On Brookline

For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am

- From Shakespeare’s Othello

Some time ago I took to calling Brookline Town Administrator Richard Kelliher “Our Iago” in reference to Shakespeare’s agent of manipulative destruction from Othello. Iago’s agency is a design on princely power, apparent to everyone except the self-absorbed of the palace court.

The allegory is apt. Because when it comes to manipulating the clueless, Kelliher is without peer. He is, according to by-law, a super secretary to the Brookline Selectmen with no explicit hiring or firing authority (but many on the payroll fear him). Even though it is not within his portfolio to do so, he prepares the Town’s annual budget (and not very well). In fact, his only job is to administer the Selectmen’s decisions.

Watch Kelliher in action and you can’t miss the tilt towards imperialism — he fiercely guards his town hall turf and sees its expansion as his own manifest destiny. How else to explain his engineering a $25 million town hall renovation in advance of putting a $6 million tax increase on the local ballot? After all, what’s a prince without a palace?

That’s the least of it, though. Our Iago has also created a culture in Brookline town government that is outright hostile to the (non-crony) citizenry. He and other town hall staff are agents of deception; planting Desdemona’s handkerchief among the many drawers of our local government and then stage whispering all manner of nonsense on how it got there.

Why is it that Brookline is Richard Kelliher’s town and the rest of just get to live in it?

He is, by most accounts, exceptionally solicitous of the developers and business interests who finance the campaigns of his ostensible political masters. And, of course, when it comes to the selectmen he needn’t draw too much power to light up the four dim bulbs of Daly, DeWitt, Allen and Mermell.

Crikey, the episode that has him writing questions for Nancy Daly to ask Governor Patrick [see video] doth “his outward action demonstrate.”

Kelliher’s Citizen’s Complaint Panel Coup.

Yet nothing proves Kelliher’s chutzpah than his maneuvering around the citizen police review panel formed in the wake of the Arthur Conquest matter.

As one who has covered this story in depth from day two, I can say, without hesitation, that Kelliher has been instrumental in Brookline Town Hall’s attempts to deny Conquest his civil rights (and due process) in aggrieving his treatment by Brookline Police. (I’m told Kelliher was involved in the review of the specious charge of assault pursued by Brookline Police stemming from the May 24th incident.)

At the first meeting of his hand-picked review panel, Kelliher indicated to them that the Town would provide a staff person. (I was at the meeting when he announced this, and it sure sounded like a clerk was going to show up at the meeting subsequent to take notes.) Who knew that it meant Kelliher had appointed himself as the panel’s advisor?

Since his (self) appointment, Kelliher has been quite active in the panel’s affairs. He often makes recommendations and advises them on matters concerning their charge and scope, as well as their witness list. On the matter of a public hearing, Kelliher advised the panel that the proceedings could not be televised due to staff expense, so he hired a stenographer. His claim was false — BATV can run the video from its studio at little expense, which they did.

The stenographer? Uh, not so cheap.

Now that Conquest has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, Kelliher has retained the services of a crony to serve as “special counsel” in the matter. In a rare display of transparency, the selectmen and Kelliher have broadcast that this attorney will cost taxpayers $35 thousand. The intent with that is clear — to pin the price tag on Conquest.

Would that that were true. The selectmen, Town Counsel Jennifer Dopazo and Kelliher have wrapped us all in the chains of their civic misanthropy by denying Conquest the right to appeal his treatment at the hands of police.

We pay Kelliher and Dopazo a combined total of nearly $400 thousand. And the counsel they gave the selectmen is that they can deny Conquest’s appeal—after hearing only from police—and then allow Conquest to rebut the police at a later date. But, as they advised, Conquest’s rebuttal will not affect the selectmen’s decision against hearing an appeal.

Unlike Iago, it appears that Kelliher’s heart is not the only organ that has been yanked from its cavity and put on the sleeve. And it’s going to cost us a whole lot of crowns to clean up that mess.