ST. PAT’S FETE COST$ A LOT OF GREEN
Annual breakfast roast no cheap affair
Telling bad jokes, apparently, doesn’t come cheap.
At least that’s what tax returns for the group behind the annual St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast show.
Boston’s bastion of groan-inducing yucks — most recently on display last week — cost organizers nearly $132,000 in 2015, according to the most recent tax documents available from the First Suffolk Partnership, the not-for-profit entity host state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry created to handle the annual event.
Overtaking a section of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center each March, the breakfast is a forum for politicos to poke fun at each other and others, all while decked out in green ties, dresses and boutonnieres. That, of course, takes another type of green. Audio and visual systems cost $44,000 while staging and “venue setup” ran organizers another $29,500. It costs about $21,000 to feed everyone and $25,000 to set up the breakfast’s telecast, according to the documents provided by the group. The First Suffolk Partnership — headed by Forry’s father-inlaw, Ed Forry — reported raising about $133,000 in 2015, and was designed to separate Forry’s political fundraising from that of the breakfast, according to political aides. They note that costs are “very similar” from year to year, and judging by the records, little is spent beyond the event itself. The group doesn’t have paid staff and none of its officers take a stipend. The event, as expected, leans on donations. The tax documents provided by the group don’t identify specific donors. But the event’s program regularly lists them, and this year they included Delta Airlines, which donated $15,000 or more; Suffolk Construction, which gave at least $10,000; and a range of others from Keolis to the Boston Beer Company, which gave at least $5,000.
Turn out the lights
Attorney General Maura Healey was arguing against Eversource’s proposed rate increase Thursday, digging into its recent profits when some of the room’s overhead lights suddenly cut out.
A smiling Healey turned to Jim Hunt, Eversource’s senior vice president.
“Was that intentional?” she asked.
Hunt chuckled. “That was not intentional.”
The actual culprit: A photographer bumped against a light switch.
Next time
Last Thursday, amid realizations they didn’t have the necessary support, Republicans postponed the House vote on their health care bill to a highly anticipated Friday session. (We all know how that turned out.)
The move, however, made for a lot of last-minute regrets on political RSVPs.
Bay State congressmen were canceling appearances en masse in order to be in D.C. for the scheduled vote that never was. Joseph P. Kennedy III was supposed to be in Fall River to appear with Gov. Charlie Baker and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Amazon’s new warehouse. (He, instead, was on the House floor.) Bill Keating was lined up to be with Warren in New Bedford. (He didn’t make it.) And Seth Moulton was expected at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce forum. (His office rescheduled it for April 13.)
But for those back home hoping for insight into the debate, they missed out most in Worcester. Jim McGovern had been scheduled to appear at a forum with Baker’s top health aide, Marylou Sudders on — wouldn’t you guess — the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Instead he was making headlines calling the bill a “backroom deal” — albeit at a House Rules Committee hearing.