blog@abn

My column in the South End News

The BRA: end it, don’t mend it
Wednesday May 13, 2009
http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=columnists&sc=city_streets&sc2=&sc3=&id=91141


The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) is planning its 50th birthday celebration. Boston has endured over a half century of neighborhood destruction, lawless development and financial assaults by this quasi-public agency, an "independent" urban renewal authority that, long after urban renewal has been discredited as a city-building strategy, has extended its fingers into almost every aspect of Boston’s governance.

But because it has such ubiquitous powers, most citizens, the media, and even public officials don’t realize that the BRA is not an integral or necessary part of the city’s government; knowing nothing different, they think it can’t be eliminated. We often hear politicians promise to reform the BRA, to make it more responsive to the community, or more accountable. This is illusory; it is structured as an authority precisely for the purpose of avoiding accountability, and its core mission will always be to promote development. It cannot be transformed. It must be structurally dismantled.

How do we do it? And what should replace it?

The BRA has three general roles: urban renewal, planning/zoning, and community service programs. Each must be terminated and these critical functions must be brought under accountable city control, on the city budget and subject to public oversight.

Urban Renewal:

The BRA was created under a state enabling law (Chapter 121B) by a city council vote in 1957. It was to create and implement 40-year Urban Renewal Plans as approved by the council, to stimulate the city’s depressed post-war economy by replacing "blighted" (read: poor) neighborhoods with middle-class housing (and residents). The BRA also has the power to qualify development projects for city property tax exemption through Chapter 121A, a program created to subsidize affordable housing in blighted areas. Over time, the BRA has elbowed the council out of its oversight roles under both statutes through legislation that exempts Boston from provisions that apply to other cities.

Today, the councilors do not seem to understand how the BRA works, nor do they realize that it was supposed to be fully accountable to them. In its 3,300 acres of urban renewal land, occupying much of the central city area, the BRA controls land use and has eminent domain power; and it can create site-specific urban renewal areas with so-called "demonstration projects," without council approval. It also exacts perpetual transfer taxes from subsequent owners of properties it sells to developers. In 2004, the BRA, negotiating with the council in unlawful secret meetings, herded the councilors into voting to give up most of their remaining powers over the BRA’s urban renewal activities and to perpetuate the urban renewal plans, from which it draws its basic power and legitimacy. But certain reporting requirements were set as a condition of the vote, including annual reports on the BRA’s urban renewal planning and land disposition activities, and from personal interaction with City Councilors I believe the BRA has failed to meet them, denying the council the stipulated tools for accountability.

The council should rescind its 2004 vote and either let the Plans expire over the next few years or vote to terminate them.

City Planning:

The BRA was never meant to be the city’s planning board. Indeed, no other urban renewal authority in the U.S. became its city’s planning agency. It is a conflict of interest, since the authority is a development interest and should be seeking approvals from the planning board and city council. Yet, in 1960, legislation (Chapter 652 of the Acts of 1960) was passed abolishing the Boston planning board and giving all its powers and properties to the BRA; this was to assure that planning would not get in the way of the BRA’s redevelopment agenda, and indeed, it never has. Thus, instead of a disinterested, professional planning and zoning operation accountable to an elected legislative body as provided under our state laws, Boston has a quasi-public redevelopment authority at its helm. Instead of taking, clearing and selling land to private developers as intended, the BRA has amassed a huge land empire of its own, in and beyond urban renewal areas (notably, the seaport industrial area), becoming one of the largest land-owners in Boston. As the planning body, and the staff and legal adviser to the Boston Zoning Commission, the BRA can plan and zone its own land to maximize its lease or sale profits. And it can manipulate the zoning process to enable private developers to escape the zoning laws, protected from legal challenge. Boston mayors have been empowered by this legal shield to effectively re-zone the city site-by-site for developers they favor, who in turn fill their campaign coffers. Since the BRA’s core mission is to promote development projects, particularly large and very profitable development for desirable demographic groups, we have no comprehensive, proactive, long-range city planning. The city council and mayor should file a home rule petition (Boston-specific state legislation) repealing the relevant section of the 1960 law, and reestablish a city planning board, under the oversight of the elected legislative body, the city council. Mass. state laws (Ch. 40A and 41) lay out provisions for planning and zoning agencies in cities.

City service programs:

The BRA has taken over the implementation of many city programs related to jobs, literacy, youth, etc. Some state and federal grants for these services, which should be run by the city directly, run through the BRA. This grip on the purse strings of much-needed public services also adds to the BRA’s political power.

These programs, and their funding, should be put back into the hands of accountable city departments.

When the BRA is dissolved, its billions of dollars’ worth of real estate, (some of which it took, with mayoral permission, from the City of Boston without paying compensation), should be taken into city ownership, and either dedicated as necessary for public use, or surplused by the city council and returned, through competitive bids, into the private market for productive development conforming with genuine city plans and zoning laws. The council should obtain a list and map of BRA-owned property, and get accurate appraisals.

The council should hold extensive public hearings to receive community input on the structure of the planning board, and it should consult legal and planning advisors as necessary to write the by-laws for the planning agency. A new or modified zoning agency may be deemed desirable as well; for this another legislative change may be necessary with regard to the Boston Zoning Enabling Act (Chapter 665 of the Acts of 1956 sets up our Zoning Commission). Boston has been excepted from other state laws affecting planning, zoning and eminent domain; these will require modification as well.

The city charter should be reviewed and revised as necessary to support these changes, and to further improve the checks and balances between the council and the mayor.

The elimination of the BRA and reestablishment of a planning board, funded and operated as a part of publicly accountable city government, is not revolutionary but simply a restoration of normal order. Election season is the time to get it done.

 Mayor Menino is holding his usual park coffee hours this year; here is the schedule. Go if you can, and ask any questions you've been wanting to ask the Mayor. Since he's not committing to participating in campaign debates, this may be your only chance to get your questions answered. Or at least -- asked....
Anyway, if you don't get answers from him, you'll pick up a few doughnut calories to fortify you in your quest for information.

Mayor Menino’s Coffee Hours

2009 Schedule

(9:30 – 10:30 a.m. daily)

** = rain or shine event

Monday, April 27 - Clarendon Street Tot Lot, Back Bay, Clarendon Street & Commonwealth Ave.

Tuesday, April 28 - Hynes Playground, West Roxbury, VFW Parkway

Wednesday, April 29 - Christopher Columbus Park, Boston **, Atlantic Avenue

Thursday, April 30 - Walker Playground, Mattapan, Norfolk Street

Friday, May 1 - Ramler Park, Fenway, Peterborough Street

Monday, May 4 – Mozart, Jamaica Plain/Mission Hill, Mozart & Centre Streets

Wednesday, May 6 – Ringer Park, Allston/Brighton, Allston Street & Griggs Place

Thursday, May 7 - Iacono Park, Hyde Park **, Milton & Readville Streets

Friday, May 8 - Doherty Park, Charlestown **, Bunker Hill & Medford Streets

Monday, May 11 – Porzio Park, East Boston, Sumner & Marginal Streets

Tuesday, May 12 – Fallon Field, Roslindale, South & Robert Streets

Wednesday, May 13 - Titus Sparrow Park, South End, West Newton Street

Thursday, May 14 - Gertrude Howes Playground, Roxbury **, Moreland and Fairland Streets

Friday, May 15 - Medal of Honor Park, South Boston, East Broadway & M Street

Wednesday, May 21 - Martin Playground, Dorchester, Myrtlebank & Hilltop Streets

I wrote the public record request to the BRA recently, after seeing the BRA salaries on the Herald website:

I see that the Herald has posted all the BRA and EDIC jobs and salaries, as it had posted the City jobs and salaries.
I'd like to get all the job descriptions, and the resumes of the people who hold the jobs.
This is far too much to xerox, it's a waste of paper, and besides, it's information that everyone should have, not only I.
Could you please post this job information on the BRA website?  I'm going to ask the City to do the same.
Please upload pdf's as they were generated, not scanned, so they will be searchable.
It's the era of transparency.  Let's get everything out there!
 
This is what the BRA wrote back:
 
In response to your request, the “search time” for the information will be 48 hours.  The “search time” cost will be 48 hours @ a $26.54 per hour equaling $1,273.92; which would be due prior to the release of the information you requested.
 
In addition, the cost for the job descriptions would be 576 pages @ .50 equaling $288.00.  The cost for the resumes would be 576 pages @ .20 equaling $115.20; the combined cost would be $403.00.
 
So, the BRA wants me to pay $1,700 to see their job descriptions and employee resumes. This is the BRA that has confiscated billions of dollars from the taxpayers of Boston, getting City-owned land, property tax exemption, rent-free living in City Hall, administrative fees for running our programs, bogus "blight" tax exemptions for private developers, and who knows what else.

The Greenway Conservancy, an instrument of the Artery Business Committee (which represents corporate interests seeking to influence the creation of public works), promised to take care of the Greenway park entirely with private money. But so far, this private group has already received $10 million dollars from the City and State, and gotten a lease on the Greenway parkland that comes with millions of State dollars a year in additional funding. The Conservancy is now asking the taxpayers to do its spring clean-up, appealing to the park-loving volunteer in all of us and invoking the Earth Day spirit to engage us in "clearing debris, sweeping, raking, cleaning benches and picking up litter" on the morning of April 22. The Artery Business Committee, which now calls itself A Better City -- since it has expanded beyond the Artery corridor -- will provide snacks. This is a small price to pay for a big piece of work. What is the Conservancy doing with all those millions of dollars, on top of the millions they have collected privately? We don't know; they are exempt from the Open Meeting and Public Record Laws.

Mayor Tom "whitewash my fence" Menino has been doing this for years, slashing public sanitation services through Boston Shines and other free-labor opportunities. He's gotten people all over the city to join in -- after all, the streets are filthy and he's obviously not going to clean them up; at least this way, you get a donut and coffee, maybe a T-shirt, some tools to use, and the City hauling away the debris. We never have enough money for our public services. Although...our officials find money to give bonuses to the "temporary" City Hall employees, to float all those pension balloons, to pay $200,000 to private law firms to drag out the City Council Open Meeting Law case for four years, to give away on tax breaks and land deals for big developers, etc. We could easily find enough money in City Hall to keep the place spotless, get the kids taught properly, clean up the streets, and do all the other things we need. The same goes for the State.

