A relentless and sincere activist Boston City Councilor, Matt O’Malley keeps his eyes on many prizes. He reaches for and works for them, but never despairs when he can’t grasp one.
He has represented District 6 — West Roxbury, most of Jamaica Plain, and slivers of Roslindale, Mission Hill and Roxbury — for four two-year terms. While young for the job, he earned his way working for or to elect many pols, including Steve Grossman and Tom Menino. He spoke of some of the important lessons. For example, Mayor Menino would see him in City Hall and immediately scold him, saying to get out of the building and go talk to the constituents. He quipped that he judged his success for a weekend when Menino was Mayor by how many times he ran into Tom. If its three or four, he figured he was hitting enough of the right events and locations.
We had a rambling talk, though we never got around to the Pats. Click below to listen to a half hour or so of his views on the Summer Games 2024, casinos, schools and even compost.
O’Malley chairs the Council’s environment committee and is vice chair of its education one. His fingers are in many other pies and he does not hesitate to research a topic and render a judgment. For example, for his main committee, he is proud of having worked with the late Mayor Tom Menino on crafting and passing BERDO, the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance. That pioneering act requires the city’s medium and larger buildings to track and report energy use, and then makes those data public.
It’s likely that his counterparts in many cities don’t do much with environmental responsibilities. O’Malley on the other hand drills down also into such quality-of-life matters as making drinking-water filling stations available for seniors, joggers, everyone. Likewise, he’s driving curbside composting and pushing to up rates of single-stream recycling (WR and JP, two of his district’s neighborhoods lead the city).
On the controversial topic of the bid for the 2024 Summer Games, he’s a believer. He sees it as a real opportunity for the city. However, he is detail oriented enough to demand much greater “sunshine’ in making the process going forward to be truly transparent. He doesn’t believe, despite organizer and promoter claims that there won’t be public funds required. He’ll push for candor and specifics.
On another hot topic, casinos, he is close to my skeptical view. He tried unsuccessfully to get Boston’s citizens a vote in the propose Everett one. Listen in to hear how he thought the approval process should have gone.
He now hopes Gov. Charlie Baker will put a hold on all casinos except Springfield’s. He thinks that city stands to get the greatest benefit from one and wants to see it as a test case before other development goes forward.
He calls himself a skeptic “at best” on casinos. He says Mayor Marty Walsh was right to sue over the Everett one. Listen in to hear what he would have liked to have seen in terms of affected municipalities having a say.
In the main, O’Malley is a Walsh supporter. We both knew and respected Menino. We figure Walsh has some on-the-job learning to pick up more of Menino’s savvy. Yet, O’Malley finds the new mayor competent, open and accessible.
This sow has some of some of this, some of that. Expect more of these as I line up other city councilors.
~Mike
He probably lost my vote on that.
Because he wants to hear and learn more about something before taking a position?
That sounds like a position to me. I know that Mat is a smart guy, and I otherwise really like him and have always voted for him in the past, so I know that he is smart enough to know how likely it is that the Olympics is going to cost serious public money. He also knows perfectly well that so far we have not gotten the transparency promised by the mayor.
He is perfectly entitled to his opinion, of course, but politicians should know that jumping on the Olympic band wagon will have a cost.
Which is fine, but he has said point blank and with no wiggle room a couple of times that any politician who supports the Games will not get his vote. Personally, I think it’s a horrible issue to serve as a deal-breaker.
And I have only made up my mind that any politician that supports the Olympic bid as it currently stands isn’t going to get my vote. In the unlikely event that the organizers together with state and local governments can come up with an iron-clad guarantee that a) we will not be stuck with the bill and/or b) it passes a binding referendum that gives the people a chance to speak on the matter, I may well change my mind.
Always great chatting with you, Mike; and thanks for front-paging, David.
Kevin- I think we may have more in common regarding the Olympic bid than you think. As I said in the interview (and have said on countless other occasions) I think we should explore this idea, conduct a thorough feasibility assessment, and robust public dialogue and, perhaps most importantly, figure out ways that this bid could provide long-term benefits to the region (i.e. through MBTA service and expansion and low income housing opportunities). If indeed, the goals can be met and an ironclad policy can be adopted to protect public money; then we should proceed with the bid. If it cannot, then we should not.
I respect your opinion and certainly understand your point of view and remain hopeful and positive that we can begin an open and transparent process in the weeks and months ahead.
Stay warm!
-Matt O.
And it isn’t a bad one as it allows room for ascertainment.
Those of us on the side of blanket opposition are generally underwhelmed by the way the planners have conducted themselves to an extent that we don’t think they are capable of anything better.
But if another constituency favors intensive scrutiny and ironclad accountability as essential preconditions for supprt, that is a respectable and worthy goal.
and thanks for responding, but it doesn’t really seem realistic that any such ironclad guarantee could ever be given.
If we want to do something about transportation and housing, lets do that. We don’t need the Olympics as a motivation to solve our real problems. And requiring the Olympic organizers to solve these problems is only going to drive up the cost and risk of overruns. The Olympics is not going to bring housing or better transportation to neighborhoods that aren’t close to Olympic venues and tourist amenities.
Raising the profile of Boston is not going to help either of those issues. More people wanting to move to Boston is only going to drive up competition for housing, and makes our roads, trains and buses more crowded. All of this is already happening without the extra attention of the Olympics.
Staking it out like that forces the Bid to make an ironclad promise now, to make long term transit and housing improvements now, and third party feasibility studies, robust debate and transparency. I’d add a public vote to the picture. Currently, they aren’t doing that, and I don’t see them doing that precisely since it’s counter intuitive to actually winning the bid. But 43% oppose outright, 10% are on the fence, and much of that 47% is soft support.
By staking out a proactive middle ground we can put the bid on the record as failing to meet these commitments and by doing so make the issue a lot more black and white and hopefully use that to rally the opposition. Many oppose the Olympics on principle, many more, probably a near supermajority-would oppose them if they couldn’t even deliver on these basic questions of long term investment, cost containment, and public oversight. I gives these contributions as steering the overall conversation in the right direction for the region.
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Are you here stating, and not just insinuating, a disagreement with the feasibility study already done?
Do you also dispute, and not just insinuate a dispute with, the benefits laid out by both the feasibility study and the bid documents extant?
That’s the first step. The panel, which when it’s led by the CEO of Suffolk Construction, isn’t the most unbiased voice around, still had this to concede:
Let’s have the detailed analysis of needed venues and other projects.
That’s all I’m saying, and that analysis isn’t anywhere in the Bid documents, which serves as a blueprint. Others have already pointed out typos, the fact that some land owners wouldn’t want to have proposed roads or venues go through their existing property or the conflicts with the parks.
When Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney said the Iraq War would pay for itself did you just believe it on face value? I sure as hell didn’t. And had Bush listened to rather than fired the guy who said it would cost at least $100 billion (it ended up costing 10-20 times that by the way) maybe some common sense might have prevailed.
All I am asking for is transparency, accountability, and a democratic vote. I don’t see why those have to be principles backers of the bid oppose in a knee jerk fashion. The public can, should, and will be entrusted with this information and making the final decision. If it results in a yes, then there is absolutely nothing I or any other opponent can complain about.
He hasn’t served four two-year terms yet. He was first elected in 2010 to fill a vacancy and re-elected to full terms in 2011 and 2013.