Another black mark for Massachusetts State Police | Housing factory eyed for Boston area | Biden’s bizarre choice of advisors | Wu’s tax plan no slam dunk on Beacon Hill | From celebration to uncertainty at Celtics | Killing the messenger |
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End of the road? Wu’s controversial plan to hike tax rates on half-empty office buildings faces an uncertain future at the State House.
That would be Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposal to avert a looming revenue crunch by jacking up tax rates on already struggling downtown office buildings.
Now Wu did manage to push her plan through the City Council last month. However, given that three of its members all worked for the mayor previously, let’s just say that did not exactly require a deft political touch.
But the Boston mayor’s shortsighted quest, which has sparked a backlash from the business community, could be nearing the end of the road now that its fate has been placed in the hands of a mostly skeptical Beacon Hill.
House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka may be fellow Democrats, but they haven’t exactly been racing to review the divisive proposal from Boston’s uber progressive mayor.
With barely a month left in the legislative session, Wu’s controversial plan is only now being taken up by the state Legislature’s revenue committee, which will either hold a hearing or, barring that, take written testimony.
And Wu’s proposal is not likely to rise to the top of Beacon Hill’s already packed legislative agenda, with the state budget overdue and a multibillion-dollar housing bill yet to be completed.
Overall, Boston faces a looming, $1 billion-plus shortfall in tax revenue over the next few years amid the post-pandemic plunge in the value of office buildings and towers.
Without action of some sort, homeowners across the city will likely end up seeing their tax bills surge.
But Wu’s proposal to deal with the crisis has the look of attempting to squeeze water out of a stone given the battered state of the office market, where many older office buildings are half-empty amid the shift to remote work.
Nor has Boston’s mayor done herself any favors by refusing to make cuts to the city budget. Instead, she is barreling ahead with a more than 8 percent increase in spending.
By contrast, state legislative leaders and Gov. Maura Healey have been focused over the past two years on boosting the state’s economic competitiveness.
It’s not clear how Wu’s proposal meshes with that competitiveness agenda, given it would effectively hit the office sector, and by extension the business community of the state’s capital city, with a double digit increase in tax rates.
Meanwhile, business groups and other others are gearing up to press their case against Wu’s tax plan with state lawmakers.
“The Research Bureau will provide testimony to the state Legislature’s revenue committee and will continue to talk about alternatives to the tax proposal that could achieve the mayor’s goals without its negative consequences,” Marty Walz, interim president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, told Contrarian Boston.
The mayor has defended her plan, pointing out that, while commercial tax rates will go up, the actual tax bill on those properties will go down as their assessed value falls.
In a superficial way, that’s true. Yet behind those drops in value are declines in rental income, which come even as the cost of operating an office building, from loan payments to electric bills, has risen.
And with less money to cover their expenses, some downtown building owners are likely to wind up in foreclosure, creating yet another drag on efforts to revive struggling downtown Boston.
This just in: Feds commit millions to local effort aimed at cutting the cost of housing construction in Greater Boston
The cost of building new apartments and condos in Massachusetts is 20 percent higher than the national average.
It’s certainly one of a number of factors that have helped make rents and home prices, especially in the Boston area, some of the highest in the world.
So the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s announcement Tuesday morning that it has awarded more than $3 million to a prominent local planning organization is a big deal.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council plans to use the money to study building a modular housing factory in the Boston area.
MAPC worked with officials in Boston, Cambridge, Everett and Newton, all of which, except Everett, are some of the most expensive cities in which to buy or rent in the Boston area.
Jaw dropping revelation: Biden is relying heavily on his son Hunter for advice as he forges ahead with his sinking campaign
We almost spit out our morning coffee when read this one.
Per The New York Times: Biden and his family are circling the wagons in wake of Thursday’s catastrophic debate by the president.
And Biden is leaning on his son, Hunter, of all people, for advice, on what to do.
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