180 Massport workers face ax
Three top officials reportedly included

By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 10/11/2001

Three high-profile Cellucci administration patronage appointees are among
the 180 Massachusetts Port Authority employees who face the ax today as the
agency's board takes up a plan to cut $51 million from its operating budget.

Board members late yesterday were given a plan to deal with a sudden and
dramatic downturn in Massport revenues since the terrorist attacks last
month. The plan was being kept under wraps last night.

But authority officials who did not want to be named confirmed that the
layoff list includes former state representative Emanuel ''Gus'' Serra,
former state elder affairs chief Franklin Ollivierre, and former Revere
mayor Robert Haas - all of whom have come to symbolize what critics say is
the patronage system that former governors William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci
used for political payoffs.

According to the authority officials, the seven-member board will also be
asked to cut back many support services and programs at Logan Airport,
including big reductions in the internal bus routes and staffing at the
parking garages.

Also slated for elimination is the international marketing office and its $5
million budget and roughly 27 staff members. The former director, Charles
Yellen, left in December and his post has not been filled. The office was
charged with developing foreign airline routes and encouraging Massachusetts
firms to do business overseas.

The only revenue-raising measure offered to the board is a hike in parking
fees that would bring in $5 million.

The layoffs would come in two phases, the officials said. The first would be
an immediate reduction of 100 staff members, effective Nov. 1. The second
phase, involving another 80 workers, would take effect Nov. 30.

The most high-profile layoff would be Serra, the $128,000-per-year director
of strategic planning. Cellucci appointed the East Boston Democrat to the
post after Serra broke party ranks and endorsed Cellucci in the 1998
governor's race. The plan calls for the elimination of Serra's office and
the layoff of his four assistants.

Since his appointment in March 1999, Serra has worked on issues relating to
East Boston and other Logan-area communities. He also is involved with the
authority's efforts to promote regional aviation, part of the Massport
campaign to sell a new runway.

In a brief statement, Serra said he understood why his name had to be added
to the layoff list. ''Given the severity to the entire agency and what we
are all dealing with, these things are happening and I fall into that
category,'' Serra said. ''I am one of many, many people who obviously have
to be let go.''

Cellucci made Ollivierre the authority's $73,000-a-year director of special
projects. Haas, another Democrat, was rewarded with a $64,000-a-year job for
backing Weld and Cellucci.

The decision to push Serra, Ollivierre, and Haas out of their jobs shows the
authority is heeding Swift's call for including high-profile symbols of the
patronage system in the cutbacks.

''I've made it pretty clear there will be no sacred cows and that no person
at Massport should be protected,'' Swift told reporters yesterday as the
authority's staff was putting the finishing touches on the fiscal plan. ''I
have been very clear in my public and private conversations that they should
take the necessary steps to bring the fiscal house back in order without
protecting anyone.''

In one smaller cost-saving measure, Massport executive director Virginia
Buckingham is also expected to reorganize her staff. One assistant, Kristin
Lepore, a former State House budget analyst, is not on the layoff list, but
is planning to leave the agency.

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 10/11/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Walruses' fall

A Boston Globe editorial, 10/12/2001

SHARP PUBLIC attacks on management practices at the Massachusetts Port
Authority succeeded finally in piercing the heavy layers of ''walrus''
blubber that characterize the quasi-public agency. Yesterday Massport's
board voted to cast off roughly 180 employees in November, including several
highly paid patronage hires.

In 1989, William Weld, then a gubernatorial candidate, first vowed to
''expel the walruses'' from state bureaucracy to control spending. But he
and his Republican successor, Paul Cellucci, easily kept pace with the
patronage practices of their Democratic predecessors. And Acting Governor
Jane Swift put in time on both the receiving and giving end of patronage
jobs.

At Massport, which operates Logan Airport, patronage hiring soared. But it
fell on Sept. 11 when hijackers took control of two flights out of Logan and
crashed the planes into the World Trade Center. The public remains shaken by
an agency that seems to have put more thought into creating and protecting
jobs for friends of the administration than safeguarding airline passengers.

There is a role for loyalists in every political administration. But that
role should never include the placement of marginally qualified personnel in
sensitive public-safety roles. Joseph Lawless, former Governor Weld's driver
and Massport's former chief of security, has been stripped specifically of
his airport duties. But he continues to draw a full salary for his seaport
duties. The larding at Massport lives on so long as Lawless remains.

Massport director Virginia Buckingham was the ultimate patronage hire,
having risen from Weld's press office to become former Governor Paul
Cellucci's chief of staff. Foolishly, Cellucci made no effort to find a
professional port director. And Buckingham brought almost no technical
expertise to the job.

Buckingham has succeeded to a degree at reforming the ''old boy'' culture at
Massport. But her strengths - public relations and consensus building - are
not the main requirements for managing an international airport or a working
harbor.

It is questionable whether Buckingham will survive an in-depth analysis of
Massport now being conducted by a blue-ribbon commission headed by Marshall
Carter, a retired banker. The organization and governance of the agency are
almost certain to change dramatically. The airport and port operations, for
example, could be separated to reflect their specific missions.
Professionalism, not political juice, should guide personnel decisions.

At yesterday's board meeting there was much discussion about who would be
jettisoned in which round of dismissals. But a few weeks here or there are
not the issue. Massport needs peak performance and executives who are
capable of sustaining it.

