Granted, 3 million bucks isn't what it used to be, but it's still something.
It's more than enough to take 125 women who spend every day tiptoeing along the edge of financial and emotional despair and give them skills, confidence, and, ultimately, a job.
It's enough to pull 3,000 children off city streets and put them to work over the summer doing something other than selling crack or violently defending the kind of turf that nobody in their right mind would think is worthy of defense.
It's enough to put toddlers in child care, so their mothers, fresh off the welfare rolls, can go to work. It's enough to pay the back rent of struggling families who are about to be evicted from their apartments to live in shelters or beat-up old cars.
It's enough to fund beds and counselors in detoxification units that reverse the plunging spiral of hundreds of addicts and alcoholics who find themselves with precisely nowhere else to turn.
But if you're Tom Finneran or if you're a member of his step-'n-fetch-it Legislature, you end up slashing these programs to the core and then slashing them again, because in these dire fiscal times, there's barely a discretionary dime to be had.
But miraculously, when it comes to gerrymandering their little legislative districts to make sure minority voters are diluted and their own self-congratulatory careers are preserved, they suddenly have all the money they need.
And in this case, what they needed was $3 million and counting. No problem.
We lost all sense of normalcy and irony long ago in that no-man's land of ethics known as Beacon Hill. But even by the loosest of standards, what's gone on up there these last few weeks is nothing short of corrupt.
Take Finneran's contributions to the state Democratic Party, as reported by Globe reporter Raphael Lewis. One day, Finneran's various political committees gave $24,500 to the party's state fund. A few days later, the party turned around and gave all of it to 10 Finneran acolytes (note to legislators: it means "followers") in the House, allowing Finneran to exceed the $500 contribution limit he would otherwise face. So far, four of the 10 don't even face opponents in the fall elections.
Where I come from, that's called money laundering. It's a crime, and people who are convicted of it are, well, criminals. On Beacon Hill, it's known as business as usual, and the people who conduct it are state officials.
But back to the $3 million. When Finneran faced a court suit on the way his Legislature redrew its districts, he could have done a lot of things. Although Boston's percentage of minority voters increased, the number of so-called majority-minority districts shrunk. Minorities were pulled from districts with white incumbents and packed into a district with a black incumbent. So Finneran could have admitted fault or compromised or just started over.
But that's not his way. Instead, he fought and he lost, and the state's bill for the expensive private lawyers will exceed $3 million. Here's what we get for that money: embarrassed.
I asked the good people over at ABCD Inc. yesterday what they might do with $3 million, and I almost had to wipe the saliva from their chins.
They talked of housing assistance programs cut by the Legislature in the middle of the year and all the people who wound up in shelters because of the cut. They talked about the 125 poor and immigrant women who were trained in office techology. At the end of an intensive 26-week program, they were placed in jobs at a rate of 85 percent; some rose quickly up the corporate ladder, the American Dream. That program has been eliminated.
"We're down to zero," explained Mark Isenburg, an ABCD official. "I have no money in the budget."
And the Legislature has no shame. Just another day in the life of Massachusetts politics.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.