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 in