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First, the Mayor tried the "let's move City Hall to revitalize the waterfront" trick.  But people want to keep access to their government building; and anyway, it's well known that office buildings don't exactly liven up a neighborhood.  Now, he's trying the sure-fire environmental ploy: "let's make it a green redevelopment district."  The real purpose of this move?  As Menino's BRA uber-"planner" Kairos Shen says, it's to "unlock the development potential of the middle of downtown" -- that is, to replace Govt. Center with profitable private towers.  But Menino gave City Hall Plaza to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, free of charge, in 1996, so it's the BRA's bloated bureaucracy that will collect the fat land-lease profits from developers --- while the taxpayers pay to dismantle the huge concrete bunker and build his new palace elsewhere.  In sum, Menino is doing land clearance at public expense, to benefit the BRA and the real-estate developers who profit from its magic zoning.  He feeds the BRA; it feeds his favorite developers. There will indeed be lots of green in this district, but who will be getting it?

I've been trying to find out when the Governor's Public Integrity Task Force will hold its meetings, so I can attend and observe. After much calling and e-mailing, I am now told that there will be a public hearing on December 3, time and place to be announced. Since they only have 60 days to produce their recommendations, the Task Force is evidently planning to meet behind closed doors, other than the public hearing. Now, a public hearing is necessary, but that's a chance for us to talk to them. We all know that the important thing to see is them talking to each other. The process of deliberation is what the Open Meeting Law is designed to protect -- so we see what mutual influence (arm-twisting, knee-cracking, horse-trading, info-burying) shaped the products of the group. This Task Force may or may not be technically subject to the Open Meeting Law; but it seems clear that if the subject is ethics, transparency and accountability, its first obligation is to lift the curtain and let the citizens see what we need to see about the job of cleaning up our government.

Deval Patrick's campaign platform was very heavy on ethics, transparency and accountability, and also on civic engagement, which of course is impossible without information and fair access to the public process. This is a fundamental test of his commitment. If his Public Integrity Task Force itself is just another governmental "sausage factory," it won't produce anything more than cosmetics. The ethical cesspool must be drained, as the Boston Globe wrote, and this Task Force can't be a credible force for clean government if it is hiding behind closed doors.

Governor Patrick: tear down this door!


PS No one else on the Task Force has stepped forward to disclose the meeting dates either!  Deep underground!  This does not bode well.

It's taken some extreme ethics problems to get action, but finally, there's hope of some reform. Gov. Deval Patrick has created a Task Force on Public Integrity, saying “We in public office are not entitled to our positions. We are placed here by voters to do the best we can on their behalf. And we are expected to conduct their business honestly and openly.” Gov. Patrick, who has chosen to exempt himself from the Public Record Law and has done little if anything to open the meetings of either executive or legislative bodies to the public, is going to need some prodding to do this right. So far, his 12-member panel includes no ordinary citizens (many of whom have had only too much experience with problems in government accountability) and is not planning to meet in public. Suggestions can be submitted at the above website; the first, I'd say, is to make every meeting and record of this group fully public.

Patrick ran on a promise of transparency, accountability, ethics and civic engagement. He is constantly urging citizens to participate in their governance. Well, we participate without information. That's why I, together with Kevin McCrea and Kathleen Devine, have spent almost four years in court trying to force the Boston City Council to obey the Open Meeting Law.

Before you trundle off to attend a City Council meeting or hearing, call first. The Open Meeting Law forces the City Council to post notice when these events are scheduled, but not to notify people if they are cancelled. So this morning I arrived at City Hall for a scheduled hearing, testimony prepared, only to be told it is cancelled. Why was it cancelled? An invited speaker cancelled out -- YESTERDAY MORNING. But not to worry, they told me -- the cancellation is being posted RIGHT NOW. I got an e-mail about it just as I arrived back home -- and that's only because I have signed up on the receptionist's e-notice list. You ordinary mortals got nothing. Your tax dollars at work.

The hearing was to be about city and state agencies using prison labor at slave wages, a subject I researched for one of my South End News columns a couple of years ago. Here it is:

City Streets
Fair labor practices for prison inmates
by Shirley Kressel

Hanging on the walls of City Hall and of state government buildings is a poster encouraging public officials to order supplies from a cheap source, free from bidding requirements. No bids are required because it is a transaction between government agencies. The source is MassCor (Massachusetts Correctional Industries). The products — which range from bumper stickers, street signs, official vehicle decals, clothing, office and cleaning supplies to furniture, license plates, business cards and U.S. flags — are made by prison inmates.

MassCor is expanding and diversifying. Last year, the Boston Globe reported that MassCor wanted to increase employment from three percent of the prison population to 15 to 25 percent, and that its projected revenues for fiscal 2005 were $7.5 million — up $200,000 from 2004. Director James F. Karr is quoted, half-jokingly: ''Maybe we'll be selling [MassCor jeans] on Newbury Street." (It’s possible; Oregon’s inmates produce a huge line of clothing labeled “Prison Blues.&rdquo

The City of Boston has been buying MassCor products for many years, according to the purchasing department. Between 2002 and 2005 the City bought $27,000 worth of floor cleaners, dust pans, recycling bins, beds, mattresses (some for jail prisoners) and decals for law-enforcement vehicles. Since they aren’t bid, the savings to the City are not known, but it’s certain to be substantial.

The chronically under-funded State Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) uses prison laborers, according to a recent report by Harvard’s Rappaport Institute, because the workers are available at minimal cost. Some of this work is for parks within Boston. And the Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium (MHEC), a nonprofit purchasing association which includes many educational and cultural institutions, both private and public (e.g., UMass, and Roxbury and Bunker Hill Community Colleges), has numerous contracts with MassCor.

Productive work for prison inmates seems like a good idea; they spend their time usefully, learn skills and work habits, earn money for use and for saving, and provide some public service. These jobs are sought by inmates, who have few alternative ways to spend their time. But we have to be careful to see the big picture.

