03.14.2025

Teachers union pushes radical ideology, report contends | Public not getting the full story on the Bay State’s outrageously high health care costs | State treasurer spending taxpayer dollars on white shoe law firm in legal battle against former colleague | Mancuso: Healey administration may be violating ethics rules in its choice of interim ed commissioner |

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Good use of taxpayer dollars? State treasurer shells out top dollar for elite law firm in her battle against a former political ally

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took heat for the $650,000 legal bill she wracked up preparing for her recent showdown with a GOP-controlled congressional panel.

But Wu’s $950-an-hour legal prep for her D.C. grilling on Boston’s self-proclaimed sanctuary city status - a story first reported by the Herald - looks like a bargain compared to the high-priced attorneys assembled by another well-known local pol.

That would be state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, whose office has spent roughly $1 million to retain the services of one of the nation’s most expensive law firms, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg

Goldberg’s office forked over the seven-figure sum as part of its ongoing legal and court battle over the treasurer’s decision to fire the now former head of the state’s cannabis board, Shannon O’Brien, state spending records show.

Asked what hourly rate Morgan Lewis is billing taxpayers, a spokesperson for the treasurer’s office declined to comment.

But a story in The Wall Street Journal cited Morgan Lewis as part of a group of legal “pioneers” where top litigators “are asking for much as $1,200 a hour.”

However, given that story is now 14 years old, the firm’s top rate - which, adjusted for inflation would be at nearly $1,700 an hour now - is likely only have gone higher.

Wu has certainly faced pushback over her hiring of a pricey law firm. But a case can be made for the Boston mayor going all out, given all that was at stake in her high-profile testimony at last week’s congressional hearing.

But does the state treasurer really need a big bucks law firm to handle what is essentially a personnel issue that got out of control?

The private legal help is in addition to the services of an assistant attorney general.

This high-powered private and public legal team is now tied up battling a lawsuit by O’Brien, who was suspended for a year and then fired last fall from her job as chair of the Cannabis Control Commission.

The first woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party in Massachusetts, O’Brien contends she was unjustly fired on flimsy allegations that she had made racially insensitive remarks.

Oh yeah, and O’Brien was also allegedly unfair to the cannabis commission’s now former executive director, who - surprise, surprise - just happened to have previously been a top aide to Goldberg, the state treasurer.

Cronyism anyone?

Jack Lu, a retired Massachusetts Superior Court associate justice, told Contrarian Boston that the hiring of private sector attorneys by government agencies can be an essential tool in the “management of legal risk.”

Jack Lu, a retired Massachusetts Superior Court associate justice, now works as a mediator and is an adjunct professor at local law schools.

But Lu, who now works as a mediator and is an adjunct professor at local law schools, urges public officials to work harder to find the best match. Just because a law firm is the most expensive doesn’t mean it is the best suited for the case at hand.

”Public sector leaders should follow the best practice of fitting the cost of the lawyer to the stakes of the dispute or assignment,” Lu said. “One fears that they are choosing what they perceive as the ‘best’ lawyer who also happens to be very expensive.”

File under: Sage advice.

Disturbing findings: Mass. teachers union’s anti-Israel rhetoric and workshops sign of a larger problem, AJC contends

Max Page, head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, often sounds more like a social justice warrior than a labor leader.

The long-time UMass Amherst prof raised eyebrows back in 2022 with his condemnation of the state’s “capitalist” education system.

But since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023, the MTA’s leadership has gone off the rails, drawing fire at a State House hearing for its anti-Israel rhetoric and its embrace of teaching materials on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that used antisemitic images and tropes.