This story ran on page A22 of the Boston Globe on 10/12/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

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

Massport board OK's new fees, 180 layoffs

By Raphael Lewis and Brian Mooney, Globe Staff, 10/12/2001

Facing growing financial and political pressures, the Massachusetts Port
Authority's board of directors yesterday voted to raise parking fees, reduce
bus service, and lay off up to 180 employees, including three high-profile
political patronage hires.

The moves, which still leave dozens of politically connected workers at
Massport, came as the board agreed to pump $10 million into security at
Logan International Airport, where hijackers boarded the two flights that
were flown into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11.

Added to the increased safety spending, which will eventually bring an
airport security director and a counterterrorism expert, the board also
approved seven measures to tighten Logan's security.

Created by interim security chief John DiFava, the measures call for:

Increasing the maximum fine for airline security lapses from $500 per
violation to $2,000, and submitting legislation to push that to $10,000;

Charging those who access ramp and runway areas without identification
badges, as well as any employees who aid them, with criminal trespassing;

Fining companies located on airport property, as well as their employees,
when employees violate security rules;

Allowing for the eviction of businesses other than airlines (the Federal
Aviation Administration is the only authority that can evict airlines) that
show a pattern of security lapses;

Providing clear definitions of what constitutes a security breach;

Billing airlines for the cost of security breaches, such as overtime pay and
costs associated with calling in a bomb squad or evacuating a terminal.

Virginia Buckingham, Massport's executive director, said the moves were made
to enhance security and cut costs, and not for political expediency. ''This
analysis was not a political exercise,'' Buckingham said, after the board's
nearly six-hour meeting.

Still, several employees referred to Massport by politicians kept their
jobs. Among those were Charlotte Amorello, a $52,175 project coordinator and
the wife of Matthew Amorello, the state's highway commissioner; Alissa G.
Porcaro, a $40,404 executive assistant in the communications department and
cousin of Acting Governor Jane M. Swift; and Julie A. McDonnell, a $92,465
deputy port director for finance and sister-in-law of Stephen J. O'Neill,
former Governor Paul Cellucci's chief of staff.

The layoffs will take place in two phases, will equal about 15 percent of
the authority's workforce, and result in the elimination of two highly
controversial Massport departments by Nov. 30.

One of the departments, strategic planning, was created for Emanuel ''Gus''
Serra, the former Democratic state representative from East Boston, after he
backed Cellucci in the 1998 governor's race. Serra, who will lose his job
Nov. 1, made $128,000 a year.

The 25-employee international marketing department, which will be eliminated
by Nov. 30, became a public relations liability after reports the office
spent millions on foreign missions to drum up business for Massachusetts
that had dubious results. That department also had workers with strong
political ties, such as Lorena A. Giovanetti, the $48,609 managing director
who came in with former executive director Stephen Tocco in 1993. Tocco
created the $5 million-a-year office that promotes foreign travel and trade.

Also losing jobs are Mark Drago, a $74,000 destination marketing manager and
former Cellucci aide, and Loren M. Devereaux, a former Cellucci assistant
who is now a $47,000-a-year marketing specialist.

Mark Robinson, who chairs Massport's board, said yesterday the department
was valuable, but duplicated the mission of the Massachusetts Office of
Travel and Tourism. Jeffrey Nelson, a research analyst with Local 26 of the
International Hotel Workers Union who attended the meeting, said the
decision to eliminate International Marketing was a bad mistake, given the
region's ailing tourist economy. ''International tourism is extremely
important to Boston,'' Nelson said. ''They represent 5 percent of the
tourists, but 20 percent of tourist spending, and given the fact that the
city's hotel industry is cutting jobs and hours, I think the timing of this
decision is really bad.''

But it has been the devastating financial downturn by the airline industry
that followed the Sept. 11 attacks that forced the board to close a $51
million budget shortfall, officials said. Leslie Kirwan, Massport's director
of administration and finance, estimates passenger revenues will end up
totaling 70 percent of what was budgeted, and parking revenues will be even
lower. To address the losses, the board also agreed to freeze hiring,
terminate consultant contracts, cut senior managers' pay by 5 percent, and
cut supply purchases throughout the authority.

It was clear yesterday that Massport's most prominent patronage employees
were targeted, per the tacit instructions of Swift, who said there should be
''no sacred cows'' at Massport.

Franklin Ollivierre, the former state elder affairs chief who made $73,000 a
year as Massport's director of special projects, lost his job. Robert Haas,
the former mayor of Revere, another Democrat who backed Cellucci and was
rewarded with a $64,000-a-year post as port development specialist, also
lost his job.

As for the other 147 to 177 facing unemployment, Massport refused to release
names, saying it had yet to notify all of the employees affected. Many will
be people with political ties, but some with ties will remain employed -
including the entire Massport Fire Department, most of whose members had one
or more political sponsors. James M. O'Neill, O'Neill's brother, is among
them, a $60,857-a-year firefighter appointed in 1999.

Hinting that politics should play a smaller role at Massport, Robinson said
the governor-appointed board he chairs should become a paid panel of
security, aviation, and financial experts, if Swift decides Logan should be
run by a separate authority. He also acknowledged he would likely lose his
position if that happened.

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 10/12/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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