Although some states pay minimum or prevailing wage, inmates at MassCor are paid, according to the Globe story, between 50 cents and one dollar an hour. Their low-priced products may displace those of private industries paying living wages, health insurance and retirement benefits. And they may undermine union labor; a 1998 resolution by AFSCME, AFL-CIO encouraged programs that train inmates for work after their release, but opposed programs “not specifically approved by the affected labor organization, that do not pay the prevailing wage for that occupation in the state, or that use inmates to displace or adversely impact free workers” and use of inmate labor that “keeps wages at a sub-living wage level, and denies benefits and training to the unemployed or underemployed law abiding citizens.” AFSCME also warns against use of inmate labor for private industries as an alternative to hiring workers.

We know that people of color are disproportionately involved in the prison system. According to a 2004 Boston Foundation report, African-Americans and Latinos each make up 27 percent of those in prison even though they are five and seven percent of the population, respectively. This is due, in large part, to uneven enforcement of drug laws across race lines. The Sentencing Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for alternatives to incarceration, reported in 1995 that one in three black men in their twenties have some involvement with the criminal justice system, and that African-Americans constitute 13 percent of all monthly drug users, but represent 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted on drug charges and 74 percent of those serving time for drug-related offenses.

We should be on guard against any inequities carried out in the name of prisoners’ welfare or budget efficiencies – especially because Boston has a majority population of color. City Council should have a hearing on this issue, to learn about uses of prison labor by the City or within the city, and about the benefits for the inmates. Let’s be sure we do not pit minority and other poor people on the inside against their brothers on the outside.

In the big picture, we must reform the criminal justice system to treat people of color, and poor people, as we treat middle-class whites — or vice versa. Immediately, we should be sure the injury is not compounded by programs that claim to help them, and to help our City’s bottom line.

This is my latest column in the South End News (you can see my other recent columns at the South End News website:

YOU ARE THE BAILERS OF LAST RESORT
Wednesday Oct 8, 2008

The national economic system is collapsing under the weight of nothing: funny-money, clever debt "instruments" backed by, as it turns out, not-so-real estate. Our state government is in big financial trouble, and just inquired about a federal loan because we can’t issue bonds for our own loans. Yet Governor Deval Patrick has happily announced a quarter-billion-dollar (for starters) fund to lend to commercial developers who promise that their projects will pay back the loans. How does the government "free up private-market credit" when it can’t get its own? We’ll soon see.

Under the recently activated "I-Cubed" (Infrastructure Investment Incentive) law, the state will pay off construction loans for selected commercial projects’ "public" infrastructure, facilities serving "essential governmental functions" - including parking lots, landscaping and recreational amenities. The money will come from the project’s state taxes, which would otherwise go into the general treasury. These loans are beyond the state’s bond limit, because they are not guaranteed by the "full faith and credit" of the state, i.e. the taxpayers, but are backed by development revenues. However, in case of project failure to generate the promised state taxes, the city is on the hook. If the city doesn’t find a way to pay, the state can withhold local aid for schools, roads, and services.

So, if the project succeeds, the developer gets all the project profits, while state taxpayers make up for the revenues forfeited to pay his "infrastructure" construction costs. (We also get to own, and pay him to maintain, all the "public infrastructure" we build for his project.) If the project fails, city taxpayers must pay off the loans for failed real estate speculation, and also take care of whatever "infrastructure" is standing. Public risk, private profit, all backed by real estate. Gosh, what could go wrong with that?

So excited is the Administration that Lt. Governor Tim Murray, in a Worcester Telegram story, described the program as "self-funding" between the state, local communities and interested businesses. Before the era of public-private partnerships and other re-interpretations of the "private free market," "self-funding" meant money from private investors and private profits. Now the diversion of taxes to a private project is called "self-funding."

And so eager is Patrick to implement I-Cubed that he has accompanied the public subsidy with the only thing to fear more than fear itself: deregulation. The law’s regulations (public comments due Oct. 15), set numerous selection criteria and also give the Secretary of Administration and Finance discretion to waive any of them for any applicant.

These criteria are rather important. They require proof that the developer will provide all required information, that the project needs public subsidy, that the developer has financing, that the project is financially feasible and environmentally sustainable, that it will produce enough state taxes to pay off the loan, that competitive bidding of qualified contractors will be used, and that it will start in a timely manner after approval. The criteria also stipulate that only two projects will be subsidized per city, that the project wasn’t approved by the city before Sept 7, 2006 (when this law was passed), that the developer won’t get other state subsidies, that individual project infrastructure bonds won’t exceed $50 million, and that the project was approved by the city and the state quasi-public bond-issuing agency, MassDevelopment.

It’s not reassuring that the basic qualifying requirements - already often finessed by applicants and ignored by subsidy-providing agencies, can be totally waived by one political appointee to fill the Administration’s political quota for "job creation" by shifting more risk from the private developer to the taxpayers. The developer simply has to threaten that he will otherwise take his marbles elsewhere (a wink-wink bluff understood by both sides). And the city has to approve any zoning changes needed by the project, undermining comprehensive planning.

So much for transparency and accountability.

My experience with similar subsidy programs indicates that a tip of the hat and a handshake will get a developer $50 million.

If the state or city want public infrastructure to support economic vitality, why don’t they make a general plan, conduct a budgeting process where competing priorities are weighed, and pay for the works directly instead of through these arcane debt arrangements that at best serve only individual projects and at worst encourage chancy real-estate adventures by politically connected developers through public assumption of risk? Perhaps because there’s no political glory for just keeping the state and city in good working order so that everyone, including developers, benefits and we know what our cost burdens will be. Perhaps because there are no announcements at the Chamber of Commerce, no new "partnerships," no new "investments" or "incentives" - and no "job-creation" numbers to claim.

In a 2006 Boston Globe interview, then-gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick said he would "take a dim view of using state tax incentives as a major tool for attracting business expansion in the state, saying companies whose plans turn on tax breaks probably aren’t worth attracting." He said, "business creates jobs, not government. Governments create a climate where businesses can thrive," and, "a business that makes a decision on the basis of a tax break alone, that’s a business that’s on its way out of business."