In a scene straight out of a Dickens novel, Boston schoolkids and parents came to English High School last night to beg for their supper, or their education -- as they have done in other public meetings in other neighborhoods. I went to this one, and to the Dorchester meeting a few weeks ago. I am astounded that Mayor Menino is unashamedly holding our kids ransom to force their parents to lobby for his meals tax. He is letting them think the sky is falling, when he knows he's giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the BRA and to private wealthy developers that should be going into the City treasury.

City Councilors Yoon and Connolly made an appearance last night, but very briefly; they were announced, got their round of applause (especially Yoon), and next time I looked they were gone.

Councilor John Tobin was there too, and made the same remarks as he did in Dorchester -- assume there is no meals tax coming, and accept the axe.

The Chairman of the Menino-appointed School Committee -- Gregory Groover, a black preacher -- exhorted the crowd to save their children's future by asking the legislature to impose the meals tax. They trust him, and this is what he does with that trust.

Only Kevin McCrea, running for Mayor on a good-government, good-schools platform, stood up to tell the people that there are millions of dollars available to solve our "crisis" (if there is one) and they are being squeezed for nothing. He handed out a flyer with past newspaper stories about the Hayward Place and Winthrop Square boondoggles, and asked Superintendent Carol Johnson and the School Committee members if they had looked into these problems since the time he had testified about them in Dorchester. They gave no answer. Of course not. I had also testified in Dorchester, about the developer tax breaks that bleed of us tens of millions of dollars a year. They obviously didn't care to find out about that either. Better to lay off teachers than to expose the Mayor's diversion of our children's money.

In other cities, the School Committee fights for the schools. We need an independent School Committee here, one that will protect the children, not promote the Mayor's city-tax agenda -- an agenda that will give him a tax on us that he can raise on his own every year, with no state interference (it's already double what he proposed last year). He wants us to pay even more, so he can give away even more to the BRA and to his favored developers.

Shared sacrifice? Only the citizens have to fight it out to share the sacrifice. The BRA is not laying off its bureaucrats, or cutting their handsome wages. The private developers collecting parking fees from City lots and getting exemptions from property taxes aren't being asked to share the sacrifice.

Sam Yoon knows all about Winthrop Square and Hayward Place; he posted a memo about them back in 2007 (not included on his new campaign site). He helped make the deal to let the BRA take Winthrop, burying a public hearing to get a say on where the money would go (hint: not to the CIty) -- or so he thought. The developer enjoying the free use of the City lot at Hayward is a supporter of his previous employer, the Asian CDC. Yoon could have spoken up, used his credibility with the crowd to tell them: "Don't fall for another tax you'll have to pay! Let's force Mayor Menino to get us back our land and our money, so you don't have to beg for your school programs! Join me tomorrow at City Hall Plaza -- which Menino gave away to the BRA for free -- join me for a march on the Mayor!" He said nothing and disappeared, having shown that he cared enough to show up...

We citizens must force the politicians to disclose the giveaways of our public assets.

I've been to two City Council budget briefings and one School Committee public hearing (in Dorchester) where the city's budget "crisis" has been discussed. I have spoken for years, and now mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea is speaking out as well, about the hundreds of millions of dollars bled from the City treasure by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) -- through takings of City land without paying a dime, multi-million-dollar, multi-decade tax breaks to politically wired developers for huge and profitable projects, accumulation of a land empire free of city property taxes, rent-free occupation of the whole 9th floor of City Hall, sale of tax breaks in return for direct payments from real estate owners, take-over of state and federal grant programs at exorbitant administrative fees -- all done with Mayor Tom Menino's express permission. Despite all this public information, the mayor does not relent, and protects the BRA while school children come to hearings and beg for their education. And NOT ONE City Councilor brings up any of these items at the budget meetings or school hearings. They'll sit there and frown over how to cut classes and where to close schools and whether to cut cops or teachers; Councilor Maureen Feeney suggested at the hearing we all pray together as an action strategy. But they won't touch the BRA, which is tucked securely under the mayor's powerful wing. They've even started to talk about taxing hospitals and colleges, but will not touch the BRA! What kind of catastrophe would it take to get them to break open the BRA's bloated treasure chest? What will it take to get rid of this parasitic agency, that bleeds our resources and controls our communities? I think it's time for another tea party. These politicians will not do the right thing unless they are forced to. Each and every official who stands by and participates in this disgraceful charade of governance should be voted out of office and replaced by someone who will represent the people's interests.

On YouTube, you can see four videos by mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea, including a bio. Be sure to watch the one on Hayward Place, a one-acre City property worth at least $23 million, that Mayor Menino gave away to the BRA for free to lease to the developer of the Ritz towers across the street (a personal friend of his). No property taxes are being paid on this land, and the parking revenues -- about $3 million a year for ten years -- are going into the pocket of the developer while he ties up the parcel promised to the community for a public school or affordable housing (uses that, alas, would not enhance those Ritz towers).

All the city councilors know about Hayward Place; it was thoroughly covered in the newspapers when the deals were made. But not one has spoken up, not one has taken action to get back our land and our money. They don't even ask for information, don't file for a hearing, nothing. Millions and millions of dollars from City land that belong to the taxpayers, and the councilors have their heads in the sand. The disposition of City property is one of the few jobs this council has left, and they do nothing.

This boondoggle is just one of many that, if reversed, could solve our "fiscal crisis." What would the school children say, those who have come to the public meetings begging for their education, if they knew the Mayor has given away their money to this and other wealthy developers? Will School Superintendent Carol Johnson, or the School Committee members, all selected by the mayor, stand up for the students and demand that he take back our land and our money and invest it in the future of these youngsters? I doubt it. This mayor doesn't allow dissent.

That's why Kevin McCrea made this video. I hope he will produce others during his campaign, because there are dozens of stories like this that need to be told. Other citizens and I have testified and written about them for years; no one in City Hall cares.

Our city is not poor. It is being impoverished deliberately by our politicians. And now Menino is mercilessly using the school children as a pawn to get his new meals tax passed. (Once he gets it, I expect he will mysteriously "find" a chunk of money and save the day for the kids, a hero at the last moment.) You know what the politicians say: "Never waste a crisis." Or the opportunity to manufacture one....

Mayoral candidate Michael Flaherty is now Mr. Transparency, after 9 years on city council. He is filing for a hearing on televising the BRA and ZBA hearings. Those are already public (although it's good to make them available for those who can't attend and testify). Now, what we need is public access to the meetings held in non-wired rooms -- like all those city council committee meetings in the Curley Room. That's where the problems have been cooked up.

As remedial action for eleven past Open Meeting Law violations over which Councilor Flaherty presided, a few ideas:

Suggestion: Let's have a public hearing on all those private meetings with the BRA in 2003 and 2004 and 2005, and tell the public about the deals made as part of that horrendous council vote to perpetuate the BRA's urban renewal powers while stripping the council of most of its oversight powers.

Suggestion: Let's reverse that vote, since the BRA has not in four years met the reporting requirements on which the vote was conditioned.

Suggestion: Let's pass a Home Rule Petition repealing the 1960 legislation that abolished our planning board and gave all its powers and properties to the BRA, and re-establish a real city planning department -- one that publicly posts all its documents.

A City Council Special Committee for the Boston Common, chaired by Michael Ross and joined by Bill Linehan and Sal Lamattina, is trying to set up a private fund-raising conservancy (see my South End News column) made up of abutters. It will be mainly Emerson College and Suffolk University, who have been expanding around the Common and aspire to make it part of their campuses -- and especially the ball-fields, which they want to consolidate into a big athletic field and cover with synthetic turf for their sports program use. After objections from the Friends of the Common and Public Garden and State Rep. Marty Walz, Councilor Ross promised to delete the word "conservancy."

But he simply replaced it with "Improvement Fund." The objectors then swatted the Special Committee upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper. Its members quickly promised to abandon any further thoughts of a private non-profit.

But the final report, presented at the Council meeting this week, still contemplates "partnerships" and "relationships." To me, a "relationship with a local college to maximize care and utility of the fields"  is fundamentally the same thing: a deal with a private party for public rights in return for private money.   Rotch Field (in South End), which the Committee denounced, has been privatized out of the community’s hands by exactly such a partnership, or a "relationship," with "a local college" -- Emerson, in fact.  

The justification for these deals is always that the City doesn’t have enough money to take care of its parks. So, let’s ask the Parks commissioner what she needs for the Common, and look at all the money that does come in, from all sources; it’s much more than the official City operating budget.

And if we need more, there’s lots of it around, in waste, fraud and abuse. Like the $60,000 a year -- $600 an hour!-- paid to a stenographer to produce the skeletal Council meeting minutes that the Clerk’s office could type up in a half hour.  And all the "excess" money in the Council budget every year that is divvied up among the Council's employees (Did you ever wonder about those mysterious hastily-mumbled votes called without reading the dockets? That’s what they are).  And the millions in property tax breaks the City gives away to developers every year.  A lot of public money is burned in the Ianella Chamber, while we use poverty as an excuse to accommodate Suffolk and Emerson.

Conservancy, Improvement Fund, partnership, relationship – the title doesn't change the basic problem of City alliances with private parties who are pursuing special interests in the park.  

The privatization of public spaces has proceeded here and all over the country, unquestioned by the general public and welcomed by most park advocates who don’t want to “look a gift horse in the mouth.” We shouldn’t be shocked when it reaches the most quintessential public space of all, America’s first public park.

Mayor Tom Menino’s strategy, praised by the Boston Globe, to lend insolvent developers $40 million raises a few questions.  
 
How did he get this kind of money from HUD in the current crunch? (Or was it lying around the BRA from past mis-managed grants?)

