Thomas Menino
Thomas Michael Menino was an American politician who served as the mayor of Boston, from 1993 to 2014. He was the city's longest-serving mayor. He was elected mayor in 1993 after first serving three months as acting mayor following the resignation of his predecessor Raymond Flynn. Before serving as mayor, Menino was a member of the Boston City Council and had been elected president of the City Council in 1993.
Dubbed an "urban mechanic", Menino had a reputation for focusing on "nuts and bolts" issues and enjoyed very high public approval ratings as mayor. During his tenure, Boston saw a significant amount of new development, including the Seaport District, the redevelopment of Dudley Square, and the redevelopment of the area surrounding Fenway Park. However, during his mayoralty, gentrification priced some longtime residents out of neighborhoods, and allegations were made of favoritism by Menino towards certain developers. During Menino's tenure as mayor, crime in Boston fell to unprecedented lows, and the city came to rank among the safest large cities in the United States. Menino also undertook a number of environmentally-focused actions. In the last year of Menino's tenure, the city faced the Boston Marathon bombing, an incident of domestic terrorism.
Menino was a liberal member of the Democratic Party. He led a powerful political machine in Boston and also played roles in national politics, such as serving as president of the United States Conference of Mayors from 2002 to 2003, bringing the 2004 Democratic National Convention to Boston, and co-founding the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. After the end of his mayoralty, he was appointed professor of political science at Boston University. He also served as co-founder and co-director of the Initiative on Cities, an urban leadership research center based at Boston University. Menino's post-mayoralty life was unexpectedly cut short as he was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer of unknown primary origin in March 2014 and died from the disease seven months later.
Early life and education
Menino was born on December 27, 1942, in Readville, a part of Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was the son of Susan and Carl Menino, both of Italian descent. Readville was a largely Italian-American community. Menino's father was a factory foreman at Westinghouse Electric, and his grandparents lived on the first floor of his parents' Hyde Park home. In his youth, the Italian-American Menino was exposed to anti-Italian prejudice.After graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Jamaica Plain in 1960. Menino enrolled in three night classes at Boston College before abandoning his college education. Menino had decided that college was not for him much to his father's dismay. Carl Menino once recalled his son's reasons for opting out of higher education: "Truman didn't go to college," the younger Menino would tell his father. Menino eventually received an associate degree in Business Management in 1963 at the now-defunct Mount Ida College, which was then known as Chamberlayne Junior College. During his tenure as a Boston city councilor in 1984, Menino enrolled as an undergrad at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in community planning in January 1988.
Early career
Prior to running for office, Menino worked as a housing relocation specialist for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, was a research assistant for the state legislative committee on housing and urban development, and served as an aide to state senator Joseph F. Timilty.Menino met at the age of nineteen Joseph F. Timilty, who became a political mentor to him, in 1961.
Menino began working in sales at Metropolitan Life Insurance in 1963. He left the insurance industry in 1968 after Timilty got him an entry-level position at the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Menino worked on Timilty's 1971 and 1975 mayoral campaigns. In retribution for Menino working on Timilty's effort to unseat him, Mayor Kevin White fired Menino from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Menino again worked on Timilty's campaign in the 1979 Boston mayoral election.
City Council career
Menino was elected Boston city councilor for the newly created District 5 in November 1983, capturing 75 percent of the vote against Richard E. Kenney. Timilty would later claim that District 5's boundaries had been effectively designed with the goal of designing a district that would be guaranteed to elect his protégé Menino to the Boston City Council. Menino's overall vote total of 17,561 would not be surpassed by any district council candidate until Matt O'Malley received 18,204 votes in 2013. The 1983 Boston mayoral election coincided with the City Council election, and Menino endorsed Raymond Flynn for mayor over Mel King. Menino represented District 5 for nine years. He ran unopposed for re-election in November 1985. He was again re-elected in November 1989 and November 1991.File:Councilor Thomas M. Menino, Governor Michael S. Dukakis, Mayor Raymond L. Flynn and New England Patriot Brian Holloway.jpg|thumb|left|Menino at a 1985 New England Patriots rally, alongside Governor Michael Dukakis, Mayor Raymond Flynn, and player Brian Holloway
File:City Councilor Thomas Menino with Mayor Raymond Flynn and New York Mayor Ed Koch in Roslindale .jpg|thumb|left|Menino walking in the Roslindale neighborhood with Mayor Flynn and New York City Mayor Ed Koch in 1986
In 1984, Menino was named chairman of the council's Planning and Development Committee. In 1988, he became chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee. This committee was renamed the City Council Ways and Means Committee in 1990, a name that it continues to hold today. He remained chairman of this committee for the remainder of his tenure as City Councilor. He earned a reputation for having a strong understanding of the city budget of how to allocate funds to assist residents. He was known to be a "vigilant watchdog of the city budget," as hailed by The Boston Globe. He was a founding member of the City Council's Tourists and Tourism Committee which was created in 1991. Menino received praise for what The Boston Globes Adrian Walker called "aptitude for details of city government", and some criticism for his closeness to Mayor Flynn. Walker also wrote that Menino had received a reputation as a councilor, "for diligence and attention to detail." In 1993, Menino was voted by his fellow councilors to serve as president of the Boston City Council over Maura Hennigan. This had been somewhat an upset victory.