But the politics of "business incentives" has prevailed and the Administration invests heavily in corporate welfare, even, as I have witnessed, when the corporation says outright that the subsidy is not part of its decision to build or relocate.

Now, the state, its troubles compounded by another overly-clever debt-shuffling gimmick - the collapsing Turnpike Authority, to which the state shifted the Big Dig construction-cost risk to escape "full faith and credit" bonding - is planning to ask the floundering federal government for financial help. It’s not exactly a bail-out - yet.

In any case, the "full faith" bailer of last resort is you.


Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at shirley.kressel@verizon.net.

I recently testified at the City Council hearing on moving City Hall to the South Boston waterfront. Councilor Mike Flaherty invited me to testify (an interesting change: when I tried to testify at the BRA budget hearing back in June, Councilor Steve Murphy shook his head "no" and adjourned). Flaherty and Mike Ross were listening to me, but did not seem at all happy with what I had to say. Perhaps because they know all this already, and don't want to do anything about it. I said:

The reason the BRA and Mayor Tom Menino want to move City Hall to the waterfront is to clear the City's Government Center property for development.  And who will be the lucky developer?  

Why, it's the BRA!  Yes, the BRA took back City Hall Plaza, using eminent domain, in 1996 (when the BRA was a joint-venture partner with some hotel developers).  And Menino gave his blessing and waiver of compensation -- an estimated $400 million, gone from our capital budget.  The Mayor likes to fund the BRA off-budget and off-accountability, because the BRA is very helpful to him in certain development dealings.

So the BRA has held ownership of the Plaza, like any other real estate speculator, and will similarly get the land under City Hall for free -- but not before the taxpayers fund the hugely costly demolition of the building.  
The lease fees for construction on this 11-acre site in the heart of downtown will be enormous -- and since the BRA is also our regulatory agency it can simply approve whatever project will maximize its profits.  

The BRA, having abolished the Boston Planning Board in 1960, is also our "planning agency," so it is in charge of conducting the studies to decide on the move, a clear conflict of interest.  Despite the many "Plans" it has created governing this site and the waterfront site (which it owns too!), the BRA's answer after this study will certainly be a resounding "ka-ching!"  

BRA: Hundreds of millions of dollars.  City: zero.  

The BRA and City budgets are totally separate.  And sharing only goes in one direction; can you guess which way?

Note to City Council: You created the BRA, and you can terminate it.  Do it and get back the power you've been looking for. We can also get back billions of dollars worth of BRA real estate, and the millions in cash it has collected in leases and fees and various irregular arrangements from developers.

I offered to help the Council with more information. The phone is not yet ringing off the hook.

I wouldn't expect any better from Mayor Tom Menino. But I did call Governor Deval Patrick, who ran on promises of integrity in government, to express my disappointment and that of many people I heard from when I was making personal phone calls for Sonia Chang-Diaz. Instead of sheepish embarrassment, remorse, or even sincere explanation, I was met with surprisingly snide comments from his staff, effectively, "I bet you're glad you won't have Dianne Wilkerson to kick around any more" and "She paid a heavy price, didn't she." I couldn't seem to get through to the guy that it wasn't just about her, that there was a principle involved here; cronyism was the mindset and apparently, the defense. This is just politics as usual, as expected, for Menino and the many other pols on Wilkerson's website endorsement list, but, naively, I had hoped for something different from the governor who wanted to restore the citizens' confidence in government. Now they've all leaped to congratulate Sonia and "look forward to working with her." Let's hope she stays squeaky clean in the midst of all that.

I am pleased to announce that Kevin and Clara McCrea and I are co-hosting a fund-raising party
at the McCrea home, 218 West Springfield Street in the South End, next Wednesday evening September 3, from 7 to 9 pm.  See attached invitation!
 
In the upcoming SEPTEMBER 16 PRIMARY ELECTION, Sonia will be on the ballot running against current Senator Dianne Wilkerson.  We have known Sonia for 3 years now and have been impressed by her commitment to bringing integrity and openness, along with her progressive attitude, to our State Senate seat.  Sonia is a former school teacher who worked as an aide for former State Senator Cheryl Jacques, work that has given her great experience in understanding and addressing educational, social and economic needs of our community.

 While both are liberals, there are important differences:
- Sonia does not support the bioterror lab, opposes wasteful corporate welfare, and believes public funds must be dedicated to long-term community infrastructure, not used as a "grab-bag" of favors.  
- Sonia would support clean election laws, which Dianne has voted against.  
- And most important, Sonia's ethical, accountable leadership will help counter citizens' growing cynicism about government, and encourage confidence in public investment for progressive programs.

I hope you will join us for a fun evening to meet the candidate, reconnect with old friends and meet new ones  -- and hopefully to donate to Sonia's campaign.      If you can't come, please consider making a contribution anyway.   You can find out more and donate at www.soniachangdiaz.com.

Remember -- even if Sonia is not your district senator, the person in that office makes decisions affecting us all.  And unlike Dianne Wilkerson, Sonia can't look to big developers and corporations for campaign funds; this is grassroots all the way!  

Here is my full letter on the Globe's piece on the BRA's planning director, Kairos Shen, of which the Globe Magazine Editor published excerpts in the August 3 issue.

Your glowing tribute to the BRA’s Kairos Shen omitted his most important innovation: his outright substitution of his own opinions for the rule of even the BRA’s infinitely flexible laws.  Small wonder that Mayor Menino, after years without a Chief Planner,  has elevated Mr. Shen to uber-control; he simply instructs developers to break the law, apparently telling them they can fly, even when they can’t use one of the BRA’s many legal parachutes.

