Progressive union leaders and other community activists, including the Greater Boston Labor Council, jumped on board the Occupy protests that sprang up two years ago to decry growing economic inequality. What happens now when one of their allies occupies City Hall?
A lot of factors helped propel Marty Walsh ’s election to be Boston’s next mayor. One of them was the a sense that the plainspoken Dorchester rep and labor union official was a “regular guy” who understood the struggles of “working” people and would ensure that city government was on their side. Add the significant boost he got from minority voters following endorsements from a string of minority elected officials and you can make the case that Walsh will be sworn in next month with high expectations that he will take on the economic inequality that is leaving many lower-income Bostonians behind.
But does a mayor really have the power to turn such populist rhetoric to policy reality at the municipal level?
No, wrote Adam Davidson , host of NPR’s Planet Money, in last Sunday’s New York Times . Davidson says that for all Bill de Blasio ’s campaign talk about New York dividing into a tale of two cities, one of the very rich and one of the very poor, Gotham’s incoming mayor will at best be able to nibble around the edges of the global forces responsible for that trend. He says it’s a viewpoint that, for all their differences, is shared by de Blasio fan Benjamin Barber , author of If Mayors Ruled The World, and Harvard economist Ed Glaeser , author of The Triumph of the City .
“The distance between Bloomberg and de Blasio is not as great as the media – and the two men – have made out,” Barber tells Davidson. “Being a mayor is about solving problems and not about striking ideological poses.”
Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution says Davidson and the others are too quick to dismiss the power of mayors elected on platforms to combat inequality, a category that he says includes de Blasio as well as Walsh and incoming Seattle mayor Ed Murray . In a blog post on Friday , Berube, coauthor of a recent book on the growth of suburban poverty , points to three areas these new mayors could focus on.
First, he says, is bringing together business, education, and labor leaders to develop strategies for bringing young workers into the flow of the economies that drive their cities. That’s a challenge that Walsh would seem well-suited to take on. It came up most concretely during the campaign in talk about ways to connect — and help bolster the performance of — Madison Park Technical Vocational High School and Roxbury Community College . A partnership between the two institutions has already been established, though both have struggled under abysmal leadership, squandering enormous opportunity to boost the economic fortunes of young Bostonians. It’s an area in which there is room for plenty of more work by Boston’s new mayor. Indeed, education may be the most potent anti-inequality lever Walsh has , especially with mayoral control of schools (a power de Blasio will also have in New York). At its best, expanded educational opportunity and attainment can give residents the tools to compete in the increasingly globalized economy.
The other efforts mayors could pursue, says Berube, are increases in the regional minimum wage and aggressively promoting more housing construction, particularly the supply of affordable housing. The town of SeaTac , home to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, recently voted to increase the minimum wage for transportation and hospitality workers to $15 per hour, and there has been talk of a regional boost to the minimum wage by Washington, DC, and two neighboring Maryland counties. The Massachusetts Senate recently voted to boost the state’s minimum wage over three years from $8 to $11, but the House is taking a go-slow approach. The need for more affordable housing, meanwhile, was underscored today by yet another study, this one documenting the high cost of rental housing in Massachusetts.
There has been lots of concern expressed about whether Walsh’s labor loyalties will lead him to be unduly generous to municipal workers. There has been a conflating of progressive causes and the plight of the public-sector workforce. City workers, especially police, firefighters, and others toward the top of the municipal pay scale, aren’t the ones suffering the pains of growing inequality. Walsh’s work in other areas will be where his resolve to combat inequality will be judged.
–MICHAEL JONAS
CASINOS
Sunday’s Globe lays out the time and other details of gambling commission chairman Steve Crosby ’s troubling delays in disclosing that he was once a business partner with a land owner looking to cash in on a Everett casino proposed by gambling mogul Steve Wynn . (It turns out Crosby has connections to one of the principals in the proposed Suffolk Downs casino as well.) Meanwhile, this week the commission will be sorting out the Macau connections to Wynn’s Everett plan and MGM Springfield.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Despite the man-of-the-people persona he rode to victory, Boston Mayor-elect Marty Walsh will follow the well-worn path of other pols and grant special perks to big-dollar donors to his inauguration festivities. After roughing up Walsh during the election, the Herald ’s editorial page offers an olive branch to the new mayor.
The Herald finds Boston schools handing out millions in no-bid contracts to former teachers and principals.
Lawrence home prices rebound slightly, as do property tax rates, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Some Quincy officials are defending the city’s laws that allow hunters to shoot ducks and geese in waterfront parks within densely populated neighborhoods.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Proposed changes in IRS regulations governing political involvement of nonprofits could stifle advocacy actions , say groups from both sides of the ideological divide. A Wall Street Journal op-ed column paints the proposed regulations as a leftist power grab.
Two of the most powerful African Americans in Washington, President Obama and US Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, do not get along.
In the year following the Newtown school shooting, states with tough gun laws made their laws tougher, while states with lax gun laws weakened them .
ELECTIONS
Lawrence Mayor-elect Daniel Rivera sets up a website to accept resumes and ideas, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
In the Frank Addivinola versus Katherine Clark contest in the Fifth Congressional District, The MetroWest Daily News endorses the Melrose state senator.
EDUCATION
Catholic Academy in Lawrence fires two teachers who revealed that they had fallen in love and are having a child. The school says the teachers violated Catholic teachings but the couple, who are planning to get married, say they don’t know how they will handle the birth without health insurance, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Lynn elementary schools are running out of room, the Item reports.
Education officials urge parents and students to give a thank you note or card to teachers in lieu of a Christmas gift , pointing out that public school teachers are subject to the state ethics law, which prohibits gifts worth more than $50 and requires teachers to report the presents.
HEALTH CARE
Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health have determined a healthy diet can cost on average about $550 more per year , a burden on those who are more in need of healthy eating such as seniors on fixed income and low-income families.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Eastern states press midwestern factories and power plants to clean up their emissions.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies collected cell phone data for their investigations from wireless companies, the Washington Post reports. Data on their information dragnets will be released today by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey. Tech companies band together to seek limits on government surveillance, Time reports.
Although a two-year old state law increased penalties for men who pay for sex with women, its provisions continue to be little used by prosecutors and courts, the Globe reports .
A 20-year-old killed in a daytime shootout with Boston police on Saturday had a lengthy criminal record , which included a jail sentence he had just completed for a gun charge.
Victim advocates are calling on Cardinal Sean O’Malley to support legislation that would extend the statute of limitation for victims of childhood sexual abuse. Church officials said last year, when a more sweeping bill was pending, that such legislation could exposes church organizations to undue liability.
A brouhaha has unfolded over allegations that a private investigator hired by the defense in a Suffolk Superior Court murder trial improperly encouraged a would-be witness not to testify for the prosecution in the case.
MEDIA
Dan Kennedy points out a significant factual error in a Howie Carr column , then comes under attack for buying into the left-wing agenda.
Carolyn Ryan of the New York Times uses Twitter to tease an upcoming story and then sees that story come out first — in another newspaper, Politico reports.
