One seemingly unlikely reason rents are going up | The Globe’s big blind spot when covering the Krafts’ soccer stadium plan | Nonprofit CEO and Healey pal’s staggering comp package | Former T chief eyes local comeback after forging national transportation empire |
Raking it in: Embattled nonprofit chief with ties to Healey takes home sky-high pay package
Remember that old saying, doing well by doing good?
Well let’s just say Elyse Cherry has given a whole new and rather unfortunate meaning to it.
The BlueHub Capital CEO popped up in the news recently, and for all for the wrong reasons, with State House bosses attempting to shield Cherry’s nonprofit from a deluge of lawsuits, per The Boston Globe.
This surely has been a major embarrassment for Gov. Maura Healey, for whom Cherry has raised loads of campaign cash.
But an even bigger controversy is to be found in Cherry’s outsized compensation package as head of a nonprofit that claims to save struggling homeowners from foreclosure, Contrarian Boston has learned.
Cherry’s total compensation for BlueHub and related ventures is decidedly more like that of a high-flying finance exec than a local nonprofit chief, according to IRS 990 forms reviewed by Contrarian Boston.
Cherry’s total comp crossed the $1 million mark 2022, the latest year available, including $320,000 in bonus and incentive payments.
That’s up from roughly 25 percent from 2018, when Cherry took home roughly $758,000 in total compensation - a number that was criticized at the time for being too high for a nonprofit chief.
A BlueHub Capital spokesperson defended the CEO’s comp package, noting BlueHub has $1.3 billion in assets under management and that executive pay is reviewed by a third party consultant.
For her part, Cherry goes back a long way with the governor, having served as a member of the governor’s campaign finance committee and having helped raise money for her for years going back to when Healey was state AG.
Healey also heaped praise on Cherry, a prominent LGBT activist, calling her a “trailblazer” in a Boston Business Journal profile.
Cherry, in turn, has contributed $1,000 - the maximum possible - to Healey’s campaign account, this year and in 2023, as well as in 2021.
But Cherry’s gold-plated compensation package - and her company’s quest for a legal shield from lawsuits by some of the homeowners it claims to have saved - has put the governor in a awkward position.
State House bosses tucked a seemingly obscure provision into a $4 billion state economic development bill that just passed, shielding Cherry’s Roxbury organization from consumer protection lawsuits, The Boston Globe reports.
BlueHub Capital has positioned itself as a savior of struggling homeowners facing foreclosure, buying their homes from the bank and then reselling them back to their owners.
But dozens of these homeowners who BlueHub claims to have rescued are now suing. They say they were never told the nonprofit would get a cut of the increase in the value of their homes over time, no small matter given what has happened with real estate values.
However, BlueHub paints a much different picture, saying that its foreclosure prevention program saves families an average of $734 per month in mortgage payments, and that families exit the program with an average of $150,000 in equity.
Healey hasn’t said what she’s going to do about the economic development bill or the provision in it that would provide a legal shield to BlueHub.
She could strike it from the bill, which, now that it has made headlines, seems likely.
For its part, BlueHub contends the legislation is needed to “ensure that foreclosure relief programs like BlueHub SUN remain accessible to families who are facing imminent danger of losing their homes.”
Still, one has to wonder what signals the governor or her aides were giving to state legislative leaders on the BlueHub proposal as the economic development bill was taking shape.
After all, these things just don’t miraculously appear out of nowhere - someone had to give it a green light.
Ready to take another swing: Having forged a private-sector transportation giant, a former MBTA chief eyes bid for the T’s multibillion-dollar commuter rail contract
Let’s just say it would be quite the comeback story.
James O’Leary was written off by local pundits back in 2014 after his firm lost the T’s then $2.68 billion commuter rail contract to Paris-based transportation giant Keolis.
Instead of packing it in, O’Leary, his son Paul, and COO Mike Mulhern, a former MBTA GM himself, went on to build a national transportation management empire from their headquarters in Boston’s Liberty Square.
Now O’Leary is eyeing a bid for the perpetually embattled transit authority’s commuter rail contract, with requests for proposals to potential bidders likely to go out early next year.
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