In Boston, labor and business together

Aerial view of Downtown Boston, 2015

— Photo by Nick Allen 

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Kim Janey, the president of the Boston City Council, will become The Hub’s acting mayor as Mayor Marty Walsh heads off to become Joe Biden’s labor secretary. It’s unclear whether she’ll actually run for the job.

I hope not, since Ms. Janey seems more interested in ethnic identity and appealing to certain neighborhood politics than with  the overall state of the city. She also seems to have little knowledge of, or respect for, business. That Marty Walsh and his predecessor, Tom Menino, both standard liberal Democrats, understood that nurturing a vibrant business climate was essential in paying for municipal programs explains some of Boston’s stunning prosperity in recent decades.

As Jon Chesto wrote in The Boston Globe, “Walsh knew what every big-city mayor understands: Success depends heavily on a thriving business community. Boston’s budget is particularly reliant on a strong haul of commercial property taxes, a steady stream that has continued to earn the city high marks from two bond-rating agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic.’’ When a city’s bond rating falls, its interest costs – and often its taxes -- go up. Mr. Chesto noted:  “progressivism often gives way to pragmatism when you have to run a city as large and as dynamic as Boston.’’

To read Mr. Chesto’s article, please hit this link.

Whoa, a U.S. labor secretary who will be pro-labor instead of pro-plutocrat (the case under the gangster who left the Oval Office Jan. 20)!  

Mr. Walsh used to run the Boston Building Trades, among other union positions, before he became mayor. He understands the needs of working people. But he also understands business. Yes, you can be pro-labor and pro-business. Indeed, such a mating is the best for the long-term health of the economy.

Making local government work

Boston’s City Hall, opened in 1968 and whose Brutalist architecture remains hated by many.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

‘’Those cynical about government’s capacity to help people would do well to watch famed documentary-film maker Fred Wiseman’s new movie, City Hall, about municipal government in Boston. That government, now ably led  by Mayor Marty Walsh, as it was before him  by Tom Menino, has been a fine example of city officials who listen to all parts of the vastly diverse population that it’s charged with serving.

The film,  sometimes tedious, sometimes fascinating, shows city employees at all levels doing their often difficult and frustrating jobs with dedication. And the higher-ups don’t sugar-coat the city’s (one of America’s wealthiest) racial, socio-economic and other disparities while providing  specific ways to address them.

There’s a moving segment with Mayor Walsh, in front of a veterans group, discussing his past struggles with alcoholism. He’s not particularly articulate but he’s very open.

As for the partisan  remarks in the film, Mr. Wiseman says:

"City Hall is an anti-Trump film because the mayor and the people who work for him believe in democratic norms. They represent everything Donald Trump doesn't stand for." 

To address affordable-housing issue, fix zoning

Unaffordable (except for the truly rich) housing on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Officials in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and elsewhere are calling for a big push to expand that rather nebulous thing called “affordable housing.’’ Probably the most dramatic set of proposals in New England comes from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who presides over a city in the middle of a metro area whose tech, health-care and financial-services companies have brought great wealth but have also driven up further what have long been among America’s highest living costs.

Mr. Walsh has vowed to commit $500 million over five years to address the city’s affordable-housing crisis. That would necessitate, among other things, the sale of a parking garage and implementing a real-estate transfer tax.

The mayor is also pressing major companies and foundations to consider pooling some money — perhaps as much as $100 million — to help finance affordable housing in Boston. If this actually happens, Boston would apparently become the first East Coast city to do something like what’s happening on the West Coast, where tech companies are funding some big housing programs to address some of the cost challenges they created.

Still, isn’t having rich companies, with highly paid workers, better than having poor ones? As always, each success presents new problems.

Over the long run, the affordable-housing issue will be most effectively addressed through changes in zoning laws, especially in the suburbs, that have long discouraged mixed-used neighborhoods (commercial/residential) and multi-family housing. “Snob zoning,’’ which sets high per-residence minimum acreage, has, in particular, removed a lot of land from possible new-housing construction. But those who live on snob zoning lots have much more political clout than people searching for a place to live that they can afford. And zoning is mostly a local power.

Anyway, certain changes could dramatically increase the supply of less expensive housing, reducing the price pressure. That would include a slowing population growth, making housing more of a buyers’ market.

