Climbing Above the Culture Clash

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municipal elections, demonstrating broad popularity beyond his Irish roots to appeal to constituencies as diverse as the Vietnamese and Russian communities. Through his “Kitchen Table Conversations Tour,” Flaherty has met with Boston residents to hear their ideas to improve the city. make the city government’s budgeting, record-keeping and planning accessible to the public; and a data tracking and analysis system called CitiStats, already in use within several U.S. cities, including Somerville. Another important campaign theme is keeping families in Boston, with “ When it comes to public safety, especially youth violent crime, we’re not going to be able to arrest and prosecute our way out of the problem. ” working people, and the role of unions in securing those conditions. He also stayed active in his old neighborhood, coaching Little League and youth hockey and serving as director of the South Boston Citizens Association. Flaherty credited Professor Robert Volk, director of BU Law’s Legal Research and Writing Program, with teaching him to research and write like a lawyer in that first year, as well as keeping an eye on his extracurricular activities. “Professor Volk was always looking on, making sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing,” he said. He reached out to the city’s expanding gay and lesbian population, becoming the first citywide elected official to endorse same-sex marriage in 2001. He later helped push through the council an ordinance known as the transgender protection law, which bans discrimination against people based on their gender identity or expression. Flaherty also draws upon his personal experiences to inspire his political views. His pitch for mayor sounds themes that have preoccupied him since his ADA days: turning around the public schools, reducing youth violent crime, decentralizing policing to give more power to district police captains, and streamlining government spending by making decisions based on real-time data. One of his major priorities is to bring greater transparency and accountability to government operations, which he says will help the city identify areas of wasteful spending. He advocates using such tools as the Internet to such proposals as increasing affordable, family-sized housing and expanding neighborhood crime watches. “I’m a city kid. I was born and raised in the city,” said Flaherty, 40, who grew up in Boston and still lives in his old neighborhood with his wife, Laurene, and their four children, three of whom attend the Murphy School in Dorchester. Flaherty’s own education took him from Boston College High School to Boston College and then to BU Law. The first year of law school was tough, he said, not least because he continued to work as a driver for Airborne Express Company, a job he’d had since leaving high school. While learning torts, contracts and other 1L subjects, he was working as a courier, delivering freight to warehouses citywide, and loading and unloading airplanes at Logan Airport. As a member of Teamsters Local Union 25, he gained a first-hand understanding of the importance of “good wages, good benefits and good safety conditions” for In his ambitious campaign, Flaherty said he refrains from ugly politics. He conceded that Tom Menino was good for the city when he first took office in 1993, but also said he believes that a new generation needs a new kind of politics — with a new politician to lead the way. Flaherty’s hope is that his approach to politics and governing, coupled with his longtime love for the city, will persuade Boston voters that it’s time for a change — and that he is the best candidate for the job. So far, his hard work has paid off — Flaherty took second place in the September primary, and will face off against Menino in November. In The Boston Globe, Flaherty told his followers on primary night, “If everyone in this room stands with me, rolls up their sleeves, and helps me throw a shoulder into this effort, we will change Boston.” • For more information on how Flaherty does in November, go to www.cityofboston.gov/elections/results. 8 | Boston University School of Law | www.bu.edu/law
America’s Future Trust-Brokers: BU Law Looks at the Economy Professor Tamar Frankel on the Financial Crisis and the New Course It Has Inspired Trust. It’s a concept that’s on shaky ground in the financial world these days. But according to BU Law Professor Tamar Frankel, it remains the cornerstone of our entire economic system. Frankel has devoted much of her storied legal career to the concept of trust, teaching and writing extensively on corporations, mutual fund regulation and fiduciary law, serving at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and visiting at the Brookings Institution. Earlier this year, she testified before Congress about Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, and offered recommendations on how to reform our beleaguered regulatory system. Reform is essential, Frankel told Congress, because no investment system can flourish in the absence of trust between investors and financial institutions. She expanded on these thoughts in a recent interview with The Record. “Over the last 30 years, there has been a shift away from a reliance on law and morality toward self-protection as a way to regulate the system,” she said. “The assumption is that people should protect themselves in financial matters by educating themselves.” But this simply won’t work, argued Frankel, noting that the investors who lost their shirts in the Madoff scandal included many of the most sophisticated individuals and institutions. “We live in a specialized society, so some services cannot be adequately supervised by the recipient,” she said. “I cannot supervise the work of my surgeon when he performs heart surgery, nor can a person supervise the work of his lawyer, or the services of their financial advisers. In order for the system to work, we have to entrust our money to our financial advisers, just as we have to give our surgeon authority over our body.” Fall 2009 | The Record | 9
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Page 5 and 6: The Veterans’ Veteran: Kirk Bauer
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Climbing Above the Culture Clash

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