Inspector general blames everyone, but UMass killed the Star Store

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Much has been said this last year about how the state inspector general was going to get to the bottom of why UMass Dartmouth abruptly — and to nearly universal criticism in the city — closed its downtown New Bedford arts campus a year ago August.

But though Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro’s Sept. 16 report cast a wide net of blame — pointing a sharply critical finger at every single player involved — his most pointed comments in the 57-page report on his investigation seem aimed against none other than the man who conceived the project and pushed it through the state Legislature: state Sen. Mark C.W. Montigny of New Bedford.

Yes, Shapiro — whom I think the record will show is quite the political animal himself — judged that UMass Dartmouth was never really committed to keeping the College of Visual and Performing Arts in downtown New Bedford. And yes, he criticized the state office (the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance — DCAMM) that was in charge of administering the campus funding for failing to take ownership of it.

And yes, he ever-so slightly rebuked the owner (Paul Downey) of the building (Star Store) where the New Bedford campus was located. He said Downey failed to follow the state’s instruction that he establish a reserve account, into which UMass Dartmouth was supposed to deposit state funds to do big-ticket maintenance items on the building.

Shapiro also noted, by the way, that UMass Dartmouth never deposited any funds to the non-existent maintenance account. “Neither DCAMM nor UMD took ownership of a lease to which they were both signatories,” he wrote.

And yes, the inspector general castigated all the parties above — DCAMM, UMass Dartmouth, and Downey, as well as the state Legislature —  for failing to communicate with each other, and develop an effective plan to save the New Bedford arts campus as the deadline for its 20-year lease wound down.

But Shapiro, by often using people’s positions and not writing their names in his report, shrewdly avoided biting the legislative hand that feeds him, even as he implicitly reserved his biggest criticism — the first of his major “findings” — for “New Bedford’s state senator” who put together the plan that brought the CVPA campus to the downtown commercial district.

Here’s what he said in Findings 1 and 2:

“The 1996 legislation was flawed, setting up a procurement process that was not open, fair, or competitive,” and “The resulting request for proposals (RFP) was an RFP in name only and resulted in a flawed lease.”

Shapiro had bought into the conclusions of the original 1997 examination of the Star Store campus done by previous Inspector General Robert Cesaroli.

Cesaroli, at the time Montigny wrote the enabling bill, had urged then Gov. William Weld to veto it. He criticized the proposed law for creating a procurement process for the acquisition of a building that was effectively exempt from competitive bidding. It was exempt, he said, because the city’s Redevelopment Authority, at Montigny’s recommendation, had already sold for $1 the only downtown building (Star Store) that could satisfy the state’s UMass Dartmouth RFP. It went to Paul Downey.

“With no competition, there was no incentive for the Developer to reduce costs or propose terms favorable to the Commonwealth,” Shapiro wrote. “The Developer made millions in profits while the Commonwealth bore every expense related to the Star Store lease.”

Shapiro, however, acknowledged that Montigny was trying to do good by bringing the arts campus to downtown New Bedford, even if his legislation, and the resulting RFP and contract with Paul Downey, were flawed. The missteps he said he found were the result of failure in the effort’s “myriad details and the actions and inactions of key parties.”

“The fact that the Commonwealth assumed a central responsibility in a plan to revive downtown New Bedford was both a reasonable and admirable governmental function,” Shapiro wrote.

So essentially, the inspector general is saying that Montigny came up with a well-meaning but flawed plan, and then some recalcitrant parties (UMass Dartmouth, DCAMM and Downey) took advantage of its loopholes.

But it’s actually even more than that because, according to Shapiro’s own report, both UMass Dartmouth and DCAMM were critical forces in the failure. They declined to create and fund the vital maintenance account, but then they failed to come up with a plan for taking ownership of the building, and finally they missed two separate deadlines for acquiring the structure.

Shapiro mentioned the missed deadlines for taking the building but he didn’t make a big deal of them. That strikes me as active resistance on his part to shining a brighter light on why the campus ultimately closed.

Astonishingly, Shapiro even says the university and DCAMM should have moved to close the campus in 2021, the first time they missed the deadline for acquiring the building. That kind of neutrality on the continuance of the arts college in downtown New Bedford belies the inspector general’s previous statements that the school was opened for a good purpose.

