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Menino, Flaherty joust in high-stakes debate

E-mail|Link|Comments () October 19, 2009 10:07 PM

Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff

Menino and Flaherty were many feet apart, but clashed numerous times.

By Michael Levenson and Donovan Slack, Globe Staff

Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty Jr., trailing in the polls and facing his last televised opportunity to confront his opponent, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, argued tonight that Menino’s City Hall favors politically connected insiders at the expense of everyday Bostonians.

But the four-term mayor, smiling genially and referring to Flaherty by his first name, shrugged off one attack after the next, citing a list of awards given to the city and a flurry of programs launched by his administration to bolster his argument that the city is already working on everything Flaherty proposes to tackle.

In a city renowned as a cradle for revolutionary ideas and innovation, both candidates stuck to mostly small-bore proposals — with Flaherty promising to pick up visiting chief executives at the airport and lamenting the lack of FiOS, while Menino touted a 15-year-old financial disclosure requirement for city department heads.

The two candidates tussled over education, crime, development, and the city’s handling of public records. But their differences were often expressed in the form of nitty-gritty policy disagreements that might have left some viewers scratching their heads, as they argued about ‘‘GIC’’ — the state Group Insurance Commission — and whether the city council should have approved property taxes on utility poles and other telecommunications equipment.

A rare moment of direct confrontation came when Flaherty asked Menino what letter grade he would assign to the Boston public schools, after reminding viewers that Menino asked voters in 1996 to ‘‘judge me harshly’’ on education. Menino gave himself a B, saying, ‘‘I’ll be generous,’’ while Flaherty, decrying the dropout rate and an achievement gap between minority students and their white counterparts, said, turning to Menino: ‘‘I’ll give you an F.’’

The debate played out before an audience of 200 gathered at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester just two weeks before the Nov. 3 election. The candidates both plan to appear at a MassVote forum on Oct. 27 at Faneuil Hall, but that event is not expected to be televised.

‘‘Folks, the next four years are going to be years of excitement, years of working with all of you to make this a better city when it comes to education, when it comes to a green economy and a safer city,’’ said Menino, 66, who was first elected mayor in 1993, after serving nine years on the City Council. ‘‘I ask all of you to work with me to make this a better city, not for some of our people, but for all of your people.’’

Flaherty, 40, who was first elected to the City Council in 1999, last night pledged to bring ‘‘new leadership, leadership that embraces new ideas, and leadership that collaborates with folks whether or not you agree or you disagree with their opinion.’’

‘‘For those who are at home who are undecided, I am asking you personally for your vote,’’ Flaherty said. ‘‘This is about the future of Boston. This is about your future. It’s your city and it’s your time.’’

In an exchange about development, Flaherty vowed to eliminate the city’s planning and development authority and create an agency responsible solely for planning. Currently, the Boston Redevelopment Authority is responsible for planning, development approval and job creation.

‘‘What we’re going to do is end the pay-to-play process,’’ Flaherty said, claiming that some developers get favorable treatment from Menino.

‘‘If you don’t hire the right person, if you’re not connected, you don’t get that permit, you don’t get that license,’’ Flaherty said at another point. ‘‘For me, it’s about embracing projects and policy on their merits, not about who walks in the door with what lawyer and what consultant.’’

Menino said the redevelopment authority has reduced average approval times for proposed developments from 18 months to eight months during his tenure.

‘‘That’s an impressive number,’’ Menino said.

The debate was the first to allow the candidates to directly question each other. Menino used his questions to recite a litany of city programs he is proud of — to combat foreclosures and homelessness, for example — and then ask Flaherty what he would do differently.

Menino deflected Flaherty’s criticism of under-performing schools by arguing that the city of Boston is not alone in confronting the problem. Fifty-percent of the schools in Massachusetts are considered in need of improvement, Menino said, including schools in Brookline, Weston and Wellesley — all relatively wealthy communities.

‘‘They all fit into the same category we fit into,’’ Menino said.

Asked by Flaherty to name his ‘‘biggest mistake,’’ as mayor, Menino cited his failure to persuade the Legislature to direct more money to Boston as the state’s capital city and economic engine.

‘‘I haven’t convinced them, and I haven’t convinced other folks, that we should get more funding out of the state than we do presently,’’ Menino said.

Flaherty argued that the mayor’s biggest mistake was to try to relocate City Hall to the South Boston waterfront ‘‘away from the city center.’’ He said his own biggest mistake was ‘‘that I didn’t run [for mayor] four years ago.’’

Menino, discussing a controversy over the deletion of e-mails from the computer of one of his top aides, did not directly answer a question about how important he believes the state public records law is, but said his administration has done the best it could to respond to public records requests.

’’We have more transparency in my administration than ever before,’’ he said.

But Flaherty said the issue now is not just the emails or their contents, but about Menino’s sidestepping responsibility for their deletion in potential violation of the law.

‘‘I think this is about the public trust and taking responsibility when things don’t go right,’’ Flaherty said.

The mayor shot back that neither he nor his administration had officially been charged with anything.

‘‘This is another political move a few weeks before an election,’’ he said.

Menino was clearly annoyed by the continued questions about the e-mails. The mayor suggested it was an issue the public did not care about, even though 68 percent of respondents in a Globe poll published Sunday said they have followed the issue somewhat or very closely.

‘‘Let’s talk about the issues that face the people of Boston this evening,’’ Menino said, voice rising. ‘‘Let’s talk about the housing issue, the crime issue — those are the issues that are important to people in the city. That’s what I want to talk about.’’

Flaherty, asked about his own record on public access to government, said he had apologized for a period when he was serving as City Council president and the council was meeting behind closed doors, an act that was found to have violated the state open meeting law 11 times.

‘‘Leadership is about accepting responsibility,’’ Flaherty said.

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com; Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.