Today’s Globe coverage of the Boston mayoral race is less … extreme than yesterday. Still, check out today’s front page. The headline and the lede:
Both mayoral candidates look to remake BRA
Both candidates to be Boston’s next mayor say they would overhaul or eliminate the Boston Redevelopment Authority, raising the specter of sweeping change at a powerful agency that has defined development in the city since the 1950s.
OK – sounds pretty equal, pretty balanced. Let’s read on.
Mayoral candidate Martin J. Walsh unveiled a plan Thursday to replace the BRA with a new economic development agency whose director would work under a contract and be less beholden to the mayor’s office. He said the City Council would be given new authority to oversee the agency’s operations and finances, and members of the agency’s board would be subject to term limits.
“The BRA must be reformed for efficiency and transparency,” Walsh said during a press conference on City Hall Plaza. “It must be reformed for the residents, the investors, and the taxpayers in the city of Boston.”
Walsh’s opponent in the election, Councilor John R. Connolly, has proposed similar changes to the BRA, advocating for a separation between its planning and development arms, as well as term limits for board members. He has also called for the establishment of more specific zoning rules across the city to prevent development from becoming subject to political manipulation.
Great, great. Sounds like both candidates have advanced pretty similar ideas for what to do with the BRA. What else?
Both Walsh and Connolly have cited the accelerated pace of board meetings — and development approvals — at the BRA and urged the authority to slow down.
Awesome. Anything else, as we get down to the end of the article?
Walsh offered a 14-point plan for pursuing economic growth in the city. The plan seeks to consolidate several city departments, including the BRA, into a new agency called the Boston Economic Development Authority…. Connolly has not yet outlined a specific vision for restructuring the BRA….
Wait … what?? The whole time I was reading this front-page story, I thought I was reading a comparison of the two candidates’ plans. But when (if) I get to the end I learn that, actually, I’m comparing a concrete plan from one candidate with, I don’t know, off-the-cuff remarks from the other?
Hmmm…
The Globe is really risking its credibility with the coverage of this race. It has been a disgrace. I had same reaction as you and went back to online version assuming there must be another article based on Connolly’s plan, but nothing. May need to write another letter to the editor…
“Gee I haven’t thought about that, but my opponent has laid out a plan, and I can’t admit I don’t have any idea what to do”.
Disappointing
I don’t read the Globe everyday to see a pattern, but maybe if somebody sent in an Op-Ed, they might publish it. Don’t make it sound like “I live Walsh & you’re not fair with him.” Rather, appeal to their ego. Although calling them Herald-esque would probably make them cringe.
You can also send something to the reporters themselves (although they don’t write headlines) or to McGrory. Couldn’t hurt. I bitch at reporters all the time. And I’m kinda sorta, not really, but yeah on their same side.
“Although calling them Herald-esque would probably make them cringe.”
Doubtful. Anyone working at the Globe would happily take a job at the Herald if their current job disappeared. They might draw a line at working for the Enquirer, but I wouldn’t put money on that, either. The job market in newspapering is even worse than in the rest of the economy.
and expect the Globe Editors to reveal their opinion in the placement , headline and photos of every news story. I have recognized and appreciated it when I agree with them , and when I have not. So it goes.
I remember when every Globe photo of then-President GHW Bush made it look as though he was sitting on a tack.
He did sort of look like that anyway, of course.
A WonderBRA”…Okay that was cheap gag but I live in (Romantic) Arlington, so I tend to extract the maximum laffs from the Hub Mayoral situation as a general rule.
Just waiting for that metro section headline
“Hub Ministers Divided Over Mayoral Race”.
Some think Connolly is Black, Others say he is White….and the same backwards on Walsh…:D
JLG
Love it. 26 6s for you pal
Honestly, all Walsh has done is take a general point about folding the BRA into a new economic development agency (which strikes me as a fairly pro forma and ineffectual bureaucracy shuffle) and turn it into press release fodder as part of a trumped up 14-point plan.
For the record, all 14-point plans are bullshit. They’re simply a collection of off-the-cuff remarks pasted next to each other. It carries about as much weight as recording it in your dream journal.
So my actual issue with the story is they’re letting Walsh’s press release and campaign strategy guide the coverage here rather than independently reporting on the economic development. Yesterday Connolly was doing a different dog and pony show, meaning the best the Globe could muster on this story was to dredge up his stump statements on the BRA.
