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Murphy says he doesn't want to interfere with federal probe; postpones hearing on lost-and-found items at the library
By adamg on Fri, 06/05/2015 - 2:38pm
City Councilor Steve Murphy said today he has postponed a planned hearing Monday on the Boston Public Library's handling of valuable prints and other items, not because two of those items, worth an estimated $630,000, turned up misfiled rather than stolen, but because he does not want to "compromise the integrity" of federal and city investigations into "the whereabouts of library valuables."
Just yesterday, Murphy called the loss of the two prints "the mere tip of the iceberg" of inventory problems at the library and called on the entire library board of trustees to resign immediately - in a press release issued shortly before library officials announced a Copley Square staffer had found the prints filed away on the wrong shelf.
Murphy, chairman of the council's public-safety committee, said in a statement:
A hearing at this time could compromise the integrity of the investigation. Once the investigation is complete, the public hearing process will commence.
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Comments
Happy Steve / Poor Steve
Happy Steve - Got his name in the paper. Yelled a bit, Looked big shot tough for his constituents. Harumph, Harumph, Harumph.
Poor Steve - Can see the ability to stuff more sign holders into hidden library jobs slipping from his fingers.
Alas.
Awful
Can Murphy, as chairman of the council's public-safety committee, make an argument that lost or stolen items at Boston Public Library are a public safety issue?
Murphy and Walsh know they look like jackasses demanding Amy Ryan's job in the middle of an investigation--before they know what happened.
Murphy also demanded the entire board to resign because he had a suspicion the findings of the investigation were going to exceed everyone's worst nightmares.
Walsh needs to ask Amy Ryan to stay.
Walsh and Murphy have to stop their Boston Public Library grab.
Ain't gonna happen.
The purpose of the Boston Public Library, as with all city agencies and departments, is to provide jobs to those whom the administration wishes to favor.
How is it that retaining Amy Ryan would further that purpose?
your premise is wrong
The purpose the public views
The purpose the public views city institutions to have vs how the mayor views the purpose of those institutions is a divergent gulf.
Challengers Bryan Fuller, Annissa Essaibi George
Vote!... Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Challengers for the current City Council Member's Seat
http://bostondocuments.blogspot.com/2015/05/qualified-list-of-candidates...
Bryan D Fuller, South Boston Veteran
bryandfuller at gmail.com
http://www.bryandfuller.com/
Annissa Essaibi George, Dorchester
annissaeg at hotmail.com
http://annissaforboston.com/
2015-2016 Committee Assignments. Boston City Council
http://www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/committees/
http://bostondocuments.blogspot.com/
Maybe the Fed probe will find
Maybe the Fed probe will find out this was all orchestrated by Marty to take down the library as part of a corruption racket and result in his early retirement.
the question is
does the councilor have information that it was "the mere tip of the iceberg", or was that quote an innocent mistake, or is something wrong with the councilor?
That was no "innocent mistake"
Murphy has engaged Regan Communications to handle his press releases, and they're not in the habit of just making slips of the tongue (slips of the keyboard?).
Amazing that Regan Communications didn't see the exposure
Amazing that Regan Communications didn't see the exposure in making the demand that all BPL trustees should resign because Murphy suspects the results of the investigation into lost or stolen property might be worse than expectations.
The reason you have an investigation is to find out what happened. It's common to let the investigation proceed to a conclusion before proposing remedies.
Secondly, demanding the resignation of the entire board without any evidence of incompetence or malfeasance by the board members is unwarranted and irresponsible.
Unless
Unless you're acting on behalf of Mayor Olympics to take advantage of this item, blow it out of proportion, & pack the board with Walsh's picks so that he can then make sure all of his friends and friends' cousins can get a job at BPL for the next few years.
Sounds like a bad stereotype, but that's how Walsh has been running things in just 6 months. I never realized how incorruptible Menino was (with all his faults) until Walsh wasted no time in lining his friends' pockets with Boston2024, the IndyRace contract, and this push.
I think there's evidence
I think there's evidence Marty Walsh's circle of acquaintances get lucrative gigs at Boston 2024 and IndyRace, both private enterprises, presented by Marty Walsh as non-essential government service.
Boston 2024 and IndyRace sponge off the taxpayer because Marty says they can. The justification is that cost of BPD details, traffic control, etc etc etc will generate in taxes what it costs the city in services.
These "deals" are being authorized without the oversight of the City Council and are being justified as cost-effective (revenue exceeds cost, cost = taxpayer dollars)
City council should be evaluating the numbers and giving Walsh feedback. Maybe even taking a vote of approval or disapproval. (I.E. Is spending this money on a car race more important than closing the Boston Public School budget gap of $42 million)
Voters should have a say, even if it's non-binding on Boston 2024 because of the high risk (billion of dollars of risk).
I'd like more information about what Walsh is up to with BPL. I'm unsure about the motivations.
Get used to things like this
There are a small number of city functions that are grabbing a bigger and bigger share of the budget - police/fire/schools and fixed costs are growing faster than the budget as a whole. That's a big reason we operate the city with 1988 era technology, we need outside money for parks, sports are an afterthought at the schools.
