Gov. Patrick's Staff Chief Takes Blame For Walsh

Gov. Deval Patrick's chief of staff is apologizing for the administration's handling of a widely panned effort to hire Sen. Marian Walsh into a high-paying state job.

Doug Rubin said in an e-mail sent Monday by Patrick's political committee that the team "clearly made mistakes" and he was accepting responsibility.

Yet Rubin spent the rest of the note outlining what he saw as recent administration accomplishments, including a series of announcements for distributing aid from the federal stimulus package.

The governor has hedged when asked whether he or his staff was to blame for the outcry over offering Walsh a $100,000 raise to work at a state authority.

Patrick first tried to quell it by cutting her pay from $175,000 to $120,000. When that didn't silence the critics, Walsh decided to stay in the Senate.