Boston mayor complains about dearth of state funding for city's schools

Plaque commemorating the first site, on School Street. of the Boston Latin School, the most prestigious public school in Boston and, founded in 1635, the oldest public school in America.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told the New England Council  on Monday that his city is in a “crisis” because the state has been failing to address longstanding shortages of state funding for local schools. And he said he disappointed in the amount of aid proposed by Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican with whom the Democratic mayor has generally had friendly  political relations.

“One of our biggest fiscal challenges that we can’t wait to solve is our declining and underfunded state aid. We have issues there.''

The city says: “State aid has been reduced substantially over the course of the last two recessions. Since FY02, net state aid (defined as state aid revenues less state assessments) to the City has been reduced by over $252 million or 59%. The City lost approximately $79 million between FY03 {fiscal 2003} and FY05, gained approximately $16 million between FY06 and FY08.''

To read more, please hit this link.

A city for the middle class?

Long Island, in Boston Harbor.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Boston Mayor Marty  Walsh promised at his second inauguration last Monday that he’d rebuild the city’s middle class.  “We can be the city that is world class because it works for the middle class,’’ he said. That’s an admirable if vague goal for a city that’s among the most prosperous in America but that also has increasing income inequality, as very highly compensated people at the top of the city’s tech and financial-services sectors get bigger and bigger slices of the economic pie. The new federal income-tax law will further widen the inequality. But Mr. Walsh can’t do much about it and he can sincerely celebrate Boston’s prosperity.

Mr. Walsh has shown himself an effective booster of the city’s reputation and so far, anyway, shows the potential of being as good a mayor as his immediate predecessor, Tom Menino, the “urban mechanic’’ who served from 1993 to 2014 and whom Mr. Walsh sees as his model. The current mayor said Mr. Menino “put us on the world stage as a national leader in health care, education, innovation, and the nitty-gritty of executing basic city services.” Of course, Boston was already a leader in those areas but there’s no doubt that Mr. Menino helped make “the Hub of the Universe’’ truly a world city.

Most interesting to me was the mayor’s promise to rebuild the Long Island Bridge and create on the Boston Harbor island a campus focused on substance-abuse treatment and especially on the opioid crisis. Perhaps it could become a center serving all of southern New England.

Limited territory

Print from about 1730.

Because Boston Mayor Marty Walsh resoundingly won re-election,  aided by the growing wealth of the city, some silly commentators are saying that he could have national ambitions. But no Boston mayor could go beyond being Massachusetts governor, and even that might be a stretch. Walsh is too liberal and some Americans would dislike his accent, too. Boston is a foreign city to many people west of the Hudson.

James P. Freeman: Boston's mayor should keep his ambitions within reality

Boston Mayor Martin ("Marty'') Walsh.

“Believe or not I’m walking on air
I never thought I could be so free
Flying away on a wing and a prayer, who could it be?
Believe it ornot it’s just me”

— Theme from The Greatest American Hero (“Believe It or Not”)

In homogeneously progressive Boston  pell-mell fantasy  can exceed partisan reality.

Appearing on WGBH's Greater Boston a day before Election Day to promote his book Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, former aide to the late U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, was getting a second thrill going up his leg. When asked who in the Democratic Party today is closest to the late senator (presumably in temperament and spirit), Matthews responded with understated hyperbole:  “Maybe the mayor here.”   

And on WCVB-TV’s Sunday political program OTR five days after Election Day, the usually rational Patrick Griffin was clearly under the influence of hypnosis. Or something else. When asked during the roundtable discussion who had the “best week,” the Republican strategist responded with overstated gusto. “Marty Walsh!” Where the mayor, newly reelected, is now poised and positioned to begin a “national narrative.” Well.

Cue the needle scratching over the record.

With little enthusiasm (just 27 percent voter turnout in the general election; 14 percent in the primary), little competition (his challenger lost by over 30 percentage points), and little in the way of transformational advancement during a single term (understandable after following the longest-serving Boston mayor, the late Thomas Menino (five terms, 1993-2014)), Boston Mayor Marty Walsh won re-election. And, summoning ghosts in machine politics, Walsh is — so say observers — now worthy of higher office in Massachusetts and, possibly, a position in national affairs. Play me a new song.

