04.28.2022

Former Red Sox investor striking out on Balsams’ restoration | Auditor Bump’s mysterious warning | Baker’s secret weapon in housing spat | Climate change purity contest | About Contrarian Boston

State House showdown looms over ‘rent control lite’

To call these bills controversial would be an understatement.

The day of decision is nearing for legislative proposals that would cap rents, give nonprofit housing developers a boost in bidding on properties in a cutthroat market, and slap fees on luxury condo and home sales.

The deadline for the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing to either advance the bills in question, or send them off to die in study committees, is fast approaching on May 9th. One final extension is also possible, though the clock is ticking on the legislative session.

This year has produced a bumper crop of hot-button housing proposals, with frustration over surging rents and soaring prices driving the legislative action.

Interestingly, it is the rather sleeping sounding TOPA, or Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, that is the main target right now of landlord groups, likely because it has the best chance of passing.

While tenants would get a chance to buy their buildings when they hit the market, they would also be able to also team up with a nonprofit housing developer, who would then take over and buy the property. And that, arguably, is the real play here with TOPA, dubbed ‘rent control lite’ by one prominent supporter.

Community development corporations and other nonprofits have found themselves outgunned in a hyper-inflated housing market where cash is king and flipping rental properties is the order of the day.

But the new law could also tie up transaction for months, driving off other buyers in the process, with SPOA, the small landlords’ association, labeling TOPA a “silent threat.”

Stay tuned.

Real deal or just hype? Balsams Resort savior still spinning wheels

That would be Les Otten, who built and later lost a ski resort empire under a mountain of debt and who is now seeking “redemption,” or so we were told by the Globe in a glowing piece back in December, as he attempts to revive the long-shuttered North Country resort.

That piece, as we noted here a few months back, rather oddly left out a key bit of context: Otten was part of the original investment group led by John Henry that bought the Red Sox, and, of course, as we all know, Henry now also owns The Boston Globe.

The Globe story also hailed a supposed financing breakthrough and predicted that Otten might even launch the renovation and revamp of the historic 19th-century resort property as early as March after seven years of proposals and deals that went nowhere.

Fast forward to the end of April, and there’s no groundbreaking in sight. Meanwhile, New Hampshire lawmakers have refused to pony up $4.1 million to repair a road between the resort and its golf course, a request that comes atop of tens of millions in prospective public subsidies Otten and project supporters have already wrangled.

A representative for Otten – who was reportedly away at financing meetings – told lawmakers at the hearing on the request that the roadwork is “key piece of the puzzle,” according to InDepthNH, an independent news site.

All of which is rather strange since we were given to believe the project’s financing was all but a done deal. Apparently, that’s not the case, and we can’t say we’re shocked.

Not enlightening: Candidate event features stultifying debate on how to combat climate change

WBUR’s climate forum devolved into a dreary purity test between the two progressive candidates on who has the most environmentally pure and activist-approved agenda.

Both Republican candidates for governor opted not to attend the Wednesday event, leaving the stage to the two Dems in the field, Attorney General Maura Healey and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz.

The result was predictable, with lots of talk about wind, solar and storage – the modern-day version of mom and apple pie - while avoiding or simply ignoring, other, trickier questions and issues on the historic transition ahead.

No, we are not talking about debating climate change, but rather how we get to a decarbonized electric sector and an emissions free economy.

Along those lines, does it make sense to start banning natural gas hookups in towns across Massachusetts, when the Biden administration is pumping billions into research on green hydrogen?

Should we truly just give up on Canadian hydro, with a key transmission line in Maine blocked by a questionable coalition of environmental groups and fossil fuel companies?

And you can forget about any discussion of nuclear energy, which very definitely won’t be happening again in Massachusetts after being demonized for decades, despite new advances in the realm of small reactors.

Faced with a climate in crisis, candidates for governor, whatever their party affiliation, should be at least open to debating an all of the above strategy, rather than bowing to an ideological consensus on what is ultimately an issue of technology and science.

State auditor issues cryptic warning to voters

Suzanne Bump is wrapping up 12 years as the state’s chief watchdog. And as Bump gets ready to head out the door, she has some advice to voters as they look at the three candidates jockeying to become her successor as state auditor.

However, while Bump has clearly got some concerns about one or more of the candidates, she’s not naming names.

“I think the public is best served by a candidate who sees audits as tools to make government work better, rather than as weapons to bring down a person or an agency,” Bump told Contrarian Boston.

So exactly which candidate – or candidate – has Bump fretting about his or her ability to use the powers of the auditor’s office impartially?

Is it State Sen. Diana DiZoglio? The Methuen Democrat has vowed to audit the Legislature on its practice of forcing young staffers, after suffering from sexual harassment or other forms of abuse, to sign confidentiality agreements to get payouts - something DiZoglio says she once experienced.

Bump has dismissed DiZoglio’s plan, arguing convincingly the auditor does not have the legal authority to audit the Legislature.

Is it fellow Democrat and former state transportation official Chris Dempsey, who has pledged to audit the State Police in the wake of the overtime pay scandal?

Or is it Anthony Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, who has taken Bump to task over not meeting her quota of audits and has argued a Republican in the watchdog office would be a counterbalance to likely Democratic control, come fall, of both the governor’s office and the Legislature?

Bump wasn’t dishing on any of her would-be successors, so we can only speculate.

“This is the least political position in state government,” said Bump, a Democrat. “I have advised the public to think about the philosophy and goals and values that are being espoused by the auditor candidates. I wouldn’t want to see that credibility squandered.”

Can a 40-year-old executive order save Baker’s sputtering housing campaign?

Who knows, but the governor right now can use all the help he can get right now on the housing front.

Suburban officials are throwing a fit over the new Housing Choice law designed to spur construction of more than 200,000 condos and apartments, saying the loss of grant money from two or three modest state grant programs would not be a big deal.

Digging through the legal archives, Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, has come across a 1982 executive order by then Gov. Ed King.

The order, still on the books, gives the governor the power to put a hold on all manner of development-related grants to cities and towns “that are determined to be unreasonably restrictive of new housing growth,” Kanson-Benanav said.

That means cities and towns could wind up blocked from a whole array of grant programs, not just two or three.

And maybe, just maybe, then some of these towns will reconsider their stance.

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.