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Michael Flaherty needs to bone up on his reading skills

Tom Menino sure pulled a good one on him, slipping $2 million into the city budget to study moving City Hall to South Boston, which Flaherty managed to vote for even though he opposes the move, because, well, it was on page 342 of the budget:

In an interview after the hearing, he said that he did not realize he had already voted to approve the funding for the studies.

As a reporter, I once covered a similar issue in Natick - when one selectman realized he'd been similarly, if not quite so back-of-the-bookishly, bamboozled, he said "If I'd realized what I was voting for, I would have voted against myself."

No offense to Natick, but shouldn't we expect more from Boston councilors, who, after all, get paid full-time wages? Surely a man who would be mayor of Boston would realize he has to be on guard when it comes to the man who is mayor of Boston - even if he does have a point about spending $2 million on a study like that in times like these.

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Comments

This sort of thing probably happens more than you might think. It was worded innocuously enough to seemingly not have to do with City Hall, and despite what Hizzoner's cabinet member says, the intent was most likely to hide it. "The Power Broker", a book about Robert Moses and NYC, is filled with anecdotes of budgets and bills with hidden agendas that legislators rarely discovered until it was too late.

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sounds like an aide messed up,

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If you expect more from your Boston city councilors, why do you keep electing such clowns and deadbeats? I mean, in the words of a Cambridge city councilor, you are not Methuen.

But then why would you think the Boston city council is any better than the other legislative body that meets in your city?

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