The revenge of Jim “Jones” Lyons | Wu’s Faneuil Hall debacle | News startup doing just swell in Wellesley | Buoyant condo market | Baker mystery payments | About Contrarian Boston |
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Baker’s golden goodbye: Campaign cash helps pay for gala sendoff at local casino
Apparently, former Gov. Charlie Baker exited office in style last month with a party to end all parties.
Baker’s longtime partner in crime, former Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, shelled out $135,000 in campaign cash to pay for governor’s “farewell event,” state campaign finance records show.
While we assume the governor’s ceremonial “lone walk” out of the State House on Jan 4 was priceless in more ways than one, the after party at the Parker House and a weekend bash at the Encore Boston Harbor casino most certainly were not.
Looks like Polito picked up the entire tab for the events. Now that’s some loyalty for you.
Still, it’s too bad the event was held back in early January, and not at the end of the month, when sports betting went live at the Everett gambling palace. Nothing like placing some bets on a couple college games to get the party rolling.
Hmm … on second thought, since Baker is off to the NCAA, where we’re betting he will whip the scandal-plagued college sports organization into shape, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a hot idea after all.
A tale of two markets: Faced with rising costs, buyers switching to condos
That’s one takeaway from the frontlines of the cooling real estate market.
Condo prices, both in Greater Boston and across the state, hit new highs in January, even as home prices edged down.
Boston-area condos saw their median price rocket nearly 15 percent in January, hitting $685,000.
Home prices, by contrast, fell 2.4 percent to $707,250, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors.
Buyers are really having to crunch the numbers
While interest rates have since stabilized, the big jump over the fall dramatically pushed up costs for buyers, forcing some to switch to condos and others to drop out of the market altogether.
“More buyers are looking at condos as a more viable option,” said David Crowley, a broker and vice president at One Boston Luxury Living|William Raveis in Boston.
Backstory behind shocking BPDA vote: Behind Wu’s big setback, a staff meeting gone awry
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has spent years campaigning for the demolition of City Hall’s development authority.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency has been Wu’s favorite target, her white whale, so to speak, guilty of everything from demolishing the West End in the late 1950s to the growing gap today between rich and poor.
And as we noted here, the board of the Boston Planning & Development Agency, led by local civil rights icon, academic leader, and respected architect Ted Landsmark, put the brakes last week on the mayor’s plans to dismantle the agency.
But Wu should have sensed trouble before that disastrous rebuff by BPDA board last Thursday, probably the only time in modern history that the agency has rejected a mayor’s request.
Two week before, Wu had met with dozens of BPDA staffers at the Great Hall in Faneuil Hall, a fitting location given it has been the site of protests and political meetings for nearly three centuries.
Wu did her best to sell her plan to split the agency in two, which would involve transferring the BPDA’s planners to a yet to be created city planning and design department.
But Wu’s pitch fell short when she and other top city officials were unable to answer specific questions on exactly the big shift would mean in concrete terms for BPDA planners, some of whom have been with the agency for decades.
We are talking details on pay, pensions, benefits, professional responsibilities and titles - you name it.
And Landsmark and fellow BPDA board member Brian Miller were well aware of the concerns raised by agency planners - and their low morale - before their decision to table Wu’s plans.
Seems like someone didn’t do her homework here.
Globe columnist cites Contrarian Boston coverage of the Wu/BPDA story
That would be Joan Vennochi, whose columns are always a must read.
Vennochi quoted from our coverage of the BPDA board’s rejection of Wu’s fumbling plans to dismantle the agency in her own column on the issue.
Thanks Joan.
We’ll just say that Contrarian Boston has some of the best readers around - it was a sharp-eyed source who immediately spotted not just the significance of the vote, but of Landsmark’s remarks.
More bad financial news out of Gannett? You can bank on it
The terminally ill national newspaper chain, which owns several local papers across the state, is gearing up to release its fourth quarter earnings early Thursday morning.
And we’re betting it’s going to be a doozy.
The ailing chain, which for some reason pays its chief executive $7.7 million a year to run the business into the ground, canned nearly 20 local papers across Massachusetts last spring, and combined another nine titles into four.
Gannett also went on a layoff spree last December as well, just in time for the holiday season.
Stay tuned - we will be keeping a close eye on this.
Late Christmas: Long-time Baker campaign advisors clean up
Jim Conroy and Brian Wynne go way back with Charlie Baker.
Conroy was the former governor’s long-time campaign manager and Wynne managed his last gubernatorial campaign in 2018.
Both now have their own political consulting firms.
As Baker and former Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito left office in January, the two campaigns forked over $60,000 to Conroy and $20,000 to Wynne, state political finance records show.
Given that Baker and Polito did little if any campaigning during their last year in office, having hung up their spurs in December 2021, it begs the question: what was all that money for?
Were they just parting bonuses to trusted, long-time advisors? Or were the pair hired to help with the ultimately successful campaign to push Jim “Jones” Lyons out as MassGOP chair?
