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Paul Levy goes public
By adamg on Sat, 05/15/2010 - 10:04am
Look for Levy interviews in local media through next week as he goes public and says he won't resign as CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He links to three interviews so far; the Herald has the most details on the woman in question and her role at Beth Israel (more specifically, its Needham hospital).
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Paul Levy said he will not resign
not because she's his girlfriend- because he abused his position
What is clear is that Levy concealed abusing his authority as CEO for years by hiring a former student and "close personal friend", an abuse of authority he readily admits on two counts, “a major mistake of judgment ... first by employing a close personal friend to work here and second by having her stay here all of these years.”
Levy concealed this abuse "all these years" until he was called out by an anonymous whistle-blower. The longevity of his deception and the nature oft the abuse should tell you that his regret comes not from the actions he took but from the consequences that he faces.
Levy's close personal friend was earning over $100,000 a year before she was laid off, and given $29,000 severance. It also appears Levy continued his "close personal relationship" with the former employee after the termination.
I don't care who he fucks. That's between him, his girlfriend, his wife and two kids but his abuse of authority as CEO of the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital sets a standard for behavior at the BI Deaconess Hospital
Unless Levy loses his job, every other hiring manager at BI ought to be able to hire their girlfriend and not lose their job for a despicable hiring practice. Patients and the public have the right to know people are being hired for the qualifications and ability to perform the job, not based on a "close personal relationship" with the hiring manager. We go to the BI to be treated by professionals, not someone's girlfriend.
Highly paid executives of non-profit institutions (which means they pay no taxes and therefor are accountable to the public not shareholders) who breach the public trust fail to lead and should resign or be terminated.
Accountability is quickly becoming a quaint notion not a standard of public life. If it continues, abuse of the public trust will decline as fast as the American Dream. That the powerful get a wrist slap and go on their way, hauling in millions of dollars in salary (from a non-profit institution no less) while sub-executives ARE held accountable for their behaviour or laid-off as a matter of business cycle is not only completely unfair and inequitable it would be, if it continues, one of the causes of populist backlash and rightly so.
Note that two trustees have resigned over this issue *unlike the failure of BPL trustees to stand up for the BPL branches, two BI trustees wont lend their name to the abdication of accountability in the case of Paul Levy abuse of authority, clearly a fire-able offense (because he cannot be trusted with the authority the position holds.)
Maybe its time
Maybe its time for the board to make a new policy about hiring "close personal friends" (girlfriends).
Levy has ruffled feathers at
Levy has ruffled feathers at other hospitals. The knives are obviously out. Wouldn't you like to see where these anonymice are posting from?
God knows if I could still get college kitty I'd be on it like ice cream on pie.
I really love the place and am VERY ATTACHED to the people
"Very attached" is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words given Levy's decision to hire a "close personal friend" (girlfriend) arguably based on his "attachment" to said friend.
I would be extremely surprised if BI policy permitted any direct supervisor including Levy to be the direct supervisor for someone with whom he had a close personal relationship because of concerns about workplace fairness, opportunity for advancement and bonus compensation. If it true their policy prohibits people in personal sexual relationships to be supervisor/supervised then the board has misrepresented the truth. That two trustees have resigned over this issue points to some concerns about exactly this issue.
Did she do her job well?
If she was competent at what she was doing, end of story as far as I'm concerned. Only if she wasn't is this at all newsworthy.
And strangely, no one has commented on that
I agree, Ron, and I suspect if there was cause for her to be called incompetent, it would have been come up by now. It would also seem that, if she hadn't done a good job, she wouldn't have been sought out by Liebman for the Needham campus. It's not like Levy hired someone with no qualifications - apparently she studied technology and planning at MIT (she at least has her undergrad degree from there, but I couldn't tell from the Globe article if she finished the graduate program), and then went to work in those areas at Beth Israel. Also, the $100K salary the Globe claims she got doesn't seem out of line for the work she was doing. If anything, it seems a little low for her position on Liebman's staff.
On top of all that it sounds
On top of all that it sounds like she was laid off but continued the relationship with Levy. If this were a true tit for tat situation I would think getting laid off would result in HER turning around the next day and claiming it was because she was sexually harrased by Levy.
What he did was wrong but I feel that the flames are being fed by people who are jealous of him and would like to see him land flat on his face.
The upside to this is he has given money and support to Baker for governor. Deval lucked out this time because if he had been a Deval Patrick supporter lord knows that the Herald would have brought that connection up on the front page of its tabloid.
I also do not think they should be getting Martha Coakley involved in this, I mean seriously it seems pretty straight forward. Enough with the sexual witch trials already.
