Former state AG goes to aid of ex-Chelsea housing chief

Harshbarger angers Patrick with pitch

November 12, 2011|By Andrea Estes and Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff

Scott Harshbarger has been called on frequently to investigate corruption…

Former Massachusetts attorney general L. Scott Harshbarger, who has long positioned himself as a champion of honest and open government, has emerged as an unlikely ally of Michael E. McLaughlin, the former Chelsea Housing Authority executive director, who abruptly quit after his $360,000 annual compensation was revealed.

Harshbarger called Governor Deval Patrick on the governor’s cellphone this week trying to cut a deal on behalf of McLaughlin, whose entire agency is now under investigation by the FBI, the attorney general, and several other agencies over his extraordinary pay and his efforts to collect a state-record pension.

Patrick was alarmed by the call, during which Harshbarger asked if McLaughlin could end the controversy by accepting a lower retirement benefit, according to two people briefed on the phone call. The next day, Patrick’s chief of staff, Mo Cowan, called Harshbarger back and told him not to call on the matter again.

Harshbarger, who went on to serve as president of the citizen watchdog group Common Cause after an unsuccessful run for governor in 1998, yesterday told the Globe that he intervened on McLaughlin’s behalf at the request of a “mutual friend,’’ whom he would not name, and was not representing him. He said he had known McLaughlin since the two first ran for office in Middlesex County in 1978.

But Harshbarger called back about 40 minutes later to explain that he was acting as McLaughlin’s lawyer and had met privately with the former housing chief, a fact he did not disclose to the governor.

He also did not disclose that relationship in an e-mail to a Globe editor on Nov. 5 suggesting that McLaughlin is “perilously close’’ to being the victim of a “reputational witch hunt.’’

Harshbarger, 69, said the phone call to Patrick on Nov. 8 was “totally innocent and appropriate. Nothing was intended and nothing came out of it.’’ But, he said, in hindsight “I wouldn’t do it again obviously … because of the implications it raises.’’

Since he stepped down as the president of Common Cause in 2002, Harshbarger has been called on frequently to investigate corruption and recommend reforms.

He was appointed by Governor Mitt Romney to head a commission on prison reform and more recently advised the state courts on how to recover from the patronage scandal in the Probation Department that led to an indictment of the former commissioner.

This time, though, Harshbarger was acting on behalf of a man caught in an ever-deepening scandal.

The Globe revealed the size of McLaughlin’s compensation package on Oct. 30. McLaughlin had seen his pay rise nearly fivefold during his 12 years at the helm of the authority, but he told state officials he made only $160,000, less than half the real total.