Chuck Turner: I’m a ‘paragon of virtue’ Vows fight to keep City Council seat

Chuck Turner: I’m a ‘paragon of virtue’
Vows fight to keep City Council seat
By Richard Weir  |   Wednesday, December 1, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Politics

‘PHOENIX’: City Councilor 
Chuck Turner talks about his felony corruption conviction 
in his City Hall office yesterday.
Photo by Angela Rowlings

Facing the biggest City Council vote of his career, an unrepentant Chuck Turner yesterday laid out the case he plans to make to his colleagues, arguing it would be a “moral mistake” to expel him from office despite his federal corruption conviction.

“It’s a question of whether the council will rise to the level of moral integrity as opposed to political expediency,” the 70-year-old Roxbury councilor told the Herald on the eve of today’s vote on a motion by Council President Michael Ross for Turner to be stripped of his position.

“Moral integrity says, ‘No. He’s been a paragon of virtue during our 11-year experience with him, and it’s clear the government decided to try to tear him down,’ ” said Turner, who still maintains he “didn’t take the money” and was framed by a corrupt U.S. Attorney’s Office. “Political expediency says, ‘Get rid of the bum. Follow the mayor’s advice.’ ”

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has little sympathy for Turner’s fight to keep his $87,500-a-year job after his conviction last month of accepting a $1,000 bribe.

“Chuck was one of the better city councilors, but he broke the law, and under the City Council statute, he must resign, and I think the council will do that tomorrow and take that vote,” Menino said yesterday.

But Turner vowed to plead his case on the council floor. He said he will remind his peers that he’s been one of the council’s fiercest “fiscal watchdogs,” for example having voted against giving Liberty Mutual a $16 million tax break when it hauled in $31 billion in profits, and against awarding firefighters a raise for agreeing to drug tests when the city was laying off low-level workers.

He will also mention how he spent $180,000 of his own money, loaned to his campaign, to help run his full-time district office — a “little City Hall” in Roxbury that spawned the Boston Workers Alliance.

“I am not a rich man. That came from my salary,” Turner said, adding, “I’m the only councilor who did that.”

Scores of Turner’s supporters are expected to hold a rally outside City Hall prior to today’s vote, which will take place before the public at Turner’s request.

Questioning the council’s authority to remove Turner, former state Rep. Mel King said he may attend to support his friend.

“On what grounds or legitimacy do they have?” King said. “All of this is murky.”

Ross said an analysis of established case law, the City Charter and the council’s own rules shows “we’re on solid footing here” to expel Turner, an unprecedented move. Never before in the council’s 100-year history has a councilor been removed.

“This was not an easy decision,” Ross said. “It’s a reluctant decision, but in the end it will be the right decision for the City Council.”

Turner said he expects to be sentenced Jan. 25 to prison. However, the Harvard-grad-turned-community activist said his life is not over. Next week he plans to file papers for a business he’s long dreamed of launching: “The Roxbury Institute of Space Exploration . . . to help people understand how they can explore their inner space.”

Greeting supporters yesterday, he told one: “People see me as going down. But I think I’m coming up. I’m the phoenix rising from the ashes of destruction.”

Thomas Grillo contributed to this report.

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