A friend, indeed
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There was never any doubt that being a friend of House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi is a good thing, but now we know just how good it really is.
An investigation by Inspector General Gregory Sullivan has found that three close friends of DiMasi's were paid a total of $1.8 million by
The three men - Steven J. Topazio, Richard D. Vitale, and Richard W. McDonough - have been close to the speaker for years. Though lobbyists are required by law to report the payments they receive, these three either had not reported their windfalls or had reported amounts far less than Sullivan uncovered.
All involved have denied everything. DiMasi has said he had nothing to do with the contracts that Cognos received from the state. McDonough, in a statement to the Globe last week, said he had complied with all requirements. Topazio said he could barely find the State House, and that he was paid for legal work, not lobbying - which was contradicted by Sullivan's findings. Vitale, who collected $600,000 over two years, has said he is a "strategist," not a lobbyist. Apparently, a strategist is a lobbyist with a better hourly rate.
McDonough and Vitale just happened to receive $700,000 from a sales agent for Cognos on the very day that the state paid $13 million on the contract. But, of course, all was above board, and Vitale does not lobby.
Sullivan's investigation was instigated by stories in the Globe last summer about the relationship the lobbyists enjoy with the speaker. This is how close: Topazio shared office space with DiMasi. Vitale gave him a third $250,000 mortgage on his house, repaid after the Globe wrote about it. If Vitale is in fact a lobbyist, which is how Sullivan describes him, that loan would be a clear violation of state ethics laws.
Two years ago, Deval Patrick ran for governor declaring that he would clean up the mess on Beacon Hill. How's that working out? A spokesman for the governor said the administration could not have known about the payments to DiMasi's friends, which sounds reasonable. But just because they didn't know how much DiMasi's friends were getting paid doesn't mean the lobbying wasn't successful. Sullivan's findings suggest that the three men weren't shy about letting bureaucrats know of their ties to DiMasi.
It is important to stress that nothing has surfaced to indicate any wrongdoing on DiMasi's part. But his lack of curiosity about the State House activities of his buddies is troubling, to say the least.
Friends are a hazard in jobs like his. Not long after Thomas Birmingham became Senate president, one of his predecessors gave him a piece of advice. "Keep the friends you have," he counseled. "But don't make any new friends."
Trouble is, old friends can be a problem, too.
Sullivan can't be a popular man in the State House, where looking into the activities of one's colleagues is considered very poor form. But he appears to have dug deeply, and has declared that he intends to keep going.
As for DiMasi, last year at this time he was the most powerful person in the State House. It's unlikely that anyone would describe him that way now, because a steady drumbeat of bad news has kept him constantly on the defensive. Now, both the governor and the Senate president are ascendant, while DiMasi has to deal with underlings jockeying to succeed him.
And as always, we are the real losers in a political process so geared to money and access. The Cognos affair is a window into the way Beacon Hill works, and it is predictably ugly. Sullivan's work may be just beginning.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
