. One half is predominantly Irish Catholic, the other predominantly black and Hispanic.”</p><p>
Keough believed he could bring out enough voters dissatisfied with the status quo to bump the incumbent Jordan from his seat. There was tremendous pressure on Keough not to run, with many fearing that the contest could get racially divisive. Keough himself would charge during the campaign that <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> publisher David Starr had personally applied pressure on him to stay out of the race. Ogulewicz knew something about Starr’s penchant for interfering in campaigns from his own first race, when Starr had asked him to endorse an opponent.</p><p>
To the credit of both Keough and Jordan, the contest never became overtly racial, although it still had plenty enough fireworks to make it one of the most colorful - and dirtiest - campaigns in modern Springfield history. Part of the reason for this was because of the way the contest strained normal political alliances throughout the city. Mayor Richard Neal was especially torn, because Keough was a close friend and very active in the Mayor’s own political organization, while at the same time, Jordan was the key point man for Neal in the black community. Also among those in a quandary was City Councilor Morris Jones, whose closest ally on the Council was Keough, but who had ties to Jordan going back decades. In short, everyone hoped to avoid internal bloodletting in the local Democrat Machine by getting Keough to back off, but the young Councilor, buoyed in part by his strong second place finish in the 1985 Council elections, was determined to move on to higher office.</p><p>
Mitch was able to avoid the worst of these conflicts, because he wasn’t particularly close to either of the candidates. Mitch and Keough had formed the basis for a friendship during Mitch’s first campaign as both canvassed the neighborhoods, but their friendship had not evolved much since they were elected. Their relationship had been particularly strained by the Kerry/Bartley Senate battle. More significantly, Mitch had maintained his political independence, while Keough had become deeply enmeshed in the local machine. Yet, Mitch felt he knew Keough pretty well and had to consider that Frankie was also a fellow colleague on the Council. In contrast, Mitch hardly knew Rep. Jordan at all. Mitch was also attracted by the way Keough appeared uncharacteristically in the role of the maverick in the race by defying the pleas of Starr and the machine Democrats urging him not to run, courageously facing their fury. So while Mitch had no great enthusiasm for Keough politically, he could appreciate the risks that Keough was taking as a boatrocker, which was the main reason why Mitch ultimately allied himself with the Keough campaign.</p><p>
And what a campaign! <i>The Springfield Newspapers</i> immediately brought forth their heavy journalistic artillery, mercilessly attacking Keough on all fronts. Under the guise of investigative journalism, Keough’s entire real estate business came under intense scrutiny (unusual from a paper that seldom told the public anything about the personal financial activities of its public officials) as they attempted to present minor discrepancies in paperwork Keough had filed at the Register of Deeds as a major scandal.</p><p>
Not all of the paper's accusations, however, were as unsubstantial. Personal friends of Keough were found to have improperly acquired absentee ballots, while Keough also took a job with the clerk of courts, meaning that he was collecting a check from both the state and city payrolls. In addition, his business partner, municipal parking clerk Stephen Phillips (brother of Gerald), had received a payraise for which Keough had both asked for and voted on. Finally, the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> raised questions over Keough's involvement with developer Leo Shipiro, asking in an editorial, "Why was he [Keough] invited, and why did he agree, to participate in a land speculation with a millionaire real estate developer who does business in the city and might again in the future? And does that speculator really need Keough's few thousand dollars to complete the deal?"</p><p>
In response to these attacks, Keough made some interesting charges of his own. Jordan was President of the Winchester Square Development Corporation, a semi-public organization which controlled taxpayer’s money for economic development in Winchester Square. Keough noted that there seemed to be no new businesses in the Square, except for a new laundromat, where it turned out that Jordan himself was the owner. Keough blasted the corporation as being full of Jordan’s “cronies” such as Henry Thomas, Bobby Jones, E. Henry Twiggs (who would later become embroiled in a scandal regarding the land taking for the Rebecca Johnson School and whom <i>Valley Advocate</i> writer Al Giordano once called Jordan’s “bagman”) and Willie Goodman, Jordan’s legislative assistant. There was also a fuss over Jordan's legislative aide Claire O’Brien, whom Keough charged had a no-show job. Finally, Keough pointed out that Jordan also had a lousy attendance record in Boston, missing 40% of the roll call votes in the legislature in 1985.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixGrZX_pmQ1FLtKMusV-shX6LuK1_-Rmue9cFw_vpP8JrELly_zez5iGxeEn6zHI_5qa_-B360Sbun0Garjz-V6PKjka1Bf2TOtsdk55txn7O77Kf88POyXUZfk2xovTonIzr7NUO6v9s/s1600/ogulewicz12c.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixGrZX_pmQ1FLtKMusV-shX6LuK1_-Rmue9cFw_vpP8JrELly_zez5iGxeEn6zHI_5qa_-B360Sbun0Garjz-V6PKjka1Bf2TOtsdk55txn7O77Kf88POyXUZfk2xovTonIzr7NUO6v9s/s320/ogulewicz12c.gif" width="320" /></a></div><p>
In short, it was an ugly campaign between two well-connected candidates, both of whom had enough skeletons in their closets to make neither of them very appealing. Ironically, there was a third candidate in the race, Reuben L. Green, but he was so overshadowed by his more famous competitors that his candidacy was never able to acquire any traction. Green was also rejected by some because of never proven charges that he had been brought into the race by Keough in order to split the black vote.</p><p>
The Keough campaign was at last undone by a brutal editorial that appeared in the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> just before the primary. In that editorial, the paper did everything but flat out declare Keough to be a crook, alleging in a statement dripping with innuendo that “Frank Keough came to politics a poor man and in less than three years on the City Council is wealthier than most of his constituents.”</p><p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZrY8_Eu-T-x7YddLokWqS-FsF3S1Hf6wfmGQ83gdniB5oG68mtOlTBvSkgADNNTw-hrKOScNymiNMkRvKfj5J1CA5xXj2Noa58gstPPvyC5sec_N8J7DhZUWB150yBHCPw9Vi5ft8hQ/s1600/dstarr.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZrY8_Eu-T-x7YddLokWqS-FsF3S1Hf6wfmGQ83gdniB5oG68mtOlTBvSkgADNNTw-hrKOScNymiNMkRvKfj5J1CA5xXj2Noa58gstPPvyC5sec_N8J7DhZUWB150yBHCPw9Vi5ft8hQ/s1600/dstarr.jpg" /></a>
The total effect of the editorial and the paper's earlier charges was devastating. In a desperate attempt to save himself, Keough publicly attacked both Starr and Arnold Friedman, accusing them of secretly assisting the Jordan campaign and of engaging in conduct that “violates every canon of responsible journalism.” But it was too little, too late and on Election Day, Keough went down to a landslide defeat.</p><p>
Mitch learned some important lessons from this campaign. Ogulewicz now realized through what had happened to Keough that he had not misinterpreted the meaning of the attacks he himself had undergone at the hands of Starr and company. Even a loyal water carrier like Keough, when he counteracted Starr’s wishes, had found himself tarred and feathered in the newspapers. There seemed to be no loyalties or other connections that could protect you if Starr was determined to have his way. This realization made Mitch even more determined to press on with his reform agenda to open up local politics to public transparency.</p><p>
Meanwhile, Francis Keough took away a very different lesson from his public humiliation. In a conversation with Ogulewicz following his defeat, Keough said that he would never again rebel against the status quo, and that he would follow instructions from Starr and the other power players in the future because he had learned that resistance was futile. From that day onward, Keough was a Councilor that the political establishment could always count on to do their bidding.</p><p>
1986 was the City of Springfield’s 350th birthday. The year long party was put on by the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs (MOCCA). Everyone agreed that MOCCA and its energetic director Judith Matt had done an outstanding job in putting on a series of special events to commemorate the occasion. As a public official, Mitch was required to attend most of these festivities, and he was proud to represent the city and share the pride over Springfield’s achievements over the centuries. Yet, ironically it would be Mitch who would later look at MOCCA’s financial records, and what he would uncover would cause still another controversy to unfold.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-51437895076149620802016-07-22T13:49:00.004-07:002022-02-08T20:07:50.421-08:00Corruption in the Square<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEx13RrU_YsDdo-iUN4rx0D0znmYTSekxAmmRrvFwr-sZ58t9lrxJ2CIcR9nxK4RJOT8llmnq8cd9A8s8QTNKOU-0eDGXSzcEL1qe7T_imgAPMAfSQv8Er5R3HnjGfs-YytAyhPokYy0Y/s1600/pino.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEx13RrU_YsDdo-iUN4rx0D0znmYTSekxAmmRrvFwr-sZ58t9lrxJ2CIcR9nxK4RJOT8llmnq8cd9A8s8QTNKOU-0eDGXSzcEL1qe7T_imgAPMAfSQv8Er5R3HnjGfs-YytAyhPokYy0Y/s400/pino.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>
One dark, cold winter night in early 1986, ten clergymen gathered in Winchester Square (now Mason Square) for a meeting whose outcome would ultimately send shockwaves of controversy throughout the political scene in Springfield. As the ten men of the cloth met that night in the heart of Springfield's black community, they reflected on the state of the Winchester Square neighborhood which comprised the membership of their respective churches. They described a community ruined by blight, poverty, crime and non-existent economic development. Yet they knew that large sums of money, in fact millions of dollars, had been spent by the government supposedly on economic development in Winchester Square.</p><p>
The clergy found themselves using terms like, "the aftermath of an atomic blast," "Berlin, 1945" and "a wasteland" to describe what had become of their neighborhood. What happened, they wondered, to all the millions of dollars (90 million in all since 1966) that had been poured into Winchester Square? Why was there so little to show for it? Bowing their heads in prayer, the religious leaders of the black community joined together that night to make a solemn vow - forming a covenant - that they would wage a fight, no matter how difficult, no matter where it led, to find out what had become of all the government money that had been intended for Springfield's poorest neighborhood.</p><p>
Councilor Morris Jones, the only black member of the City Council, was the first to make news of the existence of the Covenant known to members of the City Council. Jones approached Mitch Ogulewicz and Francis Keough and asked them to meet with the group. At that meeting, the clergy told Ogulewicz and Keough, using colorfully blunt language, that they were demanding that an audit be conducted: a line by line, dollar by dollar examination of where all of the money that had been allocated to Winchester Square from government economic development programs had actually been spent going back to 1966. Ogulewicz agreed that the requests of the clergymen were reasonable, and promised he would take their proposal for a complete financial reckoning back to the other Councilors.</p><p>
However, before any plans could get off the ground, the Mayor caught wind of it. Richard Neal immediately announced that he was adamantly opposed to any such audit. Neal dismissed the audit as "a fishing expedition" and said that with an estimated price tag of $250,000, it was too expensive. However, some in the Covenant suspected that there were other reasons for resistance to the audit, reasons that perhaps were only discussed within insider circles.</p><p>
The audit the Covenant requested would've covered some very sensitive programs in Springfield, such as Model Cities, a disastrous early economic development program that demolished the housing in poor neighborhoods even when they didn't have anything to put up in their place. The audit would also have covered the CETA program (Comprehensive Educational Training Act) a job training program that was so scandal plagued and unsuccessful that Congress eventually abolished it as beyond reform. There had been rumors locally for years that the Springfield Model Cities and CETA programs had been riddled with corruption and waste, and it was suspected that corruption might secretly be the primary reason why there appeared to be such nervousness in high places over what an in-depth audit might reveal.</p><p>
That nervousness was no doubt heightened when Mitch Ogulewicz did some investigative work on his own. Mitch discovered never before released audits of the Model Cities program, documents that revealed that over two million dollars was either improperly spent or was completely missing, with no idea of what it had been spent on or by whom. The Covenant was galvanized by Ogulewicz's revelations, with Covenant member Rev. Jerome King Del Pino declaring that Mitch's discoveries were "just the tip of the iceberg in what I assert was a comedy of errors to develop the Winchester Square locality over the past 20 years."</p><p>
Yet despite the growing body of evidence of fiscal mismanagement, the Neal Administration became ever more insistent that no audit should be held. In a comment that took Mitch by surprise, Neal declared in a private meeting with Mitch and some other Councilors that "Some of those people who were involved in those programs are now upstanding citizens, who should be allowed get on with their lives."</p><p>
A startled Mitch could only wonder what Neal meant by that statement. Who were these "upstanding citizens" placed in danger by the audit, and why should they be allowed to get away with past misdeeds? It seemed to Mitch that the Mayor knew more than he was willing to tell about the suspicions of the black community and the issues raised by the Covenant. Mitch thought it was also interesting that the scandal plagued CETA program had been administered during the Sullivan Administration, in which Neal himself had been an important figure.</p><p>
In any case, Mayor Neal began applying pressure every way he could to defeat the proposal for the audit. Coming to his aid was Winchester Square's State Rep. Ray Jordan, who announced he would hold a special public meeting in which economic development in the Square would be discussed and all questions answered. The Covenant was unimpressed, accusing Jordan of offering to hold the forum merely as a substitute for doing the audit. They released a statement dismissing Jordan's rhetoric as "typical of his style during his 12 years in office." The Covenant turned out to have been correct in continuing to press their demands, because in the end it turned out that the tell-all public forum Jordan promised was never held.</p><p>
On June 3, 1986, after weeks of intense lobbying by the Neal Administration, the struggle for the truth came to a climax when the Council voted 5-4 against funding the audit. The Covenant and most of the black community, along with other reform-minded citizens concerned with good government, were outraged. The Covenant refused to concede defeat, with Rev. Del Pino declaring in the <i>Morning Union</i>, "We are committed to the truth of what it is we are pursuing and we will not be deterred by any of the devious methods of avoidance that were utilized by each of the Councilors who voted in opposition to this proposal."</p><p>
The Neal Administration was caught off-guard by the unexpectedly intense outpouring of public anger following the defeat of the audit proposal. It was obvious that the Covenant and its supporters in the community and on the Council were not going to let the matter drop. Finally Councilor Robert Markel came forward with a compromise proposal to fund an audit covering a much shorter period of time - 1979 to 1984.</p><p>
This would remove from the investigation the time periods covering the Model Cities and CETA programs about which the Neal Administration seemed so nervous, and would cost only $50,000, alleviating the concerns over costs. The Covenant was not at all satisfied by this proposal, which essentially took off the table 75% of the time period they wanted investigated, but in light of the defeat of the larger audit they decided to accept the compromise as at least better than nothing and if this shorter audit showed the necessity for further inquiry, they could then return to the Council with their original, more in-depth proposal.</p><p>
The Covenant insisted that a first rate auditing firm be charged with the investigation, and the respected company of <i>Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company</i> was chosen. At first everyone was pleased, but then some funny things started to happen.</p><p>
To their shock and dismay, the Covenant discovered that the Neal Administration's Budget Director Henry Piechota had quietly changed the contract with <i>Peat, Marwick and Mitchell</i> so that they would perform an audit of all economic development in Springfield, with no special attention given to spending in Winchester Square. Such an audit would be so unfocused that it would be uselessly vague and reveal nothing that wasn't already in the public record. The Covenant accused the Neal Administration of secretly trying to sabotage even this greatly shortened audit. Rev. Del Pino condemned the Neal Administration in the harshest terms, "Mr. Mayor and Mr. Piechota," he cried out in the newspaper, "what are you trying to hide? This kind of bungling is no accident."</p><p>
Mayor Neal promised to negotiate with the auditing firm to redirect their focus to Winchester Square, but the level of trust between the black community and the Neal Administration was now badly frayed. Ogulewicz found himself more and more pushed into the position of the point man for black leaders trying to monitor the audit, as he and Morris Jones were the only Councilors the black community seemed to trust. Even Morris Jones came under increasing criticism by The Covenant for what they described as his "hesitant leadership." Some complained that they felt that Jones was more concerned with his relationship with the white power structure than he was with the concerns of the Covenant and the black community. Therefore, it was increasingly Ogulewicz whom the black community turned to as the only person who had shown the courage to stand unwaveringly by the Covenant from the very beginning.</p><p>
So the city waited for the auditors from <i>Peat, Marwick and Mitchell</i> to complete their work. And they waited, and they waited. Originally the audit was supposed to be ready in only 60 days. Then 90 days. Soon over six months had passed, with no results released or even scheduled to be released. Yet it was rumored all over the city that the audit had in fact been completed and that the Neal Administration was sitting on it.</p><p>
Finally, Ogulewicz decided that enough was enough. Calling a press conference on October 10, Ogulewicz demanded the immediate, unconditional release of the document. "This audit began in April." he said. "For $50,000 dollars we were told the audit would not take more than 60 to 90 days, and it is now six months since the audit began. All excuses for the final report not being given are not valid. Therefore I am calling for the release of the report immediately."</p><p>
The Neal Administration initially refused Ogulewicz's demand, but under increasing public pressure the report was finally released in December. The whole Valley waited with great anticipation for the results of this highly controversial document and found in the end that there was - Nothing. It wasn't that the audit showed that anything was wrong. It wasn't that everything was shown to be all right. There was simply - nothing.</p><p>
It turned out that <i>Peat, Marwick and Mitchell</i> reported that they simply couldn't get the documents they needed from the Neal Administration or the Springfield Redevelopment Authority to have enough information to draw any conclusions about anything at all. Either the Neal people claimed the documents were lost or they turned over documents that were so sloppy and incomplete that the auditing firm simply couldn't gather enough information to make any definitive statements, except to say that the city's record keeping desperately needed to be improved. The Covenant was infuriated. "You have not yet begun to feel the wrath of The Covenant," cried the Rev. Warren Savage toward city leaders. The Rev. William Dwyer declared, "We feel that the audit shows a pattern of irresponsibility, particularly on behalf of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority."</p><p>
But despite the outcry, the predictable spin doctoring soon began. Although the audit had resolved no suspicions one way or the other, Councilor Francis Keough stepped forward to declare that the audit had "lifted the cloud of suspicion" from all concerned. <i>The Springfield Newspapers</i> downplayed the missing documents and declared in its headline "Audit clears use of block-grant funds" although the truth was it had done no such thing. Despite repeated pleas from the Covenant not to let the matter drop, it became impossible to generate any more interest on the part of most Councilors toward any further investigation. The Covenant appeared to have been bamboozled off the stage of city politics, swept aside by Neal Administration rhetoric about "putting the past behind us and moving on." But the Neal Administration's victory over the black community was to be short lived, for no sooner was The Covenant shoved to the sidelines than another major controversy erupted in Winchester Square.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYj92Z29-QjvTYvFyhcfYGwp_XVTHiZZRQr5gxBqeNPdQY772Ah6MP1e87sv2ZxMNVNXUaajkYJ6prZQWFs5canI9rs95UDSKJtuCCuRQP2BxfzyX11yk1A9B2QgPpi2UiYNwQET8Srbo/s1600/IndyLogo_600.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYj92Z29-QjvTYvFyhcfYGwp_XVTHiZZRQr5gxBqeNPdQY772Ah6MP1e87sv2ZxMNVNXUaajkYJ6prZQWFs5canI9rs95UDSKJtuCCuRQP2BxfzyX11yk1A9B2QgPpi2UiYNwQET8Srbo/s400/IndyLogo_600.jpg" width="393" /></a></div><p>
The Winchester Square clergy who made up the membership of The Covenant had been radicalized by their unsuccessful attempt to uncover what had become of the over 90 million dollars in economic development money that had supposedly been spent in the black community. The Covenant members had demanded that an audit be conducted to discover where all the money had disappeared to, but the Neal Administration, through a series of delays, deceptions and restrictions, had caused the final audit to be so vague and incomplete as to have been useless.</p><p>