One of his guiding  theories of city planning is “transitional zoning” – that is, heights of new buildings should be graduated between towers; imagine a clothesline loosely strung between the tops of the city’s tallest towers, setting the heights for new buildings irrespective of the zoning code.  The non-diagrammatic  purposes of zoning – to provide air and light, maintain human scale, safeguard historic fabric, retain affordable building stock, protect existing investments, stabilize  vulnerable neighborhoods, prevent wildcat land speculation, etc. – are too mundane for such a visionary.  Despite Shen’s compassionate defense of that triple-the-zoning-height,  historic-Dainty-Dot-replacing tower in Chinatown as an engine of affordable housing, he surely knows, as every planner knows, that the real-estate speculation and subsequent gentrification such a tower spurs will do far more damage to the poor Chinatown residents than the help they’ll get from the handful of below-market units the developer’s local business partners will build on their land.  He should have been educating the residents, not seducing them on the developer’s behalf.

In a hypnotic performance that demonstrated his iron-fist-in-velvet-glove technique, he got the BRA’s advisory “guardian of the public realm,”  the Boston Civic Design Commission, to approve that tower on his transitional zoning theory.  As he politely intimidated them into a vote, the Commissioners, squirming with embarrassment before an astounded public, insisted that as a condition, the vote be specified as non-precedent-setting;  he told them that he would continue to handle every project this way on a case-by-case basis;  they approved anyway.  They actually voted, not for the project, as one Commissioner put it, but for Karios Shen. “The rule of Shen, not of laws,” so to speak.  It was unprecedented, but almost certainly not unprecedential.

The article makes numerous errors: Linkage is unrelated to negotiated community benefits. Height is not necessary for financial viability (many lawful developments were recently built or are in the pipeline, while the 400’ Columbus Center project founders).  PDA’s do not necessarily wipe out all zoning, although the BRA pretends they do. The Dainty Dot tower height was unrelated to the developer’s affordable housing “donation” – in fact, as he admitted to a confused Zoning Board of Appeal, he had offered far fewer affordable units when the tower design had been even taller.

But you got one thing very right:  Mr. Shen has the ability to make people think he said yes, when he really said no.

Today, the Boston Globe reports that Mayor Menino has had enough of street art and audience applause on Faneuil Hall's public plaza. All the noise, the music and merriment five floors down and across the street, was too much for him, and he's had his control squads sweep the plaza and pen the artists into a tiny corner, where they must take turns doing their acts. (I'm not sure if the tourists must be in a pen, too.)

Oddly, this is the kind of activity the Mayor and the BRA are constantly trying to foster. The highest and best use of any site is to "revitalize" the city and produce "vibrant" public spaces that are "destinations." Well, it took a while, but the genuine marketplace and meeting ground of Fan Hall is now nothing but a tourist destination. Not good enough, apparently. It has to be quiet, too. Orderly.

Imagine what would happen if a workers' strike, or a political demonstration, was attempted at Fan Hall, the Cradle of Liberty, today. These tend to be noisy and disorderly.

I inquired once about any requirements for holding a sidewalk sign-carrying protest at a Mayoral speech. I was told by a City Hall official that permits for "free" speech and assembly must be given, after applications are duly filed in advance, by employees that work for the Mayor -- and, in this political world of ours, they would be risking their jobs to permit gatherings that criticize him.

Meanwhile, we're seeing huge swaths of City Hall Plaza fenced off for admission-charging commercial events, draping of City Hall and other public buildings with advertising, ad banners on light poles along our streets, ubiquitous street-furniture billboards (contracted to Mayoral friends), and commercially sponsored events occupying areas of the Boston Common. Post Office Square, City land leased to a private development group, officially prohibits free speech and assembly -- not only within their park area, but on the surrounding City sidewalks, and, during scheduled park events, within a 100-foot radius of the park boundaries.

What is free speech in the cradle of liberty? Is it only available for corporations, or can citizens have some too, please?

Atop the Boston Public Library (the first in America) are engraved these words: THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY. Order and Liberty: the two linchpins of democratic society. We'd better watch that balance.

On July 14, the Boston Globe published my opinion piece about the Greenway Conservancy. On Sunday, July 20, a carefully worded letter to the editor by the Conservancy was printed. Here are its main points, and my further response.

“Failure to pass the legislation means that this non-transportation responsibility will return to the cash-strapped Turnpike Authority.”
The Turnpike Authority is indeed cash-strapped. But the Conservancy claims to be cash-strapped as well; the purpose of the pending legislation is that the state, not the Conservancy, would pay for the park’s management. The state could just as well give the money to the Turnpike Authority to fund a good management contract.

The Turnpike Authority, although it is a transportation agency, is responsible for road-building mitigations, and will be managing several other Big Dig parks; it will administer the Conservancy’s lease in any case. But as a quasi-public entity, it is subject to open meeting, public record, competitive bidding and other public-integrity laws, while the Conservancy is a private entity, exempt from all these laws -- and it has no experience at all with park operations.

“The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy is a private, nonprofit charitable organization, the only model that can raise significant private support for operations and capital improvements.”
How “significant”? And why then is it asking the state to pay $5.5 million a year, far more than a reasonable management cost? Its past and anticipated revenues remain undisclosed, but apparently, this private model depends on the public.

“Our board was appointed by the city, the state, and the Turnpike Authority; meetings are and will be open to the public.”
Board appointees are politically connected corporate chiefs. Meetings are listed on the Conservancy’s website -- not a public posting; so far, two citizens (including myself) and the Boston Globe are the regularly attending “public.” The board uses the open session for celebratory presentations -- the new logo, exciting events planned, student projects, Mother’s Walk pavers, etc. When the board wants to talk privately, it ejects the public by calling “Executive Session” (or it convenes prior to the public session). This "Executive Session" is not as defined by the Open Meeting Law; it is not restricted by topic and doesn’t require eventual publication of minutes; it’s simply a meeting the board doesn’t want the public to see.

