THE TROUBLED BENJAMIN Healthcare Center, under the care of a court-appointed receiver after missing payroll and facing the threat of closure, has functioned for nearly 100 years as a nursing home and rehab facility. It’s now also a way station for a former pol with her own troubled past.
When a Suffolk Superior Court judge appointed Joseph Feaster as the receiver of the Boston facility in April, the well-known attorney immediately turned to an old friend for help: former state senator Dianne Wilkerson.
Taking the title of executive assistant or secretary to Feaster, the ex-lawmaker now has an office inside the facility, which is perched halfway up the hill, between New England Baptist Hospital and the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center.
It’s the latest job for Wilkerson, who was once a rising star in Boston politics, a Roxbury Democrat who became the first Black woman elected to the state Senate in 1992 and was often talked about as a potential candidate for mayor. But that was before she pleaded guilty to failing to pay federal income taxes in the late 1990s, and more than a decade later, she was sent to prison for more than two years for accepting more than $20,000 in bribes, with the federal prosecutor calling the corruption “both systematic and pervasive.”
She attempted a political comeback in 2022, but came in third place in the race for her old state Senate seat, whose boundaries include the Benjamin.
In a letter to the court this summer, Feaster filed an update on the receivership – which is set to last until the end of this year – including the hiring of a new administrator, who replaces the one ousted over allegations of mismanagement after he sought to close the facility. Wilkerson’s role was mentioned, but her name was not.
Feaster told CommonWealth Beacon he reached out to Wilkerson, whom he’s known since their days working for Gov. Michael Dukakis, because she’s well-acquainted with the Benjamin. She also has a personal stake in it: Her 89-year-old mother is a resident. “She can do the work and she’s effectively doing the work around what I need to have done so I don’t need to be there on a day-to-day basis, doing what I need to do as the receiver,” Feaster said.
He added that “she served her time” in prison, and she is not barred from handling the Benjamin’s financial matters. If anybody raised their concerns with him, “it dissipated just like after a rainstorm,” he said. “I have not heard anything, any more comment about Dianne Wilkerson since my first being appointed receiver.”
The Benjamin, a nursing and rehabilitation center in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. (Photo by Gintautas Dumcius)
Wilkerson said she is an employee of the Benjamin as a “temporary assignment,” because she is aiming to help get-out-the-vote efforts for Vice President Kamala Harris and working with developers on local projects. “My task is really focused on facilitating the delivery and transmittal of information relative to the institution, the finances, the history, the accounts that weren’t paid, the tax returns,” Wilkerson said in an interview this week. That includes dealing with the IRS and other federal and state regulators overseeing the nursing home industry, she added.
State officials have advanced the Benjamin more than $500,000 as the facility tries to dig out of the hole it found itself in under the previous administrator, who has denied wrongdoing. The state has agreed to also advance payments to cover the costs of the receiver and an accounting firm.
As for payment for her services, Wilkerson said she generally charges her clients $150 to $200 per hour. Her hourly rate at the Benjamin is “well under $100,” she said, adding that she isn’t charging for the overtime as she puts in long hours at the facility that she’s seeking to save. “I’m losing money,” she said.
Race on the Cape up and running
Back in April, first-term state Rep Chris Flanagan was hit with thousands of dollars in fines and a scathing report from state campaign finance officials, who said he “delayed and obstructed” their investigation into a sketchy scheme they say he hatched to send deceptive campaign mailings to voters in his Cape Cod district in his 2022 race.
At the time, Flanagan appeared to dodge an even bigger potential problem: an election opponent. The report landed just before the filing deadline for candidates to appear on the ballot for this year’s election.
That changed last week when a Republican challenger, motivated by Flanagan’s misdeeds, got enough write-in votes in the GOP primary to win a spot on the November ballot. Gerald “Jerry” O’Connell, 59, is a retired Marine who has worked as a truck driver, bricklayer, and stay-at-home dad.
The First Barnstable District has gone back and forth between the two parties, with Republican Tim Whelan, a former state trooper and, like O’Connell, a Marine, previously holding the seat that covers the three mid-Cape communities of Brewster, Dennis, and Yarmouth.
On the fundraising front, O’Connell has already pulled in $5,300 since July, while Flanagan has struggled to raise money since April, when the campaign finance violations became public. The lawmaker has loaned himself just over $5,000, and has over $8,500 in cash on hand.
The district’s purple hue, combined with Flanagan’s campaign finance violations, mean a Republican victory is possible, though O’Connell, a Donald Trump supporter, has to pitch himself in a district that has backed President Biden over the former president by roughly 60 percent to 40 percent.
In an interview, O’Connell said he is encouraging Democrats to split their ticket – vote blue elsewhere on the ballot, but fill in the circle next to his name.
“When I knock on a door, I’m not trying to sell Donald Trump,” O’Connell said. “I’m trying to find common ground with the local folks here.”
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