Alarmed by the report, the five-man Republican delegation in the state Senate said it will file a bill to eliminate a law that gave the probation commissioner hiring authority.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, left, said that he and state Rep. Thomas A. Petrolati, right, agreed that Petrolati should quit his speaker pro tempore position in the wake of a scathing report on hiring practices in the Massachusetts Probation Department.BOSTON – A former deputy probation commissioner in Springfield provided a direct link to patronage for state Rep. Thomas M. Petrolati, according to a special investigator and his report.
The link allowed the powerful Ludlow legislator to bypass Boston and avoid landing on incriminating sponsor lists kept by the commissioner’s office as part of a corrupted hiring and promotion process, the report said.
William H. Burke III, of Hatfield, a 35-year veteran of the probation department in Western Massachusetts, who retired last year with an $83,000 pension, was enmeshed in the hiring at probation, according to a 307-page report issued last week by an independent counsel appointed in May to investigate probation hiring.
Like Burke, Francine M. Ryan, of East Longmeadow, a $113,000-a-year regional supervisor in the Springfield probation office and daughter of the late Hampden District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan, and Nicholas DeAngelis, retired regional supervisor, also testified under subpoena from investigators.
Burke, DeAngelis and Ryan could not be reached for comment.
In the report, the three portrayed a hiring process in Western Massachusetts that was rigged right to the top in favor of candidates hand-picked by Petrolati and other influential politicians or judges.
Alarmed by the report, the five-man Republican delegation in the state Senate on Wednesday said it would file a bill to eliminate a 2001 law that gave the probation commissioner hiring authority and return those powers to the state’s chief administrative judge, Robert A. Mulligan. The judge would also have to come up with a plan to assure that hiring and promotion hinges only on merit and qualifications.
Sen. Michael R. Knapik, of Westfield, and the four other GOP senators also sent a letter to state and federal prosecutors, calling for a swift and cooperative investigation.
Petrolati, a Democrat whose $537,000 campaign account is one of the largest in the state Legislature, is also coming under scrutiny for raising campaign money from probation employees, though he denies the donations were in return for his recommendation for jobs. Ryan testified that Petrolati’s annual fund-raiser was considered “a party” by probation employees.
Caught up in the probation scandal, Petrolati, the No. 3 ranking member in the state House of Representatives for the past five years, on Tuesday spoke with House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and the two agreed that Petrolati should quit his speaker pro tempore’s position when the state Legislature starts a new session in January, DeLeo said.
Burke testified that he would sometimes receive calls directly from Petrolati on behalf of favored candidates and would act on them without checking with the commissioner’s office.
That enabled the legislator to largely circumvent a paper and computer trail that is implicating other top legislators in the scandal, the report said.
“As I suggest in the report, it may have been the avenue that enabled Representative Petrolati to make recommendations without calling the commissioner’s office and finding those recommendations recorded on a sponsor list,” Paul F. Ware, the independent counsel, told The Republican.
Petrolati, the dean of the Western Massachusetts legislative delegation, was not included in a top 10 list of legislators who sponsored the candidates for jobs in probation. However, Petrolati was the runaway No. 1 on a list of 20 legislators who were recipients of campaign donations from probation employees since 2000.
Petrolati has declined comment on the probation investigation and referred questions to his lawyer, John P. Pucci, of Northampton.
Pucci said there is no suggestion in the report that Petrolati participated in the actual hiring or promotion process at probation. Pucci said Petrolati would put in a good word for candidates at certain times.
“He did not go out and seek people who wanted probation jobs,” said Pucci, a former federal prosecutor for 10 years including four years as chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Springfield. “People sought him.”
On its face, hiring and promotion in probation was objective, with rules for multiple rounds of interviews and scores for standardized questions, the report said. In reality, the process was corrupted and heavily weighed in favor of candidates called “the commissioner’s choice,” and pushed mostly by state legislators but also by judges, mayors and others, the report said.
Burke provided critical testimony about a “quid pro quo” for hiring and promotion, the report said. Burke said that the state’s suspended probation commissioner, John J. O’Brien, manipulated the process in return for a boost in the probation budget.
Burke was also blunt in admitting that fixing interviews meant that less qualified candidates were hired or promoted over the more qualified, the report said. That violated Trial Court rules that demand hiring be based solely on the merits with limited sway for affirmative action and provisions in union contracts, the report said.
Burke, former chief probation officer in Northampton District Court, said he would advance any favored candidate from the commissioner’s office unless they were “really, really – and I mean really bad.”
Burke, described as an ally of Petrolati’s, also testified about Petrolati’s clout in the hiring process. Broadly speaking, Burke said, Petrolati’s support was needed for a promotion in probation in Hampshire and Hampden counties.
Burke said that the probation commissioner forged such a tight relationship with Petrolati and other legislators, that O’Brien would see to it that the Legislature appropriated enough money to avoid layoffs of probation employees, the report said.
Burke said that O’Brien’s ties to legislative leaders were essential in winning state budget money to support hiring and growth in probation. In return for funding, legislators would get some jobs, because one hand “washes the other,” he said.
According to his lawyer, Petrolati recused himself from votes on probation items, meaning there was no written evidence that he advocated for the probation budget.
Ryan testified that now-suspended First Deputy Commissioner Elizabeth V. Tavares would give her the names of favored candidates in advance of interviews.
The process was so institutionalized that Ryan sometimes would call Tavares in advance of interviews to see if there were names that had to be on the list of finalists, the report said.
Ryan also testified that she and other probation employees would attend Petrolati’s fund-raisers. Ryan testified that probation employees would ask if she was “going to the party” ahead of the event.
DeAngelis, a retired regional supervisor in Western Massachusetts with $75,500 pension, said Deputy Commissioners Francis M. Wall and Tavares would provide him with names of candidates who “had to make the list” of finalists for positions.
DeAngelis testified that he was concerned the names from the commissioner’s office would undermine the selection process.
DeAngelis said that elected officials “higher up” in the Legislature had more pull in getting jobs in probation including Petrolati. He said he assumed that people were more interested in contributing to Petrolati for that reason.
In the wake of the report, Wall and Tavares were suspended last week by the state’s top administrative judge, joining O’Brien, who was suspended in May.
The report singles out O’Brien and Wall for allegedly soliciting probation employees in the cafeteria of a state office building to donate to Petrolati’s campaign and the campaigns of other powerful legislators in violation of state law.
The report said O’Brien and others repeatedly violated campaign finance law in raising money for Petrolati.
State law bans state employees from raising money for political candidates and it prohibits any campaign fundraising in public buildings.
Edward Rideout, a regional supervisor for probation, said that Wall tied attendance at Petrolati’s annual fund-raiser in Ludlow to the legislator’s help on the budget.
“Would have been Frannie Wall at the time, “We’re going out to see Representative Petrolati. Why don’t we all get together and go out and support him? Because he’s helping us try to get the funding for the jobs, for the program,’” said Rideout.
Rideout was referring to funding needed to start the department’s electronic monitoring program, where Petrolati’s wife now works as $93,000-a-year program manager. She joined her husband in citing the Fifth Amendment right not to testify in front of the independent counsel.
Ware said he couldn’t speculate on whether Petrolati would face criminal charges. He said that would be a function of investigations by the attorney general or the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
According to the report, public officials who fix hiring and promotion in favor of politically-wired applicants could be violating federal fraud laws and state law.
Violations of state conflict and ethics laws may also have occurred, the report said.
Pucci, lawyer for Petrolati, said he sees no evidence or even of a suggestion in the report of criminal charges against the legislator.
“I don’t see any suggestions that cause me concern,” Pucci said.