Many thought that their defeat would mean the end of The Covenant, but that was not the case. Having failed in their attempt to address the economic development boondoggles of the past, The Covenant then turned its attention to the economic development boondoggles of the present, in particular the $13 million dollar project to convert the former Indian Motocycle building into apartments.</p><p>
The legendary <i>Indian Motocycle Company</i> had ceased manufacturing activities in Winchester Square in 1953. Its two large factory buildings remained partially in use throughout the 1950's and 60's through retail outlets on the ground floor, in particular the popular <i>King's Department Store</i>. In the 1970's however, the buildings became completely abandoned and fell into ever more serious states of deterioration and disrepair. Finally, the larger of the two buildings was declared to be in such a state of structural weakness that there was a danger that it might simply topple over onto State Street, possibly resulting in injury or loss of life for any vehicle or pedestrian unlucky enough to be passing by when it fell. Therefore, in 1984 it was torn down by the city for the sake of public safety.</p><p>
The smaller building, although also in tough shape, was becoming the subject of speculation for renovation as a housing project. Three prominent businessmen, Merwin Rubin, H. Joel Rahn and Jeffrey Sagalyn were trying to put together a proposal using taxpayer funds to renovate the building and redesign it for commercial use as an upscale condo complex. Not everyone, however, believed that to be the best use of the building or the site.</p><p>
The members of The Covenant felt that what the poverty stricken Winchester Square community needed above all else was jobs. They wanted the building to be converted to cheap retail space where young entrepreneurs and small shops could be opened at rents that would help new businesses to blossom and to serve as an economic center for neighborhood revitalization. As for the plans to build condominiums, they asked who was going to move into these condos right smack in the middle of Springfield's ghetto? From a purely business viewpoint, the whole concept behind the Indian Motocycle project seemed laughable. Furthermore, there was already more than ample housing in the neighborhood - if anything there was too much housing stock, with much of it abandoned. It was jobs and economic opportunity that the community needed, and the Indian Motocycle Apartments would provide neither. Yet, like so often in Springfield, it was not economics and common sense that would dictate the course of action - it was politics.</p><p>
Concern over the political angle is what first brought Mitch Ogulewicz into the controversy. Mitch felt it was disgraceful how the Neal Administration had mistreated the clergymen in The Covenant during the audit controversy. It was obvious that the good old boys network had repeatedly failed the black community in Springfield, and Mitch was determined that in the future things would be different. Ogulewicz felt that both buildings should be razed in order to give the Square a fresh look and to create the widest possible range of opportunities for what the site could be used for. He agreed with The Covenant that the whole concept behind the condo complex was ridiculous. Who would want to live there? Why would any sane investor put their own money into such a sure loser? As Mitch tried to find out, he soon discovered that it was difficult to get answers.</p><p>
When Ogulewicz was able to track down the investors and ask them how much of their own money they intended to risk in the venture, he was startled to be told that their investment would consist solely of their own "sweat equity." In other words, the time and energy they spent working on bringing the project into existence would represent their total investment. Mitch couldn't believe what he was hearing - the investors essentially wanted access to millions of dollars of taxpayer funds for doing nothing more than donating the effort they put into acquiring the taxpayer's money. Anyone at all could be a developer under those terms! Such an arrangement was unprecedented and completely absurd from a fiscal perspective, since it really amounted to just handing the building and the millions needed to develop it over to the businessmen as a gift. The more Mitch looked into this extraordinary arrangement, the more disturbing things he discovered.</p><p>
Also acting as an "investor" in the scheme was the Upper State Street Community Development Corporation. Sitting on the board of this organization (later called The Mason Square Development Corporation) was none other than <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> publisher David Starr, who it turned out had ties to Indian Motocycle Apartments developer H. Joel Rahn. Starr admitted to <i>Valley Advocate</i> reporter Stephanie Kraft that he had solicited Rahn in the past for some of Starr's pet charities. Kraft also reported that Rahn was a friend of Arnold Friedman, Starr's second in command at the newspapers, and that Friedman and Rahn had been seen dining together at area restaurants on several occasions.</p><p>
Even more intriguing was that Upper State Street Community Development Corporation (a non-profit entity) had a for-profit subsidiary called simply "Upper State Street Indian Motocycle Building." Mitch was startled to realize who was the head of the money making operation tied to the project. It turned out to be none other than State Representative Ray Jordan, who was the politician representing the Square in the legislature in Boston, which was where most of the money for the project was supposed to originate from in the form of financing from the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency.</p><p>
So Mitch had uncovered this almost surreal situation where a historic building in Springfield's poorest neighborhood was being turned into condos that no one needed or were likely to buy, with investors who appeared to be putting little or no money of their own into the project, thereby leaving taxpayers to assume all the risks, while the publisher of the local newspaper, which was supposed to be a journalistic watchdog over the project, was sitting on the very board of the organization that the newspaper was supposed to oversee. Finally, the politician most responsible for the political and financial oversight of the taxpayer's investment, Ray Jordan, was himself the head of the profit taking subsidiary through which the investor's profits would flow.</p><p>
On April 23, 1987, Mitch Ogulewicz held a press conference to demand that the State Ethics Commission launch a full investigation into the Indian Motocycle Apartment project and the players involved. On the same day, the members of The Covenant traveled to Boston for a private meeting with Governor Michael Dukakis, where they pleaded unsuccessfully with him to reconsider his support for the grants needed to begin the project. By this time, the black community itself had become torn over the project, with Ray Jordan putting together a group of his own supporters called The Winchester Square Coalition, which was formed to serve as a citizen counter group to the clergymen in The Covenant.</p><p>
The Winchester Square Coalition held a press conference supporting the Indian Motocycle Apartments, and then released a statement accusing those who opposed the project of racism. An angry Ogulewicz immediately responded that the charge was a red herring, designed to draw attention away from the very real concerns about the project's viability and the ethical issues involved. Also accused of racism were City Councilors and project critics Vincent DiMonaco and Betty Montori, both of whom also responded angrily to the racism charges, especially Vinnie. When told by Winchester Square Coalition leader Ida Flynn that she would lie down in front of the bulldozers if necessary to save the apartment project, he bellowed, "If you lie down in front of that bulldozer, you won't be lying there long!" To which Flynn snapped back, "Nothing you would do would surprise me!"</p><p>
Mitch felt concerned about the increasingly hostile tone of the debate, and regretted that the Winchester Square Coalition had introduced the race card into the discussion. Developer Merwin Rubin called for "cooler heads to prevail" before the bad feelings resulted in the whole project being scuttled. But the war of words raged on.</p><p>
Mitch continued to demand an investigation, asking in the <i>Springfield Republican</i>, "How does Rep. Jordan justify his being involved with a for-profit subsidiary of his development corporation while attempting to secure taxpayer's money for his project? When I have asked about the equity provided, I have been told that the developer's equity is their time and sweat that they have put into the project. Where is the developer's money? How much of the money is from their own pocket compared to what they propose the taxpayers to put into the project? It is time for the Ethics Commission to look into the entire situation."</p><p>
Jordan responded with strong words of his own, accusing Ogulewicz of "making a feeble attempt to make issues out of non-issues" and mockingly giving Mitch the nickname "Landslide Ogulewicz" because he was "always looking for votes." Jordan also ridiculed The Covenant for going to see Dukakis, saying that they, and especially Ogulewicz, had no influence with the Governor. When Mitch announced that he would try to call the Governor to give his side of the issue, Jordan sneered in the paper, "I'm sure that Gov. Michael Dukakis will be bubbling over in anticipation of receiving Mitch Ogulewicz's phone call."</p><p>
Soon Mitch received some unexpected corroboration for his criticism of the Mason Square Development Corporation. Community Development Department employee James R. D'Amour wrote Mitch a scathing memo about what he saw as gross incompetence at the organization. D'Amour wrote, "Overall the agency, with respect to accountability is very disorganized. Files are lacking information and documentation. Reports are late. Staff doesn't seem to grasp necessary systems and procedures, even after many instructional meetings . . . same questions, same mistakes again and again."</p><p>
Yet ultimately no appeal to reason, no logical argument, no concerns over propriety or ethics - absolutely nothing it seemed could derail the project. Like some economic and political Frankenstein, the project had a life of its own that kept it moving forward whatever the concerns of the Covenant, the black community, Ogulewicz, DiMonaco, Montori or the taxpayers. There were just too many well-connected people exerting too much influence in high places for the simple facts about how unethical and ill-conceived the project was to make any difference. </p><p> Shortly after the project was finally completed, it became obvious that the original prediction that people simply would not want to purchase condos in the ghetto was coming true. Almost immediately upon opening, the project went into a rapid decline, at one point attempting to survive by turning itself into a welfare motel that made income off of rents paid for by the taxpayers. But nothing could stop its downward spiral, until finally the whole condo project went crashing into bankruptcy court only a few short years after it opened. In the end, the taxpayers lost every single penny they had invested in it, exactly as The Covenant, Ogulewicz and the other critics had predicted. As for the politically connected developers, by that time they had already cashed their checks and moved on.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiGGkju625zdQLBSxxIx9TgFgK41bGsKp21GeNnDdAIoCbCvhuDRQDWQE4M0Mn8lzU6H7HNpMZKyoEF_JtvJCG-lihDXCvS6GX_N3rcklannSRQK5mVC-XJxkGMvaS3Bn7V38dlk9EmnxvjX7Bcs2Qt3txa-OqmztzfaBsiv4a0e_PBl2sUapvW0yJT=s473" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="473" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiGGkju625zdQLBSxxIx9TgFgK41bGsKp21GeNnDdAIoCbCvhuDRQDWQE4M0Mn8lzU6H7HNpMZKyoEF_JtvJCG-lihDXCvS6GX_N3rcklannSRQK5mVC-XJxkGMvaS3Bn7V38dlk9EmnxvjX7Bcs2Qt3txa-OqmztzfaBsiv4a0e_PBl2sUapvW0yJT=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-4278757910324058702016-07-21T14:33:00.005-07:002022-12-28T12:24:03.617-08:00Lost Park<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_lWU6dvLyF9vrtMQOoXk1bSKbLGsT27t7Xc1A45hO2PwY-ToBkZa0ZrsOnkVG6WURfWQPgpzG12xOoccd_fCSEc3_66e7DSabE2mF2-NYV8rU9zNtqMTkY7ALMmilSuBX2nSqA14nIo/s1600/broska.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk_lWU6dvLyF9vrtMQOoXk1bSKbLGsT27t7Xc1A45hO2PwY-ToBkZa0ZrsOnkVG6WURfWQPgpzG12xOoccd_fCSEc3_66e7DSabE2mF2-NYV8rU9zNtqMTkY7ALMmilSuBX2nSqA14nIo/s400/broska.jpg" width="400" /></a><p></p></div><p> </p><p>In 1987, Edward Broska turned 75 years old and decided that it was time to retire. For his entire life, Broska had lived and worked on the 44-acre farm his family owned in Springfield's 16 Acres neighborhood. Now he was getting too old for farm work, and none of his kinfolk were interested in carrying on the family farm after him. So, Broska decided to put the homestead and surrounding land up for sale. The place had the distinction of being the only working farm left in the city. Once it was sold, the last remnant of the 350 year old history of commercial agriculture in Springfield would be over.</p><p>
Springfield's Conservation Commission had been keeping their eye on the Broska Farm since 1979, when they first heard rumors that Broska's retirement might be eminent. As the last large area of undeveloped land in Springfield, the Conservation Commission was anxious to preserve the farmland and transform it to public use, perhaps as a kind of small suburban version of Forest Park. The moment they heard that Broska's farm was about to go on the market, Commission Chairman Edward Friedman swung into action. First, the Commission members approached Mayor Richard Neal, who immediately gave the Commission his full and enthusiastic support. Neal in turn contacted State Senator Martin Reilly and State Representative Paul Caron, both of whom represented the 16 Acres neighborhood, and urged them to try and get the funds from the state to acquire the land from the Broska family.</p><p>
At first, Sen. Reilly imagined turning the farm into a state park, suggesting that it be called Broska State Park, but unfortunately the state showed little interest in acquiring more park land. However, a bill was moving through the legislature at that time providing funds for conservation purposes. Reilly and Caron managed to secure a promise from legislative leaders that if the city were to buy the Broska farm, then the state would be willing to reimburse them for 80% of the cost, thereby making the purchase very affordable. This legislative victory made heroes of Reilly and Caron, while Mayor Neal, the Conservation Committee, the citizens of 16 Acres and the taxpayers in general were all excited over the creation of a wonderful new park in Springfield.</p><p>
But then things started to get weird.</p><p>
Suddenly appearing on the scene was H. Joel Rahn, one of the infamous developers of the Indian Motocycle Building apartments complex, a ruinous taxpayer financed boondoggle that lost millions in a ridiculous scheme to market condos located in the middle of the ghetto. It was discovered that Rahn was offering Broska a generous price for his land, on which he intended to build a major housing development of nearly 50 homes. In order to block the deal, the City Council would have to take the land by eminent domain.</p><p>
At first, the news that Rahn was hoping to turn Springfield's new park into a housing development was greeted with outrage. The citizens of 16 Acres collected thousands of signatures to present to the Council urging the Councilors to stop the housing development by taking the land. Mayor Neal, Sen. Reilly, Rep. Caron and nearly all the City Councilors immediately denounced the Rahn development scheme and demanded the eminent domain taking. But that was before an odd editorial appeared in the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>.</p><p>
In that editorial, readers were surprised to be informed by the paper that the farmland should not be considered undeveloped - after all, it had been used for farming! The editorial further suggested that the whole controversy was motivated by greed, although not the greed of housing developer Rahn, but of the citizens of 16 Acres, who selfishly wanted to preserve "their view" while denying those who were in need of housing. That everyone in the city, not just those living in 16 Acres, could use the park was not acknowledged. The editorial also informed the public that Springfield was suffering from a housing shortage, which was surprising news, since most people believed that the city was losing population due to white flight. But no, not at all, said the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, in fact there was a never before known "housing crisis" with a "desperate" need for new housing developments. To the average reader, the editorial could not have made much sense. To those in the know, something underhanded was going down.</p><p>
Shortly after the editorial appeared, Mitch Ogulewicz received an unusual phone call. It was from Arnold Friedman, the second in command at the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>. While the editorial supporting the housing development was unsigned, it was widely believed that Friedman wrote most of the paper's political editorials. In fact, it had been Friedman with whom Mitch had spoken over lunch at <i>The Fort</i> several months earlier about his upcoming re-election endorsement from the paper. Now perhaps it was becoming clear what that luncheon and that endorsement was all about. Sure enough, Friedman urged Ogulewicz to vote against the eminent domain taking, something Mitch flatly refused to do. He was committed to creating the new park for the citizens of Springfield, and told Friedman so in no uncertain terms.</p><p>
Other Councilors, however, some of whom had been originally enthusiastic supporters of preserving the land, mysteriously began to sing a different tune. Councilor Francis Keough suddenly announced that he was now voting against the taking, giving the previously unknown housing shortage as his excuse. Robert Markel declared that the land was not a part of a previously unheard of "master plan" for open space in Springfield, and therefore the Broska farm was unsuitable for preservation. Only the always blunt spoken Vinnie DiMonaco laid out his reasons with unvarnished honesty, telling 16 Acres resident Michah Feldman (who then later told the <i>Valley Advocate</i>) that DiMonaco had told him that he "felt good helping David Starr in any effort he's committed to" and explaining that he would do so, because "Starr has done a lot for me and I owe Starr a lot."</p><p>
Indeed, <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> publisher David Starr and his second in command Arnold Friedman admitted to both Stephanie Kraft and Kris Hundley of the <i>Valley Advocate</i> that they had personal dealings with H. Joel Rahn, the project's developer, with Starr soliciting contributions from Rahn for some of Starr's favorite causes while Friedman had been spotted around town dining with Rahn. Once again Ogulewicz pointed out that there was a clear conflict of interest. How could the paper editorialize against taking the land when the developer standing in the way of the park was someone with whom the management of the paper had both a professional and personal relationship? At the very least, there was little hope of objective coverage by the paper, since any <i>Springfield Newspaper</i> reporter wanting to investigate the Broska Farm controversy would have had to begin by investigating their own employer!</p><p>
The fix was in, and nothing it seemed could prevent support for the park from slipping away. The Springfield Park Department, which had originally welcomed the idea of a major new addition, suddenly concluded that it lacked the funds to maintain it. Actually, the land would have been under the control of the Conservation Commission, but that inconvenient fact was ignored as newspaper headlines made it sound as if the Park Department was declaring the use of the land as unfeasible. One by one, Councilors began expressing reservations they had never before expressed about the land taking. Mitch could only wonder whether they too had received surprise phone calls from Arnold Friedman.</p><p>
Mitch realized that there was only one person who could save the park to be built on the Broska farmland - Mayor Richard Neal. In a private meeting, Mitch urged the Mayor to use his influence to stop the defection of Councilors to the <i>Springfield Newspaper's</i> position, especially that of his cousin, Councilor Bill Foley. After all, it had been Neal himself who had originally set in motion the process of acquiring the state money to purchase the land. Yet Neal was resistant, telling Mitch that it was too late and that Starr and Friedman would have their way regardless of what anyone did. "It's a losing issue," Neal told him, "and I don't like to be on the side that's losing."</p><p>
The night when the vote was to be taken on whether to accept the state money to acquire the land, the Councilors were startled to see Richard Neal quietly enter the Council chambers. Today it is not uncommon for mayors to appear before the Council uninvited to press their views. But in those days there was a clearly defined tradition of separation between the Council and the Mayoralty, and it was unheard of for the Mayor to violate the sanctity of the Council chambers by intruding uninvited on a Council meeting.</p><p>
Yet the encounter that Mitch had with Neal, in which Ogulewicz had essentially shamed the Mayor for not standing up for his own proposal, had apparently had an effect. Requesting that Council President DiMonaco grant him permission to speak, the Mayor made one last futile appeal to save Broska farm. Everyone knew that Starr and Friedman already had the votes lined up to get their way and that nothing could change that. Still, in spite of all the difficulties Mitch had had with Neal in the past and would have in the future, Ogulewicz would always remember that one occasion when Neal had spoken out in defiance of Starr, considering it one of the few times Neal had done something that Mitch could admire. Afterward, Mitch approached the Mayor in the room off of the council chambers and told him that he was glad that Neal had found the courage to do the right thing.</p><p>
Despite Neal's dramatic appearance, as expected the Council still voted to refuse the grant money, thereby putting Sen. Reilly and Rep. Caron in the awkward position of having to go back to Boston to tell the legislature that Springfield was turning down the money for a new park, money which had already been handed to them on a silver platter. Meanwhile, H. Joel Rahn moved forward with his plans, as he bulldozed the woods and the farmland and raked in the profits from his housing development.</p><p>
