Patrick Stumbles

December 7th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the Boston Globe

Forget about the inaugural extravaganza, there are more serious mistakes being made by the new Patrick administration. Just hours after being selected, Leslie Kirwan, the new head of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, started making suggestions about the new administration's budgetary ideas: allowing cities to raise fees and meal taxes.

She did this before she could have possibly explored whether or not there were real savings from waste in the budget. She did this before the Patrick/Murray working group on Budget and Finance had completed its task.

So was Ms. Kirwan speaking on her own account? Are the working groups meaningless? Are they just there to provide window dressing but with no real purpose?

Deval Patrick owes us some answers.

Full disclosure: I was a volunteer for Deval Patrick during the gubernatorial campaign.