SMITH— JAMIE O’KEEFE, TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND AND HOW YOU CAME TO RUN FOR TREASURER OF THE STATE.

O’KEEFE— I grew up in Boston. My parents are from Boston. I moved to Somerville over 10 years ago, got married, my wife and I have Liam who's almost 7 now, and Emma who’s just 7 months. It’s amazing having them. I love being soccer coach to my son and his team—it's great to see them learning and see them learn how to play. Our team doesn’t accept bad behavior in the players, which unfortunately we see a lot of in our professional sports.

The O’Keefe family—Melanie, Emma, James, and Liam—in their living room at 25 Moore Street in Somerville [photo: David Woo]

Well, four years ago I ran for Treasurer of the Commonwealth and in that race with a Republican and a Democrat my campaign achieved about 8 percent of the vote.

If we'd had a real democratic system… proportional representation, we would have had sixteen members of the legislature and we could have been there advocating for people’s needs.

NOW IN OUR TIME, WE TALK A LOT ABOUT TRANSPARENCY, ABOUT HOW MUCH IS BEING DONE IN SECRET.

Too much. The current treasurer requires that departing high level treasury employees sign confidential severance agreements. By keeping these agreements secret the public has no idea what the terms are.

Also, the pension fund invests up to 10 percent of its assets in hedge funds and venture capital funds. Both types of funds force investors to keep the terms and returns secret. How can citizens or public workers find out whether these investments are doing well if the pension fund cannot release performance details?

My plan is to open up as many of the Treasury operations as we can to public scrutiny. We will open up how well all of our investment perform and how the State votes its proxies and what that system promotes.

Both my parents are retired public school teachers, so this is something near and dear to my heart. We need to know how the State of Massachusetts provides for the retirement of its employees.

The State pension fund has assets of over $41 billion. If we have 100,000 shares of IBM or Exxon, are we using those shares in cooperation with other shareholders, responsible investors and other retirement boards, to get the corporations to clean up their act, to cut down on the amount of pollution they do?

We went to find out how much it would cost to get public information. It turned out to be a tremendous amount just to get information that’s supposed to be public. It should be on a website. My opponent said he would do this but to my knowledge it hasn’t been done, the rules haven’t been changed in the past four years.

IS THERE A WAY THAT THE STATE CAN SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY IN PUBLIC INVESTMENTS?

If we were to take a small portion of our pension fund and set up a mechanism where we would go to municipalities, to neighborhoods, go to state offices and say: we’ll pay for the energy audit of your buildings.

We’ll put up the money to do the energy conservation measures that come out of this audit. We’ll take the difference in what you’re saving —you’ll take 25 percent of what you’re saving and we'll take the rest as our payback for what you’re saving as our return.

The return for conservation measures is better than anything that’s out there. It pays off in so many ways, both for the Commonwealth and for the pension fund. It’s ludicrous in my mind that we're not pursuing these investments. We can start small, to see how it goes and make sure there's no corruption or waste. We just want a solid investment for out pension holders and get for the commonwealth less greenhouse gases, more energy saving.

TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE STATE LOTTERY

There’s been a lot of talk about the lottery. The original point of the lottery is a way of getting funds to the municipalities so that they can buy basic equipment.

The money that the lottery sends to municipalities has shrunk over time. At the beginning 68 percent went to the cities and towns. Four years ago it was only 28 percent. Additionally, the legislature has capped the amount that can go to the cities and towns.

You’re not supposed to take it [lottery receipts] so that you don’t have to raise taxes on your friends. I would put pressure on the legislature not to take this vital money away from cities and towns.

EVERY TIME IT COMES TO A CHOICE OTHER THAN DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, THE MONEYED INTERESTS SAY THAT ALL WE’RE DOING IS SPOILING THE CAMPAIGN, WHEN WE ARE TRYING TO EXTEND DEMOCRACY BY REPRESENTING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT MONEYED INTERESTS.

We're trying to articulate things that the Republicans and Democrats aren't going to say. They don't want you to know that the best way to cover everyone's medical needs is a single-payer system run by the government, as practiced by most industrial democracies. It’s very successful, and it keeps costs down.

In 2002, for example, there was a study where someone counted up all of the costs that the government paid—State and Federal—and all the tax subsidies that go to corporations in order to pay for health care. They did that on a per capita basis. Based on that, only one other country paid more per-person out of state and federal or city expenditures—Switzerland. And they have a much better system than we do, where everyone is covered….

So we’re already paying for a single payer system, we’re just not getting the benefits of it. And that's because it's run for a profit, while thirty percent of the costs that go into the health care system are simply pushing paper.

As treasurer unfortunately I don't have power over that, except in articulating that we have to look at all the costs that go into all our assets and liabilities. And one of our assets is people’s health. We need to put that, in a sense, on our state’s economic balance sheet.

WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEND FOR INVOLVEMENT IN YOUR CAMPAIGN?

We’re very much of a grass roots campaign. We’re attempting to get people to call folks in their neighborhood, we need people to also contribute to us. You need to pay for materials for advertising so we can get some more buzz, some more attention, so people can get to know about the four of us—the Green-Rainbow slate.

This campaign is not just about going to November. It’s really about building a movement to change the way things are done in this Commonwealth. Eighty-five percent of the legislators are Democrats, but they passed a health care plan that forces people who can’t afford medical care to buy insurance. It’s like—well, you’re homeless, you don't have a home or money, so we’re going to force you to rent an apartment.

Then look at Republican Governor Romney. What's he doing, saying to someone who's getting ten thousand dollars in social security that they have to pay their fair share... that's not a lot of money to live on... Romney’s got a health care plan, what about him paying his fair share?

We've got a tax system that's set up, including property taxes and fees, so that if you’re wealthy you pay less than if you're poor!

Kerry Healy talks about cutting taxes. She should start by reducing taxes for people who can’t afford them.

When we come out of this, we can go back to people in 2007 and say we have these candidates for municipal office. That’s where we can make some changes, where we've had some success in electing people. At the Federal and Commonwealth level the electoral system is stacked against us.

IT’S GOOD HAVING THIS CAMPAIGN REPRESENT THE INTEREST OF FAMILIES

If you go to the Democrat and Republican conventions, you don't see people bring their kids expecting to find child care there. We in Green-Rainbow are a very family friendly party, we do encourage people to bring their families. If the party can’t make the opportunity for them to be involved they'll lose a lot of people who don't have time.

The major parties don't ensure that families can survive. They feel that being family-friendly means bashing gay people.

With the new health care system, if they're middle income, where are families going to get the money to have health care?

Massachusetts is one of the most unequal states when it comes to income. People are leaving who are middle income and can’t afford property in this state. People who are low income can’t afford the rent. That is just not a recipe for a healthy Commonwealth.

In other countries you get time to be with your family, you get six weeks vacation. Here you’re lucky of you get three weeks. We need to change out priorities.

Having a lot of gadgets doesn't mean anything if you have to work three jobs. You have no time to spend with your family. We’re articulating a different way of living, in the Green parties. You aren't hearing that from the Democrats and Republicans.

We recognize that this a long struggle, that we're not going to get out of this overnight. If we are elected, the Legislature isn't going to be friendly to us. So we're going to have to build the Movement...

The full conversation with Lloyd Smith is available as a videotape.