Good point
I hadn't realized they continued their relationship after she was laid off. If that is so, her being part of a lay off goes in Levy's favor, IMO. If her being hired was only due to favoritism, surely he could have protected her from losing her job.
Layoff by mutual agreement
from today's Globe article:
"He [Levy] said he, the woman, and Liebman [her boss] met, and Liebman said he had considered eliminating her job because of budget constraints, so that’s what they mutually decided to do."
I see no scandal here, and nothing worthy of the Globe's or Martha Coakley's attention.
I think the concern is that Public Charities shouldn't become
private "Gravy trains", like, for instance, some would argue aspects of the public sector have become.
moreover
if CEO Levy hires his girlfriend, she should not report directly to him. This is widely understood in personnel management. She worked under him for two years.
Agreed...
Paul Levy has been very successful in two fronts: Making Beth Israel a more successful hospital despite criticism from those running mediocre facilities and fending off the SEIU, who has seen Beth Israel as a huge prize for organizing its employees. If Paul Levy resigns or is forced out for his indiscretions, it will be a huge victory for the SEIU and the people who were extremely jealous of his successes - and the SEIU will make a bee-line to BI's employees so fast you won't feel the breeze.
A Vast Commie Conspiracy
I knew the damn Reds were behind this somehow.
I thought Pete Rose was still banned from baseball :-)
Seriously, though - the reason I mentioned the SEIU is that their campaigning to organize Beth Israel has been aggressive and well-organized, so to speak. They'd like nothing more than to have Levy gone so they can move in as quick as lightning.
workers employment benefits
A lot of full-time workers at the BI do not receive health care as part of their employment package. There's something wrong with that, don't you think?
the $100K salary the Globe
For someone just out of school? A full professor at a major research university works many years to reach six figures.
She started there in 2002
The way I read it, $100K was her salary when she was laid off, at which time she was serving as head of strategic planning for a major facility, not when she walked in the door. So no, I don't think $100K is out of line.
But perhaps someone else could have done even better.
But didn't have an "in". That said, I've never had a job where I didn't know at least one person who worked at the place before I applied. Not a CEO, but still.
Always a danger
Even in a public hiring process, there could always be a better candidate than the one who got the job. But like you noted, this woman isn't the only one who got her job through a personal connection. I have certainly benefited by knowing someone at various firms where I have interviewed or worked. That's how the job market works, for good or for ill.
I admit, I haven't followed this all that closely - all I saw in the most recent Globe article was something to the effect of her having been someone he brought with him when he came on at BI. I wonder if her position was created for her, or if there was some sort of public process. I used to work at a charitable hospital and we had to at least post the job and interview equally qualified candidates, even when we were promoting from within - especially if the position was new.
I wonder if her position was
The Herald article implies it was a new job.
Then the hospital I worked at
Then the hospital I worked at would have at least made a show at a public process. We don't know for sure if BI did that (or, really, if this was indeed a new position, since no one has come out and said it) or if they decided to allow an incoming CEO to bring a few of his entourage with him.
It was Special Assistant to the CEO (Levy)
Special Assistant jobs are created when a powerful person want to hire someone. Real jobs and have real, descriptive titles like Strategic Planning Manager or Development Manager (or Administrator or Coordinator). Then the job description has specific details of what the Manager (or whatever) is expected to do and how well (increase sales x% within x year(s)).
A Special Assistant job is designed to match the resume of the person who will be hired for it (e.g. degree in (whats on resume), experience in (what's on resume)). The actual goals the job holder must meet are vague (assisting in increasing sales).
Once the job is written, it is open for the minimum amount of time required to avoid getting a lot of applicants. If there are other applicants, they usually don't even get an interview becuase their resume doesn't match the job description. So the "close personal friend" is hired since she has the only resume that meets the job description (and we're back to the job description being tailored to the "close personal friend"'s resume).
"If she was competent" is the question, but...
..we'll never truly know how well or poorly she did her job.
Remember, in the Emperor's court no one told the Emperor that the tailors he hired and was so enthusiastic about, were incompetent. All member of the court only sang praises about the tailors. They all believed that they would lose the Emperor's favor, if not their positions, if they even remotely suggested the tailors weren't doing a good job.
The moral of the story is there probably were not any truly honest evaluations of the "close personal friend" in her personnel file.
I don't know, apparently
I don't know, apparently senior staff and board members felt comfortable enough telling him to stop spending so much time with her. I would think if she was not doing a good job those same people could have said stop spending so much time with her and oh by the way she sucks at her job we should fire her.