Reilly's openness stands out
THE AVERAGE GUY in a field of well-heeled and well-housed gubernatorial candidates, Tom Reilly is sitting at the dining room table in the modest apartment he calls home, making a point about financial disclosure.
If you want to be governor, he says, you should release your income tax returns.
''It's time for high standards and openness," he declares. ''Governor is a damn important job."
Reilly is exactly right. Indeed, such disclosure used to be pretty much standard practice in Massachusetts gubernatorial campaigns. Then, in 2002, Mitt Romney broke with tradition by refusing to release his tax returns.
This year, with the exception of Reilly, every declared or possible gubernatorial candidate is declining to make public any tax returns, even though three of them -- Republican Kerry Healey, independent candidate Christy Mihos, and Democrat Chris Gabrieli, considered likely to jump in next week -- will likely be spending millions of their own money on their campaigns.
Deval Patrick, now Reilly's principal rival for the Democratic nomination, has seeded his effort with $300,000 and holds out the possibility of adding more.
''It is even more important in cases of someone from the private sector, self-financing their campaign," the attorney general declares. ''Where is the money really coming from? Are there any conflicts? These are things that people would want to know about a person before they vote."
Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, seconds Reilly's notion. ''It has been the norm for the gubernatorial candidates," says Wilmot. ''It is above and beyond the law, but it certainly would give them brownie points for the good government cause."
Democratic State Committee Chairman Phil Johnston is more adamant. ''If you run for public office, you should make public your source of income," he declares. ''I just think it is that fundamental. I think it should be statutory, frankly."
But Healey, who pitches her campaign as a force for responsive, accountable government, has declined.
''It didn't matter in 2002," says campaign manager Tim O'Brien. ''Voters chose Mitt Romney by a pretty wide margin."
Mihos, who styles himself an intrepid populist truth-teller, dismisses the issue as ''a distraction."
Patrick, who claims he's no ordinary leader, sounds pretty much like politics as usual here.
''My wife and I made a judgment about where to draw the line and this is where we have drawn the line," he says.
He also calls releasing his tax returns redundant given that candidates already must file financial disclosure statements with the State Ethics Commission. The other camps or candidates echo that assertion.
Actually, however, the snapshot required on those forms is so vague that you can't tell, for example, if someone owns $1,500 of a stock or $15 million worth.
Further, as Reilly notes, when it comes to making public one's income tax returns, ''the president does, the vice president does. So it is not an extraordinary thing."
Certainly by the standards of the other candidates, Reilly and his wife, Ruth, who as a couple claimed $162,234 in total income for 2004, are living pretty modestly.
On Wednesday, Reilly gave me a tour of the second-floor Watertown apartment where they have resided since 1990, save for a year renting in West Roxbury awaiting repairs after a September 2003 fire that claimed all their possessions except for some photographs.
The $1,200-a-month rental offers some insights into Reilly's values. With two bedrooms, plus an office that has sometimes been pressed into service as a third, an average-size living room, a small dining room, and a smaller kitchen, it can't have been a spacious place for the Reillys to raise their three daughters.
Still, the AG insists that it's all his family ever needed in a domicile. (The Reillys also have a small vacation home in Chatham, which his wife inherited.)
Reilly says he considered purchasing the house next door, where his family rented up until 1990. He didn't because he had agreed to serve (for free) as executor for the owner, and thought it would look unseemly to buy the dwelling under those circumstances.
And so, loving the quiet, close-to-the-schools neighborhood where they have lived since 1970, he and Ruth have been content to rent, he said.
''We are happy here," he says. ''I don't need any more than this."
That's Tom Reilly: a lone stoic in the gubernatorial field.
And, on this important issue of public disclosure, the only forthcoming candidate among them.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. 
