Suzanne M Bump

Early life

Bump was born on February 18, 1956 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Her father was a funeral director and her mother was a homemaker. She attended Cardinal Spellman High School, received her A.B. from Boston College, and received her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School. According to her campaign biography, she grew up in Whitman and moved to Braintree after college. She later moved to Great Barrington.

Political career

She started her career off as a legislative aide. From 1985 to 1993 she was the state representative for the 5th Norfolk district, She served on the Commerce and Labor Committee, and she spent two years as Chairman of that Committee. From 2007 to 2009 she was secretary of labor in the administration of Governor Deval Patrick.

Secretary of Labor

Prior to Suzanne's leading the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, unemployment claims were handled on an antiquated processing system. She was noted for securing funding and overseeing the roll out of modern telephone and computerized claims systems. In 2008, Bump announced a regional partnership program that provided new funds to help ex-offenders achieve successful re-entry into communities. The program focused on high crime communities by both providing preventative public safety measures and acting as an economic boost to the regions that received funding.

Auditor

She resigned from Patrick’s cabinet in order to enter the race for the position of Auditor being vacated by longtime Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci. She won the primary and the general election and was sworn in as State Auditor of Massachusetts on January 19, 2011.

Shortly after taking office, Auditor Bump held sweeping reforms following an independent review of the auditing office she took over. The review found workers without bachelor's degrees, inadequate training, and unspecified job skills. As part of the reform, 27 employees were terminated and 14 were reassigned, and other employers with proper qualifications were given raises on par with national standards.

Under Bump's tenure, the state Auditor's office has released several harsh reports on government agencies and departments failing to conduct simple checks with their data. In one audit, her office identified 119 registered sex offender addresses that matched the registered address of a child care provider. Another audit found 1,164 social welfare recipients that were either dead or using a deceased person’s Social Security number.

In August 2014, Bump faced allegations that she used her State House office for campaign work and tried to turn an audit of the Department of Children and Families into a means of winning the support of a labor union. She denied the allegations, made by a former staff member in a federal lawsuit alleging that Bump violated whistleblower laws by forcing the aide to resign.

In October 2016, Bump announced that she will be running for reelection in 2018 and will stay out of the day-to-day operations of two addiction treatment businesses she inherited from her late husband. Bump hired a new CEO to run them, and she will have no authority in the daily operations of the businesses to avoid state conflict of interest regulations.

Personal

Bump has been married to Paul McDevitt since 1980. They reside in Great Barrington but often have to commute for job purposes.