Who Will Get Taken Down Along With Senator Dianne Wilkerson?

Democratic State Senator Dianne Wilkerson of Roxbury was arrested Tuesday on corruption charges after an extensive sting operation run by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The big question to ask is: If the facts alleged in the FBI complaint are proven true, then why did the FBI wait for a year to charge Senator Wilkerson with bribery and corruption? The complaint describes a series of payments made to her, and official actions taken by her in response, back in 2007, yet the FBI continued the investigation -- and upped the ante by assigning additional undercover agents.

My prediction: there has been a much larger investigation already underway for more than a year, and more heads may soon roll. Subpoenas are already flying, but I bet the FBI knows more already than they have admitted.

A second big question is: who else might this investigation and subsequent court proceedings take down in addition to Senator Wilkerson?


The Two-Sided Sting Operation: Why Did the FBI Wait To Press Charges?

The complaint against her first makes a series of allegations of how she repeatedly accepted cash payments between June 2007 and March 2008 totalling $8,500 from a representative of the club Dejavu. The payments were for her work in twisting the arms of city and state officials in order to obtain a liquor license for the new establishment. Dejavu had originally been denied a license in early 2007, but Wilkerson initiated a campaign starting in mid-2007 -- after the alleged cash bribes -- to push for reconsideration of the license.

The FBI agent's affidavit also alleges a second set of $15,000 in cash bribes starting in January 2008 paid as part of several undercover FBI agents' make-believe attempts to obtain development rights for a parcel of land in Roxbury at the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

In the first set of cash payments, there appeared to be ample evidence by fall 2007 that the FBI could have charged Senator Wilkerson. Why did the FBI wait to make more payments on the ongoing liquor license issue -- as well as start up a new undercover operation about the Roxbury property?

My inkling is that the agents are sitting on quite a bit more information that what is contained in this one affidavit. The net may have been cast substantially more broadly, but they are only coming out with these charges against Senator Wilkerson for now. Given their ample evidence assembled by fall 2007, the FBI probably could have gotten wiretaps on her phones -- and hence snagged anyone else who might have been trying to buy political favors in the year since then.

Senator Wilkerson, Senate President Therese Murray, Council President Maureen Feeney, and BLB Chairman Daniel Pokaski met in mid-August 2007. The affidavit says that the outcome of the meeting was for Boston to submit a home rule petition to the legislature for 40 new liquor licenses and 30 new beer and wine licenses, that Dejavu would receive one of the liquor licenses, and that Senator Wilkerson would have control in allocating several of the licenses. The FBI agent's complaint reads:

25. Boston licensing Board Awards Dejavu a Beer and Wine License. On August 16, 2007, the BLB issued a letter notifying Dejavu that its petition for a malt and wine license had been granted. On the same day, WILKERSON met with the BLB Chairman, the Senate President, the Boston City Council President, and Senator [Michael Morrissey] to discuss the status of the Dejavu license and related issues. The outcome of the meeting was an agreement that the City of Boston would submit, and WILKERSON would sponsor, legislation which would authorize 40 new nontransferable liquor licenses and 30 new nontransferable beer and wine licenses for the City of Boston. (This type of legislation is also known as a "home rule petition.") It was understood the Dejavu would receive one of these new special liquor licenses, if another one did not become available first, and that WILKERSON would be able to control several other licenses.

While the FBI complaint does not allege that any of these other individuals -- Feeney, Morrissey, Pokaski, or Murray -- violated the law, this one meeting may be a major focus of the investigation as it goes forward. Assembled in one room, making an apparent back room deal, are major players of both city and state government. The meeting happened on the same day as a letter from the BLB awarding a temporary license -- probably at minimum a violation of the state's Open Meeting Law, since it followed no public hearing or public vote of the board -- and two weeks after Senator Wilkerson had put a hold on the state legislation for a pay increase for the members of the BLB. Council President Feeney has already confirmed that she was questioned Tuesday by the FBI.

While the affidavit alleged no quid pro quo among the attendees of that meeting -- to approve the liquor license for Dejavu, pass the BLB pay increase legislation, introduce and pass a home rule petition for more liquor licenses, and give control of some of those licenses not to the BLB but to Senator Wilkerson -- any casual reader easily comes to that conclusion. Whether any of that violates the law is a lingering question. What exactly was said at that meeting could cause embarrassment... or more.

Mayor Thomas Menino may have dodged a bullet here: while he was mentioned elsewhere as meeting with Senator Wilkerson and apparently promising to help, neither he nor his assistant working on the license issue were listed in the affidavit as being in attendance at that August 2007 meeting.


Boston Globe Omits Mention of Boston Globe Columnist Walker

The Boston Globe published a series of articles, an editorial, an Op-Ed, and a metro column in Wednesday's edition that covered the Wilkerson story from many angles.

Missing from all of them: the role that their own columnist Adrian Walker may have played in the unfolding drama.

We know a bit of his role from the FBI agent's affidavit:

"WILKERSON told the CW [Cooperating Witness] in a recorded conversation on or about July 11, 2007, that she sent a package of material to a Boston Globe columnist about the lack of liquor licenses available to minorities in the City of Boston."