In my opinion, the recalcitrance of UMass Dartmouth and DCAMM to saving the campus is emblematic of a deep-seated and philosophical resistance to the New Bedford location on both their parts. Mark Montigny may have believed it was a legitimate purpose of government to bring the College of Visual and Performing Arts to the city’s downtown. But after former UMD Chancellor Peter Cressey and Gov. Weld left the scene 20-plus years ago, there is little evidence that anyone else at the university or in state government ever prioritized it or deeply believed in it. Including the Karam family from Fall River that has chaired the university system’s board of directors for much of the last several decades.

But the historical connections between the players evaluating what caused the demise of the New Bedford arts campus go even deeper than the depressing historic envy between the Spindle City and the Whaling City. In fact, nearly everyone involved in the decision making had a connection to UMass President Marty Meehan. And these decisions were made while Meehan was presiding in recent years over a stark change in the way the five-campus university system operates, funds itself and thinks of its mission. 

A little bit of research on Mass.gov showed me that Jeffrey Shapiro once worked as an executive assistant to none other than UMass President Meehan when the latter was Congressman Meehan from the Greater Lowell area.

My previous poking around had already shown that state Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz also had a longtime previous job with Meehan in the UMass President’s office. There, Gorzkowicz worked for more than 10 years as the associate vice president for administration and finance. As Executive Office of Administration and Finance secretary, he presides over DCAMM. The university system’s funding mechanism that I spoke of was revamped while Gorzkowicz, who ironically was also a one-time aide to Montigny, worked in the UMass president’s office.

The commissioner of DCAMM is Adam Baacke, who would have worked with Meehan during 10 years as vice chancellor for campus development at UMass Lowell and 14 years as a city planner and assistant city manager in Lowell. Meehan, of course, in addition to being a longtime Lowell congressman, is a former chancellor at UMass Lowell.

Gov. Maura Healey appointed Baacke last year just as Montigny had decided to pull the UMass Dartmouth funding for the New Bedford campus. Baacke would have been presiding over the agency this last year as Montigny repeatedly said he was having discussions with DCAMM about saving the campus.

Finally, Gov. Healey directly influences two of the eight members of the inspector general’s council, and indirectly a third, as the introduction to Shapiro’s report outlines. 

Let’s just say there are a lot of state administrators and political appointees with long associations who were interested in this inspector general’s report.

I’m not saying that Inspector General Shapiro pulled his punches because of his association with other executives who have close histories with President Meehan. To be fair, Shapiro sharply criticized both UMass Dartmouth and DCAMM for their failures to take ownership and develop a plan for the New Bedford arts campus.

What I am saying is that the way the inspector general’s report is written, it is framed to blame everyone a little but not enough to those who count the most. The report quite clearly states that everyone failed because the original plan failed, and that original 1996 legislation creating the downtown CVPA campus at the Star Store was all Montigny’s. “The OIG (Office of Inspector General) found that the state-funded lease of the Star Store on behalf of UMD was flawed from its inception and resulted in a waste of public funds,” Shapiro wrote.

I’m not sure that’s exactly fair to the local state senator, even though I’ve sharply criticized him on other aspects of this saga, especially defunding the entire line item for the campus last year.

The problem here is that Inspector General Shapiro, like many of the professionally connected people in state government making the decisions on UMass Dartmouth, has insisted the matter is an unfortunate subject that nothing can be done about. As I’ve said before, it reminds me of the Healey administration’s attitude toward the recent closures of Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center.

The reason that these connections are significant is that the UMass system in recent years has moved to a practice of funding capital projects at the level of the individual campuses. Even as the university system did this, the president’s office has been integrally involved in approving spending for those purposes as shown by a 2019 Pioneer Institute report on Meehan’s office scapegoating of UMass Boston for a shortfall in its spending on capital projects. Former Inspector General Gregory Sullivan co-wrote that report, which concluded that Meehan’s office had actually approved the spending it blamed on UMass Boston. The report criticizes the university system for allowing UMass Amherst to buy a Newton campus for $75 million even as it forced UMass Boston to make $25.8 million in cuts. No sharing of university assets between the successful campuses and the struggling ones!