If he has $40 million from HUD (an agency created to help the poor), why put it into big wealthy corporations, for whom it is a drop in the bucket, instead of small local businesses and affordable housing, where it could make a real difference? These big projects don’t really help Bostonians in need; most construction and white-collar jobs go to out-of-town residents, and their tax obligations boomerang onto residents when their vacancy rates rise. And the housing in these projects is luxury condos, pied a terres and second (or seventh) homes.
 
Should the Mayor and the BRA be picking industry winners and losers, “investing” in the development market they are supposed to be regulating?  
 
Should we put our community block grants at risk to bail out developers the private markets won't touch?
 
And why is Menino again propping up Kensington Investments, whom he allowed to unlawfully demolish the Gaiety Theatre in 2004 – before the credit crisis. He ignored warnings that the company would be unable to build -- and ignored an offer from a qualified developer to restore the Theatre and add housing above. Now he wants to give them public financing. Why? My Public Record request for mayoral documents related to the Kensington/Gaiety project turned up exactly nothing (except -- an e-mail I had written). No records at all in the Mayor's office. Can you believe that?

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.

Neither the Boston Globe nor the Boston Herald thought it newsworthy that hundreds of people packed Faneuil Hall last Thursday night to express their views on the biolab worst-case risk assessment ordered by the court -- an assessment that hadn't been done even though the funding was awarded, the project was approved, and the building is almost entirely built. Fortunately, the South End News covered it.

NIH, which made the award, also prepared the assessment report -- a clear conflict of interest. The cover letter and introduction are unprofessionally biased, praising the lab and stating the need for it. An objective scientific report doesn't do that. NIH presented computer modeling of fictional scenarios that conclude there was no more danger from escaped pathogens if the lab is in a densely populated area than in exurban locations -- although all the other biolabs were sited in sparsely populated areas.

An independent scientific panel should have been established to prepare this risk assessment. My testimony was that it still should be. I think independent scientists might come up with a different result. There is too much at stake to take a chance; the court ordered a worst-case risk assessment, and I think the community should demand one.

Write Klare Allen at safetynetrox@yahoo.com for more information. Comments to NIH must be e-mailed (nihnepa@nih.gov) or postmarked in mail (Valerie Nottingham, HIH, Building 13, Room 2S11, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892) by Nov. 12, 2007. You can also request a copy of the report.

After reading Councilor Mike Flahterty's op-ed in the South End News about towing for street cleaning, I wrote to him and to my District councilor, Mike Ross, suggesting research into cleaning trucks with vacuum hoses to clean around cars, or hiring personnel to do monthly hand-cleaning, to keep the gutters and drains clean without fining and towing our long-suffering residents and visitors. I cc'd ABN members, and got back a message from a North End resident, saying:

"In the North End and a few other neighborhoods, the City collects trash three times a week. Poor trash disposal and collection, I believe, is the main reason we have filthy streets. The tourists are not the problem (or much of it), as many like to think. Current city regulations allow trash to be on the streets from 5:00 PM to 7:00 AM the next day, or longer. Collection crews start pick-up at 7:00 AM. So, trash, including poorly bagged or unbagged, can be on the streets of the North End for up to 14 hours, three times or week, or 42 hours a week. That provides full-time "employment" and a bit of overtime for trash pickers and rodents.

Some of us have proposed limiting the hours, say from 5:00 AM to 9:00 AM, with collection starting at 9:00 AM. I believe that would not be a problem for 95% of residents. Others could find someone else or some other means to dispose of their trash. But the City is loathe to go there. City officials try to ignore/avoid the subject at meetings, or they use excuses such as "that would take changing city law, and that could take years." Until we put restrictions and enforcement on the manner and time for trash disposal, I don't believe that hoakies or vacuum equipment will be able to keep up with the mess. Even the mechancial street sweeping's benefit lasts only until the next trash collection day (which could be the very next day!).

One other thing. Street sweeping and parking restrictions have existed in every city and most towns for many years, and they work. They don't work in Boston because we allow our streets to be used for long-term parking. In the North End, it is common for residents to leave their cars in one spot on the street for a week or more. That practice will even greatly hinder hoakie and vacuum efforts. I know, because I have participated in many street cleaning campaigns. It is very tough to remove litter and sand from gutters where cars are parked continuously.

I think the solution lies in a combination of tighter trash disposal regulations and parking restrictions that allow crews to get to the curb."

I've also heard many complaints about the disposal by the trash trucks of materials carefully put out for recycling.

Let's collect some recommendations for this whole trash/recycling/street-cleaning issue so we can have a productive Council hearing. Anyone know a better way that other cities handle these services? Policies? Equipment?

CRITICAL BIOLAB OPEN HEARING

On Thursday September 20 at 7 PM at Faneuil Hall there will be a hearing on the State Court's mandated restudy by NIH of the Biocontainment Lab 4 in Boston.

You may testify if you wish, so be there early - but it is not necessary to testify.

The NIH report is over 300 pages long, but there will be a flyer with summary and talking points at the door.

While NIH's siting criteria for BSL4 labs include the absence of substantial community opposition, they have been ignoring the community response to this lab for almost five years.

Senators Clinton and Schumer in New York have just announced their opposition to siting a BSL4 lab on Plum Island in Long Island Sound. Their reason: it's too close to New York City! It's time our Senators defended our right to be safe and secure in our community. It's time for NIH to acknowledge and respond to our opposition.

If Deval Patrick makes it a YES on gambling, he should announce it in a public school classroom, to the lucky beneficiaries of the government's gambling business.

"Hi, kids, I've done my homework, and I've decided to bring in more gambling -- yes, on top of the lottery! -- so we can pay for your books and teachers, "slots for tots," as they say, because it's way easier than cutting out the billions of dollars in tax breaks and loopholes for big fat corporations. Hey, anyone here have a parent who likes to gamble? Anyone lost your house or your college tuition yet? No? Well, my little friends, don't worry, that'll all become much easier now; why make folks go all the way to Connecticut, right?

And you should consider starting to gamble soon too, because it's good for the state, and good for your school!  But not till you've done your homework!

Keep up the good work, young winners and losers of tomorrow, we're here for you! Together We Can!"

It's not enough to just manipulate and subvert the government. Now developers want to actually BE the government!

A bill (Sen. 146) is being rushed through the state legislature that would let big land-owners/developers petition their municipalities for designation as "Local Improvement Districts" -- "bodies corporate and politic" that could do most things city/town governments can do, but without the accountability, transparency, and state oversight. Each new municipality -- complete with its own seal! -- could issue tax-free bonds, collect property assessments (i.e., taxes) from its neighbors to pay them off, get private and possibly public land taken for its developers by eminent domain, use the taxpayer subsidy to build whatever they define as "infrastructure." This could include parking garages, private shuttle bus systems, sports, arts and recreational (casinos? stadiums? golf courses?) facilities, dedicated highway ramps, and so on.

Yup, a new property tax, this time imposed on the neighbors of big landowners for infrastructure the big guys want, free from the limits of Prop 2 1/2!

Taxation without representation: Long ago, it got Bostonians to take serious action. Last year, public outrage shamed the legislature into backing off. This year -- we need to fight back again.

If this sounds like something you'd want to help stop in its anti-democratic tracks, read my column in the South End News.

Then, call or e-mail your legislators, whose contact info you can find here.

Tell them to demand a big public hearing.

Tell them to talk to Speaker Sal DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray and ask them to stop this privatization of the government.

Tell them to VOTE NO if this bill comes to a vote!

Don't wait. Contact them NOW. This bill has already been approved by its Committee, and is in the Joint Bonding Committee; it could go out for floor vote any time before the session end July 31, and IT WILL PASS -- if the legislators don't hear from YOU..

Tell them: Vote no on Chapter 40T. It lets profit-seeking developers replace our democratic government and impose a stealth property tax to subsidize thier projects.

After waiting two years for a chance to question the BRA at a budget hearing (last year's Ways and Means Chair, Rob Consalvo, is the son of a former BRA employee), a handful of Councilors showed up.

Little if any homework was done in preparation, an hour was ripped out of the middle by a press photo-op with the Mayor and his new School Superintendent, and NO ONE asked the BRA why it keeps stealing our land. Madame President never returned from the press conference to ask her urgent questions.

I was allowed to give a five-minute hurried comment in the midst of it all, and I told the Councilors to order the Mayor to come before them, as allowed by the City Charter, to explain why he's giving away our land and money to the BRA, and why he's laundering tax giveaways to developers through the BRA, when he can't find the money for schools, parks and libraries -- or even street cleaning. My suggestion didn't exactly catch fire.

I told BRA Director Paul McCann, who was smirking smugly as he walked out, that self-congrats weren't necessary -- he was taking candy from a baby. He laughed and said, "Oh, they just love us."

Campaign season heats up in September. If we don't hold these lazy, careless and incompetent feet to the fire, we deserve what we get.

.....the Mayah, Tom Menino! Yes, once again, the Mayor's hand-picked candidate is elected, with the help of his vast machine, and the City Council's supermajority Menino Nine-O remains intact, ready to rubber-stamp his every order.

Isn't there something illegal about the Mayor picking the City Council? Something Consitutionally wrong, like "breach of separation of powers"? Abuse of power in getting all those tax-payer-salaried City Hall employees to work for him and his chosen candidates? Is there a lawyer in the house?!?

Menino was quoted in a newspaper as saying that he didn't endorse either candidate, and his organization just does what it wants. 'nuff said.

There is no hope for democracy in Boston. It's not just the "strong mayor, weak council" problem. We have no checks and balances. We don't have three branches of government. We only have an executive branch. The legislative branch, sidelined in 1960 by the BRA's stealth take-over of planning and zoning, gets paid (i.e., pays itself) handsomely to remain out of the way. The judicial branch is largely fended off by the BRA's clever legal shenanigans that shield its dealings from lawsuit, and by the council's inability to hire a lawyer. If we want to resurrect democracy here, in its cradle, we'll need a major restructuring -- and an electoral revolt. If we just sit on our duffs and take it....we can't complain. In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

For the most part, the press has a giant blind spot on Boston electoral politics. Few in the media have pondered the outcome of this race -- how it happened and what it really means. But one good piece on Boston's political idiocy just came out; read the Keohane article in Boston Magazine, and laugh and weep....