And so it was that the last farm and the last major area of open space in Springfield was lost forever.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-81913166006031305212016-07-18T13:22:00.003-07:002019-04-23T13:48:02.128-07:00Hotlanta!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy4CSV_aZwblIxxg2iF_3Ieo8gNgx4VHhncou5v6vdQnttQ0eH2EWmOOZV8t1L_Ivnl9P79CoLcmjySVikC1qx3jOm5Tu_TWbln3zjDcuNLtfa7Npi9lOLGGMSeXDCnjIdlKZsGqmo1c/s1600/pass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy4CSV_aZwblIxxg2iF_3Ieo8gNgx4VHhncou5v6vdQnttQ0eH2EWmOOZV8t1L_Ivnl9P79CoLcmjySVikC1qx3jOm5Tu_TWbln3zjDcuNLtfa7Npi9lOLGGMSeXDCnjIdlKZsGqmo1c/s400/pass.jpg" width="400" height="395" /></a></div><p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UsjSmY6Fuff7xvrdOX5xjhBiiKUrxo8E1_kmMuQmS41Sq-7dXI_6veiHuVIonej6g4gianLrcL8PKuGzzuTe3FdSArgLzjm9SQ2wHeB8RkWnFUSzKjFE85yjpSWGHsCsWc6-7g5abbY/s1600/mike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9UsjSmY6Fuff7xvrdOX5xjhBiiKUrxo8E1_kmMuQmS41Sq-7dXI_6veiHuVIonej6g4gianLrcL8PKuGzzuTe3FdSArgLzjm9SQ2wHeB8RkWnFUSzKjFE85yjpSWGHsCsWc6-7g5abbY/s400/mike.jpg" width="396" height="400" /></a></div><p>
1988 was a presidential election year, and as a life-long political junkie, Mitch Ogulewicz always participated on some level in presidential politics, dating back to his campaign work in Hungry Hill on the candidacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. However, 1988 was a special year, and in one respect it was special for the same reason as the JFK campaign of 1960. As in that election year, the Democrats nominated a candidate from Massachusetts as their presidential standard bearer - Governor Michael S. Dukakis.<p>
Today, the name Dukakis is one of the most criticized in Massachusetts politics. His humiliating loss to George Bush Sr. followed by the deep recession (called by critics “The Dukakis Depression”) which quickly followed his defeat left many Massachusetts residents with a negative final appraisal of the former Governor. But in 1988 the ultimate disgrace of Dukakis was still in the unknowable future, and locally the Dukakis campaign was the focus of great enthusiasm. That was especially true among the politically connected, who had visions of Washington patronage plums dancing in their heads.<p>
Mitch Ogulewicz wasn’t one of them, but he did have a strong interest in the Dukakis campaign. He had worked for Dukakis in the New Hampshire primary, along with his new friend, freshman School Committee member Michael J. Albano, who was quickly making a name for himself as someone who was very ambitious. His Longmeadow based family was already well known in political circles, with his late father being a prominent labor leader while Albano's mother was a popular behind the scenes activist. Albano's Uncle Jim Grimaldi had served as a member of the Springfield City Council and for many years as a State Representative. Albano made no secret of the fact that he was interested in moving up from the School Committee to the City Council in the next election cycle. Eventually he would become Springfield's mayor, and a very controversial one at that. But in the late 80's, Mitch found Albano to be a lively and fun loving companion who knew how to have a good time. As Mitch would soon learn, keeping up with Mike Albano in party mode could be quite a challenge.<p>
Governor Dukakis was scheduled to accept the Democratic nomination in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia. The official delegates to the convention from Springfield consisted of all of the big name office holders and political celebrities, which did not reach down to include any City Councilors or School Committee members. Yet, as the convention approached and the excitement rose Mitch and Albano decided that they would fly down to Atlanta in spite of that. They had no credentials or passes that would entitle them to attend a single convention function, but in the heady atmosphere of the moment they decided to head south anyway and at least try to enjoy the convention atmosphere.<p>
While at Bradley airport awaiting their flight, Mitch was surprised to see Albano down three Bloody Marys in quick succession at the airport bar. While Albano was known to enjoy a drop or two on occasion, Mitch had never seen Albano drink so much so quickly. “What the hell are you doing?” Mitch exclaimed, “We haven’t even gotten on the plane yet and you’ve already had three drinks!” It was then that Albano made a sheepish confession - he was terrified of flying! This surprised Mitch, in part because it clashed with the very macho attitude Albano assumed in most situations. Yet the flight went smoothly and Albano was able to contain his discomfort, although not without the help of several more drinks in-flight.<p>
When they arrived in Atlanta, far from being dragged down by the alcohol and the flight, Albano seemed even more energized. They picked up some beer and a rental car and then headed to their hotel, a <i>Holiday Inn</i> far removed from the convention site. But Albano would have none of it, and told Mitch they were going to get a hotel closer to the action. Mitch didn’t see how that was possible. “Don’t worry about a thing.” Albano exclaimed. “Just take us to the <i>Hyatt</i>.” That was the hotel where Dukakis himself and his official entourage were staying. “They’ll never let us through the door!” Mitch protested.<p>
“Leave it to me,” Albano confidently replied, “just drive us there.”<p>
Ogulewicz did as he was told, but wondered whether the liquor was starting to affect Albano's judgement. It was ridiculous to think that they could even get past the doorman. Sure enough, as they reached the <i>Hyatt</i> and parked before the entrance, a doorman stepped forward and asked who they were. To Mitch’s amazement, Albano whipped out his wallet and flashed a badge. “Mike Albano and Mitch Ogulewicz,” he said. “Secret Service.”<p>
Mitch was shocked and alarmed, he felt they couldn’t possibly get away with this! Yet to his amazement the doorman said, “Right this way officers,” and before he knew it they were being escorted through the door of the hotel while their car was being parked by a valet. At the desk, Albano again flashed his badge at the desk clerk. “Secret Service assigned to Governor Dukakis,” Albano said. “We’ll be needing a room for the duration of the convention.” The hotel clerk sputtered with apologetic embarrassment, “I’m terribly sorry officer, but every room in the hotel was booked solid months ago.”<p>
“With no accommodations set aside for the secret service?” Albano exclaimed. “I demand to see the manager!” The nervous clerk disappeared while Mitch and Albano waited at the desk. “Have you lost your mind?” Mitch whispered. “Where did you get that badge?” Albano explained that it was given to him as a result of his job as a state parole officer. Had the doorman or the clerk bothered to look at the badge closely enough they would have seen that it had nothing to do with the secret service, but they had not done so. Soon the clerk returned with the manager in tow.<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKgLm9xEkyOVFh5ZinK3QjFdiCsIsm8YXNVsoOVrRaYFa8ZAeWgEbIQeT8EcUTmb9njWKzt1vsoDpeomzJBvQQmy48okDU19Q-JALFvXc7Ncu-tvdqN2z4y_1SqGA-bMp0wPZY3yavaBk/s1600/duke.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKgLm9xEkyOVFh5ZinK3QjFdiCsIsm8YXNVsoOVrRaYFa8ZAeWgEbIQeT8EcUTmb9njWKzt1vsoDpeomzJBvQQmy48okDU19Q-JALFvXc7Ncu-tvdqN2z4y_1SqGA-bMp0wPZY3yavaBk/s320/duke.gif" width="320" height="289" /></a></div><p>
“I’m very sorry officers,” the manager pleaded, “but our facilities are completely filled. However, I do have a room available until tomorrow morning that is being held for a late arrival. Can I offer you that for now and then we can reappraise the situation in the morning?” Albano acted as though he was terribly put out by this turn of affairs, but said that he would reluctantly accept the temporary arrangement. A bellhop then led them to their room, which must have been originally reserved by someone very special, since it was a luxury suite with a fully stocked bar and a gorgeous view of downtown Atlanta.<p>
That night Mitch and Albano made the rounds of Atlanta’s nightlife, and in the morning prepared to vacate their wonderful room. Mitch figured the jig was up, but Albano told him not to go anywhere, that he was going downstairs to talk to the manager. After several minutes, Albano returned with the bellhop and they were escorted once again to another luxurious room, this one just four floors below Dukakis himself! Once again Albano had parlayed his parole board badge into another suite. It was incredible, they had come to Atlanta at a time when people from all over the nation were congregating for the convention and fighting over hotel space, yet here were Mitch and Albano in the very same hotel as Dukakis himself, and just four floors below the private quarters the Governor and his family would use once they arrived!<p>
Being in the same hotel as Dukakis meant that they were able to come into contact with some of the dignitaries and power players who were also staying at the <i>Hyatt</i>. Among them was Sen. John Kerry’s adviser Mike Whouley. Because of Mitch’s long relationship with Senator Kerry, Whouley gave Ogulewicz and Albano passes aboard one of the special buses that would take a crowd of supporters to greet the Governor at the airport when he arrived in Atlanta from Massachusetts. He also gave them passes to some of the events at the convention itself. When the time came to board the bus, Albano balked. “F*** the bus!” he said, and insisted that they take their car instead. Mitch figured that Albano must have something up his sleeve, but he was afraid to guess what.<p>
Sure enough, when they arrived at the airport, Albano went into his secret service routine again, and it worked as well at the airport as it had at the hotel. Airport employees were only too eager to escort the two “secret servicemen” to the location where Dukakis and his wife were to arrive. It was then that Ogulewicz realized with dismay that they had lied themselves into some serious danger. As they were being led toward the red carpet where Dukakis was to descend from the plane, two men with dark glasses and suits suddenly approached them.<p>
They were real life officers of the secret service.<p>
“Excuse me gentlemen," one of them asked, "may I see some identification?”<p>
Now it appeared that they were about to be unmasked! Ogulewicz could only imagine what terrible fine or even prison term awaited those who impersonated the secret service. Mitch was speechless with anxiety, but Albano never missed a beat. “Good morning officers,” he said, showing them his badge with perfect calm. “I’m Mike Albano, a parole officer from Massachusetts and this is Mitch Ogulewicz, an elected official from Springfield Massachusetts. We’re here among the dignitaries from Massachusetts to greet Governor Dukakis.”<p>
Mitch silently groaned as he expected the secret service to swarm over them like a SWAT team and to be dragged off to jail.<p>
“Right this way gentlemen,” the secret serviceman commanded, and then led them to a roped off section where a few dignitaries and the press were waiting. It was beyond belief that after lying their way through up to that point, that they had escaped final disaster in the most unexpected way - by simply telling the truth!<p>
But something was still wrong. Ogulewicz realized to his confusion that there was no one else present besides the press. Standing near Mitch was David Broder of the <i>Washington Post</i>. After a short while Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young arrived with his entourage, but beyond that, no one. Where were the busloads of supporters that Mike Whouley said had been arranged to arrive to create a cheering crowd for the TV cameras?<p>
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Little did Mitch and Albano know that the site of Dukakis’ arrival had been changed due to air traffic problems and that the busload of supporters had been sent to the wrong location. Soon the Governor’s flight arrived and Dukakis and his wife Kitty came down the steps of the plane. The press was there snapping pictures and yelling questions. Mayor Young greeted the candidate warmly and then, as Dukakis turned to greet his throng of admirers he encountered instead a crowd of exactly two people – Mitch Ogulewicz and Mike Albano! The Governor and his wife shook their hand, a slightly puzzled expression on their faces, and then entered their limousine. Mitch and Albano could only guess what Governor Dukakis must have thought to have found such a welcoming committee, consisting only of the Mayor of Atlanta, the press and two minor public officials from Western Mass!<p>
Later back at the <i>Hyatt</i>, Mitch was surprised to run into another person from the Pioneer Valley. It was not someone he was particularly happy to meet - State Representative Ray Jordan, who was attending the convention in his role as Democrat State Committeeman. Mitch had fought some intense political battles in Springfield with Jordan over the years. One was over Jordan’s election campaign, in which Mitch had supported his opponent Frank Keough and again when Mitch unsuccessfully tried to stop the Indian Motocycle Building apartment project in which Jordan had been a major player.<p>
Yet so far from home, and in the context of the convention, Ogulewicz approached Jordan in a friendly manner. Jordan responded in kind, and before they knew it they were laughing together as friends instead of political adversaries. Mitch confessed to Jordan that he now felt that he had made a mistake in backing Keough, especially since after his defeat Keough appeared to have sold out completely to the city’s political establishment. In the course of the night Jordan asked Mitch if he was going to attend the speech the next day to be given by Jesse Jackson. When Mitch said he was not, Jordan asked if he could have his pass to give to a friend who wanted to go. Mitch was happy to do so, thereby showing that the battles of Valley politics could indeed be put aside in the name of friendship and co-operation, at least if you were hundreds of miles away.<p>
The next night was the most dramatic of the convention, when Dukakis himself would accept the nomination for President of the United States. Donald Dowd had warned Ogulewicz and the others to get to the convention early, since they would shut the doors to all comers, even delegates, once the convention hall reached the maximum number of persons allowed inside by the Fire Marshall. Mitch followed Dowd’s advice, and was glad he did, since it enabled him to observe one of the most moving political events he had ever witnessed.<p>
As Dukakis took the stage to the music of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America,” the convention exploded into bedlam, with an incredible outpouring of emotion from the Massachusetts delegation. Mitch looked over and saw Jordan aide Henry Twiggs with tears pouring down his face. One would have thought that Twiggs, in his many years with Jordan, would have seen enough to make anyone a stone cold cynic. Yet the image of Twiggs, in tears of joy over the ascension of Dukakis, would stick in Mitch’s mind as one of the defining moments of the convention.<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXuubfZrhgtU4JKLw8XgTQFFShzc-1MIHthe3iOrHsRewmK3MyqaEy91ACS91X0_9iSAJyuJ9-T_CAa7qzrxqZzlYyxU6ZD7g8y6JNseTERG3pRe2LypIb6dX8fI67rKSUg1saQq67cXs/s1600/bentson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXuubfZrhgtU4JKLw8XgTQFFShzc-1MIHthe3iOrHsRewmK3MyqaEy91ACS91X0_9iSAJyuJ9-T_CAa7qzrxqZzlYyxU6ZD7g8y6JNseTERG3pRe2LypIb6dX8fI67rKSUg1saQq67cXs/s320/bentson.jpg" width="320" height="198" /></a></div><p>
Afterwards, there was a “Boston to Austin” reception for Dukakis and his running mate Texas Senator Lloyd Bentson, for which Mitch did have a pass. Yet somehow in all the convention hullabaloo he had lost it. Arriving without Albano, it was now Mitch’s turn to test his skills at getting past a skeptical doorman. When informed that he could not enter without a pass, Mitch said that he didn’t need one because his name could be found on the VIP list. “And your name is?” the doorman asked. To which Mitch replied, “State Representative Raymond Jordan.” He was then allowed to walk right in. He had a wonderful time partying while posing as the state representative from Winchester Square. The next morning Mitch ran into Jordan as he was preparing to leave. “By the way Ray,” Mitch said as Jordan was saying good-by, “if anyone calls you about attending the reception last night, pretend you’re white!”<p>
With the convention over, Mitch and Albano did a little sight seeing before departing. They visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the tomb of Rev. Martin Luther King. Albano appeared genuinely moved by the King memorial, but still had the presence of mind to say to Mitch, “Take my picture by the tomb will you? I can always use it in some future campaign!” Mitch obliged, but could only smile to himself. "That Albano," he thought, "always the political animal!" Indeed, seven years later, when Albano was running for Mayor, he remembered that photograph and asked Mitch to give it to him so that he could use it in his campaign brochure.<p>
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<center><i>Campaign buttons courtesy of the Ogulewicz Collection</i></center><p>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-87588571897692126252016-07-13T14:37:00.001-07:002021-08-10T14:04:45.325-07:00Early Warnings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7sXWf169P7v8-92JrlIr74affivcwMM8hQB8jnooQKd-ckAGvmrVoi_VjqoW6Nm_Tk7DyR0TGpNNXM0oCU_Xs-1OILicDoa-BeOF35JUUPx0DgMMEaS82_PeZWK8sqI5hO9Pte_mM6yU/s1600/matt.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7sXWf169P7v8-92JrlIr74affivcwMM8hQB8jnooQKd-ckAGvmrVoi_VjqoW6Nm_Tk7DyR0TGpNNXM0oCU_Xs-1OILicDoa-BeOF35JUUPx0DgMMEaS82_PeZWK8sqI5hO9Pte_mM6yU/s400/matt.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><p>
An unexpected political opportunity opened for Mitch Ogulewicz in 1988. The person representing the state senatorial district that Mitch lived in, Martin Reilly, suddenly announced that he would not be seeking re-election. Reilly’s retirement came after a long fall from grace, a fall critics believed had been orchestrated by the Springfield Newspapers.</p><p>
Rumors were swirling in the spring of ’88 that the region’s longtime congressman, Eddie Boland, was retiring. Reilly was considered a major contender to seek Boland’s seat and was thought to be the only contender who was capable of beating Springfield Mayor Richard Neal for the Democratic nomination. However, the newspaper, generally sleepy and indifferent when it came to sniffing out conflicts of interest (including their own) began attacking Reilly with stories implying that Reilly may have used his office to facilitate real estate deals and his position on the Senate banking committee to improperly acquire personal loans.</p><p>
An ethics probe eventually cleared Reilly of all the newspaper’s charges of wrong-doing, but that process took many months. In the meantime, the damage done by the newspaper’s phony scandal, combined with personal family issues, forced Reilly out of the race for re-election to his senate seat. The scandal also shattered any of Reilly’s hopes for running for Congress, thereby helping to clear the field for Neal. Naturally, that outcome also left Neal deeply indebted to the newspaper. Soon after Reilly announced his retirement, Mitch received a phone call from his friend State Representative Ken Lemanski urging him to jump into the race for Reilly’s seat. Two others had already announced, former State Rep. Sean Cahillaine and Mitch’s Council colleague, Francis Keough. Republican activist Brian Lees also entered the fray.</p><p>
Lemanski’s logic for why Ogulewicz should run was compelling. With Keough and Cahillaine splitting the Irish vote, Mitch could be expected to capitalize on the strong Polish vote in Ludlow, Chicopee and Indian Orchard. Since the district was heavily Democratic, the winner of the Democratic primary was considered to have little problem beating Brian Lees in November. (Actually, Lees was the ultimate winner, thanks in part to the terrible campaign run by the eventual Democrat nominee, Frankie Keough). The race was also tempting for Mitch because such openings did not occur often as state legislators typically serve for years, even decades. Therefore, an opportunity such as this to run for a wide open seat in that district might not come again for a very long time.</p><p>
Yet despite all the positives, Mitch ultimately decided against it. With young children still at home, the large amount of time he would have to spend in Boston would simply be too much of a hardship on his family. Reluctantly, Mitch decided not to compete for the seat and instead decided to continue his work on the City Council. In retrospect, that was probably not the best choice, since little did Mitch know that his Council career was soon to come to an unplanned end, as many of the same forces that had destroyed Martin Reilly were already beginning to focus their attention on him.</p><p>
Yet, Ogulewicz remained for the time being blissfully unaware of the storm to come, although in retrospect the warning signs were there. The first was an unexpected letter Mitch received from two longtime Springfield printers, John and William Santaniello. Their letter suggested that something was amiss in the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs (MOCA). The Santaniello’s had been invited by MOCA to bid on some flyers the organization was printing for a community event. MOCA was at that time a semi-independent entity that raised money to put on special events, such as the Fourth of July fireworks, the Pancake Breakfast and the Taste of Springfield.</p><p>
According to the Santaniello’s, they had presented the lowest bid for the work, and yet had been passed over for a higher bid offered by an outfit called Italia Printers. The Santaniello's were furious over this perceived injustice, but when they complained about it they were told that the lowest bidder did not have to be the firm chosen, but merely someone chosen from the best three offers. Of course such an arrangement begged to be abused, since it meant that bidders could be granted contracts for political as well as financial considerations.</p><p>
While there was little that Mitch could do for the Santaniello’s, he discussed the matter with fellow Councilor Vincent DiMonaco, who had already expressed concern about MOCA and who had always prided himself as a defender of the small businessperson. Together they decided to take an indepth look into the finances and management of the Mayor's Office of Community Affairs.</p><p>
What their research uncovered was that MOCA owed money to small businesses all over the city and was in debt to the tune of over two hundred thousand dollars! Ogulewicz and DiMonaco demanded an explanation, while freshman Councilor Kateri Walsh called for an official audit of MOCA’s finances. In response, the Neal Administration became very defensive.</p><p>
MOCA was headed by the universally praised Judith Matt, a dynamo of energy and a brilliant organizer of large-scale events. Yet by her own admission, Matt was more of a doer than an administrator, more concerned with pulling off a successful event than worrying about how to pay for it. Technically, MOCA had no budget from the city, although it often received free services from city departments and Matt herself received a tax-funded salary.