Walsh’s parochial progressivism may in fact appeal to those outside  Routes 128 and I-495. And that may even extend beyond, to the hills of Williamstown and West Stockbridge, if he were to seek statewide office. But it stops there. (Besides, he will have to wait until 2022 to run for governor, when, presumably, Charlie Baker will be leaving, with the state in better condition than when he found it, after serving two terms.)

Thrilling for conservatives, Walsh’s platitudinous progressive record will play like warped vinyl on the national stage. It will be punched through with holes, and its collection of Democratic covers will be relegated to the bargain bin of bad ideas. Like abandoned vinyl records. 

Still, it will be fun listening. (Will he reprise Hillary Clinton’s “Listening Tours”?)

How does Walsh propose to solve problems in the country that he hasn’t been able to solve in the city or the commonwealth? The playlist is long but exposes progressivism’s universal shortcomings:  affordable housing, income inequality, climate disruption, sanctuary cities (some calling for sanctuary states), and public education.

And his first forays into the national spotlight proved opportunistic and potentially disastrous: He essentially blamed his hyper-interest in Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid as a form of payola, a political payoff to honor the legacy of a commitment made by the Menino administration. No friend of the First Amendment, he essentially suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press during the monstrously overblown Free Speech rally last August on Boston Common, despite favorable media coverage. That won’t work on the National Mall.

In many regards, Walsh is instinctively progressive but he has learned lessons from his Massachusetts mentors.

If you can’t fix it, expand it. Former Gov. Deval Patrick proposed in 2013 massive growth of the state’s transportation system, while he ignored the troubled MBTA. If you can’t improve it, market it. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s persistent message in tweets and books is that ever more government is what is needed to make America great again.

Walsh hasn’t written any books, but that didn’t stop him in 2016 from actually issuing a suggested reading list to all Bostonians. Reading is not fundamental in Boston. The booklist directive reflects the new soft sell of progressive bullying:  from the cold engineering of public power to the warm “engagement” of like-minded citizens. For Walsh’s Boston (like Warren’s America) believes in diversity of all aspects of life. Except thought. Or political party.

Walsh can’t even claim one thing that Patrick and Warren could:  reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans. Because there are no Republicans in the elected part of Boston government.

City Hall is not a standard steppingstone to the Oval Office. Only two mayors have gone on to become president of the United States. The first was Grover Cleveland, former mayor of Buffalo, N.Y. (1882), who is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). And the last was Calvin Coolidge, former mayor of Northampton, Mass. (1910-1911), who, as vice president, became president in 1923, when President Warren Harding died of a heart attack. Coolidge is the only American to be a mayor, lieutenant governor (1916-1919, Massachusetts), governor (1919-1921, Massachusetts), vice president, and president. He might be the last.

Mayors fare better becoming senators. Today, they include Dianne Feinstein (San Francisco), Bernie Sanders (Burlington, Vt.) and Cory Booker (Newark, N.J.). There might be a practical explanation behind these histories.

As citymayors.com explains, “Americans, not surprisingly, have come to respect big-city mayors as managers, but not necessarily as custodians of important values.”

Over the last 30 years, Massachusetts politicians have had difficulty articulating ideas — exporting local values? — that resonate with voters outside of the commonwealth, into electoral victory for national office. Probably, their loud, turgid progressivism is incomprehensible to the nation. And moderates are undoubtedly viewed with suspicion — guilty-by-approximation to progressives. Walsh must be acutely aware of the performance of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (1980), Gov. Michael Dukakis (1988), the late Sen.  Paul Tsongas (1992), Sen. John Kerry (2004), and Gov. Mitt Romney (2012) in presidential contests. What will happen to Elizabeth Warren in 2020?

With or without Warren, Walsh may decide next decade, cape in hand, that he will be the Greatest American Hero to progressive causes. For now, though, those lofty aspirations are prematurely foolish.

Should America reject Warren and Walsh’s propulsive progressivism, the consolation prize might be membership in an exclusive club. They could join George McGovern, who won just one state in 1972. In a landslide, he swept Massachusetts. As they likely would too.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal and here, in newenglanddiary.com.