In 1986, Mayor Flynn offered Menino the position of Parks and Recreation Commissioner. In response to Flynn's proposal, Menino said it "surprised" him, but that he does "think about all opportunities that come before ." Menino did not assume the position but was re-elected in November 1987, with 87 percent of the vote. He also announced a candidacy for Suffolk County sheriff in 1986, but abandoned his candidacy afterward. In 1992, he planned to run for the United States Congress seat that Rep. Brian J. Donnelly was vacating. This 11th district seat stretched from the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester through communities on the South Shore and into Plymouth County. After United States congressional apportionment left Massachusetts only 10 congressional seats, Donnelly's district disappeared, and Menino chose not to challenge Representatives from the other districts.
Menino opposed several domestic ordinances that would have expanded rights to same-sex couples in domestic partnerships, including the 1991 Family Protection Act. During his 1993 mayoral campaign, his spokesperson credited this opposition to Menino believing that these ordinances too broadly defined "family" and not outright opposition to similar legislation that would more narrowly define domestic partnerships.
Menino supported proposals for clean needle distribution and condom distribution as a city councilor, both of which were aimed at preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Menino's support for condom distribution included supporting distribution in schools. In his role as Ways and Means Committee chairman, Menino advocated for increasing the funding of AIDS programs. In 1988, Menino authored a 5-point plan outlining steps to stop the spread of AIDS among users of intravenous drugs, including use of needle exchanges, community health vans, street outreach workers, and increased drug rehabilitation facilities.
Menino sponsored a study by municipal government of homelessness. He also advocated as for the Boston City Hospital to be reorganized.
Acting mayoralty
In March 1993, President Clinton nominated Mayor Flynn to be the United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Mayor Flynn accepted the nomination, effectively making Menino, who was President of the Boston City Council at the time, the presumptive future acting mayor.Menino had had a longtime friendship with outgoing mayor Flynn. However, their relationship was noted to have become somewhat terser during the period in which Flynn was preparing to hand over the office to Menino. One cause for their rift was that, after Menino had promised he would appoint 100 new police officers when he took office, Flynn beat him to the chase and did so himself, which angered Menino.
Upon Flynn's resignation on July 12, 1993, Menino became acting Mayor of Boston until the upcoming November 1993 election. He was the first Italian American to lead the city.
Some initially saw Menino as likely to be a sort of "caretaker" of the office, with Brian McGrory of The Boston Globe writing at the start of Menino's acting mayoralty, that to some, "Menino is believed to be a caretaker, a known quantity, a moderate compromise builder who is unlikely to bring great change or wreak serious harm on the city." McGregory also reported that some of Menino's City Council colleagues believed that Menino had an undistinguished legislative record as a city councilor.
During his acting mayoralty, Menino temporarily appointed Alfreda Harristo to fill a vacancy on the Boston School Committee. After Harristo cast the decisive vote in the Boston School Committee's rejecting of a teacher contract proposal, the Boston Teachers Union sued, questioning Menino's powers as acting mayor to make such an appointment. A judge dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing.
In early August 1993, Menino signed a grant agreement with the state which advanced $3.7 million in state funds to be allotted for the construction of a materials recycling facility in the city.
Menino put a freeze on water utility rates in place in the city, which were at rising due to the need to pay off the expenses of a court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor. Menino's freeze was popular with the city's residents, though there were questions as to whether an acting mayor actually held the authority to take such action.