But the majority of MOCA’s money came from private fundraising, which made their cash flow unreliable and thereby left many of the businesses they dealt with waiting in line for their money long after the events the services were purchased for were over. Many business people did not know about nor understand MOCA’s unique arrangement with City Hall and therefore considered themselves to be working for the city, which tarnished the city’s reputation when they didn’t get paid in a prompt manner. In other words, MOCA was causing Springfield to gain a reputation as a municipal deadbeat.</p><p>
The solution suggested by some was to make MOCA an official part of the city government with its own budget, and indeed that was what was eventually done. What was strange about the matter however, was the seemingly hysterical overreacting by Mayor Neal. At a hearing held to resolve MOCA’s difficulties the Mayor lashed into Ogulewicz, denouncing him for committing “character assassination” by daring to raise questions about so noble an organization as MOCA and having the audacity to suggest it might be run better.</p><p>
Vincent DiMonaco further enraged Neal when he suggested that Neal himself might be partly to blame for MOCA’s troubles by repeatedly ordering MOCA to do things without any thought of how to pay for them. Neal angrily lectured DiMonaco on the duties of a chief executive, an odd thing to do considering that DiMonaco had been in office when Richie Neal was in grade school, and probably knew first hand more about the workings of city government than anyone else in the city.</p><p>
It appeared to Mitch as if Neal were wrapping himself in the flag and declaring himself immune from criticism, a position that baffled the City Council. Why was Neal taking a simple inquiry into an obviously troubled agency so personally? Indeed, Judith Matt, who presumably had the most to lose in the controversy, was actually grateful that her longstanding financial problems had finally been brought out in the open so that they could be successfully resolved. Far from feeling that she was the victim of character assassination, Matt even sent Mitch a note thanking him for helping her organization.</p><p>
There were other controversies that year during which Neal showed the same inexplicable behavior. In early August Ogulewicz received a phone call from someone who was working as a lifeguard at one of the city’s pools. The lifeguard told him that rumors were rampant that all pool workers were soon to be fired and all the pools shut down for reasons that were not yet known.</p><p>
Mitch placed a phone call to Park Department head Larry Dowd, who reassured Mitch that he knew of no such plans. Yet, only two weeks later the pools did in fact shut down and the all of the workers were told they were unemployed. As Mitch soon discovered, the problem was that so many people had been hired to work for the pools and parks that the money had run out prematurely. Once again there was shades of the MOCA scandal, with Neal ordering things to be done, in this case hiring pool and park workers, without having the money to pay for them.</p><p>
Yet another incident arose involving the economic development group Springfield Central, which was headed by <i>Springfield Newspaper</i> publisher David Starr. Under a suspension of rules, Neal brought before the Council the debt due for a city beautification program which had been handled by Springfield Central. The Councilors were furious with Neal for spending the money first, and then asking the Council to cover the bills later. That left the Council with only two choices, to either cough up the cash or stiff the people who Springfield Central had hired to do the work. Vincent DiMonaco was especially mad, accusing Neal of having the legislative process “half-ass backwards” by spending the money first, then asking for authorization for the spending later. He even suggested that Neal’s behavior might be illegal, but refrained from pursuing it further.</p><p>
Yet another forewarning involved the Police Department. Totally unexpectedly Police Chief Tommy Fitzgerald came before the Council and surprised and dismayed everyone by announcing that his department was going broke. It was discovered that Neal had ordered the hiring of 50 new cops, but had never budgeted any money to pay for them.</p><p>
That kind of reckless behavior was unlike Neal, who if anything had a reputation as a stickler for the finer points of governmental procedure. No one doubted that Neal knew the process, so why was he suddenly flouting the budgetary rules and then responding so sensitively to any criticism of his unorthodox behavior? The reasons that lay behind Neal’s behavior would soon become known, and in ways that would surprise and dismay the entire city.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-15509813794382109992016-07-12T13:34:00.002-07:002021-08-12T13:21:49.317-07:00Bye Bye Boland
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPWUagkY-YpJxF5V8BSXNIgXf-OAf2o2v8uwzQ9clsF4s28gi0kh3f2kF7By78vcM93vkZ1-CjvBhFBYhiYyGHjTY_xbW35Rg7vnxVi93YcoXjMEArk9YK9N8yxWOK9aZc7VMWuuzFN9M/s1600/boneal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPWUagkY-YpJxF5V8BSXNIgXf-OAf2o2v8uwzQ9clsF4s28gi0kh3f2kF7By78vcM93vkZ1-CjvBhFBYhiYyGHjTY_xbW35Rg7vnxVi93YcoXjMEArk9YK9N8yxWOK9aZc7VMWuuzFN9M/s400/boneal.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
In February of 1988, Mitch Ogulewicz received an invitation to attend a secret meeting at the <i>Salem Croft Inn</i> in East Brookfield. The invitation came from Mitch’s friend State Representative Ken Lemanski (D-Chicopee). When Mitch arrived at the Inn he found himself at a gathering with Lemanski and various political operatives from throughout the Second Congressional District.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcBsKKTq0UKAp0cwUX3ecQ9x10TMdmJ0vImPh3Sc8WJJsK7A15O3SrsQi09wOnxXg5mIDPC5d-Z1c7x54yEoeN7dXbcvOvDrcHHSFtt1MrHWXbxvpB9mhsACgeknDf9EIdY4vmZDG2ZSQ/s1600/bofriend.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcBsKKTq0UKAp0cwUX3ecQ9x10TMdmJ0vImPh3Sc8WJJsK7A15O3SrsQi09wOnxXg5mIDPC5d-Z1c7x54yEoeN7dXbcvOvDrcHHSFtt1MrHWXbxvpB9mhsACgeknDf9EIdY4vmZDG2ZSQ/s200/bofriend.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>For nearly four decades, the Second District had been represented in Congress by Edward P. Boland (at left with Silvio Conte, Charles Ryan and Ted Kennedy). A New Deal Democrat in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Boland was a popular and powerful congressman who held the number two position on the House Appropriations Committee, one of the most important committees in Congress because all spending bills at some point had to pass through it. That meant not only that Boland was in a uniquely effective position to attach special funding for his district to various bills, but also enabled him to “horse-trade” with other members of congress for legislation he wanted for his district. The only significant blot on his career was his failure to use that influence successfully to save the Springfield Armory from closing in 1968.<p>
Ogulewicz himself had an encounter with Boland that forever made a positive impression on him, even though at the time Mitch was working to remove Boland from office. In 1968 Boland faced the stiffest political challenge of his career when Mayor Charles V. Ryan ran against him in the Democratic primary. Mitch had a close political relationship with Ryan going back almost to his childhood, so on election day Mitch (who was on leave from the service) was standing in front of Armory Street School, campaigning for Ryan. Boland arrived at the polling place and began shaking hands. When he reached Mitch he noticed the Ryan button prominently displayed on his lapel. Instead of moving on, Boland stopped, shook Mitch’s hand and told him that he was glad to see a young person participating in politics even if he was not a supporter. It was the kind of sincere interest in people that Boland was well known for, as in the cutthroat world of Springfield politics such deference to an opponent was especially unique.</p><p>
Yet, as the decades passed, some critics complained that Boland had served too long. By 1988, there was grumbling in some quarters that Boland should step aside and let a new generation of Democrats take over. Many had expected Boland to retire in 1986, when his close friend and former roommate Tip O’Neil had retired. Boland probably would have also stepped down, except that congressional hearings were beginning the following year on the Iran-Contra scandal, in which members of the Reagan Administration were accused of funneling money illegally to rebel groups struggling to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua. Congress had restricted the amount of money that could be spent on this effort in large part due to the fear that the United States was risking becoming bogged down in a Vietnam type conflict. It was Edward Boland who had written the restricting legislation the Reagan Administration had violated, commonly referred to as “The Boland Amendments” and Boland wanted another term in order to participate in the hearings.</p><p>
So 1988 looked to be the year Boland was likely to step down, and political maneuvering of all sorts was going on behind the scenes. Representative Lemanski, State Senator Martin Reilly and Springfield Mayor Richard Neal were regarded as the leading contenders to be Boland’s successor, although by the time Mitch attended the secret meeting in East Brookfield, Reilly had already been eliminated by an alleged banking scandal that had been featured prominently by the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>. Although eventually cleared of all the ethics charges, the process of clearing his name took a long time and in the meantime Reilly’s political career was ruined.</p><p>
Lemanski told those gathered in East Brookfield that he had commissioned a poll to determine his chances of being elected to Congress. The results he received showed that it was a toss-up between himself and Richard Neal. Lemanski believed that the statistics suggested that he could indeed win the seat. The problem was that it was impossible to openly campaign until Boland made clear his intentions. To run without an official announcement of Boland’s retirement would be perceived as rudely trying to force the Congressman’s hand, something that would alienate the Boland backers Lemanski would need to win.</p><p>
Lemanski told those gathered at the Inn that he had spoken privately with Boland himself, who told him that he was uncertain of his plans. However, Boland promised him that once he had made up his mind, he would call Lemanski and give him advance warning of his intentions before alerting the media. Thus there was the need for Lemanski to keep things quiet for the time being, but Lemanski wanted supporters like Ogulewicz, who would be key players in his congressional campaign, to know the situation in advance so that they could act quickly if Boland tipped him off that he was retiring. With all participants sworn to secrecy, the meeting at the <i>Salem Croft Inn</i> dispersed.</p><p>
And then nothing happened. Weeks passed, and months passed, but without a word from the Congressman on whether or not he would seek re-election. Talk of who would succeed him began to fade, as the deadline approached for candidates to file for the race. With no word from Boland, it soon become a universal assumption that Boland would seek one more term after all. Indeed, it was quickly becoming too late for any successor to raise the money and mount a campaign. Never having heard anything from Boland as promised, Lemanski simply put his own political ambitions on hold until 1990.</p><p>
Then one morning, just days before the filing deadline, the telephone rang. It was Congressman Boland. He told Lemanski that he would announce his retirement to the media at a press conference to be held that afternoon on Hungry Hill.</p><p>
The entire Second District was shocked, and the air was filled with unanswerable questions. Why had Boland taken so long to make his intentions known? Who could run a credible campaign with such short time remaining? For that matter, who could even get on the ballot with such a short time left to gather signatures? The whole thing seemed baffling and completely out of character for Boland to behave in such an erratic way which left every prospective contender in such a lurch.</p><p>
Then as Mitch Ogulewicz was returning from the Boland press conference that afternoon to attend a meeting at City Hall, he was startled to see on cars in the parking lot bumper stickers that read “Neal for Congress.” Boland’s official announcement had barely been made an hour earlier, and yet already there were cars with Neal bumper stickers? How did Neal know enough to print them in advance? In the coming days there would be further revelations, such as the discovery that Neal had already quietly gathered a huge campaign chest and was prepared to outspend everybody. Again, people asked how could he have known to do so?</p><p>
The full circumstances behind the retirement of Edward Boland will probably never be known. Some say Boland simply woke up one morning and suddenly decided to step down. Others say that powerful political forces backing Richard Neal finally forced him off of the political stage against his will. All anyone knows for certain is that when the dust cleared, Neal was the only candidate left standing. Neither Lemanski nor anyone else was in any position to run against him at that late date, and so a fringe candidate from the communist party became Neal’s only opposition.</p><p>
As Neal prepared to claim the Congressional seat that had somehow seemingly landed on his lap, his departure was setting off a whole series of political intrigues and backroom dramas at City Hall. For Mitch Ogulewicz, and for all of Springfield, a period of unprecedented political upheaval was about to unfold.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJiPt4KFAU4YdmSUuSJPi6PrSsovz2Zn6VjROzoTtCJUPnAiH4UXOtdlyYh4UMpR_DhxtdqhdATbc4zTR8XzU1XUgIkMbQskRZzBEjqm3eedTbZfMGRzjy1F9d0zW26B_ZSUTTLDpugg/s1600/bumpneal.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGJiPt4KFAU4YdmSUuSJPi6PrSsovz2Zn6VjROzoTtCJUPnAiH4UXOtdlyYh4UMpR_DhxtdqhdATbc4zTR8XzU1XUgIkMbQskRZzBEjqm3eedTbZfMGRzjy1F9d0zW26B_ZSUTTLDpugg/s400/bumpneal.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-82750980848654731222016-07-11T14:26:00.003-07:002021-08-14T12:58:58.756-07:00Mayor Vinnie
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPiBxpRWRcY9B9k7XVCdzGHuRlVM9FO6yf4fFFSu1ATXQVjCXWJHXsSHJAFqnQMHBH5kDJYh3XIUmWdhL4KeFIeYfF5ZRcQTWy2ndVBN0uEKXbUkXtv_L8ohBTpuIgIloI5esPGroEdx4/s1600/vinnie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPiBxpRWRcY9B9k7XVCdzGHuRlVM9FO6yf4fFFSu1ATXQVjCXWJHXsSHJAFqnQMHBH5kDJYh3XIUmWdhL4KeFIeYfF5ZRcQTWy2ndVBN0uEKXbUkXtv_L8ohBTpuIgIloI5esPGroEdx4/s400/vinnie.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>
The year 1989 began a period of unprecedented political change as the result of the departure of Mayor Richard Neal to Washington following the mysteriously abrupt retirement of Edward Boland. When Neal was sworn in by House Speaker Jim Wright, the Speaker noted with astonishment that he couldn’t recall ever seeing a wide open congressional seat go so uncontested as Boland’s had. But then Speaker Wright was unfamiliar with the insular political culture of Springfield.</p><p>
Under the city charter, whenever the Mayor’s office becomes vacant the President of the City Council becomes the acting-Mayor until a new election can be held. This made the choosing of the Council President in January unusually significant, since the winner would also become the city’s new acting Mayor. Councilor Vincent DiMonaco, a thirty year veteran of city politics, announced that he wished to be elected president by the Council. At the same time he also announced his candidacy for Mayor in the special election to be held on April 25th. To Mitch Ogulewicz, DiMonaco’s political plans presented a number of conflict of interest issues. For one, Mitch didn’t believe that it was proper for a candidate in the special election to serve as acting mayor, since that would give DiMonaco an incumbent's advantage. Secondly, Mitch also believed that it would be too difficult for anyone to serve simultaneously as both Mayor and Council President while also running for office.</p><p>
However, Vinnie clearly had the votes to win the Council Presidency without Mitch’s support, and therefore enormous pressure was applied on Mitch to back DiMonaco in order to make his election unanimous. That pressure was increased even more so by the fact that Vinnie’s opponent in the special election, Councilor Mary Hurley, had agreed to make the conciliatory gesture of voting for DiMonaco despite the fact that she was hoping to replace him at the ballot box.</p><p>
Yet Mitch felt that most of his fellow Councilors were acting in an insincere manner, since nearly all of them, like Mitch, were actually supporting Mary Hurley. Secondly, because the Council President assigns all committee chairs, Mitch felt that the DiMonaco backers were cynically covering all the angles by voting for Vinnie for acting-Mayor, and then voting for Hurley in the special election. It was exactly the kind of cynical and calculating political pragmatism that Mitch had always disliked. So although he knew it would probably cost him a committee chairmanship, he voted on principle against DiMonaco and was outvoted 8 to 1.</p><p>
There was nothing personal about Mitch’s vote against Vinnie. From his first days on the Council, DiMonaco had made an effort to help guide Ogulewicz through the sometimes byzantine world of Springfield politics. Vinnie said that Mitch reminded him of himself when he was a young rebel just beginning in politics three decades earlier, At one point Ogulewicz surprised Vinnie by invoking Council Rule #18 (which allows any Councilor to delay a vote on a financial matter) a rule that DiMonaco had not expected a freshman Councilor to know. Later Vinnie told Mitch he was impressed because over the years he had discovered that few new Councilors bothered to read the rules of Council procedures, instead relying on the City Clerk to guide their conduct. Vinnie said that it was refreshing to see a Councilor who actually did his homework.</p><p>
The only problem was that DiMonaco was far more conservative in his political views than Mitch was, so it was sometimes difficult to accept Vinnie’s advice when that help took forms that would’ve required Mitch to support issues he did not agree on. Perhaps because of Vinnie’s attempts to play a mentorship role, DiMonaco took particular offense when Mitch disagreed with him, sometimes leading to some very lively and even heated exchanges between them over the years.</p><p>
DiMonaco's unique ability to adjust himself to changing political circumstances was what enabled him to survive for so long in the dog eat dog world of Springfield politics. DiMonaco was somehow able to be both a respected inside player and something of a reformer at the same time. His public persona was aggressive and blunt spoken, and no one had to ask Vinnie DiMonaco to explain himself twice. He had a way of making his views very clear, often at a tone just below a shout, with some critics complaining that Vinnie spared no one’s feelings if he felt in the right.</p><p> When <i>Springfield Advocate</i> reporter Al Giordano, a former associate of 60’s radical Abbie Hoffman, entered the council chambers one day dressed in what Vinnie considered to be "raggedy hippie garb" DiMonaco ordered him to leave and not return until he was respectfully dressed. When Giordano refused, DiMonaco had him bodily removed from City Hall by security. </p><p>
A big bear of a man who cared little for public opinion, DiMonaco was a throwback to an earlier age of plain-speaking, tough talking pols who loved a good fight and who always fought to win. On one occasion DiMonaco was out walking when he was attacked by a pit bull. Not only did he manage to beat the beast into submission, but he then got his revenge against the entire breed by ordering the Council to enact legislation banning pit bulls from Springfield.</p><p>
Yet Mitch felt he sometimes saw another side of DiMonaco, a softer side that cared deeply about people and who would help others in quiet, non-publicized ways. Like others of his generation such as Tommy O'Connor and Charlie Ryan, Vinnie believed that public service was a noble profession. These old-timers were capable of doing things for others without holding a press conference first and demanding that photographers and reporters be on hand to record their good deeds. Helping people was just something that you did, and in their view if you had no interest in helping others you should choose a different profession than public service. With this attitude, DiMonaco was increasingly out of step among the new breed of politicians like Richie Neal and Frankie Keough, whose every move seemed carefully calculated to advance their careers and enhance their power.</p><p>
Yet, it would be inaccurate to describe DiMonaco as an outsider. He often socialized with the power players in town, and he could hold a barroom in rapt attention with his fascinating and often hilarious tales of past labor union struggles and colorful accounts of the local political figures he had known in his youth. When he retired from his position as a union boss at the Van Norman machine shop, it was none other than the <i>Springfield Newspaper's</i> David Starr who got Vinnie a new job with the United Way. For that reason among others, Vinnie often praised Starr, and would attempt to do him political favors. Mitch was never comfortable with DiMonaco’s relationship with David Starr, and warned Vinnie not to trust him. But DiMonaco, a grizzled veteran of many labor battles and political wars, had too much self-confidence to feel that he had to heed Mitch’s warnings.</p><p>
Ogulewicz feared that he may have ruined his friendship with Vinnie by his stand alone vote against making him Council President. Mitch suspected that DiMonaco's feelings had probably been hardened further by <i>Springfield Newspaper</i> columnist Carol Malley, who seldom missed an opportunity to skewer Mitch in her poison-pen political column “Perspective,” and who predictably took Mitch to the woodshed over his vote against Vinnie. According to Malley, the city needed to present a united front against the uncertainties of the post-Boland era, and interpreted Mitch’s actions as divisive. Ogulewicz defended himself in a letter to the editor, which of course only kept the controversy going.</p><p>
At the Council meeting where DiMonaco would announce his choices for the committee chairmanships, Mitch fully expected to be snubbed. Yet to his surprise, DiMonaco conferred upon him without comment the chairmanship of the Administration and Internal Affairs Committee. When Mitch later tried to express his gratitude, Vinnie gruffly muttered “Forget about it.” DiMonaco never asked Mitch for a favor in return for that chairmanship and never brought up their disagreement again.</p><p>
So Vincent DiMonaco, tough-nosed former labor leader, now executive of a local charity, legendary political figure of over three decades and sworn enemy of all pit bulls, was duly sworn in as the acting-Mayor of Springfield in January of 1989. His tenure in office would be as stormy as it was short, beginning with a series of unpleasant surprises as DiMonaco, the Council and the citizens of Springfield began the painful process of coming to terms with the financial wreckage that would soon be discovered in the wake of the departure of Richard Neal.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-18564165432832576812016-07-09T12:35:00.002-07:002021-08-15T12:50:37.719-07:00Where's the Money?
