Where would the Commonwealth be without Howie Carr exposing the machinations of Gov. Patrick?
This column is for everyone standing in those long lines at the Registry of Motor Vehicles branch offices this morning.Now that Gov. Deval Patrick has shuttered so many branches, the lines at the remaining offices are out the door again, as in the bad old pre-Grabauskas days.
But look on the bright side. The Friends of Deval are doing just fine, thank you very much.
Come on down, Eddie Jenkins, just hired July 6 as the RMV’s new director of enforcement services for $80,000 a year. He’s the first RMV employee to have this job title, although there used to be a “deputy registrar for enforcement services,” and she was making $120,000 a year.
Her job went unfilled for more than a year, but then came Eddie. The job needed a man, and the man needed a job.
You may remember Jenkins, a lawyer from Roxbury, for his unsuccessful runs for political office in Boston. Before he got picked up on waivers by the RMV last month he was the chairman of the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission. His name was dropped by ex-Sen. Dianne Wilkerson when she was soliciting bribes from a wired-up businessman for a city liquor license.
On one memorable day last fall, feds arrived at Jenkins’ ABCC office with a subpoena, only to discover that State Treasurer Tim Cahill already had placed him on paid administrative leave over another problem - what the papers called a “possible diversion of state reimbursement money.”
Jenkins was cleared of any wrongdoing in the first case - the Treasury had placed the money into his account directly, rather than paying a law firm he’d been using in a State Ethics Commission probe in which he was, yes, cleared. And Jenkins is clean on the Wilkerson case, although he was one of her campaign donors.
He resigned from his $110,703.28-a-year ABCC job May 8. In other words, he’s taking a big pay cut at the RMV, but any port in a storm, as they say. According to a dime-dropper, the RMV “was told it was a ‘must-hire’ from the governor.”
Asked about that charge, an RMV spokeswoman said, “I’m not aware of that.”
UPDATE: More from the Boston Business Journal.
SECOND UPDATE: More from the Globe and Herald.
THIRD UPDATE: More from Holly Robichaud and the AP.
