Advocates and members of the local blind community are heralding the news that David D’Arcangelo has resigned as commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. They say his mismanagement led the agency into a crisis, resulting in people waiting too long for vital services and leaving employees with unmanageable workloads.
D’Arcangelo's resignation, which takes effect on April 7, is the culmination of a yearslong campaign to change the agency’s leadership.
“We had fought for this — for staffing, for all those kinds of things, to have decent supplies of adaptive equipment that we didn't have. And the commissioner just stood in the way,” said Jim Badger, a rehabilitation teacher at the commission, who is blind.
Badger joined SEIU Local 509, the union that represents the commission’s workers, at a rally outside the State House in Boston today. About 50 people gathered, expressing relief, elation and frustration that it took so long to address the deterioration of services.
“We all have caseloads that are way over what anybody could possibly handle,” Badger said. “I felt like I was running 100 miles an hour every day and always letting everybody down.”
Kate Walsh, secretary of the office of Health and Human Services, sent an email yesterday to staff saying that D’Arcangelo would “stay on in an advisory capacity” after he steps down on April 7. Deputy Commissioner John Oliveira will serve as acting commissioner until a replacement is found.
The agency supports the state’s more than 25,000 residents who are blind or low-vision in accessing services like assistive technology, as well as training on independent living skills like cooking and finding employment. The commission was founded in 1906. Helen Keller is among its founders.
A Boston Globe investigation published over the weekend revealed that under D’Arcangelo, the agency’s services suffered as he directed resources to unnecessary and unhelpful projects. According to the report, wait times for services like training on mobility devices have crept up significantly and staff have had to take on almost double the caseload than usual, all despite the fact that the agency’s $34 million budget has grown in recent years. In addition, former employees alleged that D’Arcangelo had been verbally abusive, and his demeaning comments in meetings made employees and stakeholders uncomfortable.
David Kingsbury, president of Bay State Council of the Blind, told GBH News that he had personally witnessed D’Arcangelo being verbally abusive at meetings over the years. He said the resignation was “a long time coming” and hopes the agency can improve on the “lack of transparency” when it comes to finance, spending closing regional offices and hiring.
“We needed a change,” he said, noting that D’Arcangelo was an unfamiliar leader when he took the post. “He was not somebody that the blindness community knew very well.”
Former Gov. Charlie Baker appointed D’Arcangelo, who is legally blind, to the position in 2018. He previously served as director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability. He was also a Malden City Council member and the Republican Party's nominee for secretary of state in 2014.
Kingsbury said the relationship between his organization and D’Arcangelo was “rockier” than it had been with past commissioners. Others at the rally agreed.
“For several years, our agency has not only been in distress, it has been in crisis under the leadership of Commissioner David D’Arcanegelo,” said Carolyn Ovesen, vice president of the MCB Local 509 chapter.
Ovesen said that the staffing problem “directly translates to consumers waiting unacceptable timeframes for services consumers are waiting months to be seen for direct services. This puts them at mental and physical health risks.”
Amy Ruell, an advocate and former board member who has been blind since birth, became emotional as she spoke at the rally about the privilege of having access to tools and opportunities that have allowed her to live independently and thrive in her own career.
“We had a victory today — the union and the community have come together in an unprecedented effort. But this is the beginning,” she said. “It's taken a while for the commission to deteriorate. It's going to take a while for the commission to come back to what it needs to be.”
Advocates say there is a long road ahead to restore the historic agency to its full potential.
“We've [the commission] been a flagship for the whole country since the time we were founded,” Badger said. Moving forward, he hopes the agency to focus more on its aging population — the average age of the people who use the services is in the '80s, and many did not grow up with technology.
“I want us to be there to be able to provide the kinds of things for our blind consumers and to be able to enable people to do things that we wouldn't even dream of being able to do ten years ago, before all of this technology developed,” he continued. “We have a chance now to be more independent and have more self-determination than we've ever had in history. And MCB needs to be in the forefront of enabling people to do that.”