“We maintain financial transparency and public accountability.”
Financial transparency is currently minimal. The Conservancy’s legally required Form 990’s and related documents remain substantively incomplete and inaccurate, despite promises to refile. Financial discussions are conducted in closed sessions. Requests for financial information are generally denied, citing exemption of private entities from the Public Record Law. The donors’ desire for confidentiality is the rationale for secrecy; but the donor list starts with “Anonymous” – the rest are presumably happy to be recognized for their contributions. After much delay, the Conservancy gave me a copy of the independent accountants' report serving to certify equal matching private donations the Turnpike had required for its $5 million cash grant in 2005. Black marker hid all the pledge amounts and due dates as well as individual payment amounts; but the total payment of $1,306,500 was left visible, and, subtracting the known amount of $1 million in money from the City, it becomes evident that the Turnpike grant was approved with a match of only $306,500 in actual private cash, with the rest in civic-minded generous corporate pledges -- which wouldn’t have to be collected if the bill passes. Interestingly, the report expressly disclaimed responsibility for certifying whether the Conservancy complied with the financial-related terms of the MTA agreement.

Financial transparency under the proposed bill will consist of disclosure of public-money expenditures (but not deliberations about expenditures mixing public and private funds), agency contracts (available anyway from the agencies) and discussions about development on or around the Greenway. Accountability will be through annual reports and quarterly public meetings about Conservancy goals, and self-assessments of performance, regarding events and activities, maintenance, and design modifications. There is no prohibition on closed meetings, as the Open Meeting Law imposes on public bodies. The proposed budget is to be agreed upon by the State, which must pay half up to $5.5 million; the Conservancy's budget wasn't scrutinized before the bill was filed, and is unlikely to be critically questioned once the funding is set aside by the pending bill "without further appropriation," that is, without further budgetary review.

“The legislation confirms the community's role in decision-making.”
The legislation would eliminate the existing community task force, and incorporate all community participation into its own structure (years ago, the Conservancy declared that no Friends group should be formed, because it was the Friends group; but no one can join this "conservancy," there is no membership). Two neighborhood residents selected by the current board would be voting members on the 15-seat board, and a few community residents would be selected for the 13-seat advisory "Leadership Council."

“The Greenway is public open space where there will be no admission fee to enjoy the parklands. To suggest otherwise is a scare tactic.”
There will be be no admission fee to enjoy the “parklands,” but the bill requires an annual statement describing Conservancy “goals for the upcoming year, including the number and nature of events and program activities to be conducted during the year…[and] any fees or charges to the public associated with the planned activities…” This is what my op-ed was referring to.

“No state park is comparable in the complexity of design, or in the level of care required.
If it's truly this complicated, the state should have commissioned competitive bids or independent professional cost estimates for the park’s maintenance, and also requested full disclosure of all past and anticipated Conservancy revenues, before considering any public funding, instead of agreeing to half of the Conservancy's proposed budget up to $5.5 million a year. My information from various landscape professionals indicates, as I wrote, between $500,000 and $1,000,000 a year, for high-quality maintenance. New York’s Central Park is one of the most celebrated and heavily used parks in the world, and its 843 acres are managed by a renowned private conservancy for about $25 million -- only $30,000 an acre annually.

And enhancing the park will fall to private-sector funding raised by the conservancy.”
The word “enhancing” seems to be the key here; the Conservancy is perhaps introducing a re-definition of its privately-funded responsibility to apply only to “special” activities or elements, a concept which has not been mentioned before. Its current agreement with the state, Turnpike and City mandates it to assume (after 2012) all the Turnpike’s management obligations for the park, solely with private funding, as it promised. We need an explanation of this new position.

“Rather than the power-seeking entity Kressel envisions, the conservancy is found by many to be a civic-minded nonprofit that works collaboratively with the neighborhoods, other nonprofit groups, and public officials, and cares deeply about the beauty, accessibility, and common ground of the Greenway.”

“Is found by many…”? Perhaps; but many do not know the facts about its history, structure, intent, and past performance, and its pending legislation. The Conservancy is a non-profit entity representing for-profit business interests. It is conducting political lobbying (what it calls “information sessions") to get even greater corporate power over the park through the bill. It does indeed care about keeping the park -– the front yard of its business constituents -- immaculately manicured. But the issue of public accessibility remains troubling, based on the lessons of Post Office Square park. Saying “common ground” doesn’t make it so.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is the only urban renewal agency in America to take over the government of the city. Its activities and impacts are multifold and always increasing, yet it is an unknown story. Independence Day, in its 50th year of operation, is a fitting time to look at it -- as much as we can look at in this secretive black-box government.

My South End News column of July 3 is the first in a series about the BRA. This one is about the BRA's financial empire, and its devastating impact on the city's treasury and taxpayers. The next will address the BRA's impact on the regulation of the city's development.

On July 7, Mayor Tom Menino, Department of Neighborhood Development Director Evelyn Friedman, Boston Public Health Commisioner Barbara Ferrer, and MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas kicked off a month-long Boston Main Streets initiative called Healthy Main Streets, designed to encourage residents to get out to their local commercial district on foot, bicycle, or by riding the T; the event took place on the Plaza in front of Stop & Shop/JP Licks at Brigham Circle.

Menino presided over the final demolition of the A line of the Green Line; he welcomed the Silverline bus as a substitute for the Orange Line replacement service on Washington Street; he accepted the fare increases that hit urban riders hardest; and he's been fighting against the restoration of the Arborway Green Line for years, recently sending out his troops to pave over the tracks so the cars can reign.
 
Now, suddenly, he is the champion of the T! With friends like Menino, the T is ...in the shape it's in.

All the folks I know are scratching their heads, wondering why Mayor Menino has such high approval ratings. I thought it was because the average bear has no clue what he's doing.

But I think the Boston Globe's Sunday piece on Menino's park coffee-klatches gives us a more profound insight. An older guy who's been Dunkin' with Tom for years had no complaints: "Where else can you go to get a coffee, a doughnut and a plant? You get something back for your taxes, right?"

Maybe Alexander Pope said it best in 1727: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

While the little Safety Net group keeps its tiny brave finger in the huge biolab dike of Boston, bioterror labs are springing up all over the country. A Newsweek report last December, and this week in the Seattle PI, tell an alarming story of this epidemic of research labs and the accidents emanating from them. We are increasingly victims of our own fears.

