Re: Columbus Center
[size=+2]Money to spurn[/size]
By Globe columnist Adrian Walker ? January 30, 2009
I?ve spent several days trying to make sense of the sheer lunacy that seems to form the heart of Dianne Wilkerson?s defense.
In Sunday?s Globe, the indicted former senator trotted out a defense that baffled the city. She told the Globe?s Donovan Slack that over the years she has taken at least triple the $23,000 she has been charged with grabbing illegally.
This is all legal - she said - because the state ethics commission wrote a letter saying she could take whatever she wants as long as she didn't cast votes benefiting her donors.
Say what?
Ethics Commission members maintained that their advice to public officials is private, and would not comment.
I?m going to go out on a limb and say no one told her she could start accepting unmarked envelopes full of cash. I also suspect that their advice did not say she could take payments to grease the skids for liquor licenses and real estate developments, as the US attorney?s office alleges she did.
The juiciest issue in the story Sunday is the allegation that the developer of Columbus Center, Arthur Winn, generously wrote a check for $10,000 before she spent years trying to pry loose tens of millions of dollars in state subsidies for his project. She probably would have succeeded if not for the vigorous opposition of everyone else who represents the district, including Sal DiMasi, that well-known crusader for clean government.
It?s easy to poke fun, but the interview reflected a person who seems to have lost any significant contact with reality.
She said she could accept gifts up to $12,000 without having to report them to the IRS, which is true. But tax crime has nothing to do with bribery, even if a person who has been accused of both can be forgiven for confusing them.
Typically, lawmakers have a few facts of life explained to them when they take office. One is that you don?t take cash from people who will want something in return. Two, anyone who would give you cash wants something in return. Therefore, you don?t take little envelopes from anybody, and you certainly don?t want to be caught on camera sticking a wad of hundreds down your bra.
This is more sad than funny. Wilkerson was once a crusading civil rights lawyer. She took on Boston City Hall over segregated public housing and won, changing the face of Charlestown and South Boston. Now she is sitting in a diner explaining that she did take money, but she has some letter that says really, it?s all fine. Good luck with that defense.
People have asked what her fall means for black leadership in the city, a question that makes me crazy. The city and state have a leadership vacuum in general, but it isn?t about ?black leadership.? DiMasi just left under fire, and others in the State House may follow. This isn?t about ethnicity.
Wilkerson?s grasp of conflicts of interest is obviously shaky, but it does offer another window into how such a talented person has made such a mess of her career. The compass that guided her, or seemed to, at the beginning got dropped somewhere along the way. She won her first race by assailing incumbent Bill Owens, but he never took thousands from fat-cat developers and told the world he?d done nothing wrong.
Wilkerson seems to have saved her best parting shot for the clergy, whom she has accused of smearing her for years. Heaven knows they are not above criticism, and in fact I personally know some of her complaints about them to be true.
But just as Wilkerson doesn't quite grasp bribery, she also doesn't understand the idea of a moral high ground. But how would someone who thinks there?s nothing wrong with taking envelopes stuffed with cash ever understand that?
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/30/money_to_spurn/
