Keller @ Large: Deval Patrick's Sorry Legacy
BOSTON (CBS) - I've been waiting and waiting to see if anyone would come out and say it, but no one has. So I will – former Gov. Deval Patrick was a fine fellow, full of good intentions, who did some good things.
But in the end he turned out to be a terrible manager who left a disaster behind.
I could drag you through the litany of failures that especially plagued his last couple of years in office: the demolition of our functioning health-care website for purely partisan political reasons; the horrible oversight of the Department for Children and Families, the Department of Health, and numerous other failed boards and commissions; the scattershot economic development schemes that didn't pay off, and so on.
But the sorry legacy of the Patrick years can be summed up in just four letters – MBTA.
Read the special commission report for yourself, it doesn't take long. But don't do it before mealtime.
It is nauseating to learn how, for all the spin about reform, most of the T's core problems including chronic mismanagement, misuse of funding, poor planning, and an utter failure to think and act outside the box – went unaddressed during the Patrick years, as they had before he arrived.
Gov. Baker ran as a fix-it specialist, and is now full of brave talk about reform, just as Patrick once was.
If he flops, I'll be saying the same about him in a few years.
But Gov. Patrick, wherever you're hiding, you should know – we see what a wretched mess you left us, and we don't appreciate it.
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You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