So, is this the best we can do? The Boston Globe reports that Mayor Menino is wildly popular, especially among women. He gets high marks for trash pick-up and keeping the streets and parks clean; but a lot of that work is done by frustrated residents, who join his community clean-up brigades, or just hire private companies to clean up around their block. He attributes his popularity to his work on health issues (??) and, amazingly, on the public schools, which are still, after 15 years of his reign, marked by seriously uneven and racially skewed quality -- even with all the private money he lures into them for after-school and other special programs.

He knows that he gets a lot of mileage just by showing up, getting around, meeting folks, talking to them. But he talks to people he wants to talk to; he doesn't necessarily meet with people who want to meet with him. The Safety Net group fighting the bioterror lab has tried for six years.

I've tried too, last time in 2004 when he was ordering his departments to allow the unlawful tear-down of the historic Gaiety Theatre. I was at the front desk begging the secretary for an emergency meeting to tell him the demolition scaffolding was up, and he should halt the work because a community development group wanted to rehab the Theatre and build housing above. He happened to come out of his office, and I told him. He smirked, "Really? The scaffolding is up?" and walked away. The secretary told me to send in a letter requesting a meeting; the waiting time was six months. The Gaiety's graveyard is still a rubble-filled pit; no theater, no housing, no taxes, no jobs -- all of which would have been achieved by the proposed community project. When I later put in a Public Record Request to get information on his relationship with the property owner, he ignored the Request totally; not even a NO. This is the real Mayor Menino.

When I get to ask him questions in public, he never faces the problem head-on, but says what he wants to say and moves on. He won't debate during elections; he doesn't have press conferences; he doesn't appear at community meetings where people are contesting controversial issues, like development or institutional expansion -- he uses the BRA as a shield for that. He's been "negotiating" with the police and fire departments for 15 years, and finally the FBI has to come in to investigate. I'm wondering what it takes to interest the FBI...

He won't talk about unfair property taxes; he won't admit that he gives away our capital budget to the BRA by giving it valuable City land.

I don't ask to meet with him any more, because it's a one-way conversation in each direction. Either he doesn't understand, or he knows but doesn't care.

I once asked a group of black community residents why they support Menino, since their neighborhoods and schools are treated so shabbily. They answered that they are used to getting so little from politicians that the bit of attention he shows them is enough to get their votes. Maybe that's true of most other people, too.

The way to cook a frog, the saying goes, is to put it in cold water and turn up the heat very gradually. It seems that a whole lot more damage can be done before Bostonians, right here in the cradle of democracy, will jump out of the pot and make better use of their power.

We now have a Special City Council Committee for the Boston Common. I knew I should get worried. And Mike Ross is the chair. More worried.

At a hearing (which I missed but the Boston Globe reported) on March 19, Toni Pollak, Parks Commissioner, announced that large grass-trampling gatherings should no longer be allowed on Boston Common, but should be held on City Hall Plaza.

Perhaps she is unaware that we citizens no longer own City Hall Plaza, since 1996, when the Boston Redevelopment Authority took it from the City of Boston by eminent domain, free of compensation, on the instructions of Hizzoner, her boss. The BRA is preparing to develop its valuable acreage, which is why Menino keeps talking about moving City Hall to revitalize the waterfront. Yes, the Mayor and our whole City government are being evicted, the latest victims of the BRA's urban renewal bulldozer, just the way the denizens of Scollay Square before us were thrown off their land back in the 1960's to carry out the Government Center Urban Renewal Plan -- which authorized their removal in order to build: yes, a Plaza for the people! As Paul McCann (with the BRA since its genesis in 1956) put it at a City Council hearing held, of course, AFTER the taking was all done: "It didn't work out, so it's now "blighted" and we took it again." This time, the BRA entered into a joint venture with a bunch of developers calling themselves The Trust for City Hall Plaza (remember them?) to build a hotel and garage on the Plaza -- and that, Trust chief Norman Leventhal informed me, "was just the beginning." The upshot: if we make the Plaza our democratic meeting arena, we're at the mercy of the BRA. Think about that.

But it wasn't just the grass. There were complaints about trash and noise that "damage what residents, colleges, and businesses in the area consider to be their front yard." Now NIMBYs won't let the Boston Common be the Common. We really have to teach civics in school again. What is wrong with these people?

Most alarming: For some reason, the discussion seems to have turned from protecting the green to raking in the green, and Councilor Ross opined that "cafés, restaurants, and other commercial ventures might be a good replacement for large-scale events." Of course! Commerce is pretty much the same as democratic assembly, except for the doorman in front and the bill at the end. Customers are citizens -- even better, right? Sure keeps out the poor and homeless, and good riddance, I say! The public realm is no place for 'em! And Ross responded to Tom Kershaw's complaint that he can't make enough money on Common land with his skating business on our Frog Pond, and would now like a liquor license for a night club. The alcohol prohibition on the Common, Ross offered, should be reconsidered, in the service of the restaurant business, and started planning a junket to New York's Central Park to check out the Tavern on the Green.

People, we're sending soldiers into gunfire every day to (reportedly) fight for democracy. The important part of democracy isn't what happens in the voting booth, but what happens when citizens gather, rub elbows with all kinds of their fellow human beings, and talk amongst themselves on common ground.

Let's look at reinforced grass techniques, rotating meeting spaces, or maybe a paved gathering area in the park, Commissioner Pollak, before we evict ourselves from our grassy common ground as we did from our paved one. And let's remember, Councilor Ross, the difference between the public and private realms, and why it matters.

A few weeks ago, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston delegation recently visiting Shanghai were alarmed to hear government officials, accompanied by loud martial music, talk about deciding on a development plan for an area and saying that "the plan is law."  They don't need to go to Shanghai to hear such talk.  The BRA (together with the perma-mayor) decides to make developers' proposals the law all the time.  The BRA has four mechanisms to do it that provide no legal recourse for the public: Institutional Master Plans, Urban Renewal Areas, Planned Development Areas, Chapter 121A agreements (which also waives taxes).   If none of those apply to specific projects, it simply changes existing laws to match the proposals.   The BRA writes our zoning law, and takes the liberty of rearranging or dispensing with it as it wishes.  It calls this approach "dynamic zoning."

