07.17.2024

No NPR, the debate over booting Biden isn’t “on ice” now | Wu faces make or break State House hearing on her controversial tax proposal | Beacon Hill politics snarl bid to boost housing production | Trump transformed by near death experience? | Tallying Contrarian Boston’s presidential poll results |

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Tit for tat? As prices and rents soar, State House feuding kills a proposal that could have boosted new housing development

Let’s just say House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka aren’t exactly the best of friends.

For a time it wasn’t even clear that the two could handle being in the same room together.

So did bad blood between the two legislative leaders and their minions doom a major housing-related infrastructure proposal on the South Shore, one that could have paved the way for thousands of new apartments, homes and condos?

That’s the question in the wake of the state Senate’s decision to give a cold shoulder to the House speaker’s $1 billion proposal aimed at boosting a stalled housing project in Weymouth, a town in his district.

Mariano’s proposal would have extended the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s service area to the South Shore town, enabling H2O-starved plans for thousands of new homes and apartments at the old South Weymouth Naval Air Station to move forward.

Rendering of the latest plan to redevelop the old South Weymouth Naval Air Station, now called Southfield

But the Senate’s decision to not to include Mariano’s proposal in its multibillion-dollar housing bill didn’t happen in a vacuum.

In fact, it came just a few weeks after the House released its own housing bill which conspicuously omitted a tax on homes worth more than $1 million. The so-called transfer fee just happened to be a favorite of a number of senators, with support from 28 out of the chamber’s 40 members, according to one source.

So was the Senate’s move to cut the House speaker’s proposal to extend MWRA service to Weymouth a retaliatory move? Was it, effectively, the Senate’s response to Mariano coming out against the tax on seven-figure home sales?

“It was not that transactional,” one Senate insider told Contrarian Boston.

Rather, Mariano’s decision to put the MWRA expansion in the House’s housing bill, while not including a transfer fee favored by some senators, was seen as an invitation to horse trade.

In particular, the House speaker was seen as setting up a bargaining position in which he would come around to support a high end tax, provided the Senate would give a green light to his MWRA extension to Weymouth.

Instead, the Senate released a housing bill that said no dice to Mariano’s supposed negotiation ploy, for it included neither the tax on seven-figure homes nor the MWRA extension.

In addition, some senators were uneasy about the prospect of spending $1 billion on infrastructure work in Mariano’s district, given, after all, that he is just one of 160 House members.

“We called his bluff,” the Senate insider said.

Maybe. Yet it wasn’t like the House speaker was pushing to blow a billion dollars on a “Ronald J. Mariano Institute for Public Policy,” or some other obvious pork barrel nonsense.

Rather, the MWRA extension was for a legitimate cause - plans for thousands of new housing units at an old military base that have been stalled for years.

And at this point, we can use every new home, apartment and condo we can get.

Clueless NPR: Network’s White House correspondent declares debate over replacing Biden “on ice” after Trump assassination attempt

That would be Tamara Keith.

In a segment that aired Monday morning, NPR’s political correspondents discussed how their coverage of the GOP’s presidential convention would change in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt.

So we almost fell over when Keith, NPR’s White House correspondent, said she wouldn’t be asking for opinions about whether Biden should step aside, declaring that discussion is now “on ice.”

Ok, the last time we checked, it was Trump, not Biden, who literally dodged a bullet.

So, who, pray tell, has decided that Biden’s fitness to continue serving in the nation’s highest office is now off limits?