Menino steps out of his own inner circle

Showing up at a spaghetti and meatball luncheon at Florian Hall in Dorchester yesterday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino cracked jokes about his golden years and sang into a microphone. "You make me feel so young."

One day after Menino named the city's new police commissioner, the eighth major appointment since he promised last year to infuse his administration with energy and fresh ideas, it appeared the mayor was the one infused. Famously mistrustful of those outside his inner circle, Menino had for several years recruited from within or allowed positions to remain vacant. But now he has hired chiefs for the city's most powerful agencies, police, public works, and schools. All are from cities other than Boston. All are known as independent thinkers, willing to do battle with bosses who get in the way.

Now, some say, a test for Menino is whether the hands-on mayor is able to keep his hands off and let the appointees carry out new ideas.

"These are people with very substantial accomplishments," said Paul Grogan, head of The Boston Foundation and a sometime critic of the administration. "The right course with them is to delegate to them. I'm hopeful that will be the case."

Menino is one of the most popular mayor s in city history, but during his reelection effort last fall, there were fears that after three terms in office, Menino and his administration were in danger of stagnating; familiar faces had been shuffled from department to department.

Michael Kineavy, field director for Menino's 1993 campaign, ran the city's Employee Assistance Program, the Department of Neighborhood Services, and then became the mayor's chief of policy and planning. Merita Hopkins, corporation counsel since 1995, became the mayor's chief of staff. Nancy Lo, a policy adviser in the mid-1990s, became chairwoman of the Elections Commission and is now working in the Inspectional Services Department.

"Clearly, in the early days he had a cadre of people who had government experience who he had faith in, who could help take the city through the initial years," said Howard Liebowitz, who was the mayor's press secretary in 1993 and left his post as the mayor's director of intergovernmental relations last year.

Some insiders gave a more colorful description. "The mayor was Bosley and they were like Charlie's Angels, doing his bidding," one longtime city official said on condition of anonymity.

But after winning re election in a landslide last year, the mayor promised to recruit a new roster of professionals for the administration. He convened search committees with members from the public and private sectors.

In March, he picked William Oates, the chief information officer from Starwood Hotels and Resorts to spearhead the city's information technology initiatives. During the summer, he recruited Dennis Royer, deputy manager for operations of public works in Denver, to be his chief of transportation and public works, and he tapped a Navy commander and Iraq war veteran from Rhode Island, Roderick Fraser, to be the city's fire commissioner. It was the first time since 1968 that position was filled by an outsider. Some 39 applicants vied for the post.

"When in the city's history has anyone ever advertised for a fire commissioner ?" Menino said yesterday.

By the fall, Menino had a new corporation counsel, former assistant US attorney William F. Sinnott, and chief of staff, Judith Kurland, former regional director for the US Department of Health and Human Services. After a national search, the mayor named a schools superintendent, Manuel J. Rivera, 2006 national superintendent of the year, from Rochester, N.Y. This week, the mayor announced that Edward F. Davis, police superintendent in Lowell, will take over as Boston's police commissioner in December.

His hiring criteria emphasized innovation as well as experience, Menino said. The mayor said that if applicants proposed the same old methods -- for cleaning streets and filling potholes, for example -- he didn't hire them. "I wasn't looking for guys who were satisfied with the status quo," he said. "There's new ways of doing things, I know there are."

Some innovations are already apparent. Oates is instituting a computer tracking program that will allow callers to the mayor's 24-hour hot line to check the status of their complaints and watch as they traverse the city's bureaucracy.

The new lineup has so far garnered rave reviews.

"A lot of people were wondering whether the mayor had run out of gas and whether this term would be lackluster," said Grogan of The Boston Foundation. "I'm impressed with the roster of appointments, and I think it speaks very well of the mayor. I think we can be heartened we're going to have an energetic administration."

Some have speculated that Menino, in his fourth term, is thinking about his legacy. The mayor expressed it in different terms. He said he's never been as excited about the job and hinted at a fifth term.

"Who knows?" he said after the spaghetti luncheon. "I want to have the option. I want the people of Boston to say to me, 'Mayor, I want you to stay."'

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.