Until last night, when I stumbled across
this year-old story from The Nation, I had no idea Bobby Valentine left a government job--Stamford, CT Director of Public Safety--to manage the Red Sox.
Last January (2010), Stamford's Republican Mayor Mike Pavia appointed Valentine to the position for which he had no background because he was looking for someone who could be, as he said without irony, “a good manager.” Valentine, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican was born in Stamford and owns a restaurant in town (where he claims to have invented “the sandwich wrap.”) Presumably this qualified him to handle the negotiations of city contracts for Stamford's fire fighters, police officers, and public safety workers...
Stamford, located in Fairfield County, is the richest county in America where many Wall Street executives live, but this didn’t stop Valentine from pulling a Wisconsin style attack on the city's public sector workers… demanding 65 different concessions from its public safety workers including a wage cut of $1.20 an hour, cuts in overtime pay, higher health care costs, the elimination of pensions for new hires, and the right to privatize any public service.
Happy New Year, Bobby.
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