State House Grounds Still Closed Years After Patrick's Pledge to Open Them
The grounds were closed after Sept. 11, 2001, but Patrick has said he wants to make the State House's iconic statue of JFK available once more.
More than three years after Gov. Deval Patrick said he'd make the State House grounds open to the public, the gates remain shut.
The grounds were closed after Sept. 11, 2001, and Patrick has said he wants to make the State House's iconic statue of JFK, in particular, available once more. However, Boston Herald reporters were recently turned away from the plaza and told that it is open during the summer during official tours of the State House, the Herald reported.
The governor seemed unaware that the grounds were never reopened.
“Well, the JFK statue is accessible now, which is great,” he told Herald reporters Friday. “The rangers can take you out. You just have to ask them. It doesn’t have to be a tour, and that’s a great thing.”
Ultimately, however, Patrick put the decision of whether to open the grounds with the State House security team.
“What I feel doesn’t probably matter, what matters most is that the security experts on whom we rely feel ready and are ready because of what they view as a change of circumstances... I’ll have to ask them what they think,” he told the Herald.
Christopher Popham Smith
6:27 am on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
How comforting to hear that the right hand doesn''t know
what the left hand is doing.
Patrick Lentz
9:07 am on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
It is pretty outrageous that the grounds are locked off from the people. ANYONE should be able to walk on the walkways on the grounds without having to ask. It's public property. The front steps and front doors of the State House should be opened as well. Did the terrorists win in Massachusetts?
Kimberly Ashton
5:08 pm on Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Hi Patrick, good point, but there are other pieces of public property on which we accept restrictions, like the White House. What do you think the difference is?