THE BOSTON MUNICIPAL RESEARCH BUREAU has long been considered a watchdog that keeps a close eye on the money coming in and out of City Hall. But its own leader quietly slipped out the back door last fall.

Pam Kocher, who took the reins as head of the business-backed nonprofit in 2019, left in November with no public announcement from the group. Kocher maintained a much lower profile than her predecessor, Sam Tyler, who served for 36 years, and her exit was fully in keeping with that.

As a search gets underway for a new leader, the group – founded during the James Michael Curley era of Boston politics – faces some competition. Two Democratic political consultants have started the Boston Policy Institute, a nonprofit billing itself as a think tank focused on local municipal issues. “The Boston Municipal Research Bureau has been around for almost 100 years now,” said Greg Maynard, a co-founder of the new organization. “We think that there’s a real need for more voices and better public conversation.”

Maynard, who worked for John Connolly and Dan Conley in the 2013 Boston mayoral race, is launching the organization with Joe Caiazzo, who worked on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and Joe Kennedy III’s run against Ed Markey. The nonprofit isn’t disclosing its donors.

As Maynard and Caiazzo were getting their effort off the ground last fall, Kocher, who was the Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s first woman president and steered it through the pandemic, left her post.

Marty Walz, a former Boston state representative and former CEO of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, stepped in as interim president in November. She is not expected to be a candidate for the permanent job, which comes with a six-figure salary. The most recently available tax filings, from 2021, had the salary at $160,550.

All this is happening amid economic uncertainty, as the city’s building boom has appeared to slow, and commercial buildings are dropping in value, with huge implications for a city heavily reliant on property tax revenue. The members of the nonprofit’s board of directors hail from every major sector of the city’s economy, from real estate to higher education and banking. 

Kocher’s note to members announcing her departure offered no reason for her exit or indication of where she was headed next. Kocher did not respond to a request for comment.

Who’s missing? The press release heralding the first delivery of electricity from the still-under-construction wind farm called Vineyard Wind included quotes from a whopping 12 politicians, ranging from Gov. Maura Healey to top legislative leaders to rank-and-file lawmakers on the Cape and South Coast to the mayor of New Bedford. But one pol was noticeable by his absence – Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the Senate chair of the Legislature’s Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee. Barrett, who helps write the rules governing the offshore wind industry, said he turned down an offer from the wind farm’s developers to provide a quote. “I wish ‘em well and am delighted with their success, but [I] don’t do PR for just about nobody, nosiree,” he texted.

Divisions only grow over January 6 attack on Capitol

With the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol approaching, pollsters have been busy checking how Americans view that day. The surveys come with trials still ongoing for some of the hundreds of people facing criminal charges in connection with the riot and as Donald Trump challenges rulings from Colorado and Maine that he is constitutionally barred from appearing on their ballots in 2024 because of his role in an insurrection.

The polls put to rest any thought that a little distance from that day might generate something approaching consensus on how Americans think about the events. Indeed, time appears to have had the opposite effect. 

Trump’s relentless efforts to portray the rioters not as insurrectionists, but as patriots trying to do the right thing, seems to be registering with a big chunk of Americans, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll. Only 48 percent of voters now say the rioters were “criminals,” a striking drop from the 70 percent who said so in a Suffolk poll in the weeks just after the Capitol attack. 

Meanwhile, a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 25 percent of Americans think the FBI “definitely” or “probably” played a role in instigating the attack on the Capitol.