06.09.2022

Extreme MassGOP gubernatorial candidate ready to pocket big public subsidy | Newspaper chain Gannett’s twisted approach to charity | Healey’s tap dancing on rent control | About Contrarian Boston

Having your cake and eating it too: In quest for governor, Healey straddles the line on rent control

Attorney General Maura Healey, as she pushes ahead in her campaign for governor, sounded very much like a housing production hawk in her speech Tuesday to Greater Boston’s business elite.

Healey told members of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that she’s all about finding ways to build housing, from spurring construction of new apartments near T stations to easing problematic zoning restrictions.

But Healey, in comments later to reporters, also effectively endorsed proposals that would give Boston, Cambridge and Somerville the power to cap rents in their cities.

It’s an obvious contradiction, but one the Globe and other local media, for the most part, simply missed or ignored.

As developers, businesspeople and more than a few economists will tell you, trying to boost the construction of new housing while simultaneously rolling out rent control is a fool’s errand.

New construction of apartment towers and buildings has surged in the quarter century since voters put an end to rent control in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline.

Maybe it was all just one big coincidence, but that seems unlikely.

A good politician, Healey is trying to have it both ways.

On one hand, she said she opposes a “statewide” rent control mandate, which makes little sense in the current debate, since no one is proposing or even suggesting that.

Instead, Healey has effectively thrown her support behind efforts by Boston, Cambridge and Somerville to roll out their own versions of rent control, something all three cities would need the Legislature, and likely the governor as well, to sign off on.

 “Communities should be left to make their own decisions about that,” Healey told reporters after Tuesday’ event, per Banker & Tradesman.

The problem is, we are not talking about the locals in Lee deciding whether to build a new library or expand the recycling center’s hours. Rather, the rent control proposals state lawmakers are eyeing would let three cities where much of Greater Boston’s new housing is built decide to adopt new regulations that would seriously hinder or even shut down new rental construction.

If Healey is really serious about tackling our state’s outrageous housing costs, then she’ll need to explain why she believes rent control won’t kill construction of desperately needed apartments, condos and townhomes.

Wicked windfall: MassGOP gubernatorial candidate Diehl to rake in public campaign financing cash

Something is really wrong with this picture.

Trumpie Geoff Diehl, whose views are so extreme that campaign donors have shunned him, will be taking part in the state’s campaign financing program, giving him a direct line to hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars, the Globe reports.

At last count, Diehl has maybe $60,000 in his campaign account, a pathetic figure for a candidate who just won his party’s nomination for governor, albeit at the MassGOP’s wild and whacky confab a couple weeks ago in Springfield.

Adding insult to injury, Diehl will be able to tap into some of that money fairly quickly to try and finish off Wrentham businessman Chris Doughty, who has positioned himself as a more moderate alternative and will appear on the ballot in the Republican primary in September.

Footing the bill for Diehl – and senior campaign strategist Corey Lewandowski, for that matter – is probably not what liberal minded voters had in mind when they checked a box on their state tax returns donating $1 to the public campaign finance program.

So, the devotee of the president who did his best to lie, cheat, bully, and steal his way into another term, gets a big wet kiss from the taxpayers of Massachusetts.

What a travesty.

Another big Boston transit project hanging in the balance?

That would be an $850 million proposal to connect Blue Line commuters from the North Shore to the Red Line and the burgeoning biotech, medical and health care sectors in Boston and Cambridge.

The plan calls for extending the Blue Line 2,200 feet under Cambridge Street in downtown Boston, connecting it to the Red Line at Charles Street Station and MGH, as well as the burgeoning life sciences sector in Cambridge and Somerville.

But Richard Dimino, president and CEO of A Better City, worries the project, at the current pace of planning, may miss the boat when it comes to securing a piece of the bipartisan $1 trillion federal infrastructure plan.

Sure, state transportation officials grabbed some headlines last year by announcing a few million dollars for engineering studies and the like for the project, which has been kicking around in one form or another for years now.

But preliminary engineering documents won’t be ready until early next year. And given that states across the country have already submitted applications for the first round of federal infrastructure cash, the clock is ticking, Dimino told Contrarian Boston.

“We need to find a way to put some of these projects on steroids,” Dimino said. “I would hate it if Massachusetts was just watching the parade go by.”

Well, we were warned.

Charity begins at home: Amid shuttered papers and laid off journalists, Gannett Foundation gives away millions

We did a double take when we saw this story in the Patriot-Ledger, part of the fast-shrinking Gannett chain of local newspapers.

The foundation is giving away $2 million this year under an initiative called A Community Thrives. In fact, since 2017, this fine program has given out $17 million to a range of local nonprofits and causes around the country, such as an urban farm in New Jersey.

While the causes the foundation supports are certainly worthy, it comes as Gannett slashes and trashes local newspapers across the country, including here in Massachusetts.

Earlier this spring, Gannett announced plans to shutter 19 weeklies, while merging nine different papers into four, creating Frankenpapers like The Transcript & Journal, which combined the Somervile Journal with The Medford Transcript.

Gee, that $2 million could go a long way toward paying reporters’ meager salaries, or maybe saving a venerable weekly or two from the scrapheap.

Here’s a wonderful little quote from Mike Reed, Gannett’s CEO and chairman, who pocketed a hefty $767,000 bonus last year for all his fine work: “A Community Thrives further highlights Gannett’s mission to empower communities to thrive by not only telling their stories, but also providing support to those who need it most.”

What a swell guy.

Here’s thinking that all the reporters, editors, ad sales staff and delivery drivers Gannett has put out of business could also use some of the company’s charity dollars.

It’s not just Starbucks where baristas are unionizing

Java slingers at a number of locally owned shops are also joining the labor movement, The Cambridge Day reports.

There’s a union election going on at the 1369 Coffeehouse locations in Central and Inman squares. It follows union organizing drives at least 15 other locally-owned coffee shops over the past year in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, the Day reports.

The New England Joint Board of Unite Here is leading the charge, aided by an attitude, on part of coffee shop owners, that their baristas are “disposable” workers, Emma Delaney, an organizer for NEJB and a former coffeehouse employee, told the Cambridge news site.

Quick hits:

No more hall passes for BPS? Former school committee member - and education reformer - weighs in: “Boston families have waited long enough for better schools” Boston Globe

Not ready for prime time? Focused on minutiae, Jan. 6 committee misses bigger picture - and crisis: “The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It” David Brooks/New York Times

The never-ending scourge: “Opioid overdose deaths up by 9 percent last year” CommonWealth Magazine

Yes, sign us up! “Opinion Could a new political party defang radical politicians? Washington Post

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple of months 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.