Worcesteria: Eric Batista has become a Rorschach test

The other day, we received a letter at Worcester Magazine from longtime Worcester community activist and perennial City Council candidate Bill Coleman, calling for the city council to make Acting City Manager Eric Batista’s position permanent. “In the nine years of service to the city and the nearly five months as Acting City Manager he has proven himself.” 

I’m not here to either agree or disagree, but Coleman was just one of many increasingly prominent local figures who have vocalized their support for Batista, a list that includes Mayor Joe Petty and, perhaps most surprisingly, radio personality and “Talk of the Commonwealth” host Hank Stolz. 

“I think you’re shortchanging Eric Batista,” says Stolz, of people who want a nationwide search. “I don’t think you’re giving him a fair shot … I think what that sets up is a, ‘This isn’t really your job.’ Well, what is the matter with us having a system, in a city that has seen tremendous growth — in the second largest city in New England — what is the matter with us with having a system in which you have someone who is ready to take over, and you give him a two-year contract, and you see how they do with it?” 

Well, on the surface, nothing. But why the resistance to the search? Honestly, the recent search for a new superintendent of schools that resulted in the hiring of Rachel H. Monárrez after former superintendent Maureen Binienda’s contract wasn’t renewed was largely deemed a rousing success. Stolz doesn’t talk about that at all. Interestingly, Stolz talks glowingly about alleged political insiders Michael V. O'Brien and Edward M. Augustus Jr., who were appointed to the city manager office without much of a search, and casts a little murky, indeterminate shade at Thomas R. Hoover, who came to the position through a national search. To his credit, co-host Ben White did bring up the recent successful superintendent search, but the thread wasn’t explored, although White did manage to make the point that a search would give Batista more of a mandate and a more solid footing in the job.  

To boil down the arguments to their essence, Stolz’s argument is essentially about Batista as a capable person who has proved himself. White’s argument is that the city should endeavor to find the best person for the job, whether it’s Batista or not. The fact that they, and really, the whole city, are having different conversations is a big part of the issue here, a citywide debate that’s gotten so heated that Batista put out a message on Twitter saying that, “I respect the search process, and am in no way trying to avoid it.”  

Stolz made a good point when he said that Worcester is the second largest City in New England, but perhaps not the point he was trying to make. He implied that means that the machine is developed enough that the next person in line should get the job. That seems counterintuitive. One would think that growing as a city means abandoning a townie mentality, even if it means people who have worked hard at their positions might still get passed over. To play devil’s advocate, that seems a dangerous position. Sure, the city manager is answerable to the city council, but in reality, in Worcester, the city manager is really the city’s most powerful office holder, and it would seem that no one should be entitled to a position like that, just as no one is entitled to become the governor, or a state senator, or the superintendent of schools, or to sit on a city council. Sometimes, these things go to a person who is not sitting there waiting, because they’re just better qualified. (Or at least made a better pitch.) It’s not that it’s not fair, it’s that there is no fair. As the great poet Mick Jagger once wrote, “You can’t always get what you want.” 

Still, it’s unlikely this argument will subside any time soon, and lurking underneath it is the suspicion of a whole bunch of political agendas. One longtime political watcher told me he thought Batista was being set up to fail, in order to reopen the perennial “strong mayor” argument. I’m not entirely sure anyone who would want that is capable of that sort of political intrigue, but sure, it’s possible. Others say that Batista is being pushed through because he’ll finish executing Augustus’ vision. Maybe? I don’t know. I’m not convinced many in Worcester politics are that cunning. “Sometimes,” quoting Elvis Costello this time, “people are just what they appear to be.” 

It does seem, though, that Batista has become something of a cultural Rorschach test for the city, and everyone who looks at him is seeing what they want to see, projecting their own hopes and fears on him, and it’s hard to say how that’s good for anybody.