I found the following Wikipedia entry on the Boston Redevelopment Authority! If you think some more accurate information is needed, you should go to the Wiki website and add it! Note the last paragraph. I'll say a "citation is needed"....!

PS There's an entry on Mayor Thomas Menino that may need a little editing, too....

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is a planning and development agency in Boston. The BRA was established by the Boston city council and the Massachusetts legislature in 1957. Its primary goal is to work with Bostonians, business and developers in order to provide direction for development in the city of Boston.

The BRA's statutory authority was set forth in the Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 121B, section 4 in 1957 and Chapter 652, section 12 in 1960. Its broad development authorities include the power to buy and sell property, the power to acquire property through eminent domain, and the power to grant tax concession (under MGL chapter 121A) to encourage commercial and residential development.[1]

The BRA works in the housing and business sectors. It is currently undertaking development projects such as a parkway being developed atop the Big Dig, opening up the waterfront to pedestrians. The BRA owns real estate throughout the city and sells this when an attractive plan for the use of the property is submitted and approved. This is can be seen in the "East Boston Municipal Harbor Plan" where BRA owned properties along the waterfront are currently being developed[2] and Fort Point Channel development.

One of the first projects the BRA took on was the demolition of the west end or the Scollay Square area and building of Government Center [3]. The finished project which includes Boston City Hall is considered an eyesore and the large brick plaza as an uncomfortable place to be.[4]

Overall though, the work that the BRA has done in Boston has been positive.[citation needed] In 1968 the BRA took on the renewal of Faneuil Hall Market Place which was slated to be demolished. This project has been attributed to bringing life back into the then debilitated Boston downtown. [5]

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/HomePageUtils/about_us.asp
2. ^ http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/Planning/PlanningInitsIndividual.asp?action=ViewInit&InitID=13
3. ^ http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~fup/password/downtown.html
4. ^ http://www.celebrateboston.com/strange/governmentcenter.htm
5. ^ http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFiles/greathitsweb.pdf

The FY2008 budget hearings are starting. The budget is online. The schedule is available on the abnboston.org home page. Go, or watch on TV, and speak up; it's your money.

Note the BRA hearing on Tuesday, June 19, 2:00-5:00.

Please attend if you can; testify and/or write in comment letters. This is your money.

Remember, though, that the budget has nothing to do with your taxes, because the Mayor and City Council are determined to raise your tax rates to the maximum allowed by Prop 2 1/2, even if the budget were cut! If you ask for budget cuts, either say where you'd like the money to go instead -- or demand that our tax levy -- that's your taxes -- be cut commensurately.

The only "department" that directly affects your taxes is the BRA, and the BRA does that not by affecting expenditures but by affecting collections -- that is, by giving away huge and unneeded tax breaks to big developers, by ignoring the ridiculously tiny PILOT payments made by institutions when the BRA can negotiate for more at development approval time, and by holding billions of dollars worth of real estate itself and paying not a cent in property tax.

To hear a discussion of Boston's powers over development planning and taxation, come to:

Boston Bound: A Comparison of Boston's Legal Powers with Those of Six Other Major American Cities

Thursday, April 26 at 8:30 a.m.
10th floor, The Boston Foundation, 75 Arlington St.

Welcoming Remarks by Mary Jo Meisner, Vice President for Communications, Community Relations and Public Affairs, The Boston Foundation

Summary of Findings by Gerald E. Frug, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and
David J. Barron, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Remarks by The Honorable Timothy P. Murray, Lieutenant Governor, Commonwealth of Massachusetts and
The Honorable Thomas M. Menino, Mayor, City of Boston

Moderator
Paul S. Grogan, President and CEO, The Boston Foundation

Panelists
Geoff Beckwith, Executive Director, Massachusetts Municipal Association

Lawrence S. DiCara, Partner, Nixon Peabody

Edward L. Glaeser, Glimp Professor of Economics and Director, Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston

Lisa C. Signori, Chief Financial Officer, City of Boston

Kirk Sykes, President and Managing Partner, Urban Strategy America Fund

A public forum co-sponsored by The Boston Foundation and The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

To reserve a seat, please call 617-338-4390 or email rsvp@tbf.org. Seating is still available.

MetroFuture: This Way to a Greater Boston Region

Tuesday, May 1 at 8:00 a.m.
Grand Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Boston, Financial District, One Avenue de Lafayette (Downtown Crossing)

Join 500 residents from across Metropolitan Boston at a May 1 Boston College Citizen Seminar, and be part of the planning for your community and your region! At this Seminar for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's MetroFuture project, we will unveil the plan to guide Metro Boston's growth through 2030, and identify action steps that the region can take, over the coming months and years, to make the plan a reality.

Register at http://www.bc.edu/schools/csom/cga/citizen/rsvp/, or call 617-552-0904. The event will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel (former Swissotel) in downtown Boston. Complimentary breakfast will be available at 7:30 a.m., and the program will begin at 8 a.m. Visit www.MetroFuture.org to learn more.

The state Supreme Judicial Court took the Biolab case from the Appeals Court, recognizing the importance of this issue. Klare Allen and her Roxbury Safetynet group, Alternatives for Community and Environment, and their colleagues and attorneys inspire us to keep fighting for what's important -- NEVER GIVE UP! Whether the community wins or not, at least this issue will get the serious attention it deserves, and will not be pushed through under the radar by its political and financial beneficiaries.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/23/sjc_to_hear_arguments_on_construction_of_bu_biolab?p1=email_to_a_friend


SJC to hear arguments on construction of BU biolab

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | March 23, 2007

The state Supreme Judicial Court will decide whether construction of a high-security research laboratory in the South End should continue, the latest twist in the ongoing fight to block the Boston University project.

In an action made public yesterday, the state's highest court said it would directly hear the controversial case, bypassing an appeals court that had been scheduled to consider the matter. The SJC set a hearing for September, seemingly expediting the legal process by eliminating one step.

Ten neighbors of the lab, already under construction on Albany Street, sued in state court to block the facility, where researchers will work with the world's deadliest germs. They also sued in federal court, blasting BU for locating the lab on its medical campus, near a densely populated neighborhood with a significant number of low-income and racially diverse residents.

Last August, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Ralph D. Gants ordered further environmental review of the $178 million project but did not halt construction.

BU appealed Gants's ruling, an appeal that was scheduled to be heard next month. But yesterday, the SJC, without explanation, issued a notice that it was taking the case.

"Generally, that means that it views the case as something that either has an important legal issue or is of general public significance," said Douglas Wilkins , the Anderson & Kreiger attorney who is representing the residents.

It is not unusual for the SJC to hear a case directly, and Wilkins said that its action should not be interpreted as favoring one side or the other.

BU spokeswoman Ellen Berlin said the university welcomed the court's action.

"We are pleased that this important project is receiving this important scrutiny from the Supreme Judicial Court," Berlin said.

The facility, known as a Biosafety Level-4 lab, has provoked controversy since the moment it was proposed in January 2003, with a fervent contingent of scientists, environmentalists, and community activists protesting at every turn. After their objections failed to stop the project at the city or state level, opponents turned to the courts.

Foes of the lab hailed the decision by the high court to resolve the case. "Finally, the residents are going to be heard," said Klare Allen , one of the residents suing to stop construction.

Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com.

As you may recall from the Fan Pier design process, Chapter 91 of the State laws, the Waterfront Act, places restrictions on private development on Commonwealth tideland areas; according to the public-trust doctrine for such areas -- even if they are filled tidelands -- any development has to serve a "public purpose," and private benefit has to be secondary to public benefit in any non-waterdependent project.

Development on such lands requires a license from the state, and the licensing process assures that certain protections are obeyed, e.g., height near the water, that public benefits are provided to prevent privatization of the public land, e.g., access paths (like the Harborwalk) and publicly accessible ground-floor uses, and generally that the public receives appropriate compensation for the profitable use of the public land, e.g., open space, civic and cultural amenities. The licensing process provides for public hearings so the community has a voice in the project design and public benefit decisions, and creates an enforcement mechanism for developers' commitments.

Some years ago, the Dept. of Environmental Protection decided not to include so-called "landlocked" tidelands (separated from the waterfront by a public way) in its jurisdiction for licensing private development on public-trust tidelands. (I don't know the reason, but I understand that there was some "compromise" with developers, rather than any underlying fact or principle involved.)

The state Supreme Judicial recently made a ruling on a community lawsuit (against the large NorthPoint tidelands project, mostly in Cambridge and partially in Boston) that DEP had had no right to abdicate its power for public protection on landlocked tidelands because the public's rights can only be retained or given away by the public's representative, the legislature. The ruling restored the licensing process to these areas.

It is a rare opportunity to recover public rights to public assets, and re-instate the public's voice. And the experience with the Fan Pier project and many others has shown that the public process actually improves final designs, and deprives developers of very little if any profitable building space while providing much long-term benefit to their communities and their own vicinities.

But instead of seizing this opportunity to expand public rights, Governor Deval Patrick has filed legislation that would authorize the DEP's exclusion of these tidelands from the licensing process!

Why is he doing this?

Well, Patrick recently appointed two of the NorthPoint developer's lawyers to major state positions. Dan O'Connell, who was a development executive (and investor) in this project and others on the seaport, is now the Director of Housing and Economic Development. Greg Bialecki, formerly an attorney for NorthPoint, Fan Pier, and other projects potentially affected by this ruling, is Patrick's "ombudsman" to act on behalf of developers to achieve "expedited development" statewide. These development promoters and their firms were also major campaign contributors to Patrick's campaign.

Whether this is Deval Patrick's own idea of promoting community and environmental interests, or he is letting insider deals drive his public policy, this is an extremely alarming direction for our new governor to take.

