Boston Mayor Marty Walsh refused on Monday to send any representatives to attend a meeting on Sullivan Square traffic issues that included officials from the Baker administration, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, and Wynn Resorts.

The snub by Walsh is in keeping with his no-holds-barred opposition to Wynn’s proposed Everett casino. The mayor is suing the Gaming Commission to overturn its award of a casino license to Wynn. Walsh insists the traffic generated by a casino located just over the border from Boston is incompatible with the city’s pedestrian-friendly vision for Sullivan Square.

Yet Walsh’s no-show at Monday’s meeting could backfire. In early April, Matthew Beaton, Gov. Charlie Baker’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, declined to grant Wynn a key environmental permit it needs to begin construction, in part because the Las Vegas company had failed to hold joint meetings with state and city transportation officials to reconcile differences on long-term traffic mitigation. Beaton urged all of the parties to work together.

“The success of this effort will be dependent on the active and constructive participation by all of the participants,” he wrote in his decision. “I expect that all of the parties will participate constructively; however, building consensus with parties engaged in active litigation will be a significant challenge.”

Beaton may have underestimated that challenge, given all the rancor between Walsh and Wynn Resorts. But will Beaton continue to hold up Wynn’s environmental permit if Boston refuses to even participate in the traffic mitigation meetings?

Everett mayor Carlo DeMaria says Walsh should just “man up and take it on the chin” and concede that a casino is coming to Everett. But Walsh shows no inclination of throwing in the towel. His lawsuit against the Gaming Commission cites instances where the Wynn project has failed to meet regulatory deadlines and the mayor tells the Boston Herald he may seek an injunction to block the casino. Even if the lawsuit is a bust, Walsh’s ace-in-the-hole may be the ability to withhold a number of permits the project needs from Boston in order to proceed.

Bruce Mohl
BEACON HILL

Senate President Stan Rosenberg suggests a nonbinding 2016 ballot question on legalizing marijuana. (State House News)

Lowell Sun columnist Peter Lucas says Gov. Charlie Baker is a big improvement over his predecessor.  “He is a work horse, not a show horse,” Lucas says.

Sen. Joan Lovely defends her vote for freezing the income tax rate and boosting the earned income tax credit in a letter to the Salem News.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

More than half of the $13.5 million Quincy paid for snow removal this past winter — twice what Worcester spent and more than Framingham, Brockton, and Lowell combined — went to private contractors, who the city pays by the inch. (Patriot Ledger)

Joan Vennochi says Boston mayor Marty Walsh is getting sidetracked from important priorities he was elected to address — from public safety to public schools — by the Olympics and talks about building a soccer stadium for the New England Revolution. (Boston Globe)

Billerica selectmen vote to strip health insurance benefits from two board members. (Lowell Sun)

A $12.5 million deal to buy an abandoned warehouse and turn it into a climate-controlled storage facility brings 40 jobs to Haverhill. (Eagle-Tribune)

Gloucester officials give state lawmakers and representatives from MassDevelopment a tour of the harbor. (Gloucester Times)

Framingham has launched a municipal grant program that is helping to spruce up the downtown core. (MetroWest Daily News)

The Cape Cod Times applauds towns on Martha’s Vineyard that  banded together  to save Gay Head Light. The structure was in danger of toppling into the Atlantic Ocean due to coastal erosion.

Boston inches into the 20th century by retiring the typewriter at the city’s Inspectional Services Department that applicants had been required to use to type out appeals to the Zoning Board of Appeals. (Boston Globe)

OLYMPICS

State leaders hire the Brattle Group of Cambridge to analyze the Boston 2024 bid. (WBUR)

Boston Business Journal calls in PR experts who serve up free advice on how to rescue the Boston 2024 bid.

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

With the exception of Kentucky, divided state legislatures are having problems reaching agreement on key bills. (Governing)

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

The House, which is debating reauthorizing the controversial 40-year-old fisheries management law, has approved an amendment by three Massachusetts congressmen to ensure forfeiture money goes to research and monitoring, (Standard-Times)

The state economy is growing faster than the nation’s as a whole, but Massachusetts faces particular challenges with youth unemployment and high energy costs, according to a new report. (Boston Globe)

An exhibit sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell downplaying the science of climate change at the London Science Museum is raising questions about corporate philanthropy influencing public debate over controversial issues. (U.S. News & World Report)

EDUCATION

Brockton officials are looking at cutting more than 50 classroom support positions to save teachers from being laid off to close a $4 million budget gap. (The Enterprise)

College admission consultants are offering Asian families tips on how to come off less stereotypically Asian on applications to elite schools, which some charge are setting a higher bar for acceptance for Asians. (Boston Globe)

TRANSPORTATION

Emails from then-MBTA general manager Beverly Scott show how exasperated she was with commuter rail operator Keolis during the winter transit meltdown. They also reveal the frustration of then-newly-appointed transportation secretary Stephanie Pollack. (Boston Globe)

The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration has been replaced after a series of covert vulnerability tests at the nation’s airports found that TSA inspectors failed to detect weapons and other banned items 95 percent of the time. (New York Times)

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

The chairs of the Legislature’s separate committees on global warming and climate change have filed a bill that would make Massachusetts the first place in the world to require gas producers to identify the origin of the fuel, a mandate industry officials say would be impossible to meet. (Herald News)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Boston police say an officer shot and seriously wounded a man wielding a machete in an encounter in a Roslindale parking lot this morning. (Boston Globe)

Plymouth, where Gov. Charlie Baker recently visited to hear about how the town is reeling from a spate of opioid use, suffered its 11th fatal overdose of the year this weekend. Two others were treated for suspected overdoses. (The Enterprise)

Frank Angiulo, the last surviving brother of the family that once ruled the Boston mob, dies at age 94. (Boston Globe) Howie Carr has a surprisingly gentle sendoff. (Boston Herald)

A new book suggests Lizzie Borden got a bum rap and her uncle, a butcher who carried a cleaver with him, is the one who hacked up her parents. The uncle’s name was John V. Morse and that just doesn’t flow with the ditty. (Herald News)

The 33-year-old man charged with operating a boat while drunk from which a 19-year-old woman fell and lost her arm in the boat propeller, is a lawyer specializes in DUI cases who has a lengthy record of driving infractions himself. (Boston Herald)

MEDIA

Vanity Fair took great pains to protect its exclusive interviews and photo shoot with Caitlyn Jenner.

The BBC, in what one critic calls a “creepy and dystopian” Hunger Games knockoff, brings reality TV and exploitation of the poor to a new low. (The New Republic)

When it comes to political news, Facebook has become local TV for millennials. (Nieman Journalism Lab)

A Q&A with Washington Post editor Marty Baron on the state of journalism. (World News Publishing)

The New York Times changes its masthead on the editorial page. (New York Times)