Wu’s homeownership campaign | Healey delivers knockout blow | Not your typical suburban development spat | About Contrarian Boston |
Pandemic blues? State watchdog fingers Covid delays as audits lag
Oversight of state government in Massachusetts, where corruption scandals and controversies are never in short supply, took a hit over the past two years.
Audits of state agencies in Massachusetts, already lagging before Covid, have slipped further behind as the pandemic made it harder to complete audits, with staff at agencies under review not in the offices where records were kept, among other things, according to State Auditor Suzanne Bump.
In an interview with Contrarian Boston, Bump reported that her office has not completed audits of 68 state agencies within the required three-year period, or roughly 30 percent of the total. That’s compared to mid-2019, when the state government watchdog was behind schedule on audits of 51 of the state’s more than 200 agencies, CommonWealth Magazine reported at the time.
Seizing upon the delays, Anthony Amore, who, armed with Gov. Charlie Baker’s endorsement, is running for state auditor as a Republican, has pledged, if elected, to conduct an audit of the auditor’s office.
“The first step would be to determine why aren’t these audits happening” in the required time “and what is wrong with the auditor’s office,” Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, told Contrarian Boston. “You have to get your house in order first.”
However, Bump, who will be stepping down in January fall after 12 years in office, said the struggles the auditor’s office has had reviewing all state agencies within the required three years predates her time in office and likely goes back decades.
Moreover, there are a number of factors behind the problem, which Covid delays have apparently only compounded.
Finding experienced auditors willing to work for a state government paycheck is constantly a challenge, even after some upgrades in that area, with fierce competition from the private sector, said Bump, who has won a number of awards during her tenure, including the Excellence in Government Leadership Award by the Association of Government Accountants (AGA). The MBTA and UMass system also pay better.
“I challenge you to find an experienced auditor who wants to work for state wages,” said Bump, a Democrat. “It isn’t for lack of trying.”
Bump said she has also pushed for legislation that would tighten the time frame for state agencies to respond to document requests, while also extending the timeline for auditing some agencies from three years to five years, to provide more flexibility.
That legislation, filed a couple years ago, is still pending on Beacon Hill.
File under: Systemic issues.
Governor’s race: Lights out for Sonia Chang-Díaz?
If there was any major union endorsement the state senator and progressive favorite might have had a chance of snagging, it was this one.
Instead, it was Attorney General Maura Healey, the front-runner in the Democratic primary and frankly, the governor’s race as a whole, who snagged the blessing of the SEIU Massachusetts State Council.
The council is made up of six unions with 115,000 workers, including janitors, social workers, and hospital and nursing home staff, among others.
The labor endorsement is the latest for Healey, who previously won the backing of Teamsters Local 25 and government employee unions, the Globe reports.
Healey now leads Chang-Díaz by a whopping 45 points, according to a new UMass Lowell poll.
Building equity: Wu pushes affordable homeownership
Fewer than a thousand. That’s how many subsidized condos and townhomes, sold at below market prices, hit the market in Boston over the past eight years.
Looking to target that shortage, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced plans on Tuesday to spend $106 million in federal relief money and city funds to boost affordable homeownership opportunities across the city.
There is little on the market right now in the key $160,000-to-$300,000 price range, forcing working- and middle-class families to look for more affordable opportunities beyond Boston in Brockton and other Gateway Cities, housing advocates say.
The money will be used to boost an affordable mortgage and down payment program and “accelerate” the development of new affordable condos and the like, with 312 new income-restricted units already in the pipeline across 19 developments, according to city officials.
Boston homeownership rate lags – by a lot
Here’s a pretty telling stat we lifted from the mayor’s announcement – see above – of $106 million to boost homeownership in Boston.
Let’s just say homeownership in the city definitely could use a boost, with just 35 percent of Boston residents owning their own homes.
That’s just a little more than half the overall state rate of 62 percent.
Broken down by race and ethnicity, 44 percent of White households in Boston are homeowners, “compared to 31 percent of Black or African American households, 30 percent of Asian or Pacific Islander households, and 17 percent of Hispanic or Latinx households,” city officials note.
Not your typical gripe about building heights
That would be the push by Weymouth business owners for a bit more height as the town looks at plans to redevelop Jackson Square.
Business owner Joe Gratta told the Patriot Ledger new buildings should be able to go up at least four stories. Under zoning rules proposed by town officials, new development in some parts of the square would be capped at 1 ½ to 2 ½ stories.
"The zoning is meant to be a tool to allow for the area to redevelop. It's not supposed to be limiting in preventing things from happening," Gratta told the paper. "We’re trying to enable real investment in this area."
Quick hits:
No dice: MGM can’t put its name on Springfield convention center: “MGM will keep running MassMutual Center arena, find a new name for it” Masslive
Cushman & Wakefield on hot seat: “Donald Trump's longtime appraisers, Cushman & Wakefield, ordered to obey NY AG Letitia James' subpoenas” Business Insider
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
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 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 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.