Its kind of a big deal that he ran a City Hall mostly free of serious corruption at the same time that Suffolk County seemed to be producing an endless stream of felons on Beacon Hill.
That's a huge deal, really, and I'd say the best evidence that, where possible, he governed in a way that elegantly balanced ward politics and special interests to produce the biggest benefit for the whole city.
We did have the
BRA email-deletion problem in 2009, and if anything, yes, the BRA seems to have spent a lot of time on the razor's edge between power politics and influence peddling.
And I'd say that too much of the "upside" created by State (Silver Line) and Federal (Big Dig) investments in infrastructure, instead of being re-invested in mobility, ended up steered to the big property owners at the expense of actual commuters. Having the state and feds pour, what, $14b into the Big Dig...unions, land taking, big builders and enriched abutters got a lot of money that had nothing to do with Menino. It'd be hard to *not* enjoy a downtown and Seaport renaissance with $15b being spent locally and reconnecting the waterfront and building the Ted, but Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy deserve much of *that* credit.
I will simply credit him for being a mostly honest guy.
And, yeah, the BCEC should be the Menino Center and a worthy counterpoint to SF's Moscone Center.