Downtown

A small world

Email|Print| Text size – + By Steve Bailey

Globe Columnist / July 14, 2006

`It will be safe," Mitt Romney said just after the roof fell in.

The roof in question was not a Massachusetts Turnpike tunnel in Boston this week, but one under construction over an speed-skating rink at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2000. Mitt Romney was not governor of Massachusetts, but chief executive of the Olympic Games. The man, in short, has been here before.

The cause of the roof collapse at the Olympics: faulty anchor bolts, the prime suspect in the collapse of the roof in the turnpike tunnel that claimed the life of Milena Del Valle. The man charged with investigating that collapse for Romney six years ago: Grant Thomas, a veteran Bechtel executive who Romney put in charge of the Olympic construction.

It's a small world. Three construction workers were injured after the collapse of one of 12 suspension bridge-type cables that held up the 295-foot-wide roof. A two-month investigation blamed the accident on anchor bolts that sheared where the cable hooks into ground-level foundations. Several contractors were left to pick up the tab; Bechtel, which oversaw the construction, was not held responsible.

Though ``an error was clearly made," Romney said then, the Olympic organizers were not interested in assessing blame. Rather, he said, the priority was completing construction on time for the Olympics.

This time, a mother of three is dead, and there will be no avoiding the blame game. And, this time, Romney won't be turning to a former Bechtel executive to assess that blame.

. . .

Neighborhood news: Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell thinks Boston needs the competition of a two-newspaper town -- as I do. But he is none too anxious to compete for talent. As part of his deal to sell his suburban papers to GateHouse Media Inc. this year, Purcell and GateHouse agreed not to solicit each other's employees for two years. The agreement came to light this week in a memo to management from GateHouse executive Kirk Davis: ``To be clear, do not solicit any employees of Herald Media during the two-year period and alert me if you become aware of a GateHouse Media employee that has been solicited or hired by Herald Media." Davis didn't return my call; Purcell termed the agreement standard.

Doug Foy, who departed as secretary of the Office of Commonwealth Development three months ago, has joined the consulting world -- and it pays considerably better. Foy's consulting firm, DIF Enterprises, is designed to ``promote our common wealth, reinforce the vitality of our cities and protect the environmental integrity of the earth." Foy's rate: up to $10,000 a day.

Attention shoppers: Time is running out for the Legislature to approve a tax-free shopping weekend. The third annual sales tax holiday, scheduled for Aug. 12-13, was included in the Senate version of the budget, but died in conference committee. Senator Jack Hart, a South Boston Democrat, is trying to rush a bill through the Legislature, but retailers say it will have to happen soon. Hart notes that shoppers would yawn at a 5 percent sale at Home Depot, but somehow love these tax holidays. ``When people think they are going to beat the government, they are energized," he says.

Will there be peace at the state's Appellate Tax Board? Romney this week named Thomas Hammond, a lawyer at the Revenue Department, as chairman of the board, a little-understood agency that wields tremendous power in its decisions on tax policies. Hammond would replace Anne Foley, another Romney appointee who stepped aside when two tax lawyers charged she had inappropriately solicited their support for her renomination. Another board member, Donald Gorton, also filed an ethics complaint against her. Romney nominated Thomas Mulhern, a Needham appraiser, to replace Gorton, who this week appealed to the Governor's Council to keep his job. Neither Foley nor Gorton returned calls.

Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.