Contrarian Boston/Dec. 8, 2021

In today’s edition: The politics of housing | She’s back | Looming tragic milestone | Message for new nature preserve chief | About Contrarian Boston | Seeking contributors

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Mysterious delay in Baker’s plan for rail-station housing

Gov. Baker’s much touted plan to require suburban towns to give a green light to new homes and apartments near rail stations has stalled ten months after it was passed, the Globe reports.

Maybe it’s just bureaucratic inertia.

But the story misses the most obvious reason for the foot-dragging on what will inevitably be a controversial measure in Greater Boston’s NIMBY suburbs.

Until barely a week ago, Baker had been mulling a run for a third term. Now that he’s a free man, maybe he can devote his energies to getting this promising plan back on track.

Housing advocates’ bold State House ask

Speaking of housing: Thanks for the $600 million. Now double it.

That’s the message three of the state’ top affordable housing organizations has for legislative leaders on Beacon Hill, noting Massachusetts is now the third most expensive state for renters.

House and Senate leaders, having just divvied up $4 billion in federal relief money, now need to get back to work and pass a second bill by month’s end with another $600 million for affordable housing, contend the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, the Citizens Housing and the Citizens Housing and Planning Association.

Ok, that $600 million may sound like big bucks. But it’s just a little over a third of what housing advocates had asked for - and far less than even the $1 billion Baker had proposed.

With the median listing price for a home in Suffolk County now topping $710,000, that is oddly stingy.

She’s back: Dianne Wilkerson eyes political comeback

The last time many of us saw former State Sen. Diane Wilkerson, she was stuffing her bra with $100 bills in a videotape taken during an FBI bribery sting in 2008.

Federal prosecutors alleged Wilkerson, a Democrat, with accepting $23,500 in bribes in exchange for legislation to pave the way for a Roxbury nightclub.

Now Wilkerson is thinking of taking a page out the James Michael Curley playbook as she mulls a run for a state senate seat covering several Boston neighborhoods, including Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and the South End, according to the Dorchester Reporter.

By all accounts, Wilkerson has labored to rebuild her image since getting out of federal prison back in 2013, co-leading the Black Boston COVID-19 Coalition. And make no mistake, Wilkerson was a groundbreaking state senator, the first African American woman elected to the chamber and a strong champion for the “interests of the Black, Latino and LGBTQ communities,” GBH’s Phillip Martin notes in this piece.

Still, despite pleading guilty to eight counts of attempted extortion, Wilkerson maintains she was set up by the feds. It was all apparently one big misunderstanding.

With other potential candidates lining up for a crack at the seat, here’s a modest suggestion: give someone else a try.

Unbelievably tragic Covid milestone looms

Covid deaths in the United States could surpass the 1-million-mark in early 2022, the latest daily projections out of the University of Washington show.

Worse, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, IHME, are updating their numbers for the Omicron strain, so that projection could rise higher in the coming weeks.

The grim news comes as infections and deaths once again escalate in Massachusetts, with 3,270 new infections on Tuesday alone.

IHME’s national stats, which can be found here, combine Covid deaths with suspected deaths that have not been officially tallied yet, so it is not ironclad.

But if anything, we have been undercounting the massive damage caused by the pandemic, a habit that began under Trump.

Please, no more Covid shutdowns of nature reserves

That’s our message to John Judge, the new head of the Trustees of Reservations, a nonprofit that oversees 25,000 acres of parks and woodland across the state.

Just as people were desperate to get outdoors when Covid hit, the Trustees immediately shut down their extensive network of green space.

Whatever it was meant to accomplish, it backfired, with walkers, hikers, trail bikers, you name it, crowding into state parks and other places not on the list.

At a tough, intense time for so many people, it felt like nature bureaucracy run amok.

Here’s hoping Judge, formerly head of the Appalachian Mountain Club, will take a different approach if push comes to shove again.

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks 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.

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.

Thanks for reading and see you Friday.