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpFbqaTg5cAF4I9m3ggS5EmF0tdq8zm0g4pMwnfxjQzuYtVypScAph3OwLdLbsrCq9gbgNK9rwe9A76wdKJ33NGqSSPo0-jfgYDlCXvM3lYXiZqX6bWsdNHu6WvYh49smzi7eM9te1X4/s1600/moneymove.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpFbqaTg5cAF4I9m3ggS5EmF0tdq8zm0g4pMwnfxjQzuYtVypScAph3OwLdLbsrCq9gbgNK9rwe9A76wdKJ33NGqSSPo0-jfgYDlCXvM3lYXiZqX6bWsdNHu6WvYh49smzi7eM9te1X4/s200/moneymove.gif" width="200" /></a></div>The mayoralty of Vincent DiMonaco began in January of 1989, a year that would prove momentous in both DiMonaco’s life and that of Mitch Ogulewicz. Vinnie was now exercising authority in two roles, both as mayor and as City Council President, an unprecedented level of power to be held by anyone in the modern history of Springfield. As the City Council gathered for its first meeting of the year, acting-Mayor DiMonaco led the Council members and spectators in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. When they got to the part about “one nation under God,” Councilor Francis Keough instead sarcastically said, “one nation under Vincent DiMonaco . . ." only he didn’t realize that his microphone was turned on, causing the council chamber (and no doubt the public watching on television) to break out laughing. Unfortunately, laughing at the wit of Frank Keough was one of the few moments of levity the Council would have that year.<p>
It had been obvious to close observers for most of the previous year that the city’s finances were in disarray, although the media were not yet sounding the alarm, although Mitch tried. As early as May of 1988, Ogulewicz had warned in a <i>Union-News</i> article that, “My greatest fear is that a year from now, whoever is mayor is going to be faced with a fiscal crisis.” As it turned out, he couldn’t have been more right.</p><p>
The so-called “Massachusetts Economic Miracle” that had propelled Governor Michael Dukakis to the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1988 began unraveling even before Dukakis was defeated. The result was a sudden tightening of the purse strings in Boston, leading to significant cutbacks in the local aid which had previously been rising steadily throughout the 80’s and upon which the city had become increasingly dependent.</p><p>
Also throughout the 80’s, there had been a fiscal struggle to comply with the tax limiting measure Proposition 2 ½. Passed by Massachusetts’s voters in 1980 as a check on the rapid expansion of municipal government spending in the 1970’s, Propostion 2 ½ limited tax increases from going up by more that two and one-half percent in any one year. After the free-spending 70’s, Springfield was hard pressed to learn to live within a strict budget, although much of the pain was alleviated by the generous increases in state aid.</p><p>
Most of the credit for Springfield’s financial survival in the face of these challenges was due to former Mayor Ted Dimauro. Despite inheriting a $6 million dollar deficit from his predecessor William Sullivan, by using strict fiscal discipline Dimauro was able to wipe out Sullivan's debt and go on to accumulate a surplus of nearly seven million dollars. When Dimauro left office, he passed all that surplus cash on to his successor, Richard Neal. The cruel reality facing the city in 1989 was that somehow every penny of that surplus was found to have vanished after Richard Neal left for congress.</p><p>
Since Neal had been mayor during a period when Massachusetts had enjoyed such unprecedented economic success that our governor was nominated for the presidency because of it, there simply was no explaining how Neal could have blown the city’s entire surplus during a time of economic plenty. Unsuccessful attempts were made by the City Council to get an overview of the city’s finances from Neal before he left for Washington, with Councilor Mary Hurley stating in the newspaper, “We have to sit down with the mayor and ask, “What’s up Doc?” Yet Neal departed for Washington without any such meeting being held.</p><p>
Details of the fiscal mismanagement of the Neal Administration began coming to light almost immediately after Neal left. Fifty new police officers had been hired by Neal, which he had heavily touted as evidence of his commitment to fighting crime. Now it was discovered that he had never budgeted the money to pay their salaries, putting the City Council in the awkward position of considering firing police officers who hadn’t even been on the beat for one year. In the end Police Chief Tommy Fitzgerald was forced to lay most of them off, despite the fact that the city had paid the cost of training them and some had been on the force for as little as four months. In a major embarrassment, officials from Tampa, Florida came up and hired many of them, cashing in on the law enforcement personnel Springfield taxpayers had paid to train but now couldn’t afford to keep. In quick succession other, even more serious problems came to light, so much so that even a die-hard Neal defender like <i>Springfield Newspaper</i> columnist Carol Malley was forced to express dismay:</p><p>
“City officials have been reeling following a series of surprise announcements of shortages in this year’s budget,” Malley wrote, “and it is unclear how they are going to be made up.” With considerable understatement, Malley conceded that “Neal’s biggest weakness as mayor was probably his inattention to fiscal matters, particularly over the past couple of years.” Such an admission stunned much of the public, who had been told nothing throughout the 80’s (especially not by the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>) except that Neal’s mayoralty had been an absolute model of effective government. Malley then went on to list the fiscal disasters discovered in Neal’s aftermath.</p><p>
“City councilors are trying to find out why the health insurance account was underfunded when, according to the personnel director and a health care consultant, the auditor was told a year ago that more money was needed . . . . They are also trying to find out why 50 new police jobs were created and filled, but not funded.”</p><p>
Attempts were made to get Budget Director/Auditor Henry Piechota to explain the fiscal situation, but the hearings that were held produced nothing but contradictory information, with Piechota alternately claiming that all was well or that all was headed toward disaster. It seemed impossible to determine the true status of the city’s finances.</p><p>
“What is particularly irking to city councilors,” Malley wrote, “is that each new shortfall announcement comes to light after assurances that there are no more surprises coming.” Even more infuriating, Piechota kept finding new money where none was thought to exist. “On the other side of the picture,” Malley explained, “Piechota appears to have come up with what councilors are calling “hidden pockets” of money, which they were not told existed when they asked for reports on the fiscal budget. One of the hidden pockets was a “reserve from prior year funds” which none of the councilors had ever heard of before.”</p><p>
This news of hidden money in mysterious accounts caused an outcry from both the public and the City Council for an in depth inquiry into just what had been going on fiscally in the last days of the Neal Administration. But Piechota seemed to be either unable or unwilling to provide the answers.</p><p>
The rapidly unfolding fiscal crisis was taking place against the backdrop of the campaign to determine whether Vinnie DiMonaco would continue as mayor or be replaced by his challenger Councilor Mary Hurley in a special election. The entire political establishment was behind Hurley, with the exception of only a few prominent persons (such as former Mayor Dimauro) who were backing Vinnie out of personal friendship. One of his most colorful backers was Mary Ladeux, a little old lady on Union Street whose home had been in danger of being taken for condominiums. Vinnie successfully lead the fight to preserve her home, in which she had lived all her life, with the added help of Mitch and Kateri Walsh.</p><p>
Yet, despite the fact that all the big power players were behind Hurley, in reality the terms “insider” and “outsider” didn’t really apply in the race, since in the face of the severity of the fiscal crisis, everybody was stuck in the same sinking boat. Indeed, Vinnie and Hurley managed to work together with a surprisingly low degree of political animosity, united by the knowledge that whichever one of them would win the full mayoralty, they would face an overwhelming fiscal challenge.</p><p>
Vinnie brought both skills and liabilities to the mayor's office. He had a depth of knowledge and experience to share from his decades in public service, and in some respects he was one of the most qualified persons to ever occupy the mayor’s office. Even many of Vinnie’s critics felt that the chance to be acting mayor was a well-deserved culmination of a remarkable career. However, in temperament and personal style DiMonaco was not well equipped to deal with a crisis of the magnitude the city was facing. His manner with Piechota was blunt and often sounded accusatory, creating an atmosphere of defensiveness that made Piechota even less forthcoming.</p><p>
DiMonaco even went so far as to begin blaming Neal openly for the financial difficulties, which so angered Neal that he threatened to abandon his official neutrality in the mayoral race. Vinnie came to feel that he was badly served by former Neal aide Kevin Kennedy (later Neal’s congressional aide), who seemed more concerned with protecting the congressman’s reputation than he was in fixing the fiscal crisis. DiMonaco would later tell Ogulewicz that he believed that keeping Kevin Kennedy on after Neal left was the worst mistake he had made as mayor, because instead of getting advice that was good for Springfield, he was given advice that was good for Richard Neal.</p><p>
In any case, in contrast to Vinnie’s outbursts and aggressiveness, Mary Hurley seemed very professional and above the fray. She had Mitch to thank for some of that. Whenever she had a question or comment that she knew would look political or provoke Vinnie, she would ask Mitch to raise the issue instead, thereby getting her point across while not appearing overtly political. Vinnie was too politically sophisticated not to see through their ruse, however, and would growl at Mitch, “We know whose water you’re carrying,” and once even said openly, “Councilor Hurley should have the guts to get up and speak for herself.” Yet the city was looking for a calm voice amidst all the confusion, and with Mitch’s help Hurley was able to project the competent professional image that the electorate was searching for in order to find its way out of the fiscal disaster.</p><p>
So it was no big surprise on Election Day, April 25th, when Mary Hurley was elected mayor by a landslide margin in the special election. Even Vinnie seemed to take his defeat in stride. He still had his position as Council President, and frankly it was hard to envy Hurley the terribly difficult task that awaited her. What no one knew was that the worst was yet to come.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MGyLf7CKEXIgeeaCJOhfYeNAKnNFNVKJs_ujAGzT9ddMxxDfDIFcbhVrlbstCZpNCmWAdOz0LxAIyaYKUK1t_G1ITB9cwejCCXD62e9eUB1iqRF4gwvzVFO3gohDcOccM6amJQm38WE/s1600/hurlbut.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MGyLf7CKEXIgeeaCJOhfYeNAKnNFNVKJs_ujAGzT9ddMxxDfDIFcbhVrlbstCZpNCmWAdOz0LxAIyaYKUK1t_G1ITB9cwejCCXD62e9eUB1iqRF4gwvzVFO3gohDcOccM6amJQm38WE/s200/hurlbut.gif" width="200" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-91245729590052963862016-07-06T12:08:00.004-07:002021-08-16T15:03:53.094-07:00Ms. Mayor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis4QQ5A7ILQX3MqZwx3GZaJmSAURzKnlGsbCPYUu4P2MtVfVpf6lF_2X2LDX7rSXlPfk1jJH_k54NQal00BYmMyREI7k8e25s82NNLIybNkeGAohvWYYVMckc5f3Q4zZ0Nwvl85XcLkt4/s1600/hurley.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis4QQ5A7ILQX3MqZwx3GZaJmSAURzKnlGsbCPYUu4P2MtVfVpf6lF_2X2LDX7rSXlPfk1jJH_k54NQal00BYmMyREI7k8e25s82NNLIybNkeGAohvWYYVMckc5f3Q4zZ0Nwvl85XcLkt4/s400/hurley.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><p>
The victory of Mary Hurley over Vincent DiMonaco was a significant political development for a number of reasons. Foremost, Hurley was the first woman to ever be elected Mayor of Springfield, a fact that she was very proud of. Unfortunately, she now had to face the terrible financial crisis left in the wake of the departure to congress of her predecessor, Richard Neal. Hurley was in a somewhat stronger position to deal with that crisis than Vinnie DiMonaco had been in his role of acting-Mayor, since the acting-Mayor does not possess the full authority of a mayor who is chosen by the voters in a municipal election. For the first time since Neal left, finally someone with the full power and authority of the mayor’s office could tackle the task of trying to clean up the Neal deficits.</p><p>
However, Hurley’s elevation to the mayoralty also resulted in a change on the City Council by creating a vacancy. According to city ordinance, the unsuccessful candidate who came closest to winning in the last election is invited to fill the seat. In this case it was Anthony Ravosa Jr. the son of a well-known downtown lawyer and entrepreneur. The young Ravosa was a Republican, thereby bringing to an end total one-party dominance on the City Council. As a political outsider, the arrival of Ravosa would eventually alter the dynamics of the Council in important and controversial ways.</p><p>
But for the time being, Mitch Ogulewicz and his fellow Councilors were primarily focused on trying to determine the magnitude of the financial challenges left in Neal’s wake, with the situation quickly deteriorating as more information came to light. Everywhere the councilors looked there was more red ink. Especially annoying to the council were the wildly contradictory statements from the city’s Auditor/Budget Director Henry Piechota. For example, at one point Pichoeta actually argued that the city had a surplus, but with a state revenue spokesman quickly stepping in and putting an end to that fantasy by publicly declaring the city dangerously in debt.</p><p>
Soon after Hurley was elected, Piechota vanished altogether, taking a sick leave for unspecified heart ailments. The result of his sudden absence was that the person who was the chief source of information on the financial practices of the Neal Administration was no longer available to answer questions. What caused eyebrows to raise was that Piechota left after making the statement that he had been personally responsible for a multi-million dollar deficit in the employee medical insurance account. Previously Piechoeta had vehemently denied it was his fault, which had caused fingers to point in the direction of the man who gave Pichoeta his orders – Richard Neal. Now Piechota had suddenly reversed himself and let Neal off the hook – only to suddenly disappear from the political scene with no further explanation.</p><p>
At times it appeared as though no one had any idea what was going on. Mayor Hurley felt that even in the absence of all of the information that she needed, she still had to take immediate action to stop the city’s slide towards bankruptcy. There appeared to be only two options open to her in order to create an emergency cash flow – either get money from the state to bail the city out or a Proposition 2½ override. The state government was not hostile to the idea of additional aid for Springfield, but first they wanted to know how the city had fallen on hard times so quickly and so unexpectedly. The lack of non-contradictory explanations caused the state to withhold a bailout for Springfield until a report could be prepared by the state Department of Revenue to determine in a non-partisan, independent manner why Springfield’s finances had suddenly gone so terribly wrong.</p><p>
Unfortunately, Hurley lacked the option of waiting for the state to complete its report. In the meantime, she needed an immediate influx of cash, which she tried to obtain by holding a special election in which Hurley asked the taxpayers to give her $10 million dollars in additional tax money. The override vote was held, and was defeated by a 56% to 44% margin. Not many people were surprised by that outcome, as the citizens of Springfield were mad, and many felt they had every right to be. For years they had been told by the politicians and the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> that the Neal Administration was a model of good government, that Neal himself was one of the rising stars of Massachusetts politics and that his mayoralty was a “golden age” in Springfield’s history. How could it be that they were now being told, just a few months after they had elected Neal to congress on those glowing recommendations, that the city was flat broke and pleading for a taxpayer bail-out? The voters felt deceived, and they expressed their displeasure at the polls by defeating the override by a twelve-point margin.</p><p>
The override defeat left Mayor Hurley facing a possible financial Armageddon if she couldn’t get her hands on some funding quick. The only option left open to her was to go back to the taxpayers and beg them yet again, but this time for a smaller override of 2½. For this second referendum, Hurley hit upon a novel approach in order to try and win the taxpayers over. Instead of just asking for a flat ten million, Hurley broke her request down into the individual departments that would receive the money if the voters approved. Voters were able to choose, as if from a menu, the departments of the city that they wanted to give an increase to. It was a brilliant move, since voters who may have turned down an open-ended request for ten million bucks, might still respond positively to say, an increase for Public Works, that would insure their trash pick-up. The trick was to try cobbling together a majority coalition behind each of the city services needing funding.</p><p>
Helping to form those pro-override coalitions was the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, which at times seemed to resort to almost Orwellian tactics in order to promote the override. The paper ran a series of articles on each of the possible menu choices, but every article discussed only the reasons that the request should pass, with never so much as a sentence devoted to any of the reasons why someone might oppose it. At the same time, a temporary blackout was imposed on all letters to the editor on the subject of the override. On the Sunday before the Tuesday vote, an entire page was devoted to printing excerpts from what turned out to be the many letters they had received on the override but had never published. In this format, both pro and con letters were printed in equal number, thereby giving no clue as to what the actual pro vs. con ratio had been. Many of the opposition letters were so heavily edited that it was impossible for the override opponents to present any in depth arguments, which was, of course, the whole point in the newspaper presenting the letters in that format.</p><p>
Even with these heavy-handed measures, on Election Day not all of the questions on the “menu” passed, although enough did to give Hurley a little breathing room. However, it became increasingly apparent that the city would never have the resources on its own to dig itself out of the hole Neal had left it in, and that the state would simply have to come through with some money. In the meantime, Hurley became increasingly angry about the mess she had been left to clean up and began criticizing Neal in public.</p><p>
This was something she would have preferred to avoid, because a mayor is heavily dependent on working with their local congressperson to acquire money from Washington. But the crisis was so overwhelming that at times Hurley simply couldn’t hold her tongue. Neal caught wind of her comments and suddenly appeared one day at Hurley’s home, expressing anger that she had publicly accused him of fiscal mismanagement. Hurley was unintimidated by Neal's unannounced visit and ordered the congressman off of her property. Later, when a journalist asked Neal to comment publicly on Hurley remarks, Neal replied only, “What goes around, comes around.” Congressman Neal refused to explain himself further, but many interpreted his statement as a thinly veiled threat to Hurley to shut her mouth or else.</p><p>
Meanwhile, the political fall-out from the ocean of red ink that the city was drowning in was beginning to be felt by the public, and many of Mitch’s fellow Councilors were now running for cover. Some Councilors bent over backwards to blame whomever they could, from Ronald Reagan to Mike Dukakis, anyone that is, but the person who had been in charge of the city’s finances – Richard Neal. Vinnie DiMonaco and Kateri Walsh had long been privately critical of the situation, but up to that point had refrained from attacking Neal personally. Ogulewicz was the sole exception, boldly rising in the council chamber and openly identifying Neal as the cause of the city’s woes. Knowing the intense pressure Hurley was under from the Neal camp to disassociate the congressman from the fiscal crisis, Mitch later told Hurley that he was sorry if he had caused her grief by condemning Neal in public. Hurley simply smiled and said, “Mitch, there is nothing wrong with telling the truth.”</p><p>
