Flaherty to admit erring on meetings

Mayoral candidate vows transparency

City Councilor Michael F. Flaherty Jr., who launched his Boston mayoral campaign this week, plans to accept responsibility in a speech tonight for the City Council's violations of the open-meeting law while he was its president.

It will be the first time Flaherty has acknowledged that the council improperly conducted the public's business behind closed doors when he led the body from 2004 to 2006, an issue that became the subject of a lawsuit that the city eventually settled.

The acknowledgement appears intended to inoculate Flaherty from criticism over his own record as he accuses Mayor Thomas M. Menino's administration of lacking transparency on development and budgeting issues.

"At the time, I thought I was acting appropriately," Flaherty said yesterday in a telephone interview. "The courts decided things should have been handled differently. Lesson learned.

"My administration will be about transparency, accountability, and taking responsibility."

South End business owner Kevin McCrea - who recently announced his own mayoral candidacy and who filed the lawsuit - said Flaherty's acknowledgement will be too little, too late.

"He has spent almost $200,000 of taxpayer money fighting transparency, fighting for the right to have back-room deals," McCrea said in a telephone interview. "It wasn't until two days after he announces he's running for mayor that he decided transparency is a good idea."

McCrea said the city spent more than $100,000 on outside lawyers fighting his suit, according to billing documents he has obtained. With the hours spent by the city's corporation counsel, McCrea has added an additional $100,000 to his estimate, even though the corporation counsel and aides are salaried city workers. City officials could not confirm yesterday how much had been spent on the case.

McCrea has used his website to challenge Flaherty to appear at a Feb. 24 court hearing at which McCrea is set to seek an order imposing strict transparency rules on the council.

McCrea and two neighborhood activists filed the lawsuit against Flaherty and the City Council in May 2005, alleging that councilors met twice without informing the public: with officials from the Boston Redevelopment Authority about the city's urban renewal program, and with Boston University officials following an incident in which researchers were accidentally exposed to the bacteria that causes tularemia.

Flaherty initially dismissed the complaint, calling it a politically motivated attack by a council candidate during an election year. But a Superior Court judge ruled the council violated the open meeting law on 11 occasions between June 2003 and April 2005. The decision was upheld in part by the state Appeals Court in May last year. The city's lawyers ended their appeals in September and acknowledged violating the open meeting law.

Despite the episode, Flaherty has said openness and accountability will be central themes in his campaign as he attempts to unseat Menino, who, if he decides to run this year, would be seeking a fifth term. Flaherty plans to tell the Rotary Club of Boston tonight that he learned from the lawsuit and ruling.

"As you know, the Boston City Council has not been immune from issues surrounding transparency," Flaherty plans to say, according to a draft of his remarks. "Lawsuits were filed against the council for violating the state's open meeting law. I have accepted the ruling and I have learned from it. And it's a learning experience that I will bring to my mayoral administration, where no meeting on my watch will violate the law or the people's trust."

One of Flaherty's key proposals revolves around the flow of public information. He wants Boston to begin using Citistat, a budget tracking system used by other big cities that monitors spending and efficiency of city services. Flaherty points to the system, which the Menino administration says is unnecessary, as a way to bring more scrutiny to the budget process. In announcing his campaign, Flaherty declared he wanted to bring openness to a city government that is "run behind closed doors and has shut out the public."

In the speech, he plans to blame a lack of transparency in government for ethical problems that have resulted in the arrest of a city councilor on bribery charges, and scrutiny of the Boston Licensing Board. He says the City Council should provide a more robust check on the mayor's office.

Two-term Councilor Sam Yoon is expected to announce soon whether he will enter the mayor's race.

John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.