The bigger question, how do these two candidates view the city as being able to play a role in economic development beyond administering to the bureaucracy at City Hall, goes unasked and unanswered.
Anyway, seems to me the story got Walsh and Connolly’s position on the BRA essentially right: they mostly agree though Walsh is now on record as wanting to kill the BRA in order to build a new alphabet soup monster.
there’s been a few “14 point plans” that resulted in having 9 or 12 of those points become actual policy, that’s become actual law.
Generally, you can tell the difference between the real plans and the fake ones with the seriousness with which the candidates take the plans.
Reading chunks of several of Walsh’s, along with a few of his fairly detailed ideas he’s shared during the campaign, demonstrates a candidate who takes plans and policy pretty seriously.
We’ll never see any 14 point plan become law in full — and to be perfectly honest, that’s probably a good thing — but let’s not scoff at the fact that Walsh or many others (from Obama to Deval to Hillary to Liz) have taken their campaign plans very seriously — on occasion even leading to law.
The Affordable Care Act is a pretty good example on that front at the national level, with much (though not all!) of the President’s campaign plan enacted, but we’ve also seen a number of Deval’s proposals brought forward — and from time to time the legislature has taken parts of them or similar ideas and/or notions to their lawmaking.
Off the top of my head, Deval’s big planks in revenue while campaigning in ’06 was closing some particularly egregious corporate tax loopholes and allowing cities and towns to tax restaurants and hotels. Both happened, even if the legislature initially scoffed at both proposals. Had the two revenue generators never been proposed at all as parts of plans you deem bullshit, our budget situation could be a lot worse off today.
So if this stuff is all bullshit, as you say, at least on occasion it’s been a healthy and much-needed manure. I’m sure we could all agree Government Center could do with a little bit of that, metaphorically (and maybe even literally) speaking.
Press releases disguised as poorly thought out pieces of policy. In the case of the BRA plan, Marty Walsh seems not to know that we actually already have an independent economic development agency, the EDIC. It, like the BRA, is funded through development, and it shares a board with the BRA. So basically, just wants to blow up the current system and repeat it, on the city’s books, without any idea of how to pay for it.
John Connolly has had policy documents up on his site since nearly the beginning of the campaign. He’s done his homework. Marty Walsh is turning in late assignments, scribbled on the backs of napkins, and the press is lapping it up.
Point #1 in Walsh’s plan: “The functions of the existing BRA and EDIC would be consolidated…”
Putting development oversight on the “city’s books” means ending the reign of the renewal-era “quasi-governmental authority” and making the mayor directly accountable for this major policy area.
Two questions: (1) is it legal for Walsh’s campaign not to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in union contributions until after the reporting period? (2) does it violate the state’s conflict of interest law to take salary as a union executive and introduce legislation as a state rep. that directly benefits those same unions?
There are nine seats in congress for Massachusetts and recently we all know that we had an election for the 5th CD. I don’t think the Globe knew, and if they did, their coverage was very weak. Josh Miller wrote a few articles lacking in substance. The Globe did not cover the dust up in the race over the Elizabeth Warren/Katherine Clark ads from Emily’s list. the Globe did not cover the lack of interest in the race, the fact that many people had no idea the race was even happening. The Globe did not cover that only 23% of eligible voters in the 5th CD voted. the Globe did not cover the lack of interest, the lack of civility, and the pure lack of knowledge about the candidates, the issues, how politics works, and why it’s important. The Globe should have done fact based pieces on each of the 7 dem and three Republican candidates.
better or worse than it’s been for the mayor, considering it was almost nonexistent. Some of the coverage in the Mayor’s race has been so bad, though, that I lean toward nonexistent being an improvement.
…David, how do you leave out the money quote at the end?
So equal time, equal space, one candidate has a major policy announcement, the other has a vague idea that something has to be done, but has no idea what it should be.
Isn’t it the point of the post?
I need to read better, just got buried in my read. I’m an idiot
an honest criticism could be made that even in the blogosphere, people don’t read to the end. So while I wouldn’t say you buried your own lead, I could see how someone would miss the point or think the point should have otherwise been made at the top.
I’d disagree with that, since I enjoy posts like this, that save the ‘punchline’ for the end, but I’m in the very small minority of people standing on this floating rock in space who usually reads articles and blogs to the end 🙂
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