Kim Janey throws official event celebrating 100 days as acting mayor amid campaign

Acting Mayor Kim Janey threw herself a big celebration of her 100th day in the big office, celebrating her time as mayor with a video and a 63-page “transition report” in a speech in the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill as the mayoral elections creep ever closer.

Janey, who’s been acting mayor since March 22, when then-Mayor Martin Walsh resigned to become the federal Labor Department secretary, used the speech to tout her administration’s actions in several areas, including the vaccine rollout and rental assistance.

“As I reflect on the first 100 days, I am reminded that, like this meeting house, Boston is built by the hard work and skilled hands of many,” Janey said in the historic meeting house on Beacon Hill maintained by the Museum of African American History. She also talked up the decreasing unemployment rate and efforts to close racial inequities.

This comes two and a half months before the preliminary election for a full term as mayor. This was a city event, announced, held and then touted by her taxpayer-funded office. She thanked the city’s digital team, who’d worked up a slick video promoting her as mayor.

Jason Tait of the Massachusetts Office of Campaign & Political Finance noted that the “general rule” is that “public resources may not be used for campaign purposes,” but the OCPF doesn’t weigh in on specific cases unless it investigates them.

It’s common for people in office to hold a bunch of “official” events to keep them in the public eye and the news during campaign season — a favorite move of Walsh. As long as there’s a case to be made that official business warrants an event, there’s typically no problem.

Janey used the event to hold up her “transition report,” both figuratively in her speech and also literally as she brandished a glossy copy at the lectern. The document, dated April 15 — a bit more than a week after she announced her run for mayor — featured a collection of “recommendations” for her first 100 days and for the year in general.

The transition report, her office said, was put together by volunteers and not commissioned by the campaign, even though, as the Herald reported a few months ago, the transition website was raising money for Janey’s political operation and now reroutes to the campaign site.

Janey, asked afterward if there was a problem with putting a seemingly campaign-connected document on the city website, correctly noted that Walsh did the same with a transition report as he got ready to take office in 2014.

She said it’s not a campaign document, saying, “A transition report is just that — a transition report.”

Janey made a couple of tidbits of news during the event. She announced the appointment of a new executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, to replace retiring interim chief Rita Nieves.

She also announced the creation of a “Children’s and Youth Cabinet” led by schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius and Janey’s policy chief Mary Churchill. One of Janey’s mayoral-race rivals, City Councilor Michelle Wu, floated the idea in a plan in the spring.

Wu’s campaign sent out an unsolicited statement that had the councilor saying she’s “always energized to see our policy positions and proposals adopted widely.”

City Councilor Andrea Campbell’s mayoral campaign also took a whack at Janey, saying in a statement, “this is not the time for a celebration, it’s time for governing.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2TumoHD