Gov creates heaps of work, fails to follow up

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http://news.bostonherald.com/localPolitics/view.bg?articleid=106618

Multi-tasking - Gov creates heaps of work, fails to follow up
By Maggie Mulvihill
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - Updated: 09:20 AM EST

More than a dozen ``blue-ribbon'' commissions and task forces appointed by Gov. Mitt Romney with great fanfare have faded into irrelevance – often ignored by the governor himself, a Herald review has found. Of the 15 commissions announced by the governor since Jan. 1, 2003, few have sparked substantive changes in laws or policies governing complex issues such as education, affordable housing and equal opportunity employment. Frustrated commission members told the Herald that Romney either ignored their recommendations, pre-empted their work with unilateral action on his own or took action on an issue that ran counter to their findings or advice. ``We were sold a bill of goods and they didn't deliver on it,'' said state Rep. Jeffery Sanchez (D-Boston), one of 15 members of the governor's Diversity and Equal Opportunity Council, created by Romney in June 2003 to revamp the state's affirmative-action laws.

After repeated lengthy meetings, debates and conversations with community members about how to improve affirmative action in state government, commission members submitted recommendations to the governor in the summer of 2004, they said. Commission members said the last time they heard from Romney or his staff was an Oct. 7 e-mail saying their recommendations were still being reviewed after more than a year. ``I haven't heard anything since,'' said a frustrated Sanchez. ``There was a lot of work. We put our heart and soul into it.''

There was a similar concern over at the Governor's Ocean Management Task Force, where Christopher Hardy, director of legislative affairs for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, said a bill filed by Romney in March aimed at safeguarding the state's ocean waters ``doesn't fully satisfy or meet the recommendations of the task force.'' Staff at the Audubon Society worked on the Governor's Ocean Management Task Force, a 22-member group appointed by Romney in June 2003. ``It doesn't have the support of the environmental community,'' Hardy said of the governor's bill, which is pending in the Legislature.

In the case of an auto insurance study panel, Romney essentially derailed the commission by moving forward with his own plan. In April 2004 he set up a six-member ``Auto Insurance Reform Task Force'' to revise the state's auto insurance system. Romney's staff selected the members, including state Sen. Marian Walsh (D-Boston) and Alice Moore, chief of the Attorney General's Public Protection Bureau, who met weekly for more than a year trying to craft a new auto insurance system. On June 1, Romney – without a warning to commission members – held a press conference to announce he was filing his own auto insurance legislation – essentially disbanding the commission with no explanation. Romney's bill is pending in the Legislature.

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