Grown-up on duty

Bill Galvin may be known as the Prince of Darkness around the State House, but the man has a way with words. Take the special election a week from Tuesday for the late Jimmy Kelly's seat on the Boston City Council. This will be his first test since he took over the city's Election Department after its deplorable performance in November.

"I'd prefer the Baghdad board of elections," he says, "but I have no choice."

That's the thing about Galvin. His face was not rigged for laughter -- it appears to be a physical impossibility -- but he is droll and endowed with deadpan delivery.

He pauses and looks up at the portrait of Frederic Cook, one of his predecessors: "I don't think Fred in his wildest nightmare ever thought of taking over the Boston Election Department."

Galvin, like Cook before him, is the secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts -- secretary of state to all of us great unwashed. No one I know will challenge the proposition that Galvin is a very bright bulb and knows more about our state government than anyone else on Beacon Hill. One insider calls him "Salvucci smart" in reference to Fred Salvucci, godfather of the Big Dig, who is as hopeless at public relations as he is cerebral.

Twelve years in office, Galvin is one of those rare birds who actually knows what he's talking about. You may not want to share a ride with him to the Berkshires, but you know there's a grown-up on duty.

Sometimes he simply states the obvious. Take the Boston Redevelopment Authority : "The BRA is an advocate for developers and institutions. It is not an advocate for neighborhoods."

Elections are only a small part of his job. He also oversees all risk investments and those who sell them -- the securities business -- and the regulation of corporations. He picked up responsibility for many registries of deeds across the state after much of county government disappeared. He controls the Massachusetts Historical Commission in his capacity as its chairman ex officio. It goes on and on.

The commission is a honey. If it finds that a developer's plans would have an adverse impact on a historical asset, and no mitigation agreement is reached, Galvin can deny a sewer hookup. As in the toilets won't flush.

That's a rather powerful weapon, I offer. "We think so," he replies in a moment of some understatement.

He's astringent about Harvard and his alma mater, Boston College.

"They all have this sense of manifest destiny," he says about the perceived right of universities to expand.

There has been talk regarding Harvard's move into Allston of a tunnel below or a bridge above the Charles River so that, in his words, "Harvard students won't get lost finding the new campus."

But the Charles, he says, is a historic asset, and if the commission rules such plans would have an adverse effect on the river, remember the toilets.

Back to April 17. Busy day. It's not only the special election for Jimmy Kelly's seat. Galvin's also riding herd on a primary in the 11th Norfolk district for state rep and a special election in the Worcester 14th. It's the filing deadline for the pack out for former Senate president Robert Travaglini's seat. A number of towns have elections then, too.

Local elections are far more likely to be fraught with problems than statewide ones, he says.

Some years ago, he drove to a polling site for a local race in Lawrence after receiving complaints that Hispanic voters had been locked out of the place. Sure enough, there was a lock on the door. He was told it was locked for safety.

"That was a joke," he says. "They wanted to keep out Hispanic voters."

Galvin was also unamused by the sale by the Catholic Church in 2003 of 10 acres in Hudson for $600,000. The buyer then sold it the next day for something approaching $1 million more. He confronted Bishop Richard Lennon with proof and said, rather directly, that the church was either astonishingly naïve or complicit in a scheme. Lennon in turn was unamused.

Galvin enjoys his share of dust-ups. Color him feisty. Last week he locked horns with a privacy advocate from Virginia who said personal information on Galvin's website like Social Security numbers was vulnerable to predators. She demanded that he shut it down immediately. This happened mere weeks after he had criticized Governor Deval Patrick's political website for improperly including the street addresses of people.

Galvin stoutly defends his decision to keep the website as is until a software patch correcting the problem is ready "in a matter of days or weeks."

He also disputes the idea he was hoisted by his own petard after criticizing the Patrick website. The Patrick information was involuntary, he argues, where the data on his website were entered by people knowing they were filing a public document required by state law.

Still, there's something delicious about the whole thing. And, like Dr. Strangelove, he can't resist his impulses.

"She's out for her 15 minutes of fame," he says about the woman, "and she's already had 14 and a half."

Sam Allis's e-mail address is allis@globe.com.