Weekly Transcript Round-Up: May 31, 2024
15 month old BPDA Home Rule Petition gets re-write & advances; details & headlines of 2nd hearing on Mayor Wu's CRE Tax Hike; the 2nd 'last budget hearing' of '24; and Meija gets back-to-back hearings
This week saw the last budget hearing of the year, action on the more than year-old home rule petition (HRP) to make changes to the Boston Planning & Development Agency, a second hearing on Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposal to raise taxes on commercial real estate over state-mandated limits, and two hearings for orders filed by Councilor At-Large Julia Meija as the end of budget hearings frees up the Council’s calendar.
THE SECOND ‘LAST BUDGET HEARING’ OF 2024
Last Thursday afternoon, after the last ‘last budget hearing’ of 2024 had wrapped up, a new last budget was filed: the Office of Participatory Budgeting (PB). On Tuesday morning at 10 AM PB got its hearing. While it only has a proposed budget of just over $2M, the issue looms large in the Council’s budget process because this is the program that Councilors tried to increase funding for last year by cutting Boston Police and Veterans’ budget. That fight was only one episode in what has been a rocky road for PB to actual implementation since it was created as part of a voter-approved expansion of City Council budget power in 2021 - read more in this op-ed by BPI ED Gregory Maynard. Councilors have continued to bring last year’s budget battle up, with District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson addressing it when Veterans had their budget hearing earlier this year and District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn tweeting this:
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At Tuesday’s hearing the Director of the Office of Participatroy Budgeting Renato Castello lays out what PB is and the timeline for different elements of implementation this his office has been working on - he is Speaker 2 and his testimony starts at the 4:15 mark in the transcript.
One thing that BPI was watching for in this hearing was how Councilor At-Large Henry Santana approached this issue. He was involved in writing the PB ordinance when he worked for the Wu administration at the Office of Civic Organizing. Councilor Santana’s question about who could participate in voting for PB projects revealed that children as young as 11 as well as undocumented people would be allowed to vote - he is Speaker 7 and his first round of questions start at the 30:39 mark in the transcript. That answer prompted several questions from Councilor Flynn about children voting on PB proposals at the hearing - he is Speaker 3 and the first question is at the 1:53:50 mark in the transcript - and a letter from the Councilor that earned this headline from the Boston Herald: “Boston city councilor slams mayor’s ‘tone-deaf’ plan to give 11-year-old children budgetary voting power.”
Read more about the budget hearing from the Better Budget Alliance, who followed it on their twitter feed. BBA is a coalition of advocates who have been working on increasing the budget allocation for PB.
BPDA HOME RULE PETITION EDITED & VOTED OUT OF COMMITTEE
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Back in January 2024 state legislators on the Joint Committee for Community Development and Small Businesses heard testimony on a home rule petition that had been passed by the Boston City Council back in February 2023 - more than a year previous. That home rule petition was part of Mayor Michelle Wu’s early 2023 push to reform the Boston Planning & Development Agency, which had three elements:
The failed attempt to get the BPDA board to adopt a set of reforms;
The successful attempt to get the Boston City Council to pass this home rule petition, which deals with legal issues at BPDA and allows agency employees to buy into Boston’s pension system;
An executive order to create the still-shadowy ‘Planning Advisory Council’ whose job and work product remains unclear despite probing by Council in this year’s budget hearings.
On Joint Rule 10 day, when bills are either voted out of committee to continue on the legislative process or be killed, the BPDA Home Rule Petition was punted to May. After being extended again in May, this week there was finally action on the bill with a very mild re-write and the home rule petition was voted out of Joint Committee for Community Development and Small Businesses and sent to the House Ways & Means Committee. That means the BPDA home rule petition is now in a position to be passed as part of the legislature’s end-of-fiscal-year push in June and July.
The Wu administration has indicated they will proceed with moving BPDA employees over to the City of Boston on July 1 whether or not this home rule petition passes. The passage would however ease those employees transition by allowing them to buy into the City’s pension system.
Follow its progress under its new bill number - the home rule petition was H.4065 and now is H.4676.
SECOND HEARING ON MAYOR WU’S TAX HIKE HOME RULE
While there was forward progress on the BPDA home rule petition’s on Beacon Hill this week, at the same time a different home rule petition still in Boston City Hall seemed to be making less progress. In an first for the 24-25 Council term a second hearing was held on a docket item: Mayor Wu’s home rule petition to allow Boston to go over state-mandated limits to increase taxes on commercial real estate. Keep reading for how Councilors and administration officials reacted to a new analysis that casts doubt on the tax hike’s effectiveness, and a look at press coverage of the hearing.