Lyons played a key role in destroying Baker’s chances for a third term, helping orchestrate Trump’s endorsement of Geoff Diehl in the governor’s race.
Baker, faced with losing a Republican primary where Trump voters now dominate, opted not to run.
So what was the money for? Inquiring minds want to know.
Train wreck: MassGOP faces bleak prospects as former chair launches revenge campaign
Jim “Jones” Lyons is to state party bosses what James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump are to presidents.
Simply put, Lyons was the absolutely worst chairman in the storied, 170-year history of the Massachusetts Republican Party.
Ousted as party chief last month, Lyons oversaw an historic wipeout of the MassGOP in last fall’s elections, saddled his party with more than $600,000 in debt, and may have committed any number of campaign finance violations while he was as it.
Anyone with a shred of rectitude would be hiding under a rock, but not Lyons. The geriatric blowhard and die-hard Trumpie is furiously working on a plan - Project RINO Cutter - to purge the state Republican party’s governing committee of the members who gave him his walking papers.
The original Jim Jones and apparent inspiration for recently ousted MassGOP boss Jim “Jones” Lyons
All that makes for great copy, but here’s the real significance: As long as the former state rep and his cronies continue with their nutty jihad, it will make it impossible for Amy Carnevale, the new chair, to reposition the Republican party and make it relevant again in Massachusetts.
Carnevale has been a staunch Trump supporter herself, but she appears, unlike Lyons, to have retained her sanity and common sense, with a focus on restoring the party’s finances and stability, not purging moderates.
However, in order to make any inroads with moderate Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats, the MassGOP must firmly disavow the former president, contends R.J. Lyman, a top environmental official under former Gov. Bill Weld.
Whatever one may have thought of Trump before, the Jan. 6 insurrection makes support of the ex-president’s bid to return to power impossible to square with support for democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law, said Lyman, counsel at Dain, Torpy.
We’ve reached out to Carnevale, the new MassGOP chair to get her take, but for some strange reason, we appear to be on her do-not-call list.
But here's our question: Will the MassGOP support Trump, should he become the party’s nominee?
Stay tuned.
Swellesley finds Wellesley fertile ground for growing ad $$$
By Mark Pickering
Bob and Deborah Brown, as co-editors, launched their Swellesley Report in 2005. While the name is tongue-in-cheek, the online news source has become an established small business.
The Swellesley Report website says that the publication began selling ads in earnest in 2011. At this point, the site has a wide range of advertising that includes a dentist, a lawyer and a bank, as well as a health club and beauty salons, restaurants and political ads.
The site has a variety of sponsors for certain topic areas. That includes a sponsor, the Riverbend School, for its “private schools” page. And the Mature Caregivers, which offers in-home care for the elderly, sponsors the Swellesley’s “seniors” section.
It appears that the news outlet is forging ahead in the fight for funding, at least as compared to its peers.
On LinkedIn, Deborah Brown said the local news website was started “purely as a community service,” but has since grown since then. And the company has also launched the Natick Report, which covers that adjacent community.
She points to community interest and the site’s social media followers as indicators of the Swellesley’s success. She also writes articles for the publication Wellesley Hills Living magazine.
Co-editor Bob Brown has a day job as a managing editor and content strategist with the state’s Executive Office of Technology Services & Security. His LinkedIn profile says he previously worked as news editor at Network World, which covers such things as wireless technologies and high-tech servers.
Regarding the news business as a whole, Bob is a strong advocate for allowing government agencies to publish legal ads on websites. Right now, a publication has to be in print to qualify for that kind of advertising.
Bob Brown told Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation that he’s pleased the town of Wellesley, while fulfilling the requirement to run legal notices in print newspapers, has recognized that “this law is outdated. It also has begun to post some legal notices on our online-only site,” he said.
The news business, overall, is in a state of drastic change. Gannett has turned the formerly local Wellesley Townsman over to web-only regional news. The home page prominently features a girls basketball game …between Marblehead and Ipswich!
In short, you won’t find much, if any, of the “hyperlocal” content the Swellesley entrepreneurs talk about.
The Swellesley’s articles range from feature stories on an upcoming “exotic car show” to Wellesley’s plans for an online workshop on diversity, equity and inclusion. Other news reports cover such things as Wellesley’s upcoming town election, slated for March 7, as well as the town’s search for a new fire chief and the police department’s planned use of drones.
As with many print publications, the Swellesley’s Letters To the Editor section is light on material. For the month of February, in fact, that section is filled with candidates’ campaign announcements along with various endorsements for the March town election.
At this point, The Swellesley Report seems a “mom-and-pop” operation that fills a void in the town. And all of its news articles focus on the town – and carry the bylines of either Bob or Deborah Brown.
Mark Pickering is a veteran of the local news business, having worked on the business desk and the opinion pages of the Boston Herald.
What is Contrarian Boston?
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.