Steve Murphy

Murphy on live TV.The City Council today appointed former Councilor Maureen Feeney as city clerk in a process that would have taken about 30 seconds if council President Steve Murphy had not taken the opportunity to rail against "the broadsheets" and a former mayoral candidate.

For 15 minutes, Murphy excoriated the Globe and Kevin McCrea, accusing them of creating a circus with moving goalposts that bordered on harassment and only showed they want to chose the next city clerk, but they don't have the right because who elected them?

UPDATE: The city has a fulltime legal department, yet apparently nobody thought to check whether interviewing a former city councilor less than 30 days after she quit might violate state ethics laws, the Globe reports (Globe account required).

A roving UHub reporter files this report from this afternoon's interviews of the two candidates for the job of city clerk:

The Committee on Rules chaired by Steve Murphy interviewed the two candidates for the job. The first was Maureen Feeney, who fielded mostly softball questions from the councilors present for about half an hour.

However, Counselor Yancey asked her about the removal of councilor Turner - specifically the hearing at which the council voted 11-1 to remove him (one guess who that one vote was). Yancey asked if it was true that the rules don't allow for an item to be brought up and voted on in the same day unless voted on by a majority. Feeney agreed that is what the rules say. Yancey brought up the fact that he objected and so it was not unanimous and so Turner should not have been removed. Feeney agreed that rules should be followed. Yancey did not press the point.

The second candidate, Natalie Carithers, then also answered about the same questions from the councilors and also spoke for about half an hour. Yancey also asked her about Turner, but it was a brief discussion: She said she didn't know much about the hearing at which he was removed (even though she ran for his seat).

It appeared that the committee was going to have a discussion about the candidates but Murphy said something about the fact that there were cameras present and so that changed the complexion of the situation and so gavelled the meeting to a close.

Just yesterday, City Council President Steve Murphy said BPD told him it was costing $2 million a month to watch over those scamps on Dewey Square. Channel 4, however, reports today that BPD has put the total cost of its supervision of Occupy Boston since Oct. 1 (the occupation began 9/30) at $146,189.55. Assuming that's current through yesterday, and assuming it includes another massive early morning crackdown, that comes out to roughly $350,000 a month.

A day after police and inspectors swooped down on a Blue Hill Avenue building nearby residents called a criminal warren, city councilors and lawyers began hammering out an ordinance for cracking down on owners of troubled apartments - including a provision that would require licensing for landlords with repeat offenses.