Contrarian Boston/Dec. 1, 2021

In today’s edition: Baker’s puzzling vaccine passport | Build Back Better’s middle-class problem | Tax breaks for newspaper vultures | Eaton Vance deal’s red flags |About Contrarian Boston | Seeking contributors

In shocker, Baker won’t run after all

And we all thought Baker was just being coy when he kept putting off his decision on whether to run for a third term.

With Attorney General Maura Healey waiting in the wings, Baker’s indecision sparked speculation in the local press he was simply toying with his likely Democratic challenger.

How wrong we were. Turns out, Baker was really grappling with the decision, announcing Wednesday morning a run for a third term is off the table.

The decision instantly transforms the 2022 gubernatorial race and thrusts Healey, a rising progressive star, in the driver’s seat, should she choose to run.

Stay tuned.

Eaton Vance real estate deal sends very mixed signals

At first glance, Eaton Vance’s pending deal to move its headquarters to a tower under renovation off Post Office Square sounds like a shot in the arm for a downtown Boston office market still trying to find its bearings in the wake of the pandemic.

The financial services firm is close to signing a deal for a large but underdetermined amount of space at One Post Office Square, which is undergoing a $300 million overhaul, The Boston Globe reports.

The pending deal comes with available office space in downtown Boston topping 20 percent – a figure typically seen in the bottom of a sharp recession.

But read the story a little more closely, and some red flags quickly pop up.

Turns out Eaton Vance hasn’t determined how much space it will be taking, estimating it between 250,000 to 275,000 square feet.

That is a not an insignificant step down from the 325,000 square feet it currently leases at Don Chiofaro’s Two International Place. On the high end, we are talking about a drop of nearly 25 percent.

Then there is this telling detail – smack dab in the middle of the story - that casts the whole transaction in a somewhat different light again.

Guess who advises the real estate fund that owns Eaton Vance’s soon-to-be new home at One Post Office Square? Morgan Stanley, which announced in the fall of 2020 it would be acquiring Eaton Vance.

Dan Cataldo, Easton Vance’s chief administrative officer, told the Globe the financial services firm chose One Post Office “on the merits of the property.”

The tower was already on the firm’s “short-list” before Morgan Stanley’s deal for Eaton Vance was announced.

That may be true, but count me as skeptical.

With Omicor rising, Baker shuts door on vaccine mandate

Ok, what’s the point of a vaccine passport with no vax mandate to back it up?

That’s the big question in the wake of the governor’s announcement Tuesday that Massachusetts is working with 20 other states on a digital vaccine mandate.

At first glance, it looked as if Baker, a moderate Republican, was finally done pussyfooting around the die-hard anti-vaxxers who have hijacked the GOP. Finally, Gov. Commonsense was ready to roll out a vaccine mandate.

With Omicor having burst into the headlines, the timing seemed propitious.

That all too brief moment went poof when a Baker spokesperson rushed out a statement making clear the governor has absolutely, positively no plans to impose a “statewide so-called vaccine passport mandate.”

The use of “so-called” in reference to a potential vaccine mandate speaks volumes, for it is red meat for the antivaxxers and Trumpsters.

Any whiff or hint of a vaccine mandate should be absolutely verboten, Boston Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld contends, warning it would “further alienate” Baker “from conservative GOP voters who oppose government-mandated vaccine requirements.”

Given Baker’s decision not to run for a third term, why he still feels obliged to placate the cranks in the state GOP is a real puzzler.

It’s a marked departure on part of the ordinarily sensible governor.

Build Back Better’s risky political gamble

For a political party vulnerable to claims it is beholden to out-of-touch blue state elites, how is this a good look for Democrats?

Yes, the clock is ticking in Washington, D.C., with Democrats, among them U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, scrambling to resolve their differences and prevent President Biden’s Build Better plan from becoming Build Back Never, according to a report at GBH.

But simply passing the bill at this point is no guarantee Democrats will hold onto Congress in next year’s mid-term elections.

With all the endless hemming and hawing over the bill, the Democrats have managed to subtract a potentially popular middle-class program – free community college - while, amazingly, managing to add in a massive tax break for the extremely wealthy.

In fact, the single most expensive item in the entire, massively expensive $1.7 trillion bill is a provision to lift the cap on income tax deductions for state and local taxes from $10,000 to $80,000.

The lion’s share of this blue state tax giveaway would go to people who have been doing quite well for themselves in our increasingly lopsided economy, as Democrats are fond of pointing out. The savings average $1,300 for those pulling down between $254,000 and $366,000, rising to $4,600 for earners in the next bracket topping out at $867,000, the Globe reports.

And what about middle class families, the ones who are wondering how in the world they’ll pay for college for their kids and who could really use a break like free community college?

Well, they’ll get all of $20 back.

Definitely not the way to save local news

Speaking of Build Back Better, the massive federal spending bill’s ambitions extend to saving local news.

The sprawling plan includes $1.7 billion in subsidies for local news operations, which, on the face of it, sounds just dandy for someone who has worked for decades at papers in the Boston area.

Local news organizations, not just newspapers, but also websites and TV stations, would get $25,000 for each “locally focused” journalist on their payroll in the first year, and $14,000 each year for the next four after that, The New York Times reports.

But dig a little deeper, and some big problems quickly become apparent.

An indecent amount of that money will be going to the very same corporate chains – such as Gannett, owner of scores of local daily and weekly newspapers in Massachusetts, and Alden Capital, owner of the Boston Herald - that have been laying off reporters right and left and shuttering papers across the country.

The end game of these chains is pretty clear: to slowly wind down what they clearly believe is a dying business, all the while keeping shareholders and investors happy by extracting value and ruthlessly cutting jobs and costs.

This may delay the process, but it won’t reverse it.

Instead, how about a grant process open to everyone, including the growing number of independent news sites and operations started by reporters kicked to the curb by these chains?

Anything has got to be better than sending tens of millions of dollars to the likes of Gannett and Alden Capital.

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is all 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.

Contrarian Boston seeks contributors

Have a news tip? Is there an issue you would like to see explored? Interested in writing up a news item or short opinion piece? As Contrarian Boston gets on its feet, I would like to add more news and a wider range of commentary as well.

Intrigued? Drop me a line at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.