However, the few brave voices taking Neal to task were more than obscured by the fog machine hard at work at the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, which were doing everything they could to protect the congressman they had so long supported. Leading the charge was political columnist Carol Malley, who left nothing to the imagination by declaring in the headline of her "Perspective" column, “Fiscal Problems Not of Neal’s Doing.” Critics said the column was a masterpiece of evasion and convoluted thinking, much of which contradicted what Malley herself had said at the beginning of the crisis.</p><p>
In an earlier column, she had identified Neal as being primarily responsible, yet now she was complaining that “those who continue to blame Neal for the problems that occurred after he left City Hall and for the problems in the present budget have their own questionable political agendas.” Malley seemed to be saying that the problems facing the city had nothing to do with Richard Neal, but were somehow the result of those who were trying to point out what Neal had done. Essentially Malley was urging the public to ignore the message and blame the messengers, a theme that would be developed repeatedly by the newspapers as the municipal election of 1989 approached.</p><p>
Then something happened that not even the fog machines at the <i>Union-News</i> could conceal. The state Department of Revenue finally came forward with its long awaited report on the causes and recommended cures for the fiscal crisis. The report would set off a firestorm of controversy that would leave the Neal camp scrambling for damage control.</p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvkmgjmaMcsUeX42FUCqGj8bmSBNVDdymtBTGpNwqV_12MFYjz9ZMzwsms0h8kNljQdvy9Ro-NnpBggY6RDEIJubpvrPLTMzP3kewDq6uCOSjw4JpuiM1v28LkfykW_iIuzBtnjDm8Slw/s1600/hurley.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvkmgjmaMcsUeX42FUCqGj8bmSBNVDdymtBTGpNwqV_12MFYjz9ZMzwsms0h8kNljQdvy9Ro-NnpBggY6RDEIJubpvrPLTMzP3kewDq6uCOSjw4JpuiM1v28LkfykW_iIuzBtnjDm8Slw/s320/hurley.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-1861480582576069752016-06-30T14:49:00.002-07:002023-03-08T11:20:34.544-08:00The Cook Report<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJI9pKXbSGf3wShE9hw0X1cTD3Az8U0ujBYOWyju4tiX2jkQPU9CjiUAkySa3Nuip-nQi9SRPvOqgA3c7U6SXx8w79IsFC6NL0g0q6LG9vC4YLkrPLkBWlXPCFF8eu-SJ_hhDNvKCXp2Y/s1600/hershel.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJI9pKXbSGf3wShE9hw0X1cTD3Az8U0ujBYOWyju4tiX2jkQPU9CjiUAkySa3Nuip-nQi9SRPvOqgA3c7U6SXx8w79IsFC6NL0g0q6LG9vC4YLkrPLkBWlXPCFF8eu-SJ_hhDNvKCXp2Y/s400/hershel.PNG" /></a></div><p>
By the time the long awaited Cook Report arrived from Boston, the final cost in human terms of the Neal deficits was that 858 municipal employees lost their jobs. Ironically, the loss of all those employees actually increased the city’s costs in the short term, because the city had to pay unemployment benefits to each person fired, causing that expense to rise to nearly $5 million dollars from only a half million dollars the year before. That was just more millions for Mayor Hurley and the City Councilors to try to scrape up from somewhere. While the partially successful Proposition 2½ override relieved some of the financial pressures, it served mostly to prevent further lay-offs. Everything depended upon the state legislature appropriating money to clean up what remained of Neal’s deficits.</p><p>
However, the State Department of Revenue, deeply concerned over how Springfield’s finances had crashed so suddenly and without warning, decided to withhold action until an investigation could be conducted into the mysterious and unique situation in Springfield. For that purpose, the Commonwealth brought out of retirement former Department of Revenue Auditor Newell Cook, chosen by the state because of his decades of expertise in municipal financing and reputation for unbending integrity.</p><p>
The Dukakis Administration wanted as unbiased and objective an appraisal as they could get, because they had little desire to embarrass unnecessarily their fellow Democrats and supporters in Springfield. They also knew that the report had the potential to have explosive political ramifications, possibly even threatening the career of the newest member of the state's delegation to the United States Congress, Richie Neal. Cook would have to navigate quite a political minefield in order to present his investigation’s results in a way that would avoid accusations of political interference.</p><p>
The final report Cook wrote for the Department of Revenue released in September of 1989 succeeded in obtaining that neutral political objectivity. Ironically, the report was all the more powerful in it’s political implications for the fact that no one could accuse Cook of bias. One of the means by which Cook avoided casting political aspersions on anyone was to refrain throughout the report from mentioning anyone by name. Richard Neal was referred to only as “the Mayor” and Mitch and his colleagues were always referred to simply as “the City Council."</p><p>
Although officially titled “City of Springfield – Analysis of Financial Status” the document soon became known simply as “The Cook Report.” Financially, the city got both good news and bad out of the Cook's report. The bad news was that Cook opposed a direct bailout of Springfield through a special appropriation by the legislature, as Cook reasoned that there was no reason for the taxpayers of the entire state to be hit with a bill for the fiscal mismanagement of Springfield.</p><p>
However, the report did urge the state to come to Springfield’s rescue through special legislation allowing Springfield to deficit spend (in essence borrow against future taxes to be collected) which would provide a short term fix that would solve the fiscal crisis of today by spending money that the taxpayers would be forced to pay off tomorrow. It was hardly a solution for the public to cheer about, but at least it avoided the only other alternative, which was for the city to go into bankruptcy, which would have resulted in a forced state takeover of the municipal government, placing Springfield under state receivership. The city might be broke and in debt, but at least under Cook’s recommended legislation allowing deficit spending, Springfield could at least keep its sovereignty, thereby allowing the city to preserve its last remaining shreds of dignity.</p><p>
In return for providing this way out, Cook insisted on a list of reforms that he believed were necessary to guarantee that Springfield would not fall into the same financial hole again. It was in the course of making these recommendations, and describing why they needed to be adopted, that the Cook Report emerged as a political as well as a financial document, despite the author’s plain desire to avoid doing so. However, there was simply no way of describing what went wrong, without making obvious who was responsible for the wrong-doing. As a result, the Cook Report was inadvertently a scathing condemnation of the mayoralty of Richard Neal.</p><p>
The report began with a frank appraisal of the city’s terrible fiscal situation. “The City of Springfield,” Cook wrote, “has found itself, apparently without advance warning, in financial distress.” He described the components of that distress as “1) the operating results for FY1989 have been clouded with surprises, uncertainty and acrimony; 2) the budget for FY1990 requires a reduction in total spending and has consequently required reductions in service levels and the layoffs of many employees, and; 3) the elected and appointed officials of the City believe that the public has lost respect for and belief in the financial operations of the government.”</p><p>
Cook then goes on to state that “the root cause of the distress is a general and longstanding weakness in sound fiscal management.” How longstanding? Cook pointed to “the generous growth in spending capacity experienced over the prior five years.” Of course everyone reading the report knew who, and who alone, had been mayor during that five-year period, even though Cook never mentioned Richard Neal by name.</p><p>
Cook partially excused Ogulewicz and his colleagues from having a significant role in causing the crisis. Although he suggested that the City Council should have exercised a more aggressive oversight role, he acknowledged that there were legitimate reasons why that did not occur. “It had not been until December 1988 and January 1989 that the public and most City officials were aware that there were any major problems.” Cook wrote. “Indeed during the fall and into the early winter of 1988, the financial officers of the City had been presenting reassuring projections." In other words, the City Council couldn’t be expected to carry out its oversight functions while it was being completely misled by those in charge of the city’s finances. Again, no names were mentioned, but every reader knew that Cook was referring to Richard Neal and his advisers Henry Piechota and Joseph Dougherty.</p><p>
One of the most devastating conclusions Cook reached was that the decrease in state and federal financial aid had not caused the city’s crisis. Obviously those cuts did not help, but Cook plainly stated that the crisis would have occurred regardless of what happened at the state and federal levels. “Springfield’s budget’s growth exceeded inflation by nearly $14,000,000 over this five year period,” Cook explained (and again, every reader knew who was mayor in that five year period). “While adjusting to the FY1990 level funding of State Aid, even before the further cuts required in State Aid, has led to serious cutbacks in local operations, MOST OF THIS PAIN HAS BEEN IMPOSED ON THE CITY BY ITS OWN ACTIONS OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS” (capitals added). So even if state and federal funds had not been cut, the overspending of the Neal years would still have caused the city to go into debt following Neal’s departure. Cook’s conclusion robbed Neal of the excuse that he had simply been the victim of an economic downturn, and made it clear that it was the Neal Administration’s own fiscal policies that had brought about the crisis.</p><p>
Nor would Cook allow Neal to hide behind his fiscal advisers. “While the Auditor performs a critical role in the municipality’s fiscal operations,” Cook wrote, “that role does not carry with it major policy-making responsibilities. In a “strong mayor” form of government such as exists in Springfield, this role, within the executive branch, RESIDES IN THE MAYOR. The Auditor, and indeed all other department heads, are expected, with limited exceptions to carry out THE MAYOR’S DECISIONS (capitals added).” One by one, Cook was stripping away Neal’s excuses, leaving him nowhere to hide.</p><p>
The implications of Cook's accusations were enormous. Many couldn’t help but look back at the abrupt departure of Eddie Boland from Congress, despite every indication that he intended to run again, in a whole new light. Had Neal foreseen the fiscal crisis coming to a head, and then realized that his only hope of going to Congress was to shove Boland aside and get out of City Hall before the crisis broke? What if Boland had stayed for another term, and the fiscal disaster had been Neal’s to deal with? Not only would an angry public have been unlikely to send Neal to Congress, they would’ve been unlikely even to re-elect him as mayor, thereby ending Neal's career. The suspicions that Boland had left office not completely voluntarily now seemed even more plausible.</p><p>
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Cook then went on to plainly state that the Neal Administration had been guilty of violating state laws. This was an accusation that Vinnie DiMonaco had made over the funding for Springfield Central, and what Mitch had complained about in the MOCA controversy and the unexpected firing of summer help. Vinnie had described Neal’s appropriation process as “half-ass backward,” but using more subtle terms Cook stated that “the city of Springfield routinely, and with the concurrence of the City’s financial officers . . . spent large sums without appropriation.” Refusing to go very deep into this political and legal minefield, Cook simply dryly recommended, “Immediate compliance with the General Laws should be established.”</p><p>
One might have thought that such a completely devastating indictment of city government would have inspired shouts of anger from outraged taxpayers. And perhaps it might have, if the public had ever read it. Unfortunately, the media accounts, particularly in the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, focused only on the recommended reforms in the report, conveniently overlooking the far more serious implications of exactly why such reforms were necessary. Indeed, much of the material reprinted here from the Cook Report is being presented to the public for the first time in this chronicle.</p><p>
Neal tried to make excuses for himself in the wake of the report. At first he absurdly stated that the report never referred to him by name, but only to some entity called “the Mayor.” That excuse was so lame that even his media lackeys at the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i>, who at first reported that excuse with a straight face, had to back off from it. Then Neal pretended that the fiscal crisis had nothing to do with him, since it had erupted after he had left office (by a matter of weeks). He was now The Congressman, and not to be bothered by questions relating to anything that happened before he held his current office.</p><p>
Neal's excuses were lame, but still necessary if every attempt was to be made by the newspapers and other establishment voices to protect their pet congressman. Long before the presidency of Bill Clinton, the Neal camp had discovered and were practicing the Clintonian methods of defense: deny everything, volunteer nothing and say anything necessary in your own defense, however absurd, as long as it confuses and distracts. Indeed the Neal people would soon adapt a forth pillar of Clintonism as well - destruction of your enemies.</p><p>
The Cook Report had a number of recommendations as to what Springfield should do in order to prevent a similar crisis in the future. Most of them were commonsense reforms a second year accounting major could have recognized as necessary, but which seasoned professionals in the Neal Administration either could not see or pretended they could not. Among them was a suggestion that the Auditor and Budget Director, one and the same under Neal in the person of Henry Piechota, be divided into two positions. There was a clear conflict of interest in allowing one person to do both jobs, since the auditor (Piechota) would naturally protect the budget director (Piechota) and vice-versa. Unfortunately, Hank Pichoeta was now on unlimited sick leave for vaguely described “heart problems,” a condition apparently so severe that he was never available again to answer any questions. The local media appeared to accept Piechota’s vanishing act without question.</p><p>
Despite the absent or incomplete nature of the reporting on the fiscal crisis by the greater Springfield media, up in Holyoke there appeared coverage that was not distorted by political concerns. Holyoke’s scrappy daily <i>The Transcript-Telegram</i> wrote several pieces that were much more clear-eyed than anything that Springfield residents were reading. Columnist Mark LaFrancis wrote a devastating piece entitled “Neal’s Blunder” that showed LaFrancis had no illusions about Neal’s role. “The trouble is,” LaFrancis wrote, “that Neal wasn’t worried as much about the public’s welfare as he was his own image.” Another major article by editors Bob Unger and Carolyn Lumsden was entitled, “Freshman Congressman Left Troubled City Behind.”</p><p> </p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja_aKR-LprJ60COhSbjmEsOmYTZFrhxI5aG0h1LXe_ixuFUf0Tid_ZmwinAy6fmoxJbSncN_BM4-TIc-fJUAcgiKklIk5hwIj-sHpQXDnAQTjaoYBU7Em-oZHsV6fRbDBEirQ0E6mj3kA/s1600/snooze.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="586" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja_aKR-LprJ60COhSbjmEsOmYTZFrhxI5aG0h1LXe_ixuFUf0Tid_ZmwinAy6fmoxJbSncN_BM4-TIc-fJUAcgiKklIk5hwIj-sHpQXDnAQTjaoYBU7Em-oZHsV6fRbDBEirQ0E6mj3kA/w390-h640/snooze.jpg" width="390" /></a></div><p> </p><p>Yet, as if the fiscal crisis were not enough, there were other disturbing civic matters also demanding the public’s attention. Running simultaneously with the fiscal crisis of 1989 was a gradually unfolding concern regarding the city’s employee insurance program. The first hint that something was wrong was an odd rumor that circulated within insider circles during January of 1989. According to these accounts, the city was alleged to have come within hours of having its employee health insurance coverage cancelled due to nonpayment of fees.</p><p>
The insurance bill was said to have languished on the desk of city Personnel Director Joseph Dougherty, only to be rescued at the last minute by Budget Director/Auditor Henry Piechota. He allegedly had to personally retrieve the bill from Dougherty’s desk and take it to be paid. Piechota did so only after Joseph Tierney, President of MED-TEC (the administrator of the employees health plan) complained to acting-Mayor Vincent DiMonaco that their repeated phone calls to Joseph Dougherty were not returned. Everyone was wondering why Dougherty had withheld submitting the bill for payment and had placed the city’s employees at risk.</p><p>
It fell on Mitch Ogulewicz’s Administration and Internal Affairs Committee to look into the matter, which was not a task he relished. Was it possible to imagine a more deadly dull topic than insurance law? Mitch’s own academic background was in business, and a group called the Insurance Advisory Board, rather than the City Council, was primarily responsible for the general oversight of the city’s insurance contracts. The Advisory Board consisted of Dougherty, retired cop Bobby Brown, teachers Christopher Collins and Mary Ann Salmen, Police Officer Robert P. Moynihan and a half dozen others representing every aspect of the city’s workforce. Yet despite his lack of background in insurance matters, Mitch could recognize a case of inter-departmental bickering when he saw one, and he realized the importance of nipping it in the bud.</p><p>
So his fellow committee members Mary Hurley and Robert Markel met one afternoon with Dougherty, Piechota and a man named E. Paul Tinsley, who was the founder of a consulting firm, <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>, which the city had hired in 1986 in order to advise the city on how to lower its medical insurance costs. At the meeting everyone was anxious to reassure Mitch and the committee that all was going well and that the problem with paying the bill to <i>MED-TEC</i> was merely a one-time mix-up that would not be repeated.</p><p>
Yet somehow Mitch could not shake the sense that Pichoeta wasn’t quite buying into all the happy talk, although Pichoeta himself was not openly objecting to anything being said. At one point Piechota discreetly slipped a sheet of paper across the table to Mitch. It was a document from <i>MED-TEC</i>, the city’s health insurance administrator that was hired after <i>Blue Cross/Blue Shield</i> was dropped by the city due to their rapidly rising fees. The document slipped to him by Piechota thanked acting-Mayor DiMonaco and Piechota for finally getting the bills paid, and also seemed to suggest that <i>MED-TEC</i> was very unhappy with the way it was being treated by Dougherty and E. Paul Tinsley.</p><p>
Mitch asked Tinsley for an explanation, but found the consultant evasive, even indignant over answering his questions. Finally Mitch could take no more of Tinsley’s attitude. “Listen, you work for the taxpayers the same as I do,” Mitch scolded, “and when there is a question regarding the people’s business you WILL answer the question and answer it in full!” Yet despite the dust-up, that single meeting, in which Mitch’s committee was repeatedly assured that no more problems regarding the insurance accounts would occur, would probably have been the end of Mitch’s interest in the insurance accounts if not for one fateful phone call.</p><p>