Unfortunately, he has been doing other things that show he is more concerned with "economic development" as corporate welfare, rather than with community and environmental protection and economic assistance to the truly needy.

Please contact your legislators and tell them to defeat his bill, H3757. Also tell them to defeat a bill by Rep. Michael Rodrigues, H847, that would reduce all public benefit on tidelands to a single item, Facilities of Public Accommodation (the publicly useable ground-floor uses mentioned above) in only 25% of the ground floor area.

I expected better from our new Governor. You should, too.

Events by the Rappaport Institute and the Kennedy School of Government's Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

For more information on any of these events, please contact Cara Cappello at 617-495-5140.

******

Sprawl - No Longer a Dirty Word?
Monday, March 5, 12:00 noon
Taubman BC, 5th Floor Taubman Building, 15 Eliot St.

Robert Bruegman, Professor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Illinois at Chicago, author, Sprawl: A Compact History

******

Tough Choices or Tough Times: Rebuilding American Schools for the 21st Century
Monday, March 19, 5:00 p.m.
Bell Hall, 5th Floor Belfer Building, 15 Eliot St.

Thomas Payzant, former superintendent, Boston Public Schools, member of The New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce, and senior lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education Commentary by Thomas Kane, Professor of Education and Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Co-sponsored by the Kennedy School?s Program on Education Policy and Governance, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Graduate School of Education?s Project for Policy Innovation in Education


******

Full Disclosure: The Promise and Perils of Transparency
Wednesday, April 11, 12:00 noon
Taubman A, 5th Floor Taubman Building, 15 Eliot St.

Archon Fung, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Co-director, Transparency Policy Project
Mary Graham, Research Fellow, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, Co-director, Transparency Policy Project David Weil, Associate Professor of Economics, Boston University, Co-director, Transparency Policy Project

******

Government Failure in Urban Transportation and the Case for Privatization
Tuesday, April 24, 12:00 noon
Taubman AB, 5th Floor Taubman Building, 15 Eliot St.

Clifford Winston, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution, co-author, "On the social desirability of urban rail transit systems," forthcoming in the Journal of Urban Economics, and "The effect of government highway spending on road users? congestion costs," Journal of Urban Economics, November 2006

******

Expanding the Talent Pool: Kevin White and the Encouragement of Public Service
Friday, May 4th, 12:00 noon
Kennedy Room, Charles Hotel Conference Pavilion, One Bennett St.

Panel Discussion featuring:

U.S Representative Barney Frank, former chief of staff for Boston Mayor Kevin H. White
Paul Grogan, president and CEO, The Boston Foundation and former special assistant to Mayor White
Micho Spring, chair, U.S. Corporate Practice, Weber Shandwick Worldwide, and former Deputy Mayor of Boston

Other panelists to be announced

Co-sponsored by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston

RSVP required to Polly O'Brien at 617-495-5091 or
polly@rappaportinstitute.org

At-large Councilor Felix Arroyo has, in the first session of the year, filed for a hearing on creating a City Planning Board.

We haven't had a Planning Board since the BRA got it abolished, simply by sneaking the following sentence into unrelated legislation in 1960:

The city planning board of said city is hereby abolished, and all property of said city in the custody of such board and all appropriations of said city for the use of said board are heraby transferred to and vested in the authority; and all persons appointed by said board are hereby transferred to, and made employees of, the authority.

The BRA took it over specifically to evade public oversight through the City Council, and make sure planning would never get in the way of developers.

Obviously, it's a conflict of interest to be an advocate for developers and also a planning agency, which is supposed to review development projects with the overall well-being of the city in mind. No other city in America let an urban renewal authority take over their planning and zoning. Everywhere else, the renewal authority has to come before the City Council to ask for approval, like any other developer.

The zoning ordinance that implements planning is legislation, and in all other municipalities of Massachusetts -- and the rest of America -- puts it into the hands of the legislative branch -- the City Council. In fact, this is the most important responsiblity of a City Council -- to approve the laws ruling land use, and to oversee the planning for the city as a whole; in this context, Council's role in budget oversight can be properly informed. Here, the BRA elbowed the City Council out of the way, and does whatever it wants. We all have seen how that works.

This is not just about the BRA's power -- it's about whether we have a real City Council, and planning/zoning that is publicly accountable through it -- accountable to us, the citizens.

So, prepare to testify or write comment letters. This will be your chance to change the system -- to take the planning/zoning of your city from a 'quasi-public" authority and put it into a totally public body of government. If you don't like what they do, you can vote 'em out -- or at least call 'em up and talk to 'em, for heaven's sake.

I'll let you know as soon as I find out when the hearing is scheduled. I'm trying to get it held in the evening, so more people can come.

Although some municipalities may get relief from increased state aid, Boston's residential property taxes have not been driven up by state aid cuts and won't be reduced by increased aid. Our property tax levy is set by simply increasing the previous year's levy as allowed by Propostion 2 1/2, a maximum of 2.5% annually (plus new growth). We always tax to the max. More state aid, lottery money, local-option taxes -- none of these would have any effect on property taxes; they'd just provide additional money for the City to spend.

Similarly, increasing services cannot further raise our property taxes -- although the Mayor likes to threaten higher taxes to silence citizens' demands -- and slashing services will not decrease our taxes.

Boston's growing residential tax burden is driven by several factors:

1) The assessment method for large commercial properties doesn't capture their full and fair market value as required by law, steadily running at about 50% of market value, while housing assessments have risen from 70-80% to 92%-95% of market value.

2) The tax formula protects commercial owners by putting a ceiling on the their overall tax burden (at most, 70% of the levy), but puts residents at risk by setting only a floor on their tax burden (at least, 30% of the levy).

This system forces residents' tax rates up to pay any shortfall in commercial taxes that result when commercial assessments decrease. But resident don't enjoy the same benefit if housing assessments fall; commercial owners are protected by their ceiling, and once that's reached, residential rates are raised to yield the remaining portion of the levy.

3) Over half the city's land is tax-exempt. The value of exempt institutions' property totals about $12 billion, almost half of that of the taxable commercial property sector, and institutional expansion is escalating, taking taxable land off the tax rolls (but leaving the previous value in the levy). They pay only $10 million a year instead of the $90 million they should pay in PILOT, using the rule-of-thumb of 25% of normal taxes.

4) The City gives huge tax breaks to developers based on false "blight" certifications by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, costing us perhaps $100 million in lost taxes annually. These breaks last for decades, long past any possible justification for assisting development, and are even transferred to new buyers, to no purpose at all.

5) The City doesn't tax the BRA's vast property empire, worth, I estimate, over $2 billion ($60 million in taxes lost).

As to Mayor Thomas Menino's quest for local-options taxes: a meals tax might generate $16 million a year; if he thinks we need more money, he could gain far more by ceasing to give away, at no charge, hundreds of millions of dolllars worth of City property to the BRA (e.g., City Hall Plaza, worth $400 million), and take back what he's given.

I posted the following on Joe Heisler's "Talk of the Neighborhoods" blog after his interview with Maureen Feeney:



On your Jan. 2 show, newly elected City Council President Maureen Feeney spoke about the pending Open Meeting Law suit against her Committee regarding its action on the pay raise Ordinance the Mayor filed last March.

It's important for the voters to know the other side of the story.

A Committee Report on the Ordinance, making major amendments and recommending Council passage, was approved by a majority of four of her Committee members. A majority "in favor" is required by Council Rules for an Ordinance to go to the Council floor for action.

The four members voted, not by sitting down in a meeting, but by individually communicating to her staff their "concurrence" with the Report. Serial communications among body members to arrive at a decision is a violation long established by case law. Using staff messengers as "gloves" doesn't remove the fingerprints.

Councilor Feeney, during her testimony, admitted that they voted, but told the court that it was not a vote on the substance of the ordinance. The Councilor's testimony was that the Committee members never deliberated, never discussed this controversial pay raise proposal with her or with each other between March 8 and the day they voted on May 2, and were merely providing a courtesy nod to her to bring to the Council floor her report, written solely by herself as the Chair, without any input from them.

Committee votes on Committee reports, she and Vice-Chair Stephen Murphy said, are just a housekeeping task, like a decision to order office supplies, a trivial head-count to bring the matter back to Council without regard to the substance, so public witness isn't required.

The judge asked what she'd do if most members voted against the Chair's report. She responded that she could bring it to the Council floor as a "Minority Report" -- an option that's not available in the City Council Rules and indeed would violate the Rules requiring majority approval prior to Council action.

The facts are these:

1) It's not just "housekeeping" when a committee takes action on legislation. Indeed, in this case, there were actually important amendments made to the original bill (including a pay raise for the City Clerk, a job in which Councilor Feeney has been quoted in the press as saying she has an interest). That they spoke individually, through intermediaries, calling it a "concurrence" instead of a "vote," doesn't change the basic fact: a majority of her committee took an action on the matter before them. A concurrence by a majority IS a meeting.

2) If this vote was, as Councilor Feeney insists, just a head-count of members agreeing to let the measure go to the Council for vote, that's a procedure required to be done right on the Council floor, according to Council Rules. It's called a "roll call vote," and a majority has to approve -- in public.

3) The Councilors are already changing the Rules to end Committee voting via individual votes sent to the chair. This procedure of voting without getting together in quorum was evidently contrived to skirt the Open Meeting Law, and has now been exposed.

Committee actions are the backbone of any body's work, because that's where the body's fact-finding, analysis and deliberation happen (or, in the Boston City Council, where analysis and deliberation doesn't happen, as we learned from the City Councilors' testimony). Whatever they do in those actions has to be witnessed by the public, including, as in this case, amending legislation and sending it for Council vote with a recommendation for passage. Isn't that self-evident?

The Councilors' defense of trivializing the work of Council Committees in order to deny the requirement for public witness, is a disheartening and cynical message to send to their constituents.