The BRA's director of planning is quoted as commenting that Boston could take a lesson from China's "quick and decisive action."  On the contrary, the Chinese should come here for autocracy lessons.  The main difference is that we don't play music.

Tom Keane asks this question. His reasons for a "no" answer ignore many of the real powers the mayor has, powers over taxes and development, whom to subsidize, whom to serve, whom to hire. In fact, City Hall is full of non-Civil Service hacks, hired as "temporary" or "provisional" employees at his constant whim. The departing library director cited Menino's hiring pressure.

Keane says that politics is passe, and Menino's staying power is thanks to his efficiency, his good housekeeping, which is all people care about. Do you agree?

The real question is: Does Boston need THIS mayor? What do you think? Should we dispense with the election charade and just hire a manager? Will that muck out the stables?

OK, it turns out that we don't have our constitutional right to free speech and assembly unless the Mayor says it's ok. Since he's unlikely to smile upon permits for public demonstrations at his annual State of the City address, we have to create our own forum for "virtual demonstration."

Here it is.

Get yourself an anonymous free e-mail account at yahoo.com or hotmail.com, and let's hear what you think the State of the City is these days! Remember -- anonymous means you're safe: NO ONE WILL KNOW YOUR NAME. And you can get multiple free accounts and write under any number of names or codewords.
Speak up -- or prepare for a fifth Menino term.

City Council President Maureen Feeney was the central enabler in a state-city collusion that pushed two (and possible a third) unqualified applicants for firefighter jobs to the top of the list, as reported by the Boston Globe. This meta-nepotism, an insider favor within the great family of Dorchester, is despicable for several reasons, including racial discrimination against better-scoring candidates, and endangering the public safety with incompetent first responders. This is exactly what the civil service hiring process was invented to prevent.

Even Councilor Mike Flaherty and Mayor Tom Menino thought it stank -- at first; but Madame President got it passed, and they both signed on. State Senate President Therese Murray was apparently the initial instigator, and the erstwhile Rep. Brian Wallace sponsored in the House, enlisting the help of some rookie Rep. from Everett who was just trying to build up credits on a sure thing, for future trades.

This nefarious piece of legislation became law in only six weeks; there are worthwhile bills languishing in the Council and the state legislature for months and years. It's reassuring to see that our electeds all have their priorities straight.

Most depressing is Governor Deval Patrick's collaboration. Here was our great hope for good government, with yet another flunk in the ethics report card.

It's bad enough that family members are given priority for hiring in the fire department, where merit alone should govern a decision affecting life and death. Now we get a glimpse of the inside game played by our elected officials. Apparently, public safety, life and death, aren't as important as family favors for our politicians at all levels.

Remember this next election time, people.

Re: Mayor Menino's alleged hiring of cronies for library jobs, as reported in the Globe:

I've heard similar allegations from staff of other City departments, although I didn't see any proof. If you know of any such, please post here.

So, the Boston Police Department is proposing a program -- "Safe Homes" -- for Dorchester and Roxbury, which would let them go into people's homes, based on rumors, and do searches for guns their kids may be harboring. With any luck, they'll run into some drugs or other evidence of criminality -- after all, we're talking black people in Dorchester and Roxubury, right? -- and get to lock those young rascals up for a good long time.

I wonder if this would also work for nice white areas, like the towns where all those inexplicable mass student killings are going on -- where people are shocked, SHOCKED at such violence, violence that's so...so "urban," as they say. Let's also be sure to make Safe Home programs for all those areas where the white buyers of those "ghetto"-bought drugs live, out in the 'burbs; we gotta save them from themselves, too, right? And Southie, what about Southie, drugs and havoc: more warrant-less searches!

Oh, no, I guess not.

This initiative (together with Councilor Rob Consalvo's bullet-direction detectors) is a perfect use of public money, which might otherwise be wasted educating these youngsters, cleaning up their neighborhoods, giving their parents credit to start up local businesses (instead of subsidizing millionaire developers building luxury enclaves for billionaire clients) and otherwise giving them hope of a decent, productive life as an alternative to gang activity. Excellent work, Mayor Menino. Great public policy to deal with those people. You are truly the "neighborhood mayor"!

Low voter turn-out isn't due to apathy, contentment, or complacency. It's due to resignation and helplessnes and frustration.

We need:

--Elimination of the BRA, which stole the City Council's legislative role and then legislated away citizens' legal recourse, and cannibalizes our tax base and our capital assets; fifty years of black-box government is more than enough.

--Term limits, because the incumbent advantage costs us more in fresh talent than it yields in wise elder-statesmen

--Charter reform, which chisels away the few remaining Council powers

--More elected offices and fewer mayorally appointed positions; there's one person stacking all the boards, committees, etc.

All powers are now in the executive branch, which uses the BRA's ill-gotten legislative powers to make everything that's illegal, legal. Absent two of the three branches of government, we do not have a democracy. We desperately need diffusion of power -- and that would be true even with a more capable mayor.

Voters feel it. There is no hopeful, energetic civic life; there is only "politics as usual," an insider game played by a permanent oligarchy, funded by all-powerful real estate and other corporate interests.

The media are complicit, in their obsequious support of a deeply flawed mayor and their blind-eye endorsements of city councilors who do nothing. There is plenty to reveal about all our officials, and about the way City Hall works; but there is no one to do it.

I can't imagine how we will make Boston, the cradle of democracy become a banana republic, a democracy again. Another revolution, perhaps.

Mayor Menino has whizzed through the legislature his bill to block the Governor's two-year tax relief proposal (see previous blog entry). Now it's up to the Governor to stop it and demand an amendment, to include his relief plan. Since the tax issue is so complicated for ordinary residents to appreciate, and he's probably under a lot of pressure from big commercial owners, he may just give up and sign it. If YOU want tax relief next year, call Menino (617-635-4500), and call Patrick (617-725-4005), and tell them you won't be fleeced again to cut big businesses' property taxes.

