Buckingham resigns at Massport

By Frank Phillips and Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 10/26/2001

Massachusetts Port Authority executive director Virginia Buckingham resigned
yesterday, six weeks after the terrorist hijackings of two planes from Logan
International Airport for the World Trade Center attacks put management of
Logan under unprecedented scrutiny.

Buckingham said she was resigning to give Acting Governor Jane Swift
flexibility to overhaul operations at Massport and Logan to respond to
heightened security needs.

''I feel the authority is back on course,'' Buckingham said, citing efforts
to shore up Logan's security and Massport's image in the last six weeks. ''I
also feel that this is the right time for me to move on.''

Buckingham will leave Nov. 15, and Massport aviation director Thomas Kinton
will take over the job temporarily.

''The fact that our airport was used in an unimaginable plot that killed
thousands of innocent people is something I will carry in my mind and heart
forever,'' she said.

Her decision to step down from the $150,000-a-year job was announced as
Swift faced increasing pressure to shake up management of the authority.
Though no evidence has surfaced that Massport was responsible for permitting
terrorists to board the two planes, the hijackings focused attention on
Massport's long history of political patronage and security breaches.

Buckingham had become increasingly isolated at Massport after the Sept. 11
attacks, and Swift had not spoken to her for weeks. Swift often equivocated
publicly when asked whether she had confidence in Buckingham's leadership,
though she had resisted early demands that she fire the executive director.

Swift said yesterday that Buckingham had ''conducted herself with
professionalism and dignity'' and insisted that she had not been pressured
to leave.

''This was her decision,'' Swift told reporters in Washington, where she is
attending a Republican Governors Association meeting.

Buckingham did not take questions at her press conference, which was held at
Massport offices at the airport, and she was not available for interviews.
Her aides insisted that she made the decision to resign herself, with no
nudging from Swift or the acting governor's senior staff.

They also said Buckingham's pregnancy played no role. Her second child is
due in April.

However, one senior Swift aide said the acting governor no longer believed
that Buckingham was the right person to lead Massport.

The terrorist attacks elevated the need for airport security experience, the
aide said. ''The world changed, and the kind of experience and the skills
they need to bring to the job have changed.''

Buckingham, who began her state government career at age 25 as a press aide
to Lieutenant Governor Paul Cellucci, rose to become Governor Willliam F.
Weld's press secretary and campaign manager and, later, Cellucci's chief of
staff.

Cellucci made her Massport director in 1999, after executive director Peter
Blute embarrassed the authority by taking a publicly funded, booze-soaked
cruise of Boston Harbor.

In making the appointment, Cellucci touted Buckingham's communications
skills, considered key to winning approval of the airport's planned runway
expansion, though critics called the appointment outrageous patronage.

Since Sept. 11, some Republicans on Beacon Hill and members of Swift's inner
circle have been privately pushing for Buckingham's ouster. In addition,
Swift's special Massport commission, headed by former State Street Bank
chief executive Marshall Carter, is expected to recommend overhauling the
executive director's job to require broad management and aviation
experience, which Buckingham lacks.

Carter, whose commission will make its recommendations public in early
December, praised Buckingham for her decision, but said his group had made
no evaluation of her performance.

''She made a difficult decision, and she has done the honorable thing,''
Carter said. ''In the corporate world, when there is a loss of confidence in
the CEO, most CEOs resign. She acted with dignity.''

Earlier this month, Swift demoted Massport security director Joseph Lawless,
a former state trooper who had been appointed by Weld. After the Sept. 11
attacks, Lawless, who once headed Weld's security detail at the State House,
came to symbolize Massport's reputation as a patronage haven.

Swift's statement that she did not push Buckingham out was greeted with
skepticism yesterday, especially among Democrats, who noted that Buckingham
testified at a legislative hearing this week that she and Swift had not
spoken in weeks.

State Senator Robert A. Havern III, an Arlington Democrat and cochairman of
the Transportation Committee, said he is convinced that Buckingham's
decision was personal.

But he said Swift was clearly sending a message to Buckingham by freezing
her out. ''If you were in the paper for six weeks, and your boss didn't call
you, how would you feel?'' Havern said.

