The volleys between Milton and state officials over the MBTA Communities Act, which requires multifamily zoning around public transit stations in 177 cities and towns, have underscored the tension inherent in the law, and spotlighted the debate over local control, or lack thereof.
That tension was on display Wednesday night at a CommonWealth Beacon panel in Quincy as a state legislator who voted for the law – and feels it did not go far enough – clashed with a city council president who expressed reservations with the top-down nature of the state telling cities and towns what to do.
Ian Cain, who has served on the Quincy City Council for nearly a decade and in January became its president, noted that the city, which has four Red Line stations, had already grappled with adding housing units before the MBTA Communities Act passed in 2021.
Some cities and towns want the growth that the new zoning brings, while others do not. “Personally, I think that’s within their rights to have a problem with, to seek amendments and resolutions,” he said, while noting the MBTA remains an unreliable transit system.
Rep. Russell Holmes broke in, saying the new housing that the zoning allows will take years to get built, and public transit will improve, particularly now that the T has a proven leader in Phil Eng. “We need to get the people off the roads” and onto the trains, and transit-oriented development will help, he said, citing the housing crisis that was the impetus for the law.
“But it’s not that simple. Things have changed since Covid,” Cain shot back.
“Yes, people have decided they like being in the car by themselves,” Holmes said.
“Or they’ve decided that time is more valuable to them,” Cain said. “From my perspective, we’ve got issues here in this state where people don’t have reliable transit, they don’t have to go to work as often as they do, so they can pick and choose their schedules if they are so fortunate to do that.”
Cain said people want to protect the unique identity of their neighborhoods, including ones dominated by single-family homes.
But Holmes, a veteran of civic association meetings in the Boston neighborhoods he represents, said it’s expensive to build homes because developers are having to deal with multiple meetings with neighbors, and having to drag in their lawyers and project architects through all the reviews demanded by locals, when it could be allowed under more straightforward zoning.
“It’s all about, from my perspective, NIMBYism,” he said, referring to the acronym for Not in My Backyard.
Wu sees MBTA’s low-income fare as good first step
Mary Skelton Roberts, Boston’s representative on the MBTA board of directors, joined her colleagues in voting for a low-income fare on Thursday, but made it clear Mayor Michelle Wu would like to go further. Some thought Roberts might fight for eliminating T fares entirely, which she hinted at in an earlier meeting.
But Roberts indicated the mayor views the low-income fare as a good first step. “We also think this is part of what should be – sort of hopefully will be – moving toward making bus fare free on the system,” she said. “I’m just putting that out there as the Boston position.”
Playing the Charlie card
A familiar face greeted Massachusetts reporters at a press conference this week, absent for the most part from Massachusetts politics for the past 14 months: former governor and current NCAA president Charlie Baker.
Beneath the glare of TD Garden’s press conference lights, Attorney General Andrea Campbell on Thursday announced a new coalition aimed at educating young people about the risks of sports betting, which is illegal in the state for those under 21 years old. Baker, who has made national headlines in his new role for his support of paying student athletes, was a later addition to the roster and still the least in need of the sky-high dais.
Faced with Baker’s return to the Massachusetts political scene – not counting a closed-press reveal of his official portrait – reporters and even his fellow panelists were left to consider, what’s in a name? Or a title.
Does one go with the highest elected rank? Governor Baker it is. Highest rank of national profile? President Baker, then. Or, as one reporter boldly tried out, should you go so far as to call the state’s former top elected by his given name?
Campbell, for one, passed the ball to “our former governor and now President of the NCAA, Charlie Baker, who I will not call Charlie here.”