The New MGC Chair
By Josh Resnek
Cathy Judd-Stein, currently the deputy legal counsel for Governor Baker, has been appointed by the governor to be the chair of the Gaming Commission.
Her credentials are typically spectacular. She has served under five governors, a sure sign she has favored status on Beacon Hill.
She a Dartmouth, Harvard Law School grad and is an expert in advising governors and others on Beacon Hill about ethics and the law.
By all signs, she is a stellar appointment.
What I want to know is what the governor and she discussed about the Gaming Commission and about former chair Stephen Crosby who was as crooked as a stick can be?
Did the governor tell her to do the right thing or did he tell her to be careful because the project is so big the law can only be twisted to allow it to gain success?
Will she guide the GMC to find Wynn Resorts unsuitable? Will she guide the GMC to find Wynn Resorts suitable? More importantly, will she restore confidence in an agency that doesn’t know how to shoot straight?
Will she get rid of Attorney Karen Wells and the State Police investigative team that somehow failed to find out anything negative about Steve Wynn after conducting a thorough investigation that cost about $2 million?
Does she have the green light to find Wynn Resorts unsuitable as the law would require because the GMC was lied to by Steve Wynn, Matt Maddox, and Attorney Kim Sinatra?
Certainly she must know the law – that you can’t lie to the GMC and be awarded a suitable status to gain a license to gaming in Massachusetts.
Or is she just another lifetime lawyer-bureaucrat, studied in the ways of Beacon Hill, knowing of the value of hiding reality under a mountain of legal jargon?
She comes to power at the GMC at a seminal moment.
The GMC investigation, which must certainly be the stuff of farce, is embedded in a pile of Nevada sand right now.
It can’t be released.
Maybe Judd-Stein will know how to dig it out of the sand, come to a conclusion and finally move forward.
This is impossible to know.
Judd-Stein isn’t just another lawyer. She is a prominent lawyer in a prominent position, serving the highest of elected public officials.
She knows right from wrong better than most.
Will she put her skills to work to settle the GMC impasse about Wynn Resorts suitability or will she take the easy way out and grant it as one grants a glass of water to a client dying of thirst?
What will she do, this is the question, and a good one at that.
Will she suggest that former GMC chair Crosby needs to be indicted, tried and convicted or will she pin a medal on his lapel (if he can be found) and say he did a great job?
Time will tell.
Time right now, time always, is of the essence. It is especially so for the city of Everett.
Where is The Mayor?
There is in this city of hard working people a thing called the work ethic.
Having a work ethic requires most of us to get up early in the morning, to drive or walk to our jobs, whatever they are, to put in our day, and to leave when we are done.
Nearly all of us in the work force are compelled to do this because if we don’t, we don’t get paid.
If we don’t get paid, we can’t pay our bills.
If we can’t pay our bills, we lose our homes, our reputations, we put our families at risk and on and on and on.
For many decades, the mayors of Everett, almost to a person have
gone into the corner office at city hall everyday to do their thing for the city, to show themselves around their supporters and employees, vendors and outsiders looking in.
After all, being the mayor is an honor. It is a privilege. It is a position that requires a public persona of the man or woman who serves to be that of one who is always available and who is always seen around the city.
Just in my lifetime I can remember the McCarthy’s, Ed Connolly, David Ragucci, John Hanlon and then there is the example being set by the present mayor.
Wait a minute – the McCarthys, Ed Connolly, David Ragucci and John Hanlon had one thing in common – they had a work ethic.
They showed up everyday. They were in their offices near to everyday – not out of a legal requirement – rather, out of a sense of duty to the position. Say what you will about any of them or all of them, they were not missing in action from the corner office at city hall.
Not so with the present mayor.
He is missing in action.
He hasn’t been inside his office more than four times in the last 45 days.
During the past six months he is hardly ever in his office. He’s here so little he’s done away with his personal parking space. After all, he doesn’t need it.
The only things he attends at city hall or around the city are absolutely required attendance events – like a demand made by the city council that he appear at a meeting or a wake or funeral he must attend or a citywide holiday celebration he is required to be at.
Otherwise, the mayor is again, missing in action.
He is not around at all.
Not at all.
Everyone working at city hall, every department head required to be in their offices to conduct their business, every lower echelon employee absolutely required to do their days work for their days pay and the mayor’s hired hands like his chief of staff, and Eric Demas, his flack Tom Philbin and his chief of Staff – they all come into their offices everyday but the mayor isn’t there.
What, I wonder, do they think at this point about his constant absence from his of ce and from city hall almost entirely?
Do they think its OK?
Of course not.
They are likely horrified by his absence although they probably come to enjoy it because if the boss isn’t there, you don’t have to listen to him or carry out his orders during the day.
On the other hand, the mayor’s absence from city hall is something felt by every city employee working inside the building.
They know the mayor is not there, that he is not working, that he has no interest in being in his office, that he feels, quite frankly, that he is just above it all, better than everyone else and not needing to play lip service to something he doesn’t want to do – which is to do what he was elected for – to be the commanding presence at city hall everyday and around the city for the people of Everett who elected him.
There are few, if any, statutory requirements demanding that the mayor be in his office, that he return phone calls, that he meet with constituents, that he be at city hall meetings to discuss new tax bills going through the roof and on and on and on.
There must be some law against the mayor taking what is the equivalent of three months vacation time or more.
Bottom line, his absence from his job is extraordinary even by modern standards.
The mayor is missing in action.
He doesn’t want to be around.
We are left to wonder…why such a lack of interest in the people, in city employees, in homeowners and property owners? What is up with the mayor?
Is he drifting out of office slowly but surely?
Is his a disappearing act?
Yet it is – and we don’t know why.