Board’s change a rebuff to Patrick
State finance panel replaces chairman
In a slap at Governor Deval Patrick, a state finance authority board has moved to replace its chairman, who helped engineer the governor’s politically clumsy attempt to award a political supporter a $175,000-a-year job.
The board of the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority, which provides government financing for nonprofits’ capital projects, denied Allen R. Larson a second term as chairman this week and instead chose Christine C. Schuster, an appointee of Governor Mitt Romney.
A subcommittee of the board voted, 3 to 1, not to reappoint Larson last week, and the full board concurred, 8 to 0, in a vote Thursday. The day before the full board’s vote - when it was clear Larson could not count on Patrick appointees on the board for support - he withdrew his bid for another term as chairman. He remains a member of the board.
Marvin A. Gordon, a Republican appointee who served on the nominating panel, said Larson’s involvement in helping Patrick try to place state Senator Marian Walsh in an agency job was partly the reason. He said his colleagues on the board felt that Larson had concealed from them the governor’s maneuvering to put Walsh in the job.
Larson had also been Patrick’s point man on the board for the governor’s contentious proposal to merge the agency with another state entity.
“It was determined by the nominating committee that a change was in order,’’ Gordon said. “There was a lot of unhappiness among the Patrick appointees that the board had been blindsided by the Walsh and merger fiasco.’’
Larson insisted that it was his decision to step aside because he could not give the time needed to carry out his duties as chairman. He said he had not been told of the subcommittee’s decision not to seek his reappointment.
“It had nothing to do with the Marian Walsh issue,’’ he said. “That’s an illogical and irrational story.’’
The change in chairman does not necessarily mean big changes in how the agency operates, but it represents a public rebuff to Patrick by members of a board he appointed, and it revives the controversy over the Walsh appointment earlier this year that damaged the governor’s standing with voters.
Patrick’s staff insisted that the board, while electing a new chairman, had also adopted some major reforms that the governor has proposed.
But board members, including Schuster, said the directors had merely agreed to consider the plans and did not adopt them. In a carefully worded statement yesterday, Schuster, while praising Larson for his work as chairman, said that the board voted unanimously to explore some of the changes Patrick sought at the agency.
Patrick’s move to hire Walsh, a veteran West Roxbury lawmaker and an early political supporter, was slammed by critics as a patronage move by the governor who campaigned as a reformer eager to change the culture on Beacon Hill.
Walsh was forced to withdraw from the job last April after the Globe, using internal administration e-mails obtained under public records law, showed that Patrick’s top staff had been directing Larson on Walsh’s hiring, including providing her job description, setting her salary, and handling the media strategy. Many on the board bristled at Patrick’s heavy-handed maneuver.
Larson also helped push Patrick’s plan for a proposed merger with the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, which helps foster business development in the state. The Health and Educational Facilities Authority board did not agree to the governor’s demands that it join the larger agency by July 1.
Patrick had contended that the authorities had duplicate efforts that cost taxpayers “millions of dollars,’’ and he warned the authority that he would intervene again if it did not implement the changes he was looking for. “If they don’t, we will be right back at it, inserting a change agent in there,’’ Patrick said several days after Walsh withdrew.
But the board, with a majority expressing opposition to the plan, instead set up an advisory committee to study a proposed merger and report back in September.
Meanwhile, the administration has softened its demands that the two agencies join forces.
Larson, who had been appointed to the authority’s board by a Republican governor, had become an ally of Patrick after his wife, Gloria Larson, president of Bentley College and a onetime Cabinet secretary in GOP administrations, endorsed Patrick in his 2006 campaign. 