He subsequently wrote a column about it in July 2007.

As I wrote over at UniversalHub:

As a blogger myself, I've received my own fair share of (anonymous) envelope drops trying to get me to write a political hit piece. They've all ended up in the circular file.

Maybe we could all chip in to buy a wastebasket for Walker?...

[W]hen somebody sends you a "packet", if you want to use it you ought to be prepared to do some substantial investigation to figure out the agenda of the person who sent it to you. (The affidavit left unclear if Wilkerson's envelope was anonymous or signed.)

If the Boston Globe had filled the still-vacant position of Ombudsman, I would expect a column about Walker's role and whether or not Walker had fallen for Wilkerson's political campaign. Given that the Globe is avoiding mentioning his role in all these stories, I assume they are giving Walker first crack at defending his role; his next column appears Friday.


Bets On a Wider Scandal

My prediction of what will happen:

Senator Wilkerson will lose re-election for her seat in her write-in campaign; she will fight the case to trial, with lots of embarrassing depositions along the way.

BLB Chairman Pokaski will probably resign within weeks -- if not days -- because he stood to gain financially from the August 2007 meeting that allegedly resulted in him approving a temporary license for Dejavu while the state legislature approved a pay raise for him.

Mayor Menino, Senate President Murray, and City Council President Feeney will be red-faced about how they got snookered into helping out Senator Wilkerson's campaign for the liquor licenses -- particularly Murray, Feeney, and Morrissey in how they appear to have agreed during the mid-August 2007 meeting to cede control of some liquor licenses to Senator Wilkerson.

Globe columnist Walker will defend his reporting while admitting that he feels betrayed by Senator Wilkerson. The Globe will otherwise avoid mentioning his name, but the Boston Herald will do so. Often.

And that there will be more names forthcoming in the wider FBI investigation.


Update: David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix has his own ideas about who's next.

Boston Civic Summit Brings Together Community Organizers

The first Boston Civic Summit took place Saturday at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston, providing a chance for civic leaders -- and foot soldiers -- from across the city to network with each other and craft a vision of how Boston could look a decade from now.

City Council President Maureen Feeney explained how the idea for the event grew out of a meeting months ago over coffee at Gerard's Restaurant in Dorchester with BCEC Executive Director Jim Rooney. They were looking at "ways to revitalize civic life in Boston," and seized upon a meeting of civic leaders as a way to draw people together from many different neighborhoods in the city.

Roughly 400 people from across the city met for seven hours to talk about community organizing strategies, improving communications with the media, fundraising, and their vision for the city's future.


"Don't Just Tell us What's Wrong"

Mayor Thomas Menino breezed in -- and out -- of the convention center probably feeling a little bit unwelcome. The event was conceived and organized without his input, faced his early opposition, and only provided him five minutes to speak to the crowd.

The event's program (as of one week ago) didn't list him on the program as a speaker; later in the week (and in the published program) he had a five-minute slot at the end of lunch; and only today did he manage to move his speaking slot up to a time right before event's keynote speaker. That the Boston Civic Summit wouldn't look to the Mayor as a keynote speaker speaks to the chasm between between the city's civic leaders and the municipal government's leaders; Boston Herald muckracker Howie Carr says that Mayor Menino privately calls the activists "agitators." The Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services only provided perfunctory visible support to the program -- sending out an announcement of the event to Allston-Brighton residents on April 29th, four days after registration for the event was supposedly closed on the 25th. Gee, thanks for the shout out, I guess.

Anticipating trouble might be brewing at the event, Mayor Menino tried to head it off at the pass: "Voice your concerns. Ask tough questions. Don't just tell us what's wrong."

But describing what was wrong with city government was apparently what happened at the first session of "Managing Community Development / Zoning". I was at a parallel session at the time, but word on the street was that the zoning discussion dove right into institutional expansion and animated BRA-bashing, leading to former Councilor Larry DiCara -- who led the session -- being instructed to keep the discussion in the subsequent session on the zoning process rather than the failings of the BRA. Which he did.

How could a discussion of zoning and community development avoid talking about the elephant in the room, namely the issues of institutional expansion and the BRA's role as possible facilitator? Because she said so, that's why. Councilor Feeney reportedly told one participant that this whole summit was supposed to be about civic involvement rather than reforming city government. A number of summit participants, however, didn't understand how one didn't involve the other.

It was without any apparent sense of irony that Mayor Menino noted how opposition in the early 1970s to the proposed Southwest Expressway faced down the "bureaucrats [who] tried to divide us." He obviously recognizes how civic engagement directly relates to government, although it must be tough now to be on the side of the equation.


"Rugged Idealism"

Keynote speaker Alan Khazei, the Founder of City Year, spoke about how he sees the United States being founded on the ideas of "rugged idealism," rather than the term "rugged individualism" that everyone is taught in high school history class.

Khazei gaves examples of the Boston Tea Party, the work of abolitionists in the 19th century, the suffrage movement of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott -- and the Boston Ten-Point Coalition, which focuses on "the issues affecting Black and Latino youth, especially those at risk for violence, drug abuse, and other destructive behavior."

