Governor Deval Patrick names ex-GOP official Stephen Crosby as head of gambling commission

By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff

Governor Deval Patrick has appointed Stephen P. Crosby, a former top official for two Republican governors, as the chairman of the powerful new Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

Crosby, 66, who currently serves as dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, served as the state’s top budget official under Governor Paul Cellucci and as chief of staff under acting Governor Jane Swift.

The appointment will likely be one of the most important of Patrick’s term. The five-member commission will decide many crucial regulations governing the state’s new casino industry and just as significantly will decide which developers get licenses to participate in the multi-billion-dollar industry.

The commission, more than any other body, will determine whether the industry is free of the corruption that has bedeviled other states that have legalized casino gambling. The lack of a quality commission in Pennsylvania led to cronyism, patronage, back-room deals, overlooked criminal histories, and alleged mob ties, according to a grand jury report released there earlier this year.

“Steve Crosby possesses the integrity and strong management skills we need to lead the new Gaming Commission,” said Governor Patrick in a press release. “I trust Steve to build an organization that meets the public’s high expectations and my own for integrity and professionalism.”

Crosby, who will earn $150,000 a year and is expected to work full time, does not need to be confirmed by the Legislature or the Governor’s Council because lawmakers who wrote the law wanted to ensure maximum independence for the board. His appointment was for a seven-year term, but he said today he has only committed to serving two years before returning to UMass Boston.

Crosby’s political credentials are rooted in the once dominant liberal Republican establishment that lost power to conservatives in the 1980s. He also has Democratic ties, serving as Boston Mayor Kevin White’s 1979 campaign manager and as a co-chair of the Patrick-Murray Administration’s budget and finance transition team in 2006. He is now unaffiliated, according to the governor’s office.

In March of 2009, Patrick chose Crosby to lead a review studying compensation of top managers at the state’s quasi-public agencies and in 2010, Crosby was picked by the Supreme Judicial Court to serve on a task force to review hiring practices in the patronage-plagued probation department.

“It will be up to me and the Commission to assure both the public and the participants in the gaming industry that the process for developing expanded gaming in Massachusetts is honest, transparent and fair,” said Crosby. “The Commonwealth and its residents have much to gain, most particularly in the creation of jobs.”

Attorney General Martha Coakley and state Treasurer Steve Grossman will appoint one member each to the new commission by mid-March, as is required by law. The board’s final two members will be appointed jointly by Patrick, Grossman and Coakley. The four associate members of the board will earn $112,500 each, and are also expected to serve full-time.

Patrick signed a law last month allowing up to three full casinos and one slot machine parlor.

The law gives the newly created board broad authority, including the responsibility to decide whether to raise license fees for the three casinos above a $85 million minimum and to set the percentage slot machines must pay out to gamblers.

The commission will be in charge of setting up and hiring employees for an entirely new state bureaucracy, which will have power to investigate casinos and their employees and to examine casino companies’ financial reporting.

The board can also help Patrick, if he requests it, to negotiate an agreement with the Mashpee Wampanoag, which is given a preference under the law to open a casino in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Coakley and Grossman are accepting applications online for their appointments to the board. And the state has hired a search firm -- at a cost of $56,250 paid from casino fees -- to help select the final two members of the board. Patrick did not hold an open application process to select the chairman, instead relying on his staff to identify candidates.