By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Many of us fondly remember the time when Somerville was a tight community with commercially vibrant squares and dozens of volunteer groups. Here’s a good indicator of how closely-knit neighbors were:  If a kid smoked or cussed anywhere in the neighborhood, someone would probably tell his or her parents. Such a sense of community is rare in American society.

But our city’s civic past has a dark side as well. It involves a 50-year history of corruption that reached its peak in the 1960s.

That decade began with Somerville’s population at 95,000. Manufacturing plant closures, smaller family sizes, suburban migration, and the destruction of a neighborhood to make way for I-93 reduced the population to 89,000 in 1970.

About 80% of residents were working-class first- or second-generation Americans, whose origins were Irish, Italian and Canadian. Fewer than 1,000 were African American. Mean family income was $6,000. A majority of kids who started Somerville High School did not graduate.

Democrats had controlled Somerville since 1929. Politics were not based on ideological or policy differences so much as on friendships, business relationships and favor trading.

Despite the city’s having one of the highest property tax rates in the state, by 1970 it owed almost $7 million in short-term loans that it had borrowed from banks to pay operating costs. That’s $51 million in today’s dollars. Yet the roads were riddled with potholes. School buildings and the main library branch were falling apart. And residents enjoyed many fewer city services than they do today.

One reason for these fiscal woes was that government was rife with corruption. On the expense side, mayors and their appointees gave millions of dollars in overpriced no-bid contracts to their friends and associates. On the revenue side, an elected board of property tax assessors gave manipulated abatements and sought kickbacks.

In its first ever Spotlight series, the Boston Globe documented that during the 1960s, the city had spent at least $4.3 million ($31.4 million today) in no-bid contracts. By breaking a job into small pieces, officials circumvented the requirement to bid out any expense greater than $1,000. Or they declared the job to be an “emergency.”

The city gave this work to a handful of contractors who were connected to public officials and each other through blood, marriage and interlocking financial interests. One of them had spent two years in prison, for seven counts of defrauding the city and the Commonwealth. Even then, he was paid $777,756 ($5.7 million today) for no-bid contracts. The “earned” half of that amount while he was being tried or serving time.

On one project, he submitted seven separate invoices, totaling $6,095, to dig trenches for Teele Square traffic signals.  He completed them in September 1969, but the lights did not come on for almost two years.

Although it was easy enough for the Water Department to estimate its needs and issue a request for bids, it bought supplies on a piecemeal basis, thereby keeping expenditures below $1,000. Overwhelmingly, it bought them from the a single plumbing concern, who charged the Purchasing Department 20%-40% more for supplies than did their competitors.

It also worked on city facilities. One of the more amusing jobs was “emergency” work on a heating plant, performed in the middle of summer. Mayor Larry Bretta formed an insurance business with one of the firm’s partners, and then a real estate business.

A board of five elected officials conducted property assessments. There were no skill or certification requirements for the job. In truth, it was a secretive process, largely dependent on the whim of each assessor and the mutual approval of their Board.

Contravening state law, they assessed properties of friends, family, themselves, business associates, and partners in crime. One assessor gave abatements to six Somerville properties owned by a Lexington-based landlord. In turn, the landlord sold him property in Lexington for $100, which a few years later was sold for $112,000.

A well-connected city solicitor was able to amass property valued at $3.4 million ($24 million today) over the space of just six years. He also represented the city in cases before the Massachusetts Tax Board, and people who witnessed those proceedings report that it was often difficult to discern which side he was advocating for.

While researching its series, the Globe Spotlight Team retained an independent appraiser to estimate the market value of selected properties owned by a city treasurer, favored contractors, a former state senator, a former mayor, and the solicitor. The appraiser reported that the properties were worth at least four times what they were assessed at. The Woodbridge Inn, for example, owned by two former mayors and an assessor’s brother, had a paper value of $800,000, but was assessed at $50,000.

State Senator Denis McKenna owned an insurance business that placed policies or construction bonds on Somerville Public Buildings, I-93 construction and Somerville Housing Authority structures, violating conflict of interest laws. When confronted by the Globe, he said, “I’m like the minister whose job it is to save souls. I will sell insurance to anyone who buys insurance from me.”

During those years, McKenna was Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Committee on Insurance, sat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Chaired the Committee on Counties. The Globe summed up his performance in the latter role as “using Middlesex County as a private employment agency” to reward supporters. He also owned a travel agency that booked trips for aldermen and school committee members.

In 1969, a citizens’ reform movement elected Rev. Lester Ralph as mayor. He encountered strong opposition from entrenched interests, but the Globe published the Spotlight series in February 1971, and Ralph was re-elected by a huge majority.

Assessors continued running their scams until two of them got caught in a 1983 FBI sting involving a fictitious Assembly Square development. The city then eliminated the elected Board of Assessors.

Much has changed in Somerville city government, but the relationship/favor-based political culture remains. It may be inevitable, given the city charter.

Less than 8% of Massachusetts’ 351 cities and towns have a strong mayor form of government. But they historically account for all of the Commonwealth’s major municipal corruption scandals, save one. The exception was Lowell, where the city manager had formerly been a mayor in strong-mayor city.

Just twelve years after the 1899 adoption of Somerville’s current charter, the Board of Aldermen realized its flaws.  They wrote a charter that was a forerunner of today’s council/manager form of government, but it died in the Legislature in 1914.

Somerville aldermen and mayors subsequently made three more attempts to replace the city charter. Senator McKenna killed one in 1982 by not allowing it to come out of committee.

At the time of the reform movement that elected Lester Ralph, Somerville had a half-dozen activist citizen groups, an investigative press, and an active Board of Aldermen. Completing the reformers’ work will probably require similar conditions.