Governor Keeping Council Busy with Judicial Nominees
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, NOV. 30, 2022…..The Governor’s Council on Wednesday cleared the way for the secretary of state’s office to order hand recounts in two House districts where election winners have yet to be settled, and approved 10 judicial candidates — one of whom advanced after Gov. Charlie Baker broke a tie vote.
Two candidates in House races petitioned this month for a recount of the thousands of ballots cast in their districts.
Democrat Kristin Kassner of Hamilton stands 10 votes behind Republican Rep. Lenny Mirra of Georgetown (out of 23,509 votes cast), and Republican Andrew Shepherd of Townsend is 17 votes behind Democrat Margaret Scarsdale of Pepperell in a race for an open Nashoba Valley seat (out of 19,910 votes cast).
Staff members from Secretary of State William Galvin’s office were on hand outside the chamber while councilors certified the 2022 state election results, and Galvin issued the recount orders shortly afterwards. Local officials must wrap up the new counts by Saturday, Dec. 10, according to Galvin’s office.
Callahan Approved For District Court
Later on in their busy session, councilors threw a curveball on Baker’s nomination of former Parole Board executive director Michael Callahan to the District Court bench.
The vote was initially a draw, 4-4, with Councilors Mary Hurley, Marilyn Pettito Devaney, Eileen Duff, and Paul DePalo opposed to Callahan’s judgeship.
DePalo, one of a few councilors to recently criticize operations and workplace culture at the Parole Department, said the opposition “goes back to the functioning of the Parole Department under the last several years.” Callahan was the director there from 2015 to 2018.
Former Parole Board Chairwoman Gloriann Moroney faced similar criticism from Devaney, Duff, and DePalo in her bid to join the District Court bench last month, which she ultimately won on a 5-3 vote.
Callahan is also a former Suffolk County prosecutor — he served as chief of the Dorchester Division — and most recently practiced law in Worcester.
Devaney said she heard from people who called Callahan “arrogant,” and she alleged that “he yells” when working with people.
“But besides that, I could go on and on about it, there are judges that are opposed to him, and people in the court. But, lieutenant governor, they’re not going to come here and testify. … So I’m looking at this, and I’m saying, these are people that we respect — that don’t want him as a colleague,” Devaney said.
Councilor Robert Jubinville, a practicing defense lawyer, countered Devaney’s charges.
“I go to court every day. I’ve never heard one complaint against him by any judge or any lawyer,” the Milton Democrat told his colleagues.
With the vote at 4-4, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, who presides over council sessions, placed the meeting in recess. The governor entered the chamber and said, “I hear you have a tied vote.”
Baker took the gavel for a moment so Polito could act as a voting member and break the tie for the administration. With the roll call at 5-4, Callahan secured the District Court seat held until August by Judge David Locke.
Other Confirmations
The Governor’s Council was unanimous in its other roll calls, voting 8-0 to approve four pardons, four Industrial Accident Board judges, four clerk magistrates, and one Superior Court judge.
The pardons of Brian Morin, Camille Joseph Chaisson, Michael Biagini, and Robert Busa were noncontroversial among councilors.
The panel plans to hold a hearing on two others — pardons for Gerald “Tooky” Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave — on Dec. 13. That will mark the first opportunity for public input during the Amiraults’ latest clemency bid. The Parole Board this year denied both siblings the opportunity to state their case for pardons.
Councilors granted new six-year terms on the Industrial Accident Board to administrative judges Joseph Spinale, A. Ninoska Rosado, Lauren Bergheimer, and Marguerite O’Neill. All four were originally appointed by Baker and started their IAB service in 2017.
They represent less than half of the governor’s recent burst of nominations to Department of Industrial Accidents boards, which hear disputed workers’ compensation claims.
At a hearing earlier in the day on another IAB reappointment (Administrative Judge Steven Rose), councilors credited one of their own for helping lobby the Baker administration to move along the slate of Industrial Accidents nominations.
Councilor Christopher Iannella Jr., a partner at the Boston law firm Iannella & Mummolo which specializes in workers’ compensation cases, said he and Senior Judge Omar Hernandez both talked to the administration because “we’re coming down to the ninth inning of the game.”