The UMass President’s Office and the Board of Trustees is involved in every aspect of spending by the five campuses and I believe its influence has pervaded the demise of the Star Store and the framing of the inspector general’s report.

New Bedford’s loss of the College of Visual and Performing Arts campus is a loss of a school of higher education present in the city in one form or another since the late 19th century. It is the direct successor of the former Boston University Program in Artistry and the Swain School of Design, both of which operated in or near the downtown. Shapiro seemed to have missed that aspect of the economic equation for the commonwealth in emphasizing money that was wasted.

Shapiro underestimated the economic effects of the school because he complained no one collected good data on it and went on to complain millions were wasted. But he could have arrived at a different set of conclusions had he been more in tune to the school’s role in New Bedford.

Let me tell you a little relevant history.

In preparing this column, I found a 1995 Standard-Times article by my former colleague Susan Pawlak-Seaman that seems to have been the first mention that the city of New Bedford and UMass Dartmouth had embarked on a plan to bring the arts campus to the Star Store in downtown New Bedford.

Pawlak-Seaman, reporting on a School Committee meeting, announced the striking news that the late Mayor Rosemary Tierney (chair ex officio of the School Committee) and former UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Peter Cressey had signed a “letter of intent” to bring the UMass Dartmouth campus to the downtown.

It was said to have been made possible by language that Montigny, at the time the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, had crafted setting aside $3.5 million in a higher education bond bill for the conversion of the Star Store into the UMass campus.

Paul Downey was already in control of that building, and he’s described in the story as being “taken by surprise” by the signing of the letter. According to the inspector general’s report, earlier that year, the New Bedford Redevelopment Authority had already conveyed the building, which had been vacant for eight years, to Downey that same month. The city had taken it for unpaid taxes the prior June.

Chancellor Cressey is described in the same article as saying that while he did not think the project would be “easy,” that it was “doable.” Cressey also seemed to understand its importance, not just to the revival of the center city but to the arts students.

“I could see it being a charming area, alive with people,” he is quoted as saying. “I bet it would be a real fun place.”

Whether there were any shenanigans in conveying the building to Downey, who has long been said to be close to Greater New Bedford political boss William “Biff” MacLean, I don’t know. I will say this. The building had been vacant for seven years and no one was speculating about empty 100-year-old buildings in downtown New Bedford in the 1990s.

There was no other place in the downtown that the UMass arts campus could have been located. The story by Pawlak-Seaman describes a process that was being done publicly, despite Inspector Cesaroli’s complaints about the lack of competitive bidding. Shapiro seems to have missed this aspect of the history, too.

Would a competitive bidding process, as Shapiro and Cesaroli suggested, given the state leverage over Downey for a better contract? Certainly. That’s Montigny’s failure. Would a better contract have forced the successor of Cressey at UMass and the folks who worked at DCAMM to work harder to save the downtown UMass Dartmouth campus? I’m not so sure about that. Paul Downey, as the 20-year contract wound down, spent $90,000 lobbying the state and DCAMM sought every loophole to get out of responsibility for the building.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the last 25 years. UMass under the leadership of Meehan, Gorzkowicz and others has moved on to a whole new approach to the state university system, including in the funding.

The bottom line to me, however, is that while there’s plenty of criticism to go around, if UMass Dartmouth had really wanted to stay in New Bedford, the powers-that-be would have had to go along with them. Even last year, Downey said his plan was to convey the building to UMass if the inspector general investigation would be jettisoned.

I’ve always thought it odd that Healey and Montigny didn’t take Downey up on that. Almost as odd is the determination of both Montigny and Chancellor Fuller to keep New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell from knowing what was happening.

Here’s the reality. The empty building and the UMass Dartmouth arts campus could still happen today if Meehan and Fuller were interested. 

The reality is that Chancellor Fuller moved to permanently close the College of Visual and Performing Arts in New Bedford the first chance he was given. In my opinion, he did what President Meehan wanted him to do. I just hope Inspector General Shapiro framing his report the way that he has is not doing the same thing.

I also hope that Gov. Healey and Sen. Montigny are not using the long and determined resistance of UMass to the New Bedford school as an excuse to go along with them.

Jack Spillane is a New Bedford Light columnist. Email him at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.

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