Red hot luxury condo market goes stone cold | Rebel teachers take on their union over anti-Semitic rhetoric | A sudden departure at MassDevelopment | Taxpayers group fights to save MCAS exam |
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A surprise but no shocker: Sudden exit of MassDevelopment CEO comes amid friction with state lawmakers over priorities
That would be Dan Rivera. The former mayor of Lawrence was appointed in 2020 by Gov. Charlie Baker, a close ally, to run the key agency, which oversees economic development projects across the state.
As Contrarian Boston first reported, Rivera, who earned $235,000 a year, is now leaving MassDevelopment, having submitted a letter of resignation on Friday.
The timing of Rivera’s decision to move on came as a surprise to some observers, with the holdover from the Baker administration having had his contract extended into 2026 back in December 2022 - a month before Gov. Maura Healey took office.
CommonWealth Fusion’s decision to set up shop at the old Devens army-base-turned-corporate-park was a major feather in Rivera’s cap, with the company doing groundbreaking work in nuclear fusion, noted state Sen. Jamie Eldridge.
Yet while Rivera gets high scores for spurring on economic development projects in old industrial cities across the state, tensions were also evident.
Rivera was not as engaged when it came to forging ahead with long-stymied efforts to build desperately needed new housing at Devens, long a contentious issue with the three towns that border the old base, Eldridge contends.
Two years ago, the MassDevelopment CEO stopped engaging in talks with officials from neighboring Harvard, Ayer and Shirley, Eldridge said.
“By the same token … there was a lot of frustration about the lack of engagement with legislators on the negotiations about building more housing,” Eldridge said.
Meanwhile, the Healey administration has made the state’s housing shortage one of its prime issues and has pushed for lifting a cap on the number of new units that can be built at Devens.
Still, if Rivera was reluctant to pour his time into convincing local officials to allow more housing at Devens, it would not be all that surprising.
Past campaigns by MassDevelopment to get required buy-in from the communities that surround Devens for more housing at the old base have been an exercise in futility.
A proposal by the quasi-government development agency in 2009 to turn the old Vicksburg Square barracks into 350 condo units went nowhere. Three years later, in 2012, voters in all three towns shot down a plan to convert the old barracks into 246 affordable apartments reserved for seniors and veterans.
Was there also friction between Rivera and his boss, Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao? Possibly, but who knows.
Contrarian Boston reached out to Rivera, who did not respond by our deadline.
Dan O’Connell, economic development chief under Deval Patrick, will now serve as MassDevelopment’s interim CEO.
O’Connell is a well-regarded figure with decades of experience in both state government and as a real estate executive, having served as Gov. Deval Patrick’s economic development chief.
File under: Silver linings.
Fed up: Critics of the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s bumbling foray into foreign policy plan protest at annual meeting
First there was the union’s statement in December accusing the U.S. government of complicity in the “genocidal assault on the people of Gaza and the intent to take over their territory.”
Then came a supposed anti-racism workshop in March, which drew complaints from a pair of Democratic state senators for its “anti-Israel and antisemitic political propaganda.”
Now the MTA’s leadership is back at it again.
At its annual meeting in Springfield on Saturday morning, the MTA plans to vote on a pair of contentious resolutions.
The first calls for the teachers union to “divest” from all investments tied to military support for Israel. As for the second, it offers up rambling diatribe about academic freedom, calling on the union to defend against attacks on the use of critical race theory in the classroom, among other things.
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