It's disappointing that they spend thousands of taxpayer dollars fighting lawsuits rather than taking a positive attitude and improving their transparency. It's especially wasteful when they've already begun Rules reform; their September 11, 2006, hearing on proposed Rule changes is most interesting, and a recording can be viewed via the Council website.

Unfortunately, then-President Michael Flaherty was still seeking, even at that reform hearing, mechanisms by which the Council could discuss issues "internally."

Our Councilors just have to honor the words introducing their personal copies of the Open Meeting Law: "The public's business must be done in public."

Posted at 10:21 AM
Monday, January 8, 2007

We won't be having monthly meetings this month and for the near future. Instead, we will be bringing our Show Me The Money presentation to the neighborhoods, and training community residents in giving the show to their neighbors. As we go along, the Show will add material from community comments.

We will post the SMTM slides on the website after testing with a presentation or two.

The first is tomorrow night 7:00 pm, Tubman House/United South End Settlement, at 566 Columbus Ave (near Mass Ave). Please come if you can.

There are three general issues addressed by the presentation that have to do with where our money comes from and goes, and how our development is de-controlled at our expense. We will focus on the BRA, the property tax structure, and the budget.

We will present some ideas for remedial action on all three, and we want to add suggestions from YOU as we go along.

You can also join the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods at the presentations.

Northeastern University's off the reservation. They're spreadin' out. And out. And out. It's a dorm-fest.

If you've ever suffered from Institutional Sprawl, come to the BRA hearing on Thursday, hear what's going on in Roxbury, and help that community defend themselves against college colonization!

Mayor Menino's at it again. He's going to "enliven" the far-distant waterfront with a government office building, and leave City Hall Plaza, conveniently located in the center of the transit system, to the good judgment of the BRA and its eager squadrons of office- and luxury-condo-tower developers.

What is this about, really? Well, guess who owns City Hall Plaza? The City, you say? Think again. It's the BRA. Yes, the BRA took it by eminent domain -- AGAIN -- in 1996, this time from YOU. And the Mayor waived compensation, so the BRA got it for free. Now, whatever it's sold or leased for -- the BRA gets all that money.

And -- how convenient! -- the BRA happens to be the development regulatory agency of the city, so they'll make sure that land is made as valuable as possible -- by permitting the biggest possible development.

The BRA happens also to have a Joint-Venture Agreement with the so-called Trust for City Hall Plaza -- a group of developers -- to build a hotel and garage on the Plaza. They always intended to fill it up with buildings, and apparently, now's the time.

Estimates of the land value for what they are likely to build run at $400 million. FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! While you have fund-raisers to buy school equipment and maintain your park.

Call the mayor and your city councilors and tell them you won't stand for this! Your services are being cut, your taxes are skyrocketing, and the mayor is giving away hundreds of millions of dollars --plus the profits from an over-sized development -- to the BRA.

The Patrick/Murray Transition Team is holding public meetings on various issues. Here is the link to the schedule. Go to as many as you can, and become part of the solution!

The Globe printed a great piece today on our forthcoming campaign to expose and eliminate the BRA!

But before we take the "Show" on the road, we're going to add more about the property tax problem. We'll discuss why homeowners and renters are carrying the weight of sky-high office towers and burgeoning institutions on their backs, and what residents have to do to shift the crushing tax burden back to those who aren't paying their fair share.

Mayor Menino and his School Committee have succeeded in abdicating from their obligation for public education. Where the new gentry are moving in, they just raise their own money, and let the City off the hook. And now, the donors are worrying about diversity -- alas, they can't seem to recruit enough poor families of color into the school!

What's going to happen to schools in neighborhoods that can't raise millions of dollars by making generous donations and tapping their professional contacts? They will be third-world holding pens for the economically doomed.

We are recreating (reinforcing, actually) the urban-surburban split right here, within the city limits. No need for white flight; move the private money around and the people will follow.

This is what will happen to all our public services, if our elected officials have their way. It's already happening in parks -- see previous blog. If you can afford a decent community, make one. The rest of you will get what you obviously deserve....

But .....where do our huge property tax payments go, as the City provides less and less...?

I attended a Civic Parks Alliance conference on October 21 titled, "Partners in Parks: Building a Movement." As a landscape architect, I was happy to see all those dedicated advocates for public open space.

But there was, as usual, a basic assumption that we shouldn't expect to get enough government support for parks. We've all heard the excuses: Public budgets are too tight. Park maintenance is too expensive and government can only do "the basics" so we'll have to fund-raise privately for anything more. Parks are abandoned by the government because people and public officials see parks as "frills."

So, we focus on figuring out how to get private resources to support our public realm -- corporate donations, foundations, private philanthropy, "Friends groups," fundraising, user fees and volunteer work.

This is exactly what politicians want us to do: Resign ourselves to losing what we're entitled to as taxpayers and citizens, or step in and pay for things ourselves if we care about them -- and can afford it. It's a false choice, and we shouldn't accept it.

Don't let them off the hook!

If we do, we're headed for a two-tier public realm: Pretty and neat where businesses benefit financially from "good corporate citizenship" and where wealthy residents can afford to protect their safety, aesthetics, environment and property values. Shabby and neglected where there are no tourists to embarrass the politicians, no corporations looking for "good-will" marketing, and people are too busy wrestling with issues of survival, like living wages, education, medical expenses, drugs and crime.

People keep saying that the private sector has to step in and protect our parks, because the public officials won't. Well, they certainly won't if they see that we will.

They've already learned that they can ignore services for poor and powerless people and still stay in office.

And now they're learning that they can ignore services for the new urban gentry, who don't need to spend time begging officials for services; they can just buy their own.

Amazingly, Steve Burrington, Commissioner of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, said that, after years of neglected parks in urban areas, the "unaffordability of housing in cities" is actually "promising for parks." Translation: Gentrification is the way to get good parks. Displacement of low-income people, who can't make up for government negligence, is an acceptable trade-off.

Look around: it's not only about parks. Parents and teachers are having to pay out-of-pocket for school supplies, activity fees, bus fees -- the City even has a website where teachers can beg for donations! Trash removal and street clean-up are increasingly becoming the responsibility of residents and businesses expected clean up and to “adopt” City trash cans. Transit -- for a select few -- is being privatized by institutions' shuttle bus systems. Even planning is privatized in Boston; the BRA has developers funding their own planning studies!

If we ever want to get our parks properly funded as public domain, we have to ally with advocates for other services to hold our politicians accountable. Let’s not compete with each other for a public pie that’s being shrunk on us.

We can't keep "chasing a receding tide," as one of the conference speakers described private efforts to cover the gap as public investment slides away. We have turn the tide.

The problem is not lack of money; the government isn't impoverished and incompetent -- the myth that politicians use to excuse their abdication. They have the money and can hire the expertise -- just as private friends and conservancies do.

But they choose to create a shortage, a "strategic deficit," as the Reaganite neo-cons call it, by giving away the treasury in corporate welfare, "business incentives," patronage and cronyistic deals, no-bid contracts, and other "waste, fraud and abuse" that is hard for us to find out about.

We have to make it our business to expose those leaks. ABN is now working on a comprehensive inventory. If you have any tips, send them in. We’ll check them out.

We have to tell the mayor and the governor that they owe us our public services, and we won't take a shrug and turned-out pockets for an answer any more. We can only do that if we can confront them with our knowledge of where our money is really going.

So this is what democracy looks like! What an election day it was!

Politicians have to be held accountable. Public services has to be an honorable profession. Governments must serve the public interest. Corruption is unacceptable.

This sounds sort of quaint these days, but this election showed that the fundamentals of democracy still lie there, in our hearts, even if we've all but given up on getting them.

And the way to get decent public servants -- aside from flooding them with e-mails and calls when they try something they shouldn't -- is to let them know that election time is accountability time.

But it won't be accountability time unless we do some basic reforms.

The first is to stop the buying and selling of our government. We have to get the legal bribery of campaign contributions out. So we have to force them to pass public campaign financing laws. In Massachusetts, we even voted to do that in 1998, and they repealed it in the dead of night.

And the reason they could get away with that is that the legislature has exempted itself from the "sunshine laws," the Open Meeting and Public Record Laws it wrote for other government bodies to obey. So our lawmakers can hash out these deals and ram them through on voice votes and no one even knows what's happening. So the second thing we have to do is this: The legislature must be made subject to the "sunshine laws."

Third, we need term limits for all offices. No one is so good that power doesn't corrupt them eventually. No one is so smart that s/he can't be replaced. In Massachusetts it's almost impossible to "t'row da bums out" -- we have a 98% incumbent re-election rate. (Boston may be even worse!) Working in secret on behalf of big-money donors, they keep themselves in power forever.

It's not democracy if we go to the voting booth -- and there's no viable choice. So: Fourth, we need to allow free expression of more political choices. We need "Instant Run-off" voting. Almost half of the state's registered voters are not enrolled with a party! They vote reluctantly for Democrats or Republicans -- or drop out of voting altogether because they want something different, and have no way to demand it at the polls without "throwing away" their vote or worrying about handing victory over to the mainstream candidate they want least -- the so-called "Nader" effect. Instant Run-off lets voters rank their candidate choices, and automatically re-assigns their votes to the next choice if the first doesn't have enough to win. With Instant Run-off, you could have voted for Ross, or Mihos, to send a message, and ranked your preferred Dem or Republican second to make your vote count. Independents will have a lot more influence on the D or R agenda if they can bring in the winning margin. I wonder how the independents would have done under Instant Run-off...we'd have seen the true support for their platforms. The initiative for "ballot freedom," or "fusion voting," described in our 10/29 blog posting, didn't pass. But it was on the right track. Now it's time to start an initiative for Instant Run-off, which gives the independents their own candidates and their own voice.

So, now that we've flexed our electoral muscle and seen its power, let's put it to use and get what we need -- with the help of the public offficials, or without it.

Have you ever put in an information request to a City or State agency under the Public Records Law (it's the state version of the federal Freedom of Information Act)?

If you have, you know how hard it is to get information out of our government, especially if it concerns the actions of elected officials. But with a few specific exceptions, you are entitled to those documents. And you should get them within ten business days.