"Idealism works," said Khazei. "It has the power to change lives." He concluded with a rejection of Ronald Reagan's argument in the 1980 presidential campaign that people should ask, "Are you better off?" Instead, Khazei thinks that people should focus on the question, "Are we better off?"


Aging Population of Community Activists

The wireless tools used by AmericaSpeaks in the "Town Hall" session enabled instant identification of the demographics of the civic leaders of the city -- and the comparison with the city as a whole.

Community activists here have lived in Boston far longer (50% have lived in the city more than 30 years, compared to 10% of Boston residents), are more predominantly white (73% of activists vs. 50% of Boston residents), and are heavily skewed towards older residents (67% are age 45 or older, compared to 38% of Boston residents) than the population at large.

The worrisome message that grows out of these demographics is that those civically-engaged residents are aging but not being replaced by younger activists.

The only silver lining was identified by speaker Dr. Thomas Sander of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who referred to recent research showing that people who were in college at the time of the events of 9/11 are turning out to be more politically active than their immediate predecessors.

But Sanders pointed to a steady decrease in the average rate of membership in large organizations since 1970 -- bringing activism rates, at least as measured by involvement in large organizations, down to a rate not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.


Top Issues Facing Boston

Participants identified education (61%), economic development (43%), public safety (37%), and housing (33%) as the most important issues facing Boston. Yet economic development (26%) and housing (15%) were low on the list of issues that they felt they could impact most through their civic participation, being trumped by education (65%), public safety (52%), and the environment (41%).

Political leaders often speak of economic development as key to the city's future, and point to the companies and institutions as drivers of the economic engine. The need for affordable housing is often repeated on the campaign trail, too. That the civic leaders of the city feel so powerless to affect change on these two issues is telling as to a disconnect between government and the people.


Vision for Revitalized Civic Engagement

The participants in the town hall session arrived at a common vision for how Boston might appear twelve years from now, should their civic activities produce meaningful change:

Participants envisioned thriving civic engagement in Boston in 2020 and discused how we would know we have achieved our vision. The group identified the following concrete, measurable things that would indicate we have reached our vision of revitalized civic engagement in our city:

• Boston has a 100% high school graduation rate and Boston Public Schools are as good as schools in the suburbs;
• Neighborhoods are green and sustainable (more green development, clean public spaces, decreased reliance on cars);
• The digital divide has been eliminated, partially through free wi-fi throughout the city and city services are more easily accessed through the web;
• Lower crime rate, "zero murder rate every year"
• Young people fully involved in civic programs;
• City government is more transparent (fully utilizing new technologies, participation is more fully encouraged); and
• City government is more representative -- both ethnically and of the neighborhoods.

It takes little imagination to suggest that these issues will be front-and-center in the 2009 mayoral election campaign.


Image of old man by Pulpolux, and image of BCEC by silver marquis, through a Creative Commons license.

Register Now for the 2008 Boston Civic Summit

Earlier this year, Councilor Maureen Feeney, President of the Boston City Council, proposed to hold a civic summit to bring together the leaders and foot soldiers in our activist-friendly city. It sometimes seems like there are more civic organizations than people, particularly since some people seem to join dozens of groups.

The event will be held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston on Saturday, May 3rd from 8:15 am - 3:45 pm.

Gerta Dhamo, staffer for Councilor Feeney's office, wrote of the meeting:

The purpose of the event is to build a better city by working together on strengthening and promoting greater civic engagement and fostering dialogue between community groups. The summit will also provide current and prospective community leaders with tools, training and support to better exercise their important civic responsibility.

We welcome you to join civically engaged Boston residents, organization leaders, board members, as well as concerned citizen in this important community event and that you encourage your readers to attend as well. Attached you will find more information and a registration form. You can also visit our website at http://www.bostoncivicsummit.org/

When Councilor Feeney originally proposed the idea back in January 2008, she envisioned something big:

Feeney said she wants to invite every neighborhood and business group, parent-teacher organization, and crime-watch group in the city as well as residents unaffiliated with any group, and even those who are not civically engaged at all.

The one-day gathering would be akin to a congress, where people could voice their concerns and hopes for the future of the city, a forum for innovative ideas and finding common ground, she said.

She pitched the idea to BlueMassGroup, an online discussion forum for Democrats and progressives. She didn't get much of a response -- 1/3 of the comments posted were by Don Saklad.

The idea apparently didn't go over very well with Mayor Thomas Menino, "who said the needs in each neighborhood are different and should be addressed separately," according to the Boston Globe.

The registration form (PDF) can be found here. The information says to register by April 25th.

Boston Globe (1/7/08): "City Councilor Feeney unveils plans for one-day, citywide gathering"
Boston Globe's City Weekly: "Michael Jonas: Shout it from the summit: Activists needed"
Boston Globe Editorial: "Boston misses the call"
Letter to the Editor of the Boston Globe: "Letters: Give local leadership a break: Feeney's an inspiration"; "Letters: To those in the know: Status quo must go"


Image from "redjar" through a Creative Commons license.