The Revolving Door Also Swings Close to Home

There’s been some hand-wringing recently over the increasingly oligarchical nature of our federal government. The revolving door between D.C. and Wall Street is and should be of concern. (See Blue Mass Group, Salon.com and The Atlantic.)

In all of this, however, it should not be missed that the same door is held open between Beacon Hill and the corporate sector here in Massachusetts. The Governor’s new Transportation Secretary (about which enough has probably already been written) and his Stimulus Czar both came back to state government after very lucrative stints in the private sector, which were set up by previous stints in state government, from which they both cashed out, the former by remaining a legal consultant to the Pike and the latter by filing for an increased state pension under Section 10 of Chapter 32 of the Massachusetts General Laws. (Google Jeffrey Simon and increased pension.)

It is probably worth a longer and, hopefully, deeper discussion than can be had here on a blog regarding whether the expertise that men like Jim Aloisi and Jeffrey Simon bring with them when they return to state government is worth the potential for graft created by letting that door revolve.