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Just enforcing the law or NIMBY defender? As AG, Healey helped Newton block a major new apartment project
Housing - and the dire need for more of it in every city, town and hamlet in Massachusetts - will be one of the biggest challenges Maura Healey will face as governor.
And to make a dent in the issue, Healey will have to stand up to efforts by suburban communities and urban neighborhoods alike to block new housing from getting built.
But while the governor-elect has been talking a good talk about ensuring the suburbs and other communities open their doors to new housing, in 2017 the AG’s office under Healey won a big victory in the state’s highest court effectively defending a NIMBY ploy by Newton officials.
In particular, Newton invoked a little used deed restriction to stop Cabot, Cabot & Forbes from building 350 rental units, more than 80 of them affordable, in the struggling Wells Avenue industrial park off Route 128.
Photo by Raphaël Biscaldi on Unsplash
Sure, the restriction limited development to one-story industrial buildings, but the so-called industrial park had never had any industrial uses, and Newton had waived the deed restriction 20 times to allow new offices, R&D, a hospital, and a grade school, among other uses.
But apparently rental housing - heaven forbid - was a bridge too far, with the project drawing the typical complaints about traffic, supposed school overcrowding, and even the sewage it would generate.
The developer, who proposed the project under the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law, offered $4 million to pay for infrastructure work, to no avail.
CC&F appealed the city’s refusal to budge on the deed restriction right up to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where the developer was trounced by AG Healey’s legal team.
The SJC ruling that Healey’s office won represented a “rare limitation on the broad scope of Massachusetts’ (Chapter 40B) affordable housing law,” one legal commentary on the decision noted.
So what, if anything, does this say about how Healey will deal with the NIMBY obstructionism that has strangled new housing construction and made Massachusetts one of the most expensive places to live on the planet?
Greg Reibman, president of the Charles River Regional Chamber, was a strong supporter of the CC&F project. That said, he thinks that Healey, in her role as AG, was simply enforcing the laws on the books, regardless of her personal opinions.
He pointed to Healey’s decision to strike down Brookline’s ban on natural gas hookups, which caused an uproar among some environmental activists. But Healey, as her office did with the earlier Newton housing battle, cited significant legal issues with the ban.
While the SJC’s 2017 decision killing the apartment project was “bitterly disappointing,” the “reality is I do like an attorney general who follows the law,” Reibman said.
Healey has also surrounded herself with strong housing advocates, including Rachel Heller, head of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association, who will serve on the governor-elect’s transition team, he noted.
Here’s hoping you are right, Greg.
Friends no more: Howie Carr turns his satiric powers on MassGOP’s leadership, angering some readers
The Boston Herald columnist was long one of the biggest cheerleaders of Jim Lyons, the MassGOP’s bombastic, embattled Trumpie chair.
The MassGOP chief helped engineer Trump’s endorsement of the hapless Geoff Diehl as the party’s candidate for governor.
Carr, a Trump supporter and inveterate mischief maker, delighted in it, inviting Lyons onto his radio program and citing him in columns.
Howie Carr at book signing (by John Harrison)
But with the MassGOP on the verge of electoral extinction after a catastrophic defeat in last month’s elections, Carr has turned on Lyons and the state party’s leadership with a vengeance.
For years, Carr fired off column after column ridiculing Gov. Charlie Baker for his moderate politics and criticism of Trump.
Now Carr is regularly lampooning Lyons, dubbing him Jim “Jones” Lyons after the 1970s Jonestown cult leader and calling on him to call it quits as party chair.
While Carr appears to have made the shift from ally to foe with ease, some of his readers are struggling to keep up.
“Howie can whine all he wants but he has become part of the problem,” wrote “onthecod” in the Herald’s comments section. “He's had no problem bashing baker for 7 years and then he turns on anyone who's not a RINO candidate.”
“Lyons, for all his faults which may warrant his removal, is trying to bring the party back to the right and for that Howie is destroying him. Ridiculous,” the disenchanted Howie fan fumed.
About 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.