GBH news assignment editor Matt Baskin joined GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about what stories our newsroom is honing in on this week. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Arun Rath: So let's start with the Dana Pullman case. We've been talking about this in our newscasts. He's the former head of the [Massachusetts] State Police union and he's going on trial in federal court this week.
Matt Baskin: Yeah, that's right. Jury selection started today [Monday] in the case. Pullman ran the State Police Association of Massachusetts, better known by the acronym SPAM. Like you said, it's the union that represents state troopers. Besides running SPAM, Pullman himself was a state trooper. He resigned after he was arrested three years ago, with the feds claiming he conspired to direct union business to a lobbyist also charged in the case. Her name is Anne Lynch. And Pullman allegedly took money from the troopers union and used it for his own spending — stuff like fancy meals, a trip to Florida, so on and so forth. Prosecutors say he used the union as "his own personal piggy bank."
Pullman was known for wanting State Police leaders held accountable for misconduct. He went pretty hard after the former head of the State Police, Richard McKeon, who retired quite abruptly five years ago amid claims that he pressured a rank and file state trooper to alter an unflattering report on the arrest of a Massachusetts judge's daughter.
Now, federal jurors will decide whether Pullman himself is guilty of misconduct. And it's worth saying that this is the latest scandal adjacent to the State Police or central to the State Police that’s been taken up by the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts in recent years. Eight state troopers faced federal prosecution for collecting overtime pay for shifts they didn't actually work, and the last of those eight was sentenced just this past April.
Rath: And how about on Beacon Hill this week, where we're between formal legislative sessions right now? I understand state lawmakers are continuing to scrutinize the [MBTA] given all the problems it has had in the past few months.
Baskin: That's right — the T and also the agency that until now, not many people realized had oversight of it: the state's Department of Public Utilities. You might remember that right at the end of August, the Federal Transit Administration released a report after months of investigations slamming not just the MBTA but the DPU. And that's because under state law, they're the agency that ultimately is supposed to manage the T. The FDA found that the DPU had been lax in its responsibilities, to say the least.
Lawmakers on Beacon Hill, they already had one oversight hearing about two-and-a-half weeks ago on this. Now they're having another on Thursday, and one of the things they'll be talking about is whether the DPU should have oversight when it comes to the T, or whether riders and the state as a whole would be better served without the DPU involved.
Rath: So we've covered the State House and the State Police. What about Boston City Hall?
Baskin: So back in August, Mayor Michelle Wu put out a plan that would give pay raises to city officials, including herself and including city councilors. It would also give bigger salaries to the police commissioner and the fire commissioner. Today [Monday], the City Council is discussing Wu's plan, which would bring the cap on the mayor's pay from $207,000 to $230,000. And for councilors, the pay cap would go from about $103,000 to $115,000. And after Monday’s discussion, there could be a City Council vote that'd be coming on Wednesday.
But it is important to note raises for city councilors and for the mayor wouldn't actually take effect immediately. The heftier paychecks would start going out after the next election cycle. So the people involved in these potential raises, from Mayor Wu who's proposing them, to the councilors who'll be voting on them, won't see any extra money unless they win reelection.
Rath: And what else is on the agenda for GBH News this week?
Baskin: We're going to be doing some follow up on a story we've been following out of Boston Children's Hospital the past few weeks. Doctors and other health care workers there who provide gender-affirming care to transgender adolescents have been on the receiving end of some really vile threats from right-wing extremists. One woman from Western Massachusetts actually was charged with calling in a phony bomb threat to the hospital last month. Boston Children's isn't the only hospital that's been facing these kind of threats, and now it looks like some of these health care facilities are actually scrubbing their websites of references to transgender care, ostensibly to make it harder for these extremists to find people to harass. But then that raises some questions about how people needing this care are going to be able to find it if it's not freely advertised.
Rath: Well, Matt, thanks for being with us.
Baskin: Thanks a lot.
Rath: That's GBH assignment editor Matt Baskin. This is GBH is All Things Considered.