There are only two solutions:
1) slow the growth of those functions
2) the old "new revenue streams" to pay for the same or less service
If you can you be a world class city with no libraries, parks, transportation, recreation, public works, administration etc. etc. etc. we can soon set the world standard.
Contracts
So long as BPD and BFD get sweetheart contracts who gives a shit about parks and city services, right?
This is why we need to switch
This is why we need to switch to defined contribution instead of defined benefit retirement and pool public employee insurance coverage state wide. There is no incentive for cost control right now as the taxpayer is viewed as a bottomless pit to bail out the exponentially increasing tab.
Well, yeah....
That's what we voted for. That's what we knew we were voting for when we voted. And that's what we're getting.
For what it's worth ...
One of Amy Ryan's first big public initiatives (in the sense it was one of the first times many people had heard of her) was when she proposed closing 10 branch libraries. Didn't go over too well. And the solution, as brokered by the City Council (in particular, Mike Ross): Firefighters agreed to a contract in which they gave up money that helped save all but one of the those branches.
Saying the firefighters "gave
Saying the firefighters "gave up money" in 2010 is very different from how I remember it. In 2010 the FF union and city compromised on a retroactive 16.5% raise instead of a retroactive 19% raise in exchange for drug testing. The reduction happened after an appointed arbitrator pulled the 19% number out of thin air, and before the city council was about to vote it down. And this increase was during a recession.
BFD firefighters with 10 years now have a base salary over $90k, plus typically $10-20k in overtime and details. Firefighters may make sacrifices, but definitely not financial sacrifices, at least in Boston.
Finding $600k of city property, missing for a year, vindication?
Good for Mayor Walsh in accepting the resignation of Menino's Ryan. Quite funny that the far-left crowd here views it an achievement, rather than incompetence, that the $600,000 worth of city property, long missing, was suddenly found. Hopefully the gold coins also turn up.
incompetence
BPL and its collection is not property of the city.
Established in 1848, by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library was the first large free municipal library in the United States.
Couple of things
I don't have answers to any of the questions about collection management practices. That's why I don't have an opinion as to whether these items being unaccounted for is acceptable or not.
BPL is governed by nine
BPL is governed by nine trustees, all appointed by the mayor to five year terms, and the terms are staggered. So, the mayor appoints the entire board, except when a new mayor is elected, there's a 2.5 to 3.5-year delay while the old mayor's appointees finish out their terms. This is a major source of conflict.
It might work more smoothly if the trustees all had four year terms expiring 6-18 months after a mayoral election.
Also worth noting in 2013 Menino had a bunch of expired seats on the BPL board, some expired for more than a year. He could have left them like that a couple more months and let the new mayor appoint people to them in January 2014. Instead Menino filled all those seats in October 2013, a few weeks before the election. That probably irked Walsh.
More smoothly, but....
Wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of having an independent board of trustees?
"Holdouts from the old boss"
"Holdouts from the old boss" is a common problem everywhere, but I think it's better to accept the reality that quasi-independent agencies are not completely independent, especially when they are not self-funded. And if you're going to have a five-year terms appointed by a four-year mayor, then you may as well synchronize them.
The trustees are still independent in the sense that they serve fixed terms as opposed to being at-will serving at the pleasure of the mayor.
Still, the point of staggered terms
"Holdouts from the old boss" isn't a bug, it's a feature.
The point of staggered terms is to deliberately introduce hysteresis into the system.
If you look at the way our Federal government is set up, you have terms ranging from 2 years (House) to 6 (Senate) to life (Judicial appointments). This means that, while the House can react quite quickly to changes in public sentiment, the Senate provides greater continuity and less sensitivity to whims, and the courts provide an even greater damper on excess.
Staggered 5 year terms means that there's a limit to how suddenly any given mayor can move the levers of power, and that's entirely deliberate and a good thing.
B.P.L.P.S.A. may be the oldest library Union !
There are several Union Collective Bargaining organizations at Boston Public Library including the B.P.L.P.S.A Boston Public Library Professional Staff Association and their newsletter The Real Sheet available at some Reference Desks at Branch Libraries and Central Library Departments. B.P.L.P.S.A. may be the oldest library Union !
http://bplpsa.info/contents/
Compare
http://www.local1930.org/
What are needed are consumers groups of library users like BPLUG Boston Public Library Users Group Guide to Problematical Library Use or CSNYPL Committee to Save New York Public Library
http://www.savenypl.org/
https://www.google.com/search?q=guide+to+problematical+library+use
Not a matter of right and left
This isn't a matter of political spectrum, it's a matter of people who know how these institutions function versus people who don't. As many commenters have said on the many stories over the past few weeks, it is perfectly normal for collections to have misfiled items. It is not a sign of incompetence or mismanagement. It is very normal for a collection to not know how many items they have. Read the comments from folks who have been working in libraries and you will see this. None of this is a sign that the BPL is a useless institution.
The crux of this situation is not that these items were misfiled and found. It is that these items were found to be missing months ago and the BPL leadership was not informed of it until recently. If you find something missing, you inform your superiors immediately. That's what this investigation needs to be looking into.
Compare how Councilor Wu a talented communicator reaches out...
Compare how Councilor Wu a talented communicator reaches out to Boston communities' constituencies at
http://bostonorange.blogspot.com/p/boston-city-council-candidatemichelle...