White House dismisses marshal for work habits
Mass. official found absent from office
Anthony Dichio, the politically connected US marshal for Massachusetts since 2002, has been dismissed by the White House, after the Justice Department's inspector general recommended that he be disciplined for repeatedly failing to work full work weeks and for misusing his official vehicle.
Dichio, 45, cleaned out his office yesterday morning at the federal courthouse in Boston. In a statement released yesterday afternoon, he said:
''I respect the president's decision, and thank him for giving me the opportunity to have served as US marshal."
Dichio received word that he had been removed from the $130,300-a-year job in a telephone call late Friday afternoon from the White House office of legal counsel, according to an associate of Dichio who is familiar with the White House call.
A Justice Department spokesman confirmed yesterday that Dichio ''is no longer US marshal," but declined to comment further.
Dichio was dismissed 10 months after The Boston Globe published a story citing the observations of two reporters that Dichio was often not at his office. That article prompted the Marshals Service to request an investigation by the office of the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine.
Fine's report was completed in March, but was not released until Wednesday, in response to a request by the Globe under the Freedom of Information Act.
The 35-page report found that Dichio had violated federal law by not putting in a full 40-hour workweek, and by using his government vehicle for personal errands.
''We believe that Dichio's actions warrant discipline, including consideration of whether he should remain as US marshal," the report said.
In his statement yesterday, Dichio suggested he was the victim of the US Marshals Service's failure to set out clear guidelines on when marshals can take time off in compensation for extra hours worked on other occasions.
Dichio, confronted with evidence that he had put in four workweeks of less than 40 hours last September and October, told investigators from the inspector general's office that he had taken time off in those weeks to make up for long hours he worked during the Democratic National Convention in late July in Boston.
Dichio's removal began the process for finding his replacement. While the president nominates US marshals, and the Senate confirms them, traditionally a state's highest-ranking elected official of the president's political party has influence on the pick.
In Dichio's case, he was nominated by President Bush; his sponsor was former governor Paul Cellucci, a fellow Republican. Dichio spent several years at Cellucci's side as part of the State Police detail assigned to drive the governor to appointments and to provide security. Dichio accompanied Cellucci overseas several times.
Cellucci, who left as governor in 2001 and became ambassador to Canada, did not respond to calls to his office at
Dichio was named over objections from both of the state's US senators and from nine of its 10 House members.
Critics said he lacked the antiterrorism and management experience for the job. The Marshals Service in Massachusetts includes a staff of about 120 responsible for securing courthouses; protecting federal judges, juries, witnesses, and other court officials; and capturing fugitives and transporting prisoners.
Neither Senator Edward M. Kennedy nor Senator John F. Kerry could be reached yesterday.
Governor Mitt Romney, who said on Friday that officials who do not carry out their duties should be held accountable, said through a spokesman yesterday that his office has not given any consideration to a new marshal. As the current highest-ranking Republican elected official, he presumably will have a key role in choosing Dichio's successor.
For the time being, the Marshals Service is under the direction of Chief Deputy William Fallon, a career manager, the Justice Department said. Fallon declined comment yesterday. Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman, referred calls to the Department of Justice.
As of Wednesday night, Dichio was fighting to save his job, saying in a statement released to the Globe that he was standing by his ''performance record," including a 51 percent increase in arrests of fugitives since he took office, ''significant improvements" in security of federal courthouses, and ''stronger relationships" with other law enforcement agencies.
In the statement released through a spokesman yesterday, Dichio said that a ''systemic" flaw in the US Marshals Service's compensatory time rules ''led to my being held to a higher standard than was expected of me by my superiors or by the current [employment] regulations."
''I hope that the Marshals Service will now act to clarify its comp time rules," Dichio said.
In its report, however, Fine's office in the Justice Department rejected that argument, saying there was no allowance for marshals to decide on their own to take time off for extra hours that had been worked months earlier.
''We rejected Dichio's use of 'comp time' because it was unreasonable and was not in accord with either policy or guidance Dichio told us he was provided," the report said. It also urged the Marshals Service to ''use this incident" to clarify ''that under federal regulations they are required to work a 40-hour workweek."
The report backed two Globe reporters who found that Dichio spent an average of only 4 hours, 22 minutes at his office in 10 days in late September and October.
Globe reporters watched Dichio leave his home in Westford, followed him to Boston, watched him leave the courthouse, and then followed him to Westford.
Dichio did, however, say that he had spent some time at home on the job, including 11 hours ''working out" in his home. The inspector general's office rejected that assertion. Dichio, the office said, was not eligible for, and never asked to be included in, a Marshals Service physical fitness program.
That program allows up to three hours a week of on-the-job workout time for employees who enroll after taking a physical.
The inspector general also rejected some claimed commuting time and calculated that in four weeks in September and October, Dichio worked 27 3/4 hours, 32 3/4 hours, 29 1/2 hours, and 35 1/4 hours. His payroll records indicated he worked a full 8-hour day every day during that period, except for the Columbus Day holiday and three vacation days.
Dichio confirmed to the inspector general's office the Globe's findings that he never left his neighborhood on two days.
On one day, Dichio was photographed by the Globe in the parking lot of a Westford store loading bags into his US Marshals-issued Ford Explorer.
Dichio told the inspector general's office that he had added entries to his desk calendar after the Globe published its report on him on Oct. 26.
These entries included ''two days on which he wrote '8-comp' to indicate that he took eight hours of compensatory time," the report says.
Sean Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com; Connie Paige at cpaige@globe.com. 