Both Weld and Cellucci had lobbied Swift to allow Buckingham to keep her
job. Buckingham's allies had also mounted an effort to save her, suggesting
that only in Boston, with its famously rough-and-tumble political climate,
were people calling for firings after the terrorist attacks. But the effort
failed, and Buckingham at times seemed shaken in public as she confronted
the enormity of the crisis.

Weld said yesterday that he had just spoken to a relieved Buckingham.

''She sounded like someone who had just stopped rolling a tennis court and
had let go of a two-ton piece of equipment,'' Weld said. ''I think it was a
classy move.''

Cellucci, now the US ambassador to Canada, said in a statement: ''Massport
is losing a fine leader and an excellent manager. Never one to shy away from
tough assignments, Ginny took over Massport at a difficult time and advanced
a complicated agenda with great success.''

Glen Johnson of the Globe Staff contributed to this report from Washington.
Material from the Associated Press was also used.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 10/26/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

==========================================================

NEWS ANALYSIS
Business as usual won't work for running Massport

By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 10/26/2001

As Virginia Buckingham embraced the tearful, applauding co-workers who had
assembled to hear her resignation address yesterday, it was clear the
Massachusetts Port Authority was bidding farewell to the most significant
political casualty since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

But in a larger sense, the agency employees were also witnessing the end of
an era at Massport.

Before the smoke lifted in downtown Manhattan, it was apparent the public
would no longer tolerate the kind of political patronage that allowed
Buckingham to become executive director in the first place, regardless of
her well-regarded managerial skills.

The immediate future for Massport is easy enough to map: Buckingham will
remain in office until Nov. 15, when the agency's seasoned aviation
specialist, Thomas Kinton, will become interim executive director.

A new aviation security director should arrive by mid-December, and the work
of a task force appointed by Acting Governor Jane M. Swift to examine every
aspect of the agency's finances, properties, and personnel will also finish
around then.

But after that, ''all bets are off,'' as state Senator Robert A. Havern III,
who heads the Transportation Committee, said yesterday.

While the press has debated what sort of qualifications a Massport leader
should possess, no real public debate has taken place.

Some, like State Representative Joseph Sullivan, who heads the Legislature's
Transportation Committee, insisted yesterday that a successor must have
aviation and security experience.

''At this time, given everything that's happened, there needs to be someone
with a security/aviation background,'' Sullivan said. ''The importance of
Logan Airport from an economic point of view, ... means you have to get an
individual who can get the public feeling secure about flying again.''

That argument will no doubt sound persuasive to Swift, whose ability to get
elected next fall will certainly hinge, to some degree, on her handling of
the ongoing debacle in East Boston.

But there is hardly consensus on what skills Massport's next executive
director should bring.

Havern says the most important qualification is not aviation experience, but
management expertise, ''someone who can run a big business.''

Whomever Swift ultimately chooses, the agency the new leader inherits is
deeply troubled. Three separate crises rack the authority Buckingham will
leave behind, with no sign of letting up anytime soon.

Massport's finances are a wreck, a consequence of the attacks and the
ensuing drop in air travel. On top of that, the agency is suffering a morale
crisis, as 180 people have been laid off, and more cuts are likely. And
finally, the Swift-appointed task force could very well split the agency
into two or even three separate authorities, an uncertain situation that
could very well scare off the kind of dedicated, talented people needed to
sail Massport through its troubled waters.

That's one reason why there is no clear sense when Buckingham's successor
may be selected.

''It's obvious we're in for a very challenging time ahead of us,'' said
Chris Gordon, Massport's director of capital programs, which are soon to be
slashed by about 40 percent. ''I'm sure, with the capable staff we have
here, that Massport will make it through this.''

One possible Buckingham successor is Kinton. But his knowledge of Massport
and aviation may not trump his affiliations with the agency and he may not
offer the clean break Swift might desire for public effect.

Another candidate is Len Limmer, the former deputy executive director of
airport operations at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, one of the world's busiest.
Limmer is working as a consultant for Massport, but because he retired in
1998 after 26 years at the airport, no offer, no matter how lucrative, may
be enough to lure him back to the public sector.

Such are the decisions that will face Massport's board when they meet next
week to address ''transition issues,'' as chairman Mark Robinson said in a
statement yesterday.