But to conceal inconvenient truths, government officials and staff find ways to evade the Law. They invalidly claim exceptions, they delay, or they just stonewall and don't answer at all. Instead of waiving the costs to citizens, as the Law encourages, they may threaten to bill you for thousands of dollars for "searching" the information, and charge $.50 a page instead of the $.20 the law allows (the BRA and the City Clerk do this).

You can appeal for help to the State Supervisor of Public Records, Alan Cote, in the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Office. But it takes a long time, and if an official just ignores the request, the Supervisor's hands are tied -- Attorney General Tom Reilly has interpreted the Law in a way that undermines the State's ability to force disclosure. Peter Caruso and Robert Ambrogi are lawyers experienced in PRL cases and knowledgeable about reform efforts; we might invite them and Cote as guest speakers at an ABN forum on this subject. If you have advice to document seekers on how to deal with reluctant officials, please post it here.

The Supervisor and Secretary of State Galvin, together with a couple of legislators, have introduced legislation to reform the law, but without success so far; we need to push reform legislation this session. And one major reform will be especially important and especially difficut: removing the legislature's exemption from the law!

A recent letter in the South End News reveals a City strategy to privatize our trashcanization -- Mayor Menino is gradually removing many City trash cans unless somebody is willing to adopt them.

He's assuming that residents and businesses will get fed up enough with the City's negligence to just pay for services themselves -- this while our property taxes soar.

This has also been happening with parks:

Parks officials are doing more with less, something Commissioner Antonia Pollak calls creative management. She has been forced to rely more heavily on the private sector and the good will of committed residents to take over stewardship of neighborhood parks. The number of volunteer parks groups has grown from 60 to 87 during the past five years.

Have you noticed any removals of trash cans? Have you had to adopt any? What does it cost you?

What should we do about this hidden tax increase?

On November 7, we'll have three ballot questions to vote on.

Question 2 is "Ballot Freedom," also called "fusion voting."

Many people would like to vote for a third-party candidate -- to send a message about what they want, even if that candidate can't win -- but they are afraid to throw away their vote, or to be a "spoiler," threatening the victory of the mainstream candidate they prefer and inadvertently helping the candidate they want least (think Nader or Gore vs. Bush).

It's something like run-off voting, where voters rank their preferred candidates and their vote is automatically transferred to their choice with the greatest number of votes. Instant run-off is better because the party platform is more specifically articulated by a party candidate. But right now, we have a chance to vote for fusion, and it's a start toward more political representation across the spectrum.

With fusion voting, different parties can support the same candidate, but the vote numbers show where the support came from, giving the independents some real power in shaping the winner's agenda. It's a tool for coalition building and focusing campaign energy and resources on a candidate that would be more specifically accountable to all of those who vote him/her into office.

It's all very well explained at www.massballotfreedom.com.

Fusion voting isn't an experiment; it has a long history, and is still used in several states. I think it's a great way to bring out more voters, because they know that their vote will say what they mean.

Does anyone know of a down side to it?

From Kathleen Devine, Fenway resident:

Earlier this week, I was walking my beagle along The Fenway while thinking about our new police chief, Ed Davis, and his stated commitment to community policing. Community policing likely means different things for different Boston neighborhoods.

While pondering what it might mean for the Fenway, I came upon what was formerly a public alley between Hemenway Street and The Fenway, now blocked off by bright blue steel and concrete bollards and a substantial swinging metal gate, all locked up with a “Northeastern University Police” wooden blockade to complete the picture. The concept of institutional expansion has taken on an entirely new aspect. In addition to gobbling up real estate, the institutions are now creating their own, private municipal infrastructure.

The citizens of Boston now pay for both an under-manned city police force, while also subsidizing the private police forces of tax exempt institutions.

How is it that Northeastern University Police has become the “community police force” in my neighborhood? How did they acquire the right to patrol the streets of the Fenway and block off neighborhood alleys? Over the past ten years Boston’s public parks have become virtually privatized by the City’s failure to fund Parks and Recreation. Will the same process of de-funding now privatize public safety?

In the streets of the East Fenway (Massachusetts Avenue to The Fenway and Boylston Street to Huntington Avenue), if your sleep is being disrupted by a rowdy party at 3 AM on Saturday, a call to Boston Police Area D-4 will bring you to someone who will tell you to call Northeastern Police. A call to NU Police will direct you back to D-4. The Boston Police will tell a caller that they don’t have sufficient manpower to send a patrol car out. The NU Police will claim they don’t have jurisdiction.

The only entity with great clarity in this matter is the Assessor’s Office. They KNOW they want your property tax bill to be paid no matter how little policing you receive in return.

And what about those bright blue bollards? I checked with the City of Boston’s Assessing On-Line. Northeastern University owns the adjacent Melvin Hall, which they describe on their website as a “quiet dorm, with an emphasis on healthy living.” The opposite side of the alley entrance is a private apartment building. The Assessor’s on line map shows the blocked off entrance as a public way. So why is it that Northeastern has taken over control of the access?

This will mean a trip to the City’s Public Improvement Commission Office at City Hall and some further investigation into how this “privatization” of a public way came to be. You can rest assured that there will be no repercussions for NU if it turns out that they acted without permission. The motto of most local institutions is “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Witness the taking of 15,000 square feet of City park land by the Forsyth Institute and the transformation of that land into paved parking. The penalty for that misdeed was the approval by Parks and Recreation to just give it to them. You pave it; it’s yours, I guess. And perhaps that will be the same with “community policing”. You put your patrol cars on the streets and the streets are yours for the taking.

Mayor Menino has invented a new tax break, called "I-Cubed". This newly enacted law is supposedly meant to encourage job creation, and so it's structured to encourage commercial development, rather than the housing we desperately need.

I-Cubed would expedite large commercial projects by relieving developers of the costs of building infrastructure for the site; the taxes generated by the project would pay for this infrastructure, which would then become public.

But remember -- developers get to exceed zoning in exchange for providing this infrastructure (streets, lights, landscaping, transit, etc.) as "community benefits." Under I-Cubed they won't actually have to pay for these benefits. Their (that is, OUR) state taxes will be diverted from the general fund to pay for those benefits through state bonds. And if they fail to generate enough state taxes, the City will have to pay off the bonds. We city property tax payers will assume the risk for that infrasturucture debt.

Guidelines are now being written to implement this law, which was rushed through after the legislative session ended, with lots of questions hanging. When the draft guidelines come out, we should demand that such "double subsidy" be disallowed. Either developers pay for their promised benefits privately from the extra profits of the over-sized project, or they give up the extra size. Otherwise, they are technically violating the zoning laws that let the trade height and density for benefits.

We should also protest two other provisions: the exemption of Boston projects from state and city competitive bidding requirements, and from laws requiring the strict screening for engineer qualifications on public works. These are two public protections the Big Dig has reminded us we can't do without.

I'll post an action alert when the draft guidelines are available for comment.

Once again, by the way, our City Councilors just sat by and did nothing while our budget, already running on fumes, was put at risk for what will probably be about $100 million in bonds for speculative development on the none-too-predictable Seaport. They knew about it -- I told Ways and Means Chair Rob Consalvo that it was proposed and suggested a Council hearing -- but no one was listening.

SILVERLINE COMMENTS WERE DUE OCT. 29 -- BUT IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, WRITE IT IN! THE ANALYST WILL STILL READ IT!

The room was packed at the MBTA's October 19 public hearing on its latest Silverline Phase III proposal. This is a tunnel through downtown between Green Line Boylston Station and Red Line South Station, supposedly connecting the Washington Silverline bus through Roxbury and the Piers Transitway bus to the waterfront.

The MBTA, invested for some reason in the fictitious "bus rapid transit" of the Silverline, keeps trying to use a bus tunnel for this connection. Every design option for the portal to get into this tunnel would be damaging to the neighborhoods, institutions and businesses along the route -- and impractical as a transportation choice as well.

The justification claimed for federal funding for this hugely expensive boondoggle is "environmental justice": it’s touted as taking those Roxbury folks to the great jobs (bellhop, chambermaid, parking valet, retail clerk) at the new Seaport developments. Washington Street Corridor Coalition to MBTA: “No thanks! Just give us what you took away when the Elevated was removed back in 1987: a direct rail connection into the downtown subway system!”

The Silverline tunnel is supported only by business groups -- the Artery Business Committee, the Urban League -- who see it as a connector for South Boston conventioneers to the hotels in the Back Bay. As the BRA's urban design chief said back in the planning stages, "the Back Bay will be the rec room for the South Boston convention center." Will conventioneers really want to ride buses all around the town to get back and forth?

The convoluted approach and portal into this tunnel, the tunnel itself, and indeed the whole "Bus Rapid Transit" system, is misguided and widely opposed.

The community wants the MBTA to do a fair study of a rail-based system to make the necessary transportation links, providing real transit that’s better for riders and cheaper in the long run.

Excellent testimony was given at the hearing, this time as previously, by John Kyper of the Sierra Club, the Washington Street Corridor Coalition, Mark Slater for the Bay Village Neighborhood Association, Kathy Emrich for Ellis South End Neighborhood Association, Michelle Yee and Serene Wong on behalf of the Chinatown community, Chris Betke, and Larry Rosenblum for Leather District Neighborhood Association, Emerson College, and many others.

Written comments on MBTA's Notice of project change are due by October 30, 2006 and can be sent to:
Secretary William Golledge
EOEA Attn: MEPA Office,
William Gage bill.gage@state.ma.us
Re: EOEA No. 6826/11707
100 Cambridge Street, Suite 900
Boston, Mass. 02114
617-626-1181 (fax)

The Notice of Project change is at the above link. For hard copy: Copley Library, Dudley Library and State Transportation Library, or call MBTA at 617-222-6950.

The Boston Parks Department has submitted its plan to the Boston Landmarks Commission to demolish the Pinebank mansion, the only mansion left for public use on the banks of Jamaica Pond by Frederick Law Olmsted when he created the Emerald Necklace park system in the 1880’s.