Councilor Terry Kennedy told the nominee that “you guys wouldn’t be here today but for the efforts of Judge Hernandez and Councilor Iannella for these reappointments.”
“The ones that would have happened later would have sat there, I think, because as you can see, we’re jam-packed at the end of the administration,” Kennedy said. “And squeezing all of you guys in was due to their efforts, and given how busy we are, that’s a big deal.”
On 8-0 votes, the council approved Katherine Barkowski, a longtime clerk’s office employee at the Boston Juvenile Court, as the new top clerk for Somerville District Court; former Rep. Joseph McIntyre as clerk magistrate for the Housing Court’s Southeastern division; New Bedford attorney Pamela Gauvin-Fernandes as the new magistrate in Wrentham District Court; and Lauren Greene Petrigno, former executive director of the Judicial Nominating Commission, as clerk magistrate of Stoughton District Court.
Hurley called Greene Petrigno’s new post “well deserved.”
Devaney voted in favor of her confirmation and called her appointment “excellent” at the session. The Watertown Democrat said later Wednesday that she suffered from temporary “hearing loss” and did not know which nomination she was voting on. She provided the News Service with a copy of a letter she wrote after the meeting explaining her condition and stating she had intended to vote against Greene Petrigno’s confirmation.
The one new judge minted Wednesday was William Bloomer, who will depart the state’s new police oversight agency after less than a year to sit on the Superior Court bench.
Hired on April 4 as the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission’s division of standards director, Bloomer said at the time that his new job was a “rare opportunity” to shape an agency charged with ensuring professional policing and investigating allegations of police misconduct.
A former Middlesex County prosecutor and chief of Attorney General Thomas Reilly’s Special Investigations and Narcotics Unit, Bloomer went on to serve in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for nearly two decades.
Devaney said that the 1988 Suffolk Law graduate had applied for a judgeship five times.
Concluding the string of roll calls, Polito thanked councilors for vetting such a large herd of nominees. “That represents a lot of work,” she told them.
New Nominees
Baker handed three new nominations to the council Wednesday, including career prosecutor Michael Cahillane whom Baker picked for the Superior Court bench.
Cahillane, a 1999 Suffolk Law graduate, spent 11 years as a prosecutor in the Northwestern district attorney’s office before moving cross-state to the Bristol County DA’s office in 2011.
He currently serves as a Superior Court prosecutor dealing with “murders and other major felonies with a focus on the use/possession of firearms,” according to his resume, and received the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association’s “Prosecutor of the Year” award in 2010.
Baker also tapped veteran court clerk Jennifer Lennon for permanent appointment as clerk magistrate of Marlborough District Court. Lennon has been Marlborough’s “acting” magistrate since taking over in 2021 for Clerk Magistrate Paul Malloy, who had served since 1983.
Lennon was previously the acting magistrate at Ayer District Court from 2018 to 2020, when her name was raised in council debate as someone who applied for the permanent post but was not invited to interview with the governor’s Nominating Commission.
After graduating Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in 1998, Lennon worked for nearly five years as a prosecutor in the Middlesex County DA’s Child Abuse Division and Cambridge Superior Court, according to her resume. She later handled civil cases — “primarily insurance defense” — at Worcester firm Fuller, Rosenberg, Palmer, and Beliveau, LLP.
These latest nominations eliminate all but one of the judicial vacancies recently reported by the News Service. (The Baker administration has not updated its published list of vacancies since July.)
On Tuesday, Baker nominated Nicholas Dennis Bernier for a six-year term on the Appellate Tax Board, which hears tax appeal cases. Bernier is a partner at Rampart Law Group LLC, which has offices in Fall River, Boston, and Rhode Island.
Renewable energy clients are a focus of his practice, according to his nomination paperwork, including clients “developing/acquiring large portfolios of renewable energy generation projects in Massachusetts” and those with “a variety of land use and municipal law issues in Massachusetts and in Rhode Island.”
Bernier was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America in 1998 at age 13. He served on Swansea’s Advisory and Finance Board and the town’s Charter Commission in 2005-2006 and 2007-2008.