One day in February, Mitch received a call from an old friend. Attorney Thomas Murphy had known Mitch since high school and had been very active in all of Mitch’s campaigns. Although Murphy had many ties to people in the Neal camp, he had always remained supportive of Mitch and his family (eventually Murphy would become the personal attorney of <i>Peter Pan’s</i> Peter Picknelly). Murphy asked Mitch to meet him for breakfast the next morning at <i>Russ’ Restaurant</i>, a popular Glenwood Circle Diner in the Atwater Section of Springfield that was often frequented by political people.</p><p>
When they met the next morning, Murphy did not bring up any topics out of the ordinary. Finally, when they were outside the restaurant and safely away from any eavesdroppers, Murphy told Ogulewicz that there was an insurance contract that Neal had signed during his last days in office which might be bad for the city and that ought to be re-examined. Murphy claimed not to know much about the contract himself, which was with <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>, but he knew of an employee of <i>MED-TEC</i> named Vincent Britt who had some concerns. Mitch agreed to talk with him, and a few days later, after Murphy had arranged the meeting, Mitch met with Murphy and Britt at the same diner. Later, Mitch spoke to Piechota, requesting to see all contracts pertaining to <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> and <i>MED-TEC</i>.</p><p>
Even with his own limited background in insurance, Mitch soon realized that something was wrong. He discovered that <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>, which had received the contract Murphy and Britt had warned him about, was at the very least duplicating work already being done by <i>MED-TEC</i> . Ogulewicz began to wonder just what is this entity called <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>, and what exactly did it do for the city? He saw all over the documents the name of E. Paul Tinsley, the arrogant consultant he had met at the committee meeting. The more Mitch looked, the more convinced he became that E. Paul Tinsley and <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> were bad news. His opinion was even more reinforced when he showed the information to insurance experts he knew, who also suggested to him that something wasn’t right about the role of <i>I.C.C.</i> in city government.</p><p>
Mitch also began to ask around City Hall about the insurance contract. He arranged to have breakfast one morning with Joe Dougherty at a place called <i>The Court Square Restaurant</i>. Mitch asked him his opinion of <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> and E. Paul Tinsley. Dougherty praised Tinsley to the roof, saying he ran a great organization and even said that he and his family had stayed at Tinsley’s house on Cape Cod that past summer. It appeared to Mitch that Tinsley was not just someone that Dougherty worked with on the city’s insurance matters, but was a personal friend as well.</p><p>
Ogulewicz recognized that he personally lacked the expertise to conduct a full investigation. Actually an “investigation” in a criminal sense was not what he had in mind. What Mitch wanted was to have the contract reviewed so that if it had been pushed through in an ill-advised manner during the last days of the Neal Administration, then the city could revisit it with an eye toward getting a better deal. It seemed to Mitch that the contract’s length – five years – was extraordinarily long (it was rare for the city to sign a contract for more than a year) and the terms of ending the contract seemed extraordinarily generous to <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>. He also wanted to know whether or not there were duplication of services and determine if Springfield was being overcharged. It appeared to Mitch as if a similar contract <i>I.C.C.</i> held with Worcester cost much less even though Worcester had more employees.</p><p>
Therefore on March 9, 1989, Mitch Ogulewicz held a press conference calling on the city to hire a respected outside company such as the accounting firm <i>Coopers and Lybrand</i> to come in and examine the <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> contract. While fielding questions from the press, Mitch noticed acting-Mayor Vincent DiMonaco discreetly slip into the Council chamber. DiMonaco gave Mitch a signal to meet with him after the press conference, and then quietly stepped into the Council’s private office. After the press conference, Mitch met him there.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vinnie demanded in his typically gruff manner.</p><p>
Mitch explained that he was convinced that the city was getting screwed on the <i>I.C.C.</i> contract and wanted the Council to hire an outside investigator to get to the bottom of it. “Write a formal request and I’ll see that it’s brought to a vote,” Vinnie replied and then walked away. It was as close to an open endorsement as Mitch could hope to get from the crusty old veteran, and he was grateful to have Vinnie on his side. What neither realized at the time was that both of them had just entered into a mutual political suicide pact.</p><p>
Mitch was somewhat taken back by the response to his press conference. Within one hour, an emergency meeting was held of the Insurance Advisory Board, which rammed through a resolution expressing full support for <i>I.C.C.</i> The resolution caught Mitch by surprise, since why was it necessary to rush forward to defend <i>I.C.C.</i> when no inquiry had yet taken place and no accusations had been made? It seemed like an almost panicky overreaction.</p><p>
A few days after Mitch’s press conference, Joe Dougherty contacted Mitch and asked to meet with him again. At breakfast the next morning Dougherty got straight to the point and said he wanted to clarify something. Did Mitch remember him telling him that he had stayed on the Cape with Tinsley last summer? Of course Mitch remembered that very well, and it had troubled him at the time as being potentially inappropriate and a conflict of interest. Now Dougherty was saying that he had misspoke; that it had been the summer before that when he had stayed with Tinsley, in 1987, rather than 1988. The difference was important, because if it was 1988 than Dougherty was socializing with Tinsley at the same time that he was supposedly negotiating a contract, something which would have been a clear conflict of interest. “No problem," Mitch said regarding Dougherty’s sudden change of story. “Surely you have receipts of some kind to prove that?” Dougherty nodded his head yes, but did not seem to enjoy the remainder of his breakfast.</p><p>
Another unexpected wrinkle developed when the day after Mitch’s press conference the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> revealed that one of <i>I.C.C’s</i> consultants was city tax collector Charles Kingston. It turned out that Kingston was a campaign consultant to Councilor Mary Hurley, who was running at the time for mayor against acting-Mayor Vincent DiMonaco. Mitch had no previous knowledge of the Hurley/Kingston connection, or of other details of <i>I.C.C.</i> controversies in Worcester which appeared in the <i>Union-News</i> in an article by Brad Smith that appeared the day after Mitch's press conference. It seemed improbable that Smith could have gathered all that information so quickly in the few hours following Mitch's press conference, leaving Ogulewicz wondering whether the <i>Union-News</i> had also been quietly looking into the I.C.C. contract.</p><p>
Because he was a strong supporter of Hurley's election, Mitch regretted that he might have inadvertently opened a can of worms that might prove to be embarrassing to Hurley because of her ties to Charlie Kingston. Therefore Ogulewicz wrote to Kingston asking him to clarify his relationship with <i>I.C.C.</i> so as to let Hurley off the hook. He received a terse reply, with Kingston sounding like he was doing Mitch a big favor by even responding. But the letter did appear to leave Hurley in the clear. Mitch was relieved, yet he was also annoyed by Kingston's attitude. Here again was another example of an arrogant consultant who was acting as if he was beyond the reach of the public and its elected officials.</p><p>
In short, a whole lot of people seemed to be getting awfully nervous about the spotlight being thrown on I.C.C. – in a way that appeared way out of proportion to what few things Mitch had suggested might be wrong with the contract. Mitch had indicated that there might be some duplication of services and perhaps some overly high fees. So what? That could describe half the contracts in the city. A few adjustments and a renegotiation and all should’ve been fine. Mitch couldn’t figure out why his simple requests were causing a commotion bordering on panic.</p><p>
Then the formal investigation began.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9220773383249537723.post-63723776389148185392016-06-08T13:32:00.004-07:002021-08-19T13:41:10.777-07:00The Fall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPyp88Y1jMtoH-1Xy0W03uWROnUQ9UYqtx4oGtn8CFICG1dd4VOk-AeZeiL06Sp93BXDcrWqTGsykJGEgmDDI_KcJN3UmQ_6Wn-UacJR-JtdD1NdrJFu8F_O9RvVvM1NSUftYm3Vguj9k/s1600/ofootball.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPyp88Y1jMtoH-1Xy0W03uWROnUQ9UYqtx4oGtn8CFICG1dd4VOk-AeZeiL06Sp93BXDcrWqTGsykJGEgmDDI_KcJN3UmQ_6Wn-UacJR-JtdD1NdrJFu8F_O9RvVvM1NSUftYm3Vguj9k/s400/ofootball.PNG" /></a></div><p>
As the controversy over the Neal insurance contracts continued to swirl, Mitch Ogulewicz received something totally unexpected in the mail. It was an old clipping from a Worcester newspaper sent to him by Arthur Chase, a Worcester City Councilor. Chase had read about the controversy in Springfield involving <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>, a subject which interested him because there was also a controversy in Worcester over the contract <i><i>I.C.C.</i></i> had with that city. The article was dated January 21, 1988, over a year earlier, and was entitled “Springfield Mayor Visits Spencer.” It began, “Springfield Mayor Richard Neal made a surprise visit to this town Tuesday during a seven-town swing to gain support for a possible bid this fall for a seat in Congress.”</p><p>
Mitch was startled by this article, since no one locally had any idea that Neal had been visiting towns in the congressional district that early in the year. At the time the congressional incumbent, the nearly four-decade veteran Edward P. Boland, was still expected to be seeking re-election, and it would be months before Boland would shock the district by suddenly retiring just before the deadline to withdraw. No local media had reported on these clandestine Neal campaign forays, and the article contradicted Neal’s public statements at the time that he was respectfully waiting for Boland to announce his plans before engaging in campaigning for the seat.</p><p>
But as remarkable as that discovery was, what followed in the article was even more surprising. The article continued, “Neal, joined by area Democratic leaders Paul Tinsley, a former Worcester County Commissioner, and Charles Kingston, visited Memorial Town Hall shortly before noon.”</p><p>
This article, which in the pre-internet world meant it was unlikely that anyone in Springfield had ever seen, was the first document to link the <i>I.C.C.</i> controversy directly to Richard Neal. To that point no one was aware that there was a political relationship between Neal and Tinsley, (who was the founder of <i>I.C.C.</i>) or that Springfield tax collector (and <i>I.C.C. consultant</i>) Charles Kingston was also closely involved. Charlie Kingston is a controversial Springfield political inside operative who in later years was to be indicted and convicted on felony tax charges. The article revealed that both Kingston and Tinsley had been important figures in the Neal congressional campaign since the very beginning. The discovery of this previously unknown Neal connection to <i>I.C.C.</i> added a whole new dimension to the insurance controversy, while in addition casting even further suspicion on the circumstances surrounding the sudden retirement of Eddie Boland.</p><p>
Yet Mitch was not prepared to open that can of worms, at least not just yet. At the time he was focusing on presenting a written request to acting-Mayor Vincent DiMonaco for a formal investigation into the <i>I.C.C.</i> contract. Mitch soon realized that the scope of the inquiry had to be expanded to include <i>MED-TEC</i> and the <i>John Alden Life Insurance Company</i>, who were both engaged with <i>I.C.C.</i> in administering the city’s insurance program. This was exactly what Mitch had feared, an expanding, ever more complicated probe. Yet the information in the article sent by Chase and the encouragement of acting-Mayor DiMonaco, who told the <i>Union-News</i> it was “absolutely right” to expand the probe, caused the final request to become a wide-ranging overview of the city’s insurance contracts and the ways in which they interacted. DiMonaco insisted to Mitch that he had the votes for Council approval.</p><p>
In the meantime, Richard Neal was forced to respond to the uproar that accompanied the revelation of his personal relationship with Tinsley and Kingston. Neal tried to downplay the story, stating that he hardly knew Tinsley and had only known him for a year and a half, which would have meant he had first met him in late 1987. While the media accepted this explanation, Mitch could not, because he remembered that the city’s relationship with <i>I.C.C.</i> had actually begun in 1986. Ogulewicz also knew that all contracts had to be signed by the mayor, and Mitch could not accept the claim that Neal had entered into an important, long-term relationship with a company without ever meeting with the company's owner.</p><p>
On April 10, 1989, the formal vote was held in the council chambers to appropriate $15,000 dollars to hire someone to conduct a formal investigation into the city’s insurance contracts. It passed by a vote of 8 to 0, with Councilor Robert Markel absent. The unanimous vote caught some observers by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. The simple truth is that Richard Neal was not winning any popularity contests on the Council in those days. While most members, fearful of newspaper retaliation, were publicly towing the party line on the fiscal crisis and the insurance controversy by refraining from mentioning Neal by name, in private most Councilors were livid over the mess Neal had left behind for them to fix. The insurance contract controversy was especially galling, because by under-funding the account to cover insurance expenses, Neal had forced the Council to scramble on an almost month to month basis to find the funds to cover the basic insurance costs.</p><p>
With the city still struggling to avoid bankruptcy, yet another revelation by acting-Mayor DiMonaco further inflamed the hard feelings. DiMonaco announced that he had informally submitted contract proposals identical to the ones held by I.C.C. to two insurance consultants, <i>Alexander & Alexander</i> of Boston and <i>George Beram Inc.</i> of Newton. The acting-Mayor asked them to suggest what they would offer to do the same work that <i>I.C.C.</i> was being paid for. The results were an offer of approximately $150,000 from one and $60,000 from the other. It raised plenty of eyebrows among the Councilors when they considered that the City of Springfield was paying <i>I.C.C.</i> $480,000 dollars to do the exact same work. At a time when the city was scrounging for every penny it could find, it angered many Councilors to realize that the city might be squandering money on what increasingly looked like a sweetheart deal for Neal’s political allies.</p><p>
Adding fuel to the fire was an attack on <i>I.C.C.</i> by James Gaffney of the major government employee union AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) who wrote to DiMonaco denouncing the money spent on the <i>I.C.C.</i> contract. “My understanding,” Gaffney wrote, “is that the city of Springfield has approximately 105 consultants. Granted some of them are needed, but most of them are not.” He singled out <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> as clearly in the unneeded category, and suggested that the contract be cancelled and the work turned over to city employees. Gaffney’s criticism, which he instructed DiMonaco to consider “a formal complaint from AFSCEME Council 93,” directly contradicted the statements of Jane Curto, the union’s representative on the city’s Insurance Advisory Board, who had joined with her colleagues in defending <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>.</p><p>
Meanwhile, acting-Mayor DiMonaco announced that he had reached a decision on who should be hired to conduct the inquiry into the insurance contracts. The person he had decided upon was one of Massachusetts most respected investigators, Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan. A former F.B.I. agent who specialized in white collar crime, he was uniquely qualified to conduct the kind of hard-hitting probe that could get to the bottom, once and for all, of the insurance contract controversies. However, he said that he doubted the $15,000 dollar budget the Council had voted for would suffice. Therefore, DiMonaco agreed to set up a second Council vote on an additional $10,000 dollars.</p><p>
Somehow however, the unanimity that had greeted the first request had mysteriously vanished. For example, acting-Mayor DiMonaco and Joe Tierney of <i>MED-TEC</i> went to see Francis Keough one day at his real estate offices at the corner of Sumner and White. They were discussing strategies for gaining the additional money, with Keough fully onboard, when Keough excused himself to accept a phone call. When he returned, DiMonaco said, Keough appeared very nervous and abruptly brought the meeting to a close. Soon afterward, Keough completely flip-flopped, becoming one of <i>Insurance Cost Control’s</i> strongest defenders. Although he had no way of proving it, Vinnie claimed until the day he died that he believed it was that mysterious phone call that day in Keough’s office that had flipped Frankie’s vote.</p><p>
So it appeared that someone was calling around, trying to convince Councilors, some of whom had once been totally united behind the <i>I.C.C.</i> probe, to flip their votes. But who? What were they saying that was so compelling as to cause the Councilors to suddenly reverse their earlier positions? To the public's surprise, the request for the additional funds went down to defeat, although acting-Mayor DiMonaco was still able to salvage the contract with O’Sullivan by telling the investigator to start spending the $15,000 dollars that had already been appropriated and to come back later when he needed more. Perhaps by then Vinnie would be able to garner the necessary votes.</p><p>
No one could predict how long the O’Sullivan investigation would take. As the contract with <i>Insurance Cost Control</i> came under increasing scrutiny by the council and the administration of Mayor DiMonaco, it appeared that <i>I.C.C.</i> was increasingly attempting to stonewall the investigation. For example, <i>I.C.C.</i> had repeatedly made public statements to the effect that they had saved the city over two million dollars through its oversight activities and cost-cutting advice. However, when DiMonaco insisted on documentation to prove their claim, <i>I.C.C.</i> replied that it would not be able to provide the evidence until several months later, sometime in May. That date however, would conveniently place the time for producing the proof past the special election for mayor, which DiMonaco was widely predicted to lose to fellow Councilor Mary Hurley. Since one of <i>I.C.C.’s</i> consultants, Charles Kingston, was also involved in the Hurley campaign, it was hard not to notice how convenient it was that <i>I.C.C.</i> could not prove their claims until after a new administration took office, one that presumably might be more friendly to <i>Insurance Cost Control.</i></p><p>
The fact that <i>I.C.C.</i> could not produce proof of their supposedly successful cost-cutting measures raised other questions. How long had the city been dealing with <i>I.C.C.</i> based upon performance claims not backed by any corresponding evidence? <i>I.C.C.</i> was claiming to save the city all kinds of money, but apparently that was being accepted as fact purely on the basis of <i>I.C.C.’s</i> unsubstantiated claims. Without documentation, no one knew whether two million dollars had actually been saved, or if that was just a figure taken out of thin air and which the city had apparently accepted purely on faith. That months were required to pass before <i>I.C.C.</i> could come up with any documentation for their alleged savings raised deep doubts about <i>I.C.C.'s</i> level of transparency in their dealings with the city.</p><p>