Friends of Pinebank, a citizens group made up of Jamaica Plain, Brookline, and Boston area residents, proposes to reconstruct Pinebank as a community center for music and the arts.

The capital to finance reconstruction would be funded largely from private donations. We want to forge a partnership with the city to restore this civic building for all citizens - local and national - and as a continuation of the improvements in the Emerald Necklace made over the last 20 years.

We’d like your input about these proposed uses:

The existing south terrace could be used for outdoor artistic performances and enjoying coffee from the Olmsted Café on the first floor. Also, large outdoor concerts could be managed near Pinebank like the current Landmark Orchestra concerts.

The first floor could serve expanding uses including - music, performances, exhibitions, community meetings, and fund raising for local groups.

On the second floor, small flexible rooms could be spaces for music lessons or art school studios. An office could be available for a Park Ranger.

To counter potential vandalism, a small apartment could be on the top floor for a full-time caretaker.

One third of the basement could be for an environmental study area by local schools. A small bike shop could be in the basement for repairs and perhaps bike rentals.

Access to Pinebank would be primarily pedestrian or bicycle, with limited and controlled access for some vehicles (musicians, caretaker, etc.). This plan could promote physical activity and reduce the need for nearby parking.

Operating maintenance expenses could be covered by the Olmsted Cafe, income from leasing the second floor rooms to local music or art schools, and rental of the main rooms for weddings or small conferences. A large endowment could be created to ensure that maintenance costs and long-term expenses would be covered.

A reconstructed Pinebank could be an energy-efficient, state-of-the-art sustainable building. With such innovation, Pinebank could be a national model of adaptive re-use, recycling the existing bricks and terra cotta imported from England into an energy-efficient sustainable building using the latest green technology.

Would you be willing to have your name publicly listed in favor of reconstruction, rather than demolition? You would join the hundreds of supporters who treasure this signature building Frederick Law Olmsted left for us on the Emerald Necklace.

To join this ever-growing chorus of citizens who want their voices heard, please respond by email with your approval to hmattison@aol.com to list your name by Sunday, October 29, and ask other supporters to respond also. Also, please include your address.

Thanks from the Friends of Pinebank,
Hugh Mattison, President, Brookline
Anne Lusk, Ph.D. Vice President, Brookline
Dorothy Clark, Chair-Public Relations, Jamaica Plain
Albert Lafarge, Member and Social Scientist, Jamaica Plain
Bill Powell, AIA, Architect, BrooklineSarah Smith, Ph.D., Novelist, Brookline
Vickie Wallen, Chair-Community Outreach, Jamaica Plain

Mayor Menino recently announced that he wants a 1,000 foot tower built on a City-owned property, 115 Federal St., in the Financial District at Winthrop Square.

As usual, there's a little problem with zoning -- it's a 150' height area -- though the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) has tricks to fix that.

But there's a much bigger problem of money. And the BRA' s trick for that will cost us big-time.

The disposition of this City land, currently occupied by a leased garage, should be voted on by the Council and put out for competitive bid by the Public Facilities Commission (now Dept. of Neighborhood Development), per the Boston City Charter:

The public facilities commission of the city of Boston may dispose of any or all of the off-street parking structures, including the real estate related thereto, owned in the city of Boston, as surplus property... only when transferred to the commission by a majority vote of the city council

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Instead, once again, the City's land will be given away simply by a little deal between Mayor Menino and the BRA. Just like Hayward Place in 2001 (worth $23 million), City Hall Plaza in 1996 (worth well over $200 million), and countless other City properties, this one will be taken from us by the BRA in an abuse of its eminent domain powers, with Mayor Menino acting alone as The City -- and not a dime in payment: Menino not only authorizes the taking, but he waives compensation!

This is one of the ways he funds the BRA off-budget (i.e., without City Council and public review and accountability) and keeps the BRA powerful -- so it can protect his unlawful development deals ( like 1,000 foot towers) from lawsuits by subverting the zoning code with creative exemptions (like PDA, U-District, and 121A). Mayoral tricks and BRA tricks work together to take away our laws and our land.

How much are we going to lose this time? According to a June 20, 2006 Boston Herald story, "Tower Money to BRA?" by Scott Van Voorhis,

"The Winthrop Square garage could be worth anywhere from $100 million to as much as $300 million, depending on the ultimate size of the project, according to informal estimates by city real estate executives. That value, in turn, has been created in part by Menino’s vocal and public support for a massive skyrise complex there, executives said."

When the BRA takes the land, it keeps the sale or lease money. And remember: The BRA is not the same as the City! They have two separate budgets, and the BRA is legally accountable to no one.

The Mayor and the BRA have already begun making soothing promises that the money will go to good uses, as the Herald revealed:

"...a spokesman for Menino insisted that when the money is disbursed, the mayor will see that it goes to worthy civic causes. 'The revenues available will be unencumbered.' ”

They think that if they say certain magic words, like "affordable housing," they can silence criticism and gain allies. Don't be fooled; it's all going to support the BRA's burgeoning bureaucracy.

And in any case, it's not up to the BRA to decide where our money goes, nor to the Mayor's personal whims; we have an elaborate public budget process, and a City Council for which this is the main responsibility. When the Mayor says "unencumbered," he means free from this process.

The BRA has already put out a Request for Proposals (not bids), which are due November 13. The RFP says the BRA will own and convey the land free of City title, and the property will be leased, giving the BRA a hefty permanent income stream. If things go as usual, they'll begin the taking process around Thanksgiving with a 30-day notification to the Council, and finalize it around Christmas.

Why are our City Councilors sitting by and doing nothing? They can't hire a lawyer to fight the taking; they have to mobilize public opinion now before the 30-day clock starts. This means that all of us who hoped we could elect conscientious public servants to protect our welfare and go about our daily lives have to get up and do something.

Think about what you'd want the City to do with $200-$300 million dollars! Write, call, and e-mail the Mayor and all of the City Councilors, visit their offices, and if necessary hold rallies and vigils on City Hall Plaza (if the BRA lets you!) and demand that they do their jobs FOR YOU.

And next election, don't vote for any candidate that stood by and let us be robbed of over $200 million dollars.

Meanwhile, knowing the Mayor and the City Council, I think we'd better start protecting ourselves in other ways too. I believe the BRA exceeds its authority in taking City property, since that land is already available for public purposes; as far as I could find out, the BRA is the only urban renewal authority in America that takes City-owned land by eminent domain. Further, I believe the Mayor exceeds his authority in waiving compensation. I think there may be a few legal violations in this deal.

If there are any lawyers out there interested in looking into this, please contact me.

Okay, we're here. Out of the meeting rooms (though we'll still be there, too) and into the blogosphere!

ABN was formed so people across all of Boston's neighborhoods could share information and join together to have an effective voice in improving our city.

And now, we hope to amplify that voice online.

For ten years, we've held meetings, distributed information, put on big public workshops, gotten City Council hearings, submitted joint comment letters and testimony, issued city and state action alerts, and brought together people with common problems and ideas for solutions.

This blog will be a resource for faster and broader outreach, so you can share your knowledge, learn what you need to know and find allies for action on the specific issues you care about. Please post comments, suggest or submit posts on new topics -- and spread the word.

It's our next effort in enriching Boston's civic life, and making of many neighborhoods, one community.

The second lawsuit filed by Kevin McCrea, Kathleen Devine and myself against the Boston City Council is coming to a head. This one is about the pay raise the Government Operations Committee approved for the Council, the Mayor, and numerous others, in a private vote in spring. The Law says a complaint based on valid evidence of a violation gets a hearing in court in ten days or at the earliest possible date. That hearing would put the Councilors, and any other relevant witnesses, on the stand for sworn testimony. Of course, the Council wants to avoid that above all, even if it means a decision -- or admission -- of guilt. As in the first suit we filed (and in the case against Council in 1987 by the state Attorney General), the Council lawyer (same lawyer as in l987!) was planning to file motions that would somehow keep the Councilors off the witness stand. Last Thursday, October 19, the court decided that we would go to trial, with or without the Motion for Summary Judgment the City Council lawyers want to file. This is big news! Will we get to question our Councilors, Mayor and others on the witness stand? Or will they....hmm, what will they try to do to escape? See Kevin's blog for more.

Three Boston registered voters, Kevin McCrea, Kathleen Devine and I, successfully sued the Boston City Council last year for gross violations of the Open Meeting Law in their vote to perpetuate the BRA's Urban Renewal Plans. We sued the Council again this May for violations of the Law in their process of voting to approve a pay raise for themselves, the Mayor and certain City Hall employees (see City Council Compensation Study on Kevin's home page).

Council President Michael Flaherty still insists that the Councilors are guiltless, and more than that -- that the Law gets in the way of their work -- as he keeps calling it, the "sausage factory" of getting to consensus. (Maybe he doesn't realize that the term mocks this kind of legislative process -- it means that if we knew what dirty dealing went into our laws, we wouldn't accept them.)

The Open Meeting Law is an important effort to protect the public from harmful behind-closed-door dealings of our governmental bodies; a state Attorney General Guideline clearly explains the intent. But the law as written has some flaws: it's hard to enforce, and in the end just fines the taxpayers for the misdeeds of their elected officials. Some legislators have been working to reform the Law, to clarify what is a "meeting," what activities are covered, and what are the penalties. All States have such laws, and some cities, like San Francisco, have their own that are useful models.

Have you had any experiences with such violations? Have you been kept out of meetings of governmental bodies, by lack of posting or even by physical barriers? Do you have evidence that a vote taken at the body's public meeting is really a rubber stamp of closed-door meetings of the members? If you feel that legal action is necessary, you can read our documents on Kevin McCrea's blog. How can we open up the people's business to the people?

And currently, the state legislature is not even subject to the Open Meeting Law; how can we make the Law apply to the very state legislators who control its passage?

Should we have an ABN community workshop on this topic, and work for state action on a better law and and better enforcement?