A firmer hand on the House

IT'S BEEN a bad patch for Speaker Sal DiMasi and the House he leads.

Even some DiMasi admirers were left shaking their heads last week at the black eye Eugene O'Flaherty, House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, gave the body by pushing to weaken drunken driving legislation -- then jetting off with several other DiMasi leadership lieutenants and reps on a 10-day vacation during what was supposed to be a working period.

But in an interview yesterday, DiMasi shrugged off most concerns. The Speaker said that O'Flaherty retains his confidence as a ''competent," ''knowledgeable" chairman. As for the vacationing members of his leadership team, DiMasi made it clear he's not contemplating disciplinary action. ''I don't want to mete out any punishment," he said. ''I'm not their parents."

The furthest DiMasi would go was to say: ''I have to pay closer attention to the fact that when I have given these people the authority, they had better fulfill their obligation by doing the work. If they're not going to do the work . . . then I may have to take action later on."

Here's what a real reformer could do to put things right.

Step one: Give Gene-O the heave-ho. That is, tell O'Flaherty that the Speaker wants his resignation as a chairman -- and make it clear that if O'Flaherty won't go quietly, he'll move to strip him of that important post.

O'Flaherty has given ample demonstration that he isn't leadership material. Rather, he's a hothead whose intimidating manner and penchant for the legislative equivalent of road rage are widely known on Beacon Hill.

Step two: Make clear that the next time a member of leadership indulges in a long vacation during key working weeks, he or she will face a similar fate.

Step three: Lean harder into the job himself. After years as a consummate quip-and-grip insider, DiMasi doesn't seem to realize that he now occupies a job with statewide visibility. An end to extraneous travel would help. So would a more active House schedule.

Step four: Fix the drunken driving bill.

Governor Romney intends to send the measure back to the Legislature with amendments. DiMasi should publicly promise that the House will deliver a stronger bill -- and then follow through. One particular issue is the elimination of a provision that would let prosecutors use certified copies of court documents to establish that a person had previously been convicted of drunken driving.

Senator Steven Baddour of Methuen, a member of the conference committee, says House conferees insisted on jettisoning that measure. ''If we had not given up on that, we would not have a bill today," says Baddour, who favored the provision.

But absent that provision, it will be much harder to crack down on repeat offenders, legal experts say. (Certainly DiMasi, who made representing accused drunk drivers one of his specialties during his days as an active defense attorney, understands as much.)

''You could have been arrested in a different state or in a different part of the state," says Attorney General Thomas Reilly. ''There is no way the prosecution can always have a police officer there to say, 'That is the same person I arrested.' It really is absurd."

Certified copies of court records, which suffice as evidence of suspended licenses and of probation violations, should also be allowed to stand as evidence of prior drunken driving convictions, Reilly says.

That's not just a prosecutorial viewpoint. ''We are not talking about newspaper clippings, we are talking about certified court records," says attorney Harvey Silverglate, a civil libertarian. Silverglate, a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, says court records should be treated as presumptive evidence, meaning that they would be assumed to be correct, provided the defense has an opportunity to challenge them.

Yesterday DiMasi insisted that the House had merely been trying to honor a previous Supreme Judicial Court ruling in nixing that provision. Noting that the SJC has been asked for an advisory opinion, he said: ''If the court came back tomorrow and said this is constitutional, it will pass the next day. I guarantee it."

Well, that's a start, anyway. Still, even if one takes DiMasi at face value, his position is overly cautious.

Asked on Friday about House fears that the certified records provision would face a court challenge, Reilly had this to say: ''That's a no-brainer. They can challenge it in court -- and I will defend it."

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.