Municipal Government
The Download: Seeking middle ground on public workers
Gov. Deval Patrick is struggling with how to rein in municipal health care costs. Those costs are eating up city and town budgets, and most voters think public sector union […]
Turner done in by his own deeds and words
Chuck Turner was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday, and afterward, he repeated what he’s been saying all along about the case against him – he’s innocent, he was […]
The Download: Term limits
Massachusetts voters narrowly approved a term limits law in 1994, but two years later it was overturned by the Supreme Judicial Court because of the way it was crafted. Governing […]
Congressional math
massachusetts legislators got the bad news in late December. And by late February or early March, they should have detailed Census figures confirming what they’ve long expected: The state’s congressional […]
Robin Hood mayors
Activists in City Hall: The Progressive Response to the Reagan Era in Boston and Chicago By Pierre Clavel New York, Cornell University Press, 225 pages reviewed by don gillisboston’s ray […]
Piloting through shortfalls
massachusetts communities lead the nation in reaping revenues from tax-exempt properties, but the payments represent pennies on the dollar compared to what municipalities would bring in if the land were […]
The meter is running
the south shore town of Kingston is discovering that going green is not only good for the environment but good for the municipality’s bottom line. Kingston is plunging into the […]
The Download: The Speakah speaks
House Speaker Robert DeLeo really, really wants to show he’s not tone deaf. Really. After laying low in the wake of the devastating Ware report on patronage in the Probation […]
The Download: Whose Constitution?
It couldn’t be termed a constitutional crisis but the decision by the new Republican-controlled House to read the Constitution into the Congressional Record was as much hysterical as historical. In […]
The Download: Patrick’s new politics
Kevin Cullen, in a column in today’s Boston Globe, shines a light on how Gov. Deval Patrick is insisting on political loyalty as he assembles his leadership team for a […]
The Download: Senator Zelig
Another week, another round of head-scratching and hand-wringing over just who Scott Brown (Wrentham resident, truck owner, and current occupant of the People’s Seat in the US Senate) really is. […]
The Download: Michelle Rhee, Inc.
Michelle Rhee has certainly landed on her feet. Rhee stepped down as chancellor of the Washington, DC, public school system in October after the mayor who hired her was tossed […]
The Download: There will be blood
Few, save the most minimalist proponents of small government, think there’s much left to cut in the state budget without inflicting pain, so it’s now a matter of whose priorities […]
The Download: Mitt’s op-ed machine
While Sarah Palin goes the reality show route to boost her popularity and reduce her negatives, Mitt Romney takes a more conventional path to building presidential gravitas: holding forth on […]
The Download: Setting up a schoolyard brawl
There was tough talk aplenty in Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. And it was all built on a strange paradox. Menino isn’t asking […]
The Download: Obama hits back
When it comes to taxes, presidents can’t get a break and Barack Obama is no exception. Obama is on the defensive after the announcement of a tax deal that includes […]
The Download: Crusadin’ Galvin
Bill Galvin has always been something of an enigma in Massachusetts politics. A former Brighton state rep who has served as the Commonwealth’s secretary of state for 15 years, Galvin cuts […]
A shameful last act
For a guy who has long claimed the advancement of minority political power in Boston as his cause, Chuck Turner has a funny way of showing it. Turner railed yesterday […]
The Download: Pondering patronage
Former Senate president Billy Bulger practiced the trade with such abandon that MBTA was said to stand for “Mr. Bulger’s Transportation Authority,” an only partially tongue-in-cheek reference that seemed to […]