Political ties strong at airport
Lack of aviation experience cited

By Brian C. Mooney and Liz Kowalcyk, Globe Staff, 9/14/2001

As Logan Airport scrambled yesterday to implement new security procedures,
the focus is now on the leadership of the Massachusetts Port Authority, an
agency long run by political appointees without aviation or security
backgrounds.

At Massport, not only is the executive director, Virginia Buckingham, a
former campaign aide and adviser to two governors, but the public safety
director - often a security professional at other airports - is Joseph
Lawless, a former state trooper and driver for former Governor William F.
Weld.

The practice of appointing people with political ties to leadership
positions is not the case at all airports around the country, according to
port authority specialists. Some authorities, such as the New York-New
Jersey Port Authority, are led by political figures without prior
experience. But others, such as Chicago's O'Hare Airport and
Baltimore-Washington Airport, are run by transportation professionals.

Still, Leigh Boske, professor of public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson
School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, who focuses
on transportation policy, said he knows of no airport other than Logan that
has political appointees, with no aviation expertise, in such sensitive
positions.

''The executive director is there to run the place, and normally in a large
seaport and airport you typically appoint someone who not only knows the
business but who has grown up in the business so by the time they become
executive director they've done a little of everything,'' Boske said.

Thomas Kornegay, executive director of the Port of Houston, said he was
hired by a politically appointed commission but came up through the ranks.
He's worked at the port for 30 years.

''In seaports, normally the executive director is hired by a commission,
which is elected or political, but the director themselves, that person is
usually experienced in running a seaport,'' Kornegay said.

He adheres to the same philosophy in hiring his public safety directors.
''I've had three guys who've handled our police work for us since I've been
the director. One is an ex-FBI guy, one is a former sheriff, and the one I
have now came up through the ranks.''

At Logan, Buckingham can draw on the experience of her number two person,
Thomas Kinton, who is a career port authority manager. The rest of the
management positions are a mix of port authority professionals and political
appointees. The aviation division is generally off-limits to political
patronage. But throughout the authority, political appointees hold sway in
some sensitive areas, including public safety.

On Wednesday, Lawless sparked a high-level dispute when he rebuffed federal
assistance in implementing crucial anti-terrorism measures at the airport,
according to two federal sources. The dispute was resolved after a senior
member of the Bush administration intervened.

Yesterday, Acting Governor Jane Swift - who was appointed to a Massport
position after losing a congressional race in 1996 - said all aspects of
Logan's operation will be reviewed following the World Trade Center tragedy,
in which two of the hijacked jets originated in Boston.

Asked if the history of political appointees at Massport would be
reconsidered, Swift replied, ''Right now my concentration is in making sure
when the airport reopens, it is safe. In the days and months ahead as the
investigation gets us more information, there will be no question that isn't
explored as to how we can avoid these tragedies in the future.''

''I'm not going to get into assigning blame at this point,'' Swift added.
''There's nobody in America who wouldn't have changed something if they
thought that they could have prevented the enormous loss and tragedy.''

Jose Juves, Massport's communications director, said the agency's hiring
practices have no bearing on its safety procedures and the aviation
department has generally been insulated from politics.

''There's no connection between federal policies regulating airport security
and personnel decisions,'' he said. ''There's a professional staff at
Massport that does their job every day. Being a Republican or a Democrat, it
doesn't exclude anyone from being qualified.''

Nonetheless, political leaders in Massachusetts acknowledge that the agency
has been a destination for patronage appointees through many gubernatorial
administrations.

For instance, Lawless's predecessor as public safety chief was Carmen
Tammaro, a former state trooper whose assignments included being a driver
for Kitty Dukakis, wife of former governor Michael Dukakis.

[See subsequent Letter to Editor from Michael Dukakis refuting this point.]

Buckingham's predecessor was Peter Blute, a Republican congressman who lost
a reelection bid and also had no background in running an airport. Blute's
predecessor, Stephen Tocco, a pharmacist by training, was the economic
affairs chief for Weld and left to become a political lobbyist.

Each appointment, in its turn, was greeted with some skepticism by Massport
board members - themselves gubernatorial appointees - who questioned the
appointees' lack of aviation experience.

But the governors always stuck by their choices. Technically, Massport
functions as an independent authority, run by a board of directors. In
reality, it is under the direct control of any governor who controls a
majority of the seven appointees on Massport's board.

And the tradition has grown up for governors to use that control to place
supporters in jobs. The result, say many people familiar with Massachusetts
politics, has been a system of political patronage that is now layered
throughout the bureaucracy of the 1,200-employee authority.

But Juves, the agency spokesman, says the top-level people have always been
qualified, even if they had ties to the governors who appointed them.

Lawless, Juves said, is well-qualified for his $125,000-a-year position.

''He's been eight years at Massport, after more than 13 years at the State
Police where he was a homicide investigator,'' Juves said. ''He's certainly
been a leader on public safety issues here at the airport. Whether it's
implementing an aggressive identification challenge program or advocating
for improved equipment or improving the safety of the infrastructure, he's
taken the lead.''

When Swift left her state S enate seat after losing a tight congressional
race to Representative John Olver, Weld gave her a three-month consultancy
at Massport before having a new position created for her - $76,000-a-year
coordinator for the development of regional airports. After seven months,
she left to become state director of consumer affairs.

In March 1999, State Representative Emanuel ''Gus'' Serra, a Democrat,
became the $119,000 a year director of strategic planning as a reward for
publicly supporting Republicans Cellucci and Swift in the 1998 election.

Serra's salary is now $125,000.

Political patronage at Massport may have peaked during the brief period of
Cellucci's less than four years as governor before resigning in April to
become US ambassador to Canada.

In January 1998, Franklin Ollivierre, the state's elderly affairs secretary,
resigned amid published reports questioning his work habits and treatment of
a subordinate who complained he verbally abused her. Ollivierre became
Massport's $73,000-a-year director of special projects.

Two months earlier, Marlene Lio-MacDougal, the employee who had complained
about Ollivierre, was transferred to Massport, where she is manager of port
claims in the maritime administration department.

Many of the patronage hires are tied to Stephen J. O'Neill, who held several
posts under Weld and Cellucci, the last as chief secretary to Cellucci.

When O'Neill left to become Cellucci's assistant in Ottawa, his former
deputy, Kristen Lepore, moved over to Massport as Buckingham's deputy
executive director.

O'Neill's sister-in-law, Julie McDonnell, was hired in 1997 as deputy port
director for finance.

The same month, O'Neill's brother, James O'Neill, won a highly coveted
firefighter's position at the airport.

Two months later, in October, 1997, Charlotte Amorello, wife of then-State
Senator Matthew J. Amorello, became a project coordinator in the
administration and finance office.

And Swift's cousin won a job in the Massport communications department in
1999.

While most of these jobs bear little or no connection to safety, Swift made
it clear that she would reassess all aspects of the airport's culture and
governance in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy.

''Our entire national aviation system is doing a gut check,'' she said,
adding, ''We are going to learn things, some of them difficult to accept,
from this tragedy. And I don't think there is an elected or appointed public
servant anywhere in our country who isn't going to be searching their soul
to find out what we could have done different to avert a tragedy of just
almost incomprehensible proportions.''

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 9/14/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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