DiMasi's Hand in the Cookie Jar

Kickbacks are crude, and generally practiced where things are sloppy or corrupt enough to avoid notice. That's not what it appears House Speaker Sal "The Bottleneck" DiMasi was doing, however. Instead, he seems to have been engaging in the sleazy and unethical, but not the gross and "What, No Envelope?" type of behavior. No bars or orange jumpsuits.

DiMasi's hand was in the cookie jar, but he wasn't eating the cookies, according to the Inspector General's Office, he was handing them out to friends. Makes me wonder if this could be another source of tension between DiMasi and Gov. Deval Patrick?

If the roles were reversed, DiMasi, my guess is, would have used his suspicions for political advantage. That would have been a typical Bulgerian or Finneranesque move. Is it possible that Patrick has been trying to hold this over DiMasi's head?

I'd like to think so, but so far, the facts don't suggest that's the case.

The Globe reports:

The state inspector general has found that a Canadian software company was improperly awarded a $13 million contract last year in an unusually rushed deal in which House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi had an active interest.

At almost every turn, DiMasi, his aides, or his friends played a role in either creating a demand for Cognos ULC's computer software or in pushing Cognos to the head of the bidding field.

DiMasi personally met with the state's chief information officer to push for the kind of software that Cognos produces. A middleman in the deal, Joseph Lally, portrayed himself to key state officials as DiMasi's friend. A longtime DiMasi friend, Richard McDonough, was hired as a lobbyist for Cognos and was paid $100,000 by the company.

The result of the process was a contract award that violated basic state bidding rules.

In a five-page letter sent to Administration and Finance Secretary Leslie Kirwan on Thursday, Inspector General Gregory Sullivan recommended that the contract be voided and that the state seek a refund.

Governor Deval Patrick's administration asked Sullivan to look into the contract in December after the newly appointed head of the state's Information Technology division, Anne Margulies, raised concerns about "discrepancies" in the bids. The request also was made amid grumbling among state employees and rival bidders about possible political interference in the contract process, said a former employee of the division.

--Mb