BOSTON — Rep. Brian Dempsey, D-Haverhill, said House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi did not use his influence to kill legislation that would have barred a liquified natural gas facility from being built in Fall River.
Yesterday, DiMasi came under fire after published reports claimed he killed the bill to allow a friend, Jay Cashman, to profit from the sale of land near where an LNG terminal would be constructed.
Dempsey, who had a say in the bill's fate as chairman of the Telecommunications and Energy Committee, said DiMasi never instructed him to act a certain way on the bill.
"All our discussions centered around energy ... in terms of ideas, in terms of advancing the energy agenda," Dempsey said.
Dempsey further said he was unaware that DiMasi was friends with Cashman, a Boston construction magnate whose company was a contractor on the Big Dig.
"(We) never had any conversations about that," Dempsey said.
Dempsey yesterday joined six other members of DiMasi's leadership team at a Statehouse press conference to defend the speaker, who is the subject of a pair of probes by the state Ethics Commission over whether he's used his influence to help friends and business associates.
One probe, pushed by the state Republican Party, concerns House passage of a bill lifting a ban on what ticket agents can charge. Ticket agents who supported the bill were represented by Richard Vitale, DiMasi's accountant. Vitale, according to reports, has provided DiMasi a third mortgage on his North End condominium.
DiMasi said he never talked with Vitale about the bill.
Another probe concerns whether DiMasi acted to secure funding for a $13 million state contract for a company, Cognos ULC, which has sponsored the speaker's charity golf tournament.
Meanwhile, the state GOP yesterday asked the attorney general to investigate DiMasi's relationship with Vitale, who they said lobbied without being registered. They also want a probe of the so-called phantom voting scandal, in which a House lawmaker's voting buttons were pressed while he was on vacation, saying it amounts to a violation of his constituents' civil rights.
Dempsey dismissed attempts to connect legislative outcomes with improper influence by DiMasi. The Haverhill Democrat said in each case — with LNG and the scalping bills — the legislation in question was consistent with public policy needs.
"The outcomes that I have been involved with, legislative outcomes, are outcomes the governor shares, that the business community shares, that many other folks are supportive of outside of individual relationships (with the speaker)," Dempsey said.
The LNG bill, Dempsey and other DiMasi allies argue, is consistent with the state's desire for cultivating alternative sources of energy.
House lawmakers contend lifting limits on ticket resale prices makes sense because the state does not cap other commodity prices. That bill is stalled in the Senate.
Rep. Michael Rodrigues, D-Westport, who heads the House committee that approved the ticket resale bill, said yesterday he never met Vitale and DiMasi did not influence the bill's language.
It was approved by the committee "without any influence at all from the speaker's so-called friends," Rodrigues said.