When BPI previewed this hearing yesterday we highlighted the major change since the first hearing, an analysis of the tax hike’s impact from Daniel Swift, a principal at Ryan LLC, a tax consultancy. Here is how Swift described his findings at yesterday’s hearing - he is Speaker 30 and his testimony starts at the 2:01:06 mark in the transcript:
The underlying problem here is a decline in commercial assessed value, and this tax shift or additional tax shift will only further that decline and result in far greater burden on the residential class.
Swift’s conclusions are in line with what BPI expected an expert analysis of Mayor Wu’s home rule petition to find. As BPI’s report back in February found, remote work is upending the commercial real estate sector and property values in that sector are falling.
The City of Boston’s Commissioner of Assessing Nicholas Ariniello agreed with the broad conclusions of BPI’s report and Swift’s analysis, saying - Commissioner Ariniello is Speaker 18 and this comes during his testimony that starts at the 2:18:02 mark in the transcript:
I think the reason for this proposal is a concern of what's happened during the pandemic and kind of the impact that it's had on our economy. And that that's not just an office space issue. That impacts ground floor retail. It impacts neighborhood businesses. It impacts all the small businesses that we were talking about.
Commissioner Arinello disagreed with Swift’s specific conclusions however - he is Speaker 18 and this comment comes at the 2:43:32 mark in the transcript:
I very much appreciate the position that Attorney Swift is coming from, but I do not in any way envision that this is going to lead to that level of property value loss, if any, honestly.
The disagreement between Commissioner Ariniello and Swift led to two exchanges between the two men over residential tax numbers, at the 3:44:57 mark and the 4:15:47 mark in the transcript.
Here were the headlines from the hearing:
Boston Business Journal’s headline - City Council looks for options besides Wu property-tax plan - and lede:
Boston city councilors made one thing clear in a hearing Thursday on Mayor Michelle Wu’s property-tax plan: They want to find a way to limit residential-tax hikes that minimizes the added tax burden on businesses.
Boston Herald’s headline - Clash over Boston mayor’s move to hike commercial tax rates - and lede:
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu directed neighborhood liaisons to reach out to residents as part of a last-ditch effort to stack a Thursday City Council hearing with positive testimony for her controversial proposal to increase commercial tax rates.
Boston Globe’s headline - ‘I’m not sure people are actually paying attention’: Wu struggles to rally popular support for property tax push - and lede:
In her quest to get input on Mayor Michelle Wu’s property tax plan, City Councilor Gabriela “Gigi” Coletta Zapata has sought opinions from across the spectrum — from the Wu administration to fiscal watchdogs, real estate and development groups, unions, and local affordable housing advocates.
But one critical group has been harder to reach: workaday taxpayers.
MassLive’s headline - ‘Irreparable harm:’ Future of Boston commercial tax hike proposal uncertain - and lede:
A proposal to raise commercial property taxes in Boston is continuing to receive heavy debate as the city searches desperately for ways to lower housing costs for residents.
COUNCILOR MEIJA GETS HEARINGS ON INSPECTOR GENERAL ORDINANCE AND DISCRIMINATION HEARING ORDER
This past Wednesday did not have a regularly scheduled Council meeting - instead it featured two hearings, both for dockets submitted by Councilor At-Large Julia Meija:
At 10 AM the Committee on Post-Audit: Government Accountability, and Transparency held “a hearing to audit the City of Boston's hiring, firing and promotion policies, practices and procedures.” This hearing had two panels, first one for Boston Public Schools and then a second one for Boston Police Department. With several lawsuits having recently been filed by administrators of color against BPS alleging discrimination - including one filed the same day this hearing was held - this hearing was a good primer on the broad issues facing the district. Here is the link to the transcript of that meeting.
At 2 PM the Committee on Government Operations on Councilor Meija’s ordinance to create an office of Inspector General. This proposal was originally made by then-District 4 City Councilor & Council President Andrea Campbell back in 2019 following a pair of corruption cases in Boston city government. Wednesday’s hearing had a star-studded cast come out to testify: MA State Auditor Diana DiZoglio; former Boston City Councilor and revered civic leader Larry DiCara; the City of Philadelphia’s Inspector General Alex DeSantis; and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro. Here is the link to the transcript of that meeting.
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