Powah!

Wondering what to do with all that free money the government is tossing at you? Keep your coinage away from Sears (no, seriously, stay the f away from that place). Instead, stimulate the economy of your nearest newsstand and grab yourself a copy of the newest Boston magazine. It features a wicked comprehensive look at how power in Boston functions, including up-close looks at Mayor Tom Menino’s fearsome machine, power-schmoozers Jan Saragoni and Michael Goldman, and the university-slaying Beacon Hill Civic Association, along with some other stories by some other people. You also get a shakily-democratic approach to ranking the comparative powerfulness of Boston’s many power mongers. Pale journalists everywhere are absolutely in love with the thing. Maybe that’s because it’s an awesome read and way cheaper than this awful shirt. Get yours today!

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from the mighty mighty Boston Daily)

It’s budget season on Beacon Hill again. And it’s apt that it should coincide, roughly, with the run-up to area colleges’ final exams. After a semester of lying around and drinking, the legislature now has to pull a week of harried all-nighters before it can knock off work for the summer.

In broad strokes, this year’s House budget is big but not unduly wicked big, is unkind to out of state corporations, hates smokers, and offers, in Speaker Sal DiMasi’s own estimation, “nothing spectacular about any new initiative.” But you already knew that already.

So, in the interest of wrapping up the week with some semi-original reporting, here’s a few of the more interesting budget skirmishes to keep an eye on in the upcoming weeks.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted, belatedly, from Boston Daily)

Let’s start by picking on Hizzoner. Nothing gets the natives riled up like parking tickets, so Mayor Tom Menino’s $2.42 billion FY09 budget, which includes $13 million in new parking fines, is sure to be the only thing anybody in Boston ever talks about for the rest of time. Let the schools close; we demand parking amnesty now!

But seriously, the notion that the mayor is sewing great harm by balancing Boston’s budget on the backs of people who can’t manage to avoid parking in front of fire hydrants, rather than slogging through a nasty override fight, is about as dumb as the notion that kids wouldn’t be killing each other if it weren’t for these infernal T-shirts and video games. Gotta love this town.

In other City Hall news, the people who work inside City Hall still suck, just like they always have.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted, per usual, from Boston Daily)

We hear that Governor Deval Patrick’s budget priorities are in trouble. That’s not any great surprise. The House and Senate took most of the governor’s recommendations and tossed them in the trash last year, too.

But here’s where things get interesting. The budget crunch is about to get a lot worse in the next few years, and when it does, it’ll put Patrick’s broad promises on public safety, education, parks, and property taxes in big, big trouble. Which, of course, will put Patrick in big, big trouble.

As previously discussed, because of the significant price tag that comes along with the myriad campaