Let’s get real. Let’s drop the parochialism and chauvinism. Boston is messed up — but not beyond fixing. I’ve lived here over 35 years, but I’m not a lotus eater.
There are big problems, but there are fixes. Some require courage and vision. Fortunately both Mayor Marty Walsh and Governor Charlie Baker are pretty new to their jobs. This is the time for both traits…if ever.
In my Left Ahead show today, I went on for 28 minutes about the major problems and some of my proposed fixes. I’ll sketch them here. If you need to hear me go on about them, click on the player below to get it on.
The outrageous snowfall merely highlighted some of Boston’s troubles. Consider:
- The city could not clear its streets.
- The T — subways, buses, trolleys, commuter rail — failed on many levels. It had days on end with no service and weeks with severely limited transit. (This coincidentally when it was trying to convince the IOC to pick it for summer Olympics games.)
- Following the Marathon bombings, what we like to call Boston Strong has really been Boston Weak and Cowardly. We sheltered in place, a.k.a. hiding and ceding liberty to authority figures.
- Likewise, among 10 cities, Boston was the only one crippled by Lite-Brite style toys. To this day, the then AG Martha Coakley, governor and state and city cops refuse to admit their failures.
Like so many US cities, Boston can lump along and pretend all is swell that we are absolutely the best at everything.
Instead, I propose:
Mayor Walsh must become the first in Boston to clear, actually clear the streets. Bostonians pay an ever increasing property-tax burden, as government, college, medical and other tax-exempt properties either ride free or pay minimal contributions. We should demand passable, safe streets. Walsh needs to become the savior mayor who uses snow melters, aggressive towing, and to-curb removal instead of asking each homeowner to do the work. Real cities like Montreal and Milwaukee have done this for decades. He will become a legend.
Gov. Baker must demand that the legislature correct its biggest blunder in saddling the MBTA with untenable debt on a fantasy of a neverending growth spiral of sales taxes. He doesn’t even have to admit that this scheme was his. He simply needs to inspire the legislature to stop the crap. Instead of funding maintenance and expansion, the T is paying debt service imposed by the commonwealth. Reverse the madness!
We all need to shake off passivity. This is the hardest, since the era of the World Trade Center attacks. We have given up so much to authority figures under the premise that they will keep us safe that we lose what makes us Americans. Obey authority figures and give up liberties has long been the norm. We can now look to frequent murder by cop to see how low this can sink. At the very least, we need to lobby for and champion civilian-review boards to ID and remove the rogue cops. Police departments won’t do it for us.
From these few examples, Boston is fixable, but only through guts that we have not seen from our current Mayor, Governor, or ourselves. None of it impossible.
Don’t forget that this kid got in a shootout with the police and then disappeared into suburban sprawl. After having used home-made bombs to kill and maim people. He had displayed a capacity for extreme violence and was on the loose. It’s really, REALLY easy to look back and think we acted absurd, and many actions were a bit of an overreach, but what if no such order was made and more people died? We’d all be singing a different tune. We can learn from that event without Monday morning quarterbacking it.
…yet the underlying abrogation of American ideals is stunning. At what cost comes the perception of security?
I was following Charlie Hebdo fairly closely as I have a bunch of Google plus friends in France. Paris did not shut down even though they were on their highest public alert level. They followed movement closely and cordoned off areas as needed.
They are far more prepared and trained and operate under different rules of engagement but people over their seem determined to show adversaries that they won’t get away with disrupting anything more than absolutely necessary.
The rough consensus coming from there seems to be that is letting the other side win and only encourages them.
…cafes bombed in the morning serve dinner the same day.
… I’m not sure the test is what we did, or did not do, during the immediate crisis, rather the test is how quickly –and how well– did we return to a “normal” state? That is to say, what happened after the emergency measures were no longer needed? A line of argument has been advanced that says the emergency measures themselves were out of proportion to the danger… and that may be true… but that may be less indicative of a fascism opposed to ‘American ideals’ than a normal human (and/or herd) response to an unknown danger. How do you train for something like that such that the response is proportionate? Rather, I think we have to ask ourselves just how quickly and how well did we do in the relaxation of that response? How quickly did we get back to normal? How well did we do making and marking the thing as an extraordinary event, unlikely to occur? And were there (are there?) ongoing repercussions of that response? Massachusetts, in particular Boston and Waltham, I think, did very well. So I don’t know that what happened in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings represents an ‘abrogation’ of anything.
By way of stark contrast consider the federal government response to the attacks of 9/11/2001: We are, in fact, still dealing with much of the security state apparatus that was hastily, fearfully, erected in 2002 and 2003… In many ways, we’ve not yet returned to a ‘normal’ state, whatever that might be and that, in fact, does represent an abrogation of American ideals. To the extent that such security apparatus contributed to the post Marathon bombing response I think it’s adrenaline rather than deliberate policy or effort. That’s nothing to sweep under the rug, to be sure, but then again neither is the possibility of deliberate, earnest and sincere, if broadly and ham-handedly applied, efforts to keep the public safe solely for the sake of keeping the public safe.
Somewhere between the Boston Massacre and the Whiskey rebellion — a domain that includes the original Boston Tea Party and Shays rebellion — there is probably a guiding matrix of authorial response, honestly held ideals, proportionate measures and just actions that might, too, be considered “American ideals.” They too, were debated fiercely. Surely, some considered them too much while others considered them not enough and protestations and accusations of abrogation of ideals were flung on both sides. I do not doubt that just such questions of where those lines are to be drawn, and what those lines will encompass and what they will border, consumed Abraham Lincoln as he waged the Civil War. He, also, was accused of abrogating American ideals.
And ideals always seem to have an issue meshing with reality. But they give us something to strive for. The events following the shootout weren’t us perceiving there was some ambiguous security threat, like many TSA-related measure are, but rather a direct response to a determined and immediate threat. Horses of a different color IMO.
A “determined and immediate threat”?
The events FOLLOWING the shootout were an absurd Keystone Cops episode whose target was a wounded kid bleeding to death in a boat.
Whatever “reality” you think you’re “meshing with”, it has nothing whatsoever to do what actually happened AFTER the shootout.
please
I was widely excoriated here for saying this before and during the shootout.
The very fact of the shootout was an illustration of incompetence and hysteria. I said at the time, and continue to assert now, that the episode was seized on by government authorities to send a clear message of authoritarian and militaristic response — exactly the WRONG response if preserving our liberty and freedom is valued.
We DID act absurd. Many — even MOST — of our actions were much more than a BIT of an overreach.
I offer a different “what if”: What if no such order was made and NOBODY DIED. What if NOTHING HAPPENED?
As you observe, these were two rank amateurs acting on their own. What if a highly-trained team of anti-terror agents (isn’t that what we’ve been spending billions of dollars creating since 9/11?) quietly tracked them down and apprehended them?
I agree with massmarier — “Boston strong” means “Boston weak”. The phrase makes me ashamed to be from Boston.
with its $150 million snow removal budget. That’s a big jump both from our budgeted $18 mil and the eventual $40+ we will probably end up spending, but now is his chance. If he were to hold a press conference and announce that he is going to propose doing that, I am sure most Boston residents would be on board, because unlike the Olympics, it would tangibly benefit every single person who lives or works in Boston. No one is going to be happy if they end up paying higher property taxes because of Olympic overruns, but far fewer will grumble if it is for something immensely useful like snow removal.
I don’t think he will do this, but I would love for him to prove me wrong.
different in size, and different in average snowfall. There’s nothing that says Boston shouldn’t be trying to copy what works there, within local conditions. We don’t have to do it the way we always have, and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with each new issue that arises. Sometimes using what works elsewhere, modified for our circumstances is the route to follow.
Especially when there is a fear that the winters we have been experiencing are related to global climate change and may be seeing the same kind of winter next year or the next.
Obviously we need a plan that addresses a range of scenarios. But the the simple fact is that the only way to take care of so much snow on the streets is to remove it in some fashion. And to remove it you need more snow farms, more melters, more snow removal equipment (such as the giant snow blowers that can feed the snow directly into dump truck). You cannot magically produce snow removal and melting equipment that you do not already own.
…Gov. Paul LePAge has an interesting idea about exemptions for non-profits.
Under his proposal, only the first $500,000 of 501-c property is tax exempt. It protects small non-profits and traditional charities, but taxes multi-million dollar organizations that happen to be organized under 501-c. The only absolute exemption is for places of worship, as the Maine lawyers were concerned about a First Amendment conflict.
$500,000 in Maine is likely a million in MA, but it is a concept that Boston could look at for its property tax base.
Hell, make it $4M but no organization should get a free ride. Payments in lieu, services in lieu, or pay up.
All the beautiful 19th century churches in the Back Bay are probably worth several million in land alone. I’m should they’d make some very lovely condos that preserve their facades after the tax burden forces them to close their doors.
The question remains — why should we subsidize organized religion? How is doing that not a violation of the First Amendment?
Discrimination against religious institutions isn’t appropriate either.
the LePage proposal exempts the first $500k for non-religious non-profits but 100% of value for religious non-profits. That’s what prompted kirth’s question about subsidizing organized religion (relative to other non-profits).
Personally, I think the way folks in Boston metro think about PILOTs and taxing non-profits is the wrong way to go. I don’t think we should assess property tax on non-profits, period. Nor PILOTs. What I think we should do is:
1. Recognize that some communities have lots of non-profits, while others have few. The state should reimburse for some of the foregone sales tax revenue, so that communities with many non-profits aren’t at as much of a loss.
2. Recognize that the big non-profits (I’m looking at you, Harvard) pay big salaries. Go after them with a progressive income tax.
Goodwill had $3.8 billion in sales last year — but they’re not a rich non-profit, they help thousands (millions?) of people with marginal career opportunities find work. We shouldn’t be going after them, right? Only wait. That’s the good part. The bad part: they have a history of overpaying their management. CEO Barr got $1.2M in compensation in 2013. Portland OR branch president Miller made over $800k in 2004.
Squeezing the non-profits by going after their real estate costs isn’t the right way to go, because it squeezes the recipients of the charity. Target their high-paid employees by going after their wages, and do it fairly. Just have steeper, graduated income taxes.
Unless you make communities whole, which you explicitly do not, they will continue to have a revenue deficit to be filled somehow.
Mass. does not tax salaries of executives in Oregon. More to the point, I’m not convinced the increase you propose takes enough from the nonprofits (e.g. Harvard) you suggest.
Not that I do not favor more progressive income taxes. And maybe these are parts of the solution. But it lets Harvard off the hook.
Can’t believe I’m agreeing with the odious Paul LePage on ANYTHING but on this I do agree, it sounds like a good idea.
And I’m all for taxing the rich non profits ie Harvard, MIT, etc which have huge endowments, unlike a non profit like Goodwill or even smaller non profits that work in neighborhoods etc. And if the CEOs at a non profit like Goodwill are making fat salaries, I’m all for having them pay their fair share in income taxes to make this city and region run and prosper — just like all other folks making fat salaries and the big businesses that are doing very very well should too. Honestly most of them would barely feel it considering how well they’ve been doing — and for year after year.
And should be taxed accordingly absent some clear and overwhelming good for the public stuck in its fat footprint.
Which hook is that?
The Harvard endowment is 377 years old and, indeed, the very name “Harvard” comes from John Harvard who, on his deathbed bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the newly — constitutionally– established “University at Cambridge”. The bulk of the endowment at Harvard are gifts of this nature… If you tax the endowment at Harvard you are taxing a charitable trust. Do you really want to do this?
Nor is the endowment a big pile of money that can be spent in the same way as, say, one could do with a big pile of Warren Buffets money, or Bill Gates cash… there are strings attached: many gifts are for funding for professorships or departments or libraries… or the art museums at Harvard. Much of the endowment is tied up in legal instruments much like entails that seek to fund the given programs in perpetuity. Indeed, much of the gifts directly funds scientific research and are expressly attempting to do so over multiple generations, even centuries… Do you want to tax that?
And, even if you wanted to tax that, how would you tax that? Take a straight percentage off the top is simply not possible, even if it were advisable, so how would you do it? Well, I suppose you could just tax the capital gains on the investment… Is that going to be more than the PILOT? ( you did use the phrase “takes enough”) In the case of Harvard probably so… but will that be so for other institutions? Tufts? BC? In your effort to keep Harvard on the hook are you willing to settle for less money overall? Especially given that Harvard, absent the endowment and the ‘capital gains’ that are used to backfill, has most likely operated at a loss every single year of its existence… leading to further muddying of the ‘capital gains’ waters.
Never mind the implicit and I believe very much incorrect assumption that Harvard has taken more out of Cambridge and Boston than the CommonWealth has taken out of Harvard, it is precisely these thorny issues of charity, endowments, research and ongoing trusts that, frankly, don’t happen very much any other way, that have given rise to the PILOT programs. I do not think it’s a particularly great solution, and I’m intrigued by stomvs proposals, but it might just be the best available option.
Since then it has a leader in setting tuition trends which the other credential mills embrace thus spearheading indebtedness for the young
It is a courting pavilion for the 1%.
It actually certified W and a run of other empire building despicables.
It poisons the good will well here as all its conceits go out into the world here to condescend and impose on constituents that increasingly despise its class minions due to high handedness and contempt for the general public.
The entire exasperating top down cult of mandarin professionals that undermines democratic institutions has it as a beacon.
It admittedly does have killer PR skills going back to Putzi (Class of 1910).
And Face Book was invented there, the apotheosis of curdled conceit and self absorption writ large.
… many things were ‘a bit different’ when Oliver Cromwell was alive. Envy and doctrinaire class resentments still seem very much a similar motive force.
What’s your point?
It is? I hadn’t noticed. Arguably the two Harvard alum with the greatest proximate impact upon both your life and mine are Deval Patrick and Barack Obama… Do you consider them “the 1%“??? They certainly didn’t start out that way.
Careful, there, you’re skirting the edges of Godwins law.
I wouldn’t know. I never been on it.
The rest I knew and deeply appreciate the very funny summation. Especially courting pavilion.
He was a social anthropologist who decided to study his own culture for a refreshing change in a work called Culture Against Man.
He called the cohort that was highly paid to do a cultures preferred work “Cultural Maximizers”
Sometimes I respond to the immediately preceding comment without taking the whole thread into account – sorry. I’ll have to think about it. There is a long tradition in this country of giving religious establishments as much leeway as possible so I can sympathize with LePage a bit (never thought I would say that!).
Income tax does not help municipalities, as it doesn’t go the them. Property and excise taxes do.
Damariscotta – lovely place. About 14% of the building stock is owned by non-profits. Add in conservation/forest restrictions, and it jumps to 47%. Meanwhile, a non-profit assisted living complex there – valued at $13 million – pays no property tax. ME has no PILOT, and the home brags about giving money to the fire dept. because they run the ambulances and THEIR residnerts don’t have kids in school, cars on the road, etc. But the Fire dept. drives on those roads. And somebody paid for the education of the residents long ago. So every resident of Damariscotta subsidizes them as part of the 53% that DO pay property taxes.
This is the situation that the proposal is designed to remedy. As another poster remarked, some towns have few non-profits and others have many. It creates a neutral test. There are industries that are organized as non-profits, but a non-profit and a charity are not the same thing, but the IRS only designates 501-c. This is a form of asset testing for property tax purposes.
MD is, again, an example.
An amendment to or interpretation of the state constitution barring graduated taxes would allow cities and towns to apply a local surtax to the statewide personal income tax.
That’s how Maryland manages to fund its more prosperous communities (like Montgomery County) while keeping property taxes miniscule in comparison to ours.
the income tax funded state aid sufficient to keep local taxes under control in most places.
It was not a bad system.
Apologies to the meme.
Re-read (1). I explicitly suggested that revenue be allocated to cities and towns as a function of foregone property taxes. Furthermore, given that the commonwealth distributes substantial funds to cities and towns, there is in fact a mechanism to distribute the net increase in state revenue back to cities and towns.
If a church was built in the 19th century on land that became valuable many decades after it was built, what is the justification for charging a huge annual fee to that church to remain open? What services does the city provide to the church? Why should the church subsidize the city?
Churches are in some ways different because they are more permanent than people and businesses. People move on average once every 7-10 years, and very few people live in one home for more than 40 years. Businesses also tend to move frequently. If a person lives in a home and it doubles in value, they can sell it and move. If a business is operating in a building and the value goes up, they can sell it and move. Selling a valuable building provides some benefit to the person or business which compensates them for the hassle of moving. Selling a church for a lot of money to build/buy a different church does not compensate the members of the congregation who will have to travel further to continue attending that church.
Additionally, churches have unusual architectural requirements that make it difficult for them to just move to a different building, unlike corporations and most non-profits. When a church closes, it is typically sold to a different denomination, because a church can’t be used for many other purposes without basically rebuilding the entire thing. There are a fair number of churches with Jewish symbols built into the building because when the synagogues closed, the only viable use for the buildings was to convert them to churches.
Also, while closing any one church might not be a problem, charging full property taxes on churches would make it financially unreasonable to have any churches in downtown Boston. That would definitely be a constitutional problem as discrimination against religion.
Note that my arguments only apply to the actual church building. Religious schools, hospitals, orphanages, and other buildings should be treated the same way as they would be if they were not run by a religious group.
Wait, why are you assuming that the new church is farther from the congregation than the old one? As for what services the city provides the church, they are the same as those provided homeowners and non-religious businesses. Your claim that churches are “typically sold to other congregations” may be true, but is not universal, and is not any of the government’s concern. your claim that church buildings cannot be easily repurposed is ridiculous. I know people who live in former churches.
On the contrary, treating churches differently from other establishments in the way you favor is a discrimination benefiting religion, which is what the 1st Amendment specifically prohibits.
Your exceptions for church-owned property are not reasonable, except on an emotional basis.
However, I must push back on the idea that treating religious establishments this way violates the first amendment, or at least its orginal intent. When the drafters of the Bill of Rights prohibited the establishment of a religion they were specifically referring to a state-sponsored church. Treating all such equally does not constitute the establishment of a state church. Tax dollars do not pay the clergy and clerics are not considered officers of the state or appointed by state officials. What they had in mind when they drafted that clause was the Church of England, tax supported and with bishops partaking in governance via the House of Lords appointed by Her Majesty on the advice of the Prime Minister, with which they were most familiar as well as truly established churches on the continent. The UK continues to have the kind of establishment that the amendment prohibits.
Likewise free exercise meant something very specific. It meant you could enter a house of worship and participate in its rites without molestation from the government. It did not mean, for example, that you could discriminate against LGBT people in your temporal dealings because you think their lifestyle is immoral. The analogy I have heard and like is that free exercise is a shield and not a sword.
I know I went on a bit of a tangent here, but as someone very familiar with the historical background I have long thought that liberals tend to interpret the establishment clause to broadly and conservatives tend to interpret free exercise to broadly. I believe that in our religiously pluralistic society the best settlement is to revert to the equilibrium that I am convinced was intended by the amendment’s authors.
Rather, it is seen as the inability for the state to impose a tax on a religious institution which has specific 1st amendment protections which do not exist for other forms of non-profit. The ME lawyers felt it would result in the whole being stricken, so they put in the exemption instead.
AFAIK, however, it does NOT exempt the real estate holdings of religious institutions but only the sanctuaries and housing occupied by religious personnel.
BTW – using your logic, religion is being subsidized NOW.
Religion IS being subsidized NOW.
The Boston Globe pays taxes — not just the occasional income tax when they happen to turn a profit, but also employment taxes, property taxes, etc.
There’s nothing in the US Constitution that prohibits the taxation of religious institutions in line with other (for-profit) organizations. State constitutions? YRMV.
I don’t know if this would fly, but if you accept the premise from that case that “the power to tax is the power to destroy” religious institutions may have a case to be left alone. Notice I’m hedging here; I’m actually not sure I agree with the argument I just presented.
or any other long-standing non-profit for that matter?
Religious institutions are part of our cultural heritage and the fabric of our society. They should not be targeted like this. I uprated Porcupine’s comment because the notion is worth considering, but religious institutions should not be favored or disfavored compared to other non-profits.
Harvard University isn’t part of Massachusetts’s cultural heritage? The Food Bank isn’t part of the fabric of our society? How about we treat all non-profits the same.
I’m fine with treating all non-profits the same.