A story is appearing in many local newspapers, titled “Report warns of higher tax rate.” As written, the story would lead residents to think Mayor Menino is trying to give homeowners tax relief. It is important for residents to understand that this is not entirely accurate – and that we have an opportunity to get some relief now, but only if we take action immediately.

To fill our property tax levy every year, residents must pay whatever commercial property owners don’t pay. So if commercial taxes fall, the amount of the shortfall shifts to homeowners and renters.

The recent recession sharply reduced commercial property assessments, especially on office towers. To prevent an impending 40% jump in residential taxes, a law was passed in 2004 to raise the existing cap on the commercial tax rate, which was 175% of the basic rate, to 200%, to increase the commercial tax yield. Although officials wanted a permanent increase, the business interests forced a “deal” – a temporary increase, rolling the commercial tax cap back down to 175% by 2008, thus raising residential taxes each year. In fact, residential taxes have risen by 78% since 2003, while most commercial properties will be paying less in 2008, after inflation, than they did seven years ago, and the commercial tax rate is the lowest since 1991.

To give residents some relief from the falling commercial tax rate, Governor Deval Patrick has filed legislation to freeze the commercial tax rate at its current level, 183%, for two more years, instead of letting it continue to roll back to 175% next year as slated by the 2004 law. Menino is trying to deprive homeowners of Patrick’s two-year tax relief, which would save residents an estimated $70 to $90 million, 8% a year, in taxes.

Menino filed a bill (House 3119) to repeal the 2004 law. His bill is backed by the Municipal Research Bureau, which is a powerful corporate lobby, not a city government watchdog as commonly believed, nor a “Boston-based research company” as the story describes them. The 2004 law would drop the tax cap back to 175% next year, but his repeal would require that drop and keep it down, precluding Patrick’s two-year freeze. The Bureau’s director, Sam Tyler, admits in one of the versions of the story: “The urgency of passing the [Mayor’s] legislation …is that there are the bills pending that would keep it up at 183%.” It is urgent -- for the big businesses, who don’t want pay more, at 183%, to give residents some relief.

Menino’s bill would help residents in one way: it would repeal two harmful “dirty tricks” slipped into the 2004 legislation by business interests after the original “deal” was set. The first trick drops the commercial tax rate down to 170% in 2009 – lower than the pre-existing 175% -- permanently shifting more of the city’s tax burden from businesses to residents. The second, and far more devastating to residents, permanently prevents the mandatory residential portion of the tax burden from ever going back down from its highest level, no matter how low housing prices go or how high commercial values go. This portion used to be 30% of the total levy; it is already up at 42%.

This second provision was worded very ambiguously, so the meaning has just become evident as several municipalities were prevented from lowering their residential taxes despite rising commercial assessments. Many officials are angry that business interests used the residential relief law to take advantage of residents – who are already exploited by our lopsided tax system.

With the dirty tricks exposed, the businesses are offering to repeal them -- if they can also block Patrick’s residential relief by repealing the rest of the 2004 law. That’s the new “deal.”

Menino need not squash Patrick’s two-year tax relief to repeal the dirty tricks. He could easily write his bill to accomplish both. But the business lobby is strong, while residents don’t understand enough to fight back. So the Mayor can safely save the business interests millions of dollars at residents’ expense by blocking the Governor’s relief, while courting residents’ support for the bill as a repeal of the dirty tricks – which should never have been enacted in the first place.

Why isn’t he doing his best for the over-burdened home taxpayers?

Contact Mayor Menino (617-635-4500) (mayor@ci.boston.ma.us) and tell him you want the dirty tricks repealed AND the 183% two-year commercial tax freeze enacted.

Then, tell him you want what he promised -- a total “overhaul” of the tax system -- not a “band-aid,” as he called the 2004 law when he testified for it, so that all property owners pay their fair share. Residents shouldn’t have to carry the tax load for everyone else.

I guess that's what Deval Patrick meant. We can continue to give away $500 million in loopholes, and who knows how many millions in pointless tax breaks to corporations, and then call for saving our crumbling roads and bridges by taking over the vice businesses. Like the ghetto guys that turn to selling drugs because we've exported, or de-educated them out of, any viable means of self-support, politicans have given away our own honest revenues and now, fearing another taxpayer backlash, are exploiting the poor, who can't try to get ahead of their lot by gambling at stocks and bonds so they gamble at slots and cards, with much worse odds, and no Federal Reserve to bail them out. Hey, it's voluntary, so why not cash in? Our Great White (um, Black) Father is now setting us up in the racket; he just has to beat those other colored folks, the Indians, to the punch. The proud Indian tribes, whose restitution for almost complete decimation at white hands is to do for white society what is considered unclean but unavoidable.

It would be one thing if our officials decided to decriminalize and regulate gambling for the protection of those who need it and to take the crime out of it (as they should do with drugs), and to impose ordinary taxes on casinos, as businesses who have to pay their fair share for public services. It's a totally different thing for the government to become an investor in gambling, to have an incentive to increase it and entice people to do it -- the lottery spends a lot of money on advertising. Why not become equity partners in drugs, tobacco, alcohol, guns, prostitution -- these are all things people will keep on buying, legal or not, and why not grow the business here, so we can use the loot to pay for our schoolchildren's education, and our roads, and our ...whatever's the next victim of public neglect. Our public officials will be meta-pushers, the end will justify the means, and we can set aside some of the money to "repair" the resulting damage -- broken homes, spouse and child abuse, destitution and bankruptcy. That seems fair, right?

This is not what I was expecting when I voted for Deval Patrick, and encouraged others to do so. I was duped, I admit it. The gambling decision is the last straw, after many development policy disappointments, conflict-of-interest revelations, closed-door deliberations, expanded corporate tax giveaways, etc. I tuned back into politics because I believed in him. I told him: the "triumph of hope over experience."

Never mind.