Also cast into a negative light was the competency of the city’s Insurance Advisory Board. It was the duty of this little known regulatory body to supervise and oversee the city’s insurance contracts and its members consisted of representatives of each of the city’s departments and unions. However, none of those people were insurance professionals or had any particular background in insurance law. Instead, they were teachers, cops, firemen, secretaries and clerks, all of whom no doubt had a sincere interest in preserving and protecting the insurance benefits of city employees, but all of whom were heavily dependent on what they were told by the paid professionals who actually handled the contracts, such as E. Paul Tinsley of <i>Insurance Cost Control</i>. No one on the Advisory Board really had the expertise to be able to challenge anything these administrators and consultants had to say.</p><p>
Therefore, the Board ended up looking sort of silly after it was revealed that <i>I.C.C.</i> had never presented any documentation for its effectiveness and was unable to do so in a timely fashion when asked to do so by acting-Mayor DiMonaco. The Board had been strongly defending <i>I.C.C.</i> but apparently they had based that praise upon little more than the fact that <i>I.C.C.</i> executives had told them that they were doing a wonderful job. If the political and financial charges of incompetence, duplication and cronyism being leveled at <i>I.C.C.</i> by Mayor DiMonaco and Mitch Ogulewicz turned out to be true, then the Insurance Advisory Board would look like they had all been duped and would have to face accusations that they had failed miserably in their jobs. Therefore, there was a strong self-interest in the Advisory Board’s stubborn defense of <i>I.C.C.</i> and would explain their apparent desire, along with so many others in City Hall, to make the <i>I.C.C.</i> controversy go away.</p><p>
Indeed, probably the whole city was sick by now of hearing about insurance troubles. Earlier the <i>Cook Report</i>, which had been commissioned by the state to investigate Springfield’s fiscal crisis, had blasted the Neal Administration for its mismanagement of the insurance accounts. In fiscal years 1987 and 1988, the last two years in which Neal had written a budget, health insurance costs had risen by 24% and 29% concurrently. Yet Neal had increased spending by a mere 5% each year, underfunding the accounts to create artificial “savings” that would then free money to be spent on other things, such as Neal’s city beautification program and the other expenditures on which he would base his claim that the city was undergoing a renaissance under his leadership. There was money to place giant urns filled with flowers on intersection islands, but the essential spending on bedrock expenses such as police protection, school maintenance and insurance costs were ignored. <i>The Cook Report</i> had shown Neal no mercy on this score, stating:</p><p>
“The failure of the City to recognize the “true costs” in its budgets over the past five years IS INEXPLICABLE. Not only was the budget preparation and financial reporting WOEFULLY AT VARIANCE WITH REALITY, none of the parties to the City’s fiscal management applied a reasonableness test to the rate of growth of the expense. While for 1986 and 1987 the “true costs” were rising between 20% and 30% per year and the media was full of stories of the rapid increase in health care costs, the City blithely budgeted increases of only 5% . . ..” (capitals added).</p><p>
Fortunately for Neal, such passages from the Cook Report were never highlighted for the public by the media. However, it was impossible to hide the almost week to week struggle by the City Council to come up with the cash Neal had failed to budget in order that the city’s employees wouldn’t lose their insurance for non-payment. While only Mitch Ogulewicz, Mayor DiMonaco and Councilor Kateri Walsh dared to criticize Neal in public, in private everyone knew that the entire fiscal crisis and the mushrooming insurance scandal could be placed almost entirely on the doorstep of Richard Neal. An ugly power struggle was beginning to develop between those who felt the public had the right to know this truth and those who were determined to bury it.</p><p>
So with these controversies serving more to muddy the water than clarifying anything, and political passions having risen to a fever pitch, right in the midst of that chaotic environment occurred the municipal elections of 1989. In that election, Mitchell J. Ogulewicz and Vincent DiMonaco were unexpectedly defeated. DiMonaco died on July 6, 1993 at age 72. In the early 1990's Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger conducted an investigation into corruption in Springfield. Paul Tinsley was among those indicted and convicted. Personnel Director Joseph Douherty was also indicted, while Frank Keough was indicted and convicted both in the Harshbarger probe and in a successive probe conducted by the FBI in 2002 and was ultimately sent to prison. Charlie Kingston was indicted in the Harshbarger probe, but claimed to be dying of cancer so he never went to prison. Kingston is still involved in Springfield governmental affairs twenty years later, as of 2016 he is Mayor Dominic Sarno's chief political adviser. Mitch Ogulewicz no longer resides in Springfield. </p><p>
For a summary of the Harshbarger corruption probe <a href="http://tommydevine.blogspot.com/2010/01/harshbarger-probe-1991-1995.html">click here</a>.
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<center><b>Henry J. Piechota</b><p>
(1930-2001)</p></center><p>
One of the most controversial individuals in Springfield's modern history died in February 2001, but you’d never have known that by anything that appeared in the local media. Henry Piechota was the former auditor and budget director for the city of Springfield, the only person ever to hold both of those positions simultaneously. That remarkable dual role made him one of the most powerful unelected officials in the city’s history. Part of his legacy is that when he left the budget director/auditor position, the state ordered that it be separated into two distinct jobs.</p><p>
Pichoeta retired under mysterious circumstances at the height of the city’s fiscal crisis of the late 1980’s, during a firestorm of controversy over questions about how Springfield suddenly went from what was supposed to be the “golden age” of the mayoralty of Richard Neal to the brink of state receivership. At the time he was said to suffer from a sudden, previously unknown heart condition that made it impossible for him to be questioned about the city’s near financial collapse. He literally disappeared completely from the public eye.</p><p>
Eleven years after his sudden departure, in a small obituary printed on page B5 of the <i>Union-News</i>, it was announced that Piechoeta had died. His seventeen years with the city as the man who had held the unique (and inherently conflicting) positions of the budget director (who manages the budget) and auditor (who serves as a watchdog over it) was dismissed in his obituary by a single sentence: “He was also the former auditor and budget director for the city of Springfield, retiring in 1990 after 17 years of service.” You would have thought some third-rate city clerk had died for what little attention his passing received. But anyone who remembers the late 1980’s, when Piechota was the subject of blaring headlines for weeks with his picture in the paper almost daily, knows why the death of so prominent a citizen received so little attention:</p><p>
Because the cover-up of what happened in that era still continues to this day.</p><p>
Henry Piechota was the guy who took the fall for the widespread financial mismanagement of the Neal Administration. It was necessary for him to disappear for a while so that questions could not be asked that there were no suitable answers to. There was nothing personal about his banishment; it was just what had to be done. It is the nature of machine politics in general, and our local political machine in particular, to put the welfare of the group of insiders as a whole ahead of any individual. No one is non-expendable if it is necessary to protect the rest. Piechota understood that reality and was good team player and went quietly.</p><p>
Let it be a lesson and a warning to those in city politics today – to those of you who are currently going along to get along, who are playing the game and positioning yourselves to always be with the winners, no matter what that means, who think of themselves as being so goddam clever – to pause a moment to contemplate the fate of Hank Piechota. Once they had used him up they threw him away, even after he took the fall for the sake of all those young, ambitious men with such promising careers. Yet, all he got in the end was a single sentence mentioning that he worked for the city, in a one paragraph long obituary, in the corner of page B5.</p><p>
Hank Piechota was not an evil man. He struck me as funny and smart and had an odd but endearing mannerism of shrugging his shoulders up and down a little as he talked. I know he loved his family very much. I don’t think he is to blame for the fiscal disaster that struck Springfield on his watch, the severity of which was such that the city still has not completely recovered. At worst, he was only following orders and his was just one of many lives left shattered in the aftermath of the Neal mayoralty. Henry Piechota no doubt took a lot of secrets to his grave with him, and his death means that there are many questions that must now be filed under “Never to be Known.” Unfortunately, in the City of Springfield, that’s a filing cabinet already filled to overflowing.</p><p>
<i>Although Mitch Ogulewicz would never again hold public office, he did not disappear from the political scene. Mitch went on to have a long running career as a talk radio host and political commentator. </i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIYjtBqKfQnL1Txfv2r115_3e54BZRRNDdXvkQ6w145R7fUbgw4EKrDYJHmj05d30PVPXoPxr-fnGt96ylQVc5PyHRt6ZwEF09hCEc4fsrXM2p_jBJGXWHgkn09eBKNgVKfqYMMII5S04/s843/ogul.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="843" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIYjtBqKfQnL1Txfv2r115_3e54BZRRNDdXvkQ6w145R7fUbgw4EKrDYJHmj05d30PVPXoPxr-fnGt96ylQVc5PyHRt6ZwEF09hCEc4fsrXM2p_jBJGXWHgkn09eBKNgVKfqYMMII5S04/w400-h175/ogul.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>
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Today Mitch Ogulewicz is retired and lives in South Carolina. Here is a 2016 photo of Mitch and his grandson.</p><p>
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In 2019, in the aftermath of the impeachment of President Trump, Mitch released this statement on his withdrawal from the Democratic Party:
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I FIND THIS EPISTLE DIFFICULT TO WRITE AND POST. BUT I HOPE MY FRIENDS WILL READ IT, IN ITS ENTIRETY:</p><p>
For months I have put off writing what is to follow. Hungry Hill, the wonderful neighborhood I grew up in, was a very political neighborhood. From 1946 – 1962, Hungry Hill provided the 2 Mayors who served during those years. Danny Brunton 1945 -1957 and Tommy O’Connor 1957 – 1961. Both Mayors Brunton and O’Connor were Democrats and outstanding leaders. Most of the leaders from Hungry Hill, whether they were Aldermen, City Councilors, State Representatives or State Senators, they were all Democrats.</p><p>
In late 1957 as an 11-year-old, I met 2 individuals who had a profound affect on my life and interestin politics and government. Attorney William T. Foley and Attorney Charles V. Ryan, Jr. Attorney Foley was a candidate for District Attorney and Charlie Ryan was his campaign manager. From both, I learned how to campaign on the streets of the neighborhood. Doing literature drops, running errands, helping to put up campaign signs and any other task that could be done by an 11 year- old. In 1961, I worked on the campaign of Charlie Ryan, who was elected Mayor that year. I have told many people that Bill Foley and Charlie Ryan were my political Godfathers.</p><p>
Hungry Hill was a predominantly an Irish neighbor. It was so Irish, my parents during the Christmas Seasons, received many Christmas cards that were addressed, O’Gulewicz. Yes, Ogulewicz with an apostrophe, like O’Sullivan, O’Malley etc. The neighborhood was very proud of its United States Senator, John F. Kennedy. In 1958 I met Kennedy and again it had a profound affect on my political leanings. 1960 arrived and Senator Kennedy was candidate for President. The neighborhood was Kennedy Country. I did Kennedy for President literature drops, sold campaign buttons and on the night before the eve of the 1960 election, I helped put up signs throughout the neighbor. Kennedy was to ride through the neighborhood from Westover Air Force Base to Court Square in downtown Springfield for a final campaign rally. On January 20, 1961, because of a blizzard and a snow day, I along with everyone in the neighborhood watched the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.</p><p>
I was now a full fledged Democrat and proud of it. Through the years, I worked on many Local and State campaigns. After College and serving in the Air Force, I came home and worked on the National Campaign of George McGovern. In 1975, I met Jimmy Carter and supported his campaign for President. In 1980, I worked and supported my Senator, Ted Kennedy for President. In 1982, John Kerry asked me to Chair his Springfield and later his Western Massachusetts campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.</p><p>
In 1983, after much persuasion, I campaigned for a seat on the Springfield City Council. I was honored by the voters of Springfield when they elected me to one of the 9 at large seats on the City Council out of 67 candidates. I was honored to serve the people of Springfield for 6 years. In 1984, once again John Kerry asked me to head up his campaign in Springfield for United States Senator. I did this by taking on the entire political establishment of Western Massachusetts, which was supporting a local political power, the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House. Kerry won Western Massachusetts and was elected U.S. Senator. </p><p>
In 1984, I supported Senator Gary Hart during his primary campaign for President. I was honored to introduce him at a huge rally at Court Square in downtown Springfield. I used the famous JFK words: “THE TORCH HAS BEEN PASSED TO A NEW GENERATION”. In 1988, it was the Campaign of Governor Michael Dukakis for President. While attending the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta I watch Dukakis accept the Presidential Nomination. </p><p>
It was 16 years, until I worked on another campaign. It was for my friend John Kerry who was seeking the Presidency. I attended the Convention in Boston where the man I had supported for many years received the Democratic Nomination for President. It was then that I met a State Senator from Illinois. Barack Obama. When I returned home after the Convention, I told Cyndi that I had met a man who will one day be President. Little did I know at that time it would be 4 years later. And yes, I did support President Obama and proudly have framed my invitation to his 2009 Inauguration.</p><p>
If you are thinking to yourself why is Mick providing all this information, I am because for the last few years I have watched the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy disintegrate into a cesspool of corruption and lost values. It is a party that Roosevelt, Truman and the Kennedys would not recognize. A party that has accepted the corrupt ways of the Clintons, who have done more damage to this once great party. The party has accepted the radical left that believes that illegal immigrants have more rights than citizens, who have worked all their lives to achieve success without handouts. Democrats who are Mayors of our large Cities. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and many others, have turned their cities into Sanctuary Cities. Cities with large homeless populations. Cities with high crime and murder rates. Cities where respect for the law and our law enforcement agencies is no longer.</p><p>
The Democrats hate the President. You can disagree, but hate is uncalled for. Do I agree with President Trump on everything he has done? NO!! Do I like many of his tweets? NO!! I have always respected the results of an Election. McGovern lost. Carter lost. Ted Kennedy lost. Hart lost. Dukakis lost and Kerry lost. IT IS CALLED DEMOCRACY.</p><p>
I am a lifelong Democrat at 73 years old. Many of my friends have left the party. Many have asked why are you loyal to the party? Many have told me that the party has left me. This is no longer the party that I have worked for and supported for 62 years. Literature drops, door to door campaigning, holding signs at voting locations, gathering nomination signatures, protesting a war, working for civil rights. This is what I have done for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has turned into a corrupt and socialistic entity. The Democratic Party has turned family and lifelong friends against each other. The Democratic Party no longer accepts differing views. Because of the actions today by the corrupt Democratic Party, I will no longer be a registered Democrat. It hurts to do this. I have been a loyal Democrat. Maybe I have been loyal too long.</p><p>
AS PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY SAID: " ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND EVERY PERSON SHOULD TRY "</p><p>
I tried...………......</p><p>
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</p><center><b>AFTERWORD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OGULEWICZ CHRONICLES<p>
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BY TOM DEVINE</p><p></p></b></center><p>
It was around Thanksgiving, just weeks before the end of the century, and I was attending a City Hall event so dull that I probably couldn't have told you what it was about two weeks later, let alone after 20 years. Yet that 1999 political snoozer had at least this distinguishing feature - at the end of the event former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz came up and first pitched to me the idea of helping him to prepare and release a collection of essays to be called <i>The Ogulewicz Chronicles</i>.</p><p>
For the next several months Mitch and I would meet, usually over coffee at the old <i>Russell's Restaurant</i> on Boston Road, but also in more exotic situations such as enroute to a John McCain for President rally in Boston, and discuss his political experiences. The resulting <i>Chronicles</i> would give the citizens of the Pioneer Valley a behind the scenes look at Springfield politics at a depth and level of intimacy they had never seen before.</p><p>
The initial response to the <i>Chronicles</i> was mixed. Local political reformers were delighted with the fresh and challenging perspectives offered in the <i>Chronicles</i>. However, Establishment partisans attacked it unmercifully, and usually anonymously, in public forums such as the <a href="https://www.masslive.com/">Masslive</a> <i>Springfield Forum</i>, a now defunct medium on the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> website. In those days you could comment using a fake name, which could sometimes lead to some very entertaining and informative comments, but which also led to some pretty irresponsible statements. Yet, despite potshots and frowns from the political establishment, the <i>Chronicles</i> continued to attract new readers on a daily basis, as it does to this day. </p><p>
The publication of the <i>Chronicles</i> in 1999/2000 occurred just a few short years before Springfield would find itself plunging into the worst fiscal crisis in the city's history in 2004. That crisis ultimately resulted in the city's finances being taken over by a state control board that was appointed by then Governor Mitt Romney. <i>The Chronicles</i> were a perfect educational prelude to that fiscal disaster, laying out the financial sins of the 1980's (that would only continue into the 1990's) which eventually led to Springfield's fiscal meltdown. </p><p>
Two decades after their publication, these <i>Chronicles</i> remain surprisingly relevant to today's headlines. Richie Neal is still in Congress and all over the news due to the fight over President Trump's taxes, David Starr was President of the <i>Springfield Newspapers</i> right up until <a href="https://tommydevine.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-starr.html">his death</a> in July, and Kateri Walsh is still on the City Council. Alas, many of the same problems that faced Springfield in the 80's are still challenging the city today. In its wonderfully vivid and informative portrayal of Springfield politics in the 1980's, <i>The Ogulewicz Chronicles</i> remains a valuable historical resource both to anyone wanting to understand the city's past, as well as those looking to chart a course for Springfield's future.</p><p>
Tommy Devine - Northampton - 2019</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10900475514170268904noreply@blogger.com0