The issues go to the heart of Massport's mission, as Buckingham acknowledged
yesterday: ''As a result of the events of Sept. 11, the business of running
an airport - the business of running Massport - will never be the same.''

=========================================================

CAREER
A PR-savvy politician chooses her moment to leave

By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff, 10/26/2001

Politics is in Virginia Buckingham's blood. During a meteoric rise to power,
she cut her teeth on image making, horse trading, vote counting, and
spinning. So when Governor Paul Cellucci made her Massport executive
director, he touted her communications skills. He wanted her to use her
political skills to burnish the image of the Massachusetts Port Authority.

And then came Sept. 11, and suddenly the skills that fueled her rise and
helped three governors to claim consecutive victories became a part of her
downfall. She was a political person when the public demanded a
professional.

And so Buckingham has suffered a political death. As she stood before a
microphone yesterday and issued a statement announcing her resignation, she
took no questions and offered no spin.

Robert A. Havern III, the state senator heading a committee exploring
security lapses at Logan Airport, offered an epitaph Tuesday: ''Those marks
on your back ... are clothespin marks, because you've been hung out to
dry.''

At 36, Buckingham knew the political world well enough to understand him.
She grew up in a household with a bust of John F. Kennedy in the living
room. As a Boston College student, she worked as an intern for Governor
Michael S. Dukakis.

But she came into her own in the Republican administrations of Governors
William Weld and Paul Cellucci.

She gained press savvy as an aide to Cellucci when he ran for lieutenant
governor in 1990, and then she moved over to handle media relations for
Weld's office. At 30, she ran Weld's failed campaign for the US Senate. She
was elevated to Weld's chief of staff and then, when he resigned in 1997,
did the same job for Cellucci.

''She spoke in that little girl voice at times, but when she lost her
temper, she had a very hard edge, especially when she felt Weld or Cellucci
were getting mistreated,'' said Jeremy Crockford, former Massport spokesman.
''She was extremely loyal in an administration where loyalty was taken to a
fault.''

Buckingham helped promote Weld's image as a happy-go-lucky, likable egghead.
She took the hit for unpopular moves inside the State House and mastered the
convoluted gamesmanship that is the hallmark of all administrations. Her
fierce loyalty, together with her public relations skills, recommended her
to Cellucci, who prized loyalty above all else, when he was looking for a
new executive director of Massport.

In 1999, she became the youngest-ever Massport chief, when it seemed the
authority's public image couldn't get any worse. Her job was to clean house
after a taxpayer-funded, alcohol-fueled weekday cruise led by Massport
director Peter Blute that ended with one guest flashing her breasts for a
photographer.

Buckingham, a new mother, provided a ready counterpoint to the old Massport,
state government's premier frat house.

But her appointment to the $150,000 job brought an outcry from many who
thought her under-qualified. The late J. Joseph Moakley scoffed that
Cellucci had looked around and chosen ''some girl sitting in the next
office.''

''Nothing against her, but what has she run?'' Dukakis said of his former
intern.

Once in the job, she made some high-profile changes in an attempt to restore
public confidence. The $600 expense-account dinners were no more. She turned
down a state-issued SUV for herself.

Buckingham was most visible on cosmetic matters. She took reporters on tours
of the airport to show them how confusing the signs were. She demanded that
the candy wrappers and ticket stubs be cleaned away. And she pushed hard for
a third runway, long a Republican priority at Logan.

But when two jets were hijacked from Logan and slammed into the World Trade
Center, the crisis laid bare an agency still riddled with patronage. And
Buckingham seemed to be more a symbol of the problem than the solution.

A public relations specialist to the end, Buckingham stuck it out until
Logan, and she, started to look better. Israeli airport security expert Rafi
Ron was hired as a security adviser. The airport will soon have high-tech
face-recognition security systems installed. And earlier this week,
Buckingham testified at a sympathetic hearing of the Legislature's
Transportation Committee.

That's when Havern criticized Acting Governor Jane Swift for not being
present and suggested that Buckingham had been made the fall guy for the
administration.

It was as close to a high note as Buckingham could get.

This story ran on page B6 of the Boston Globe on 10/26/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
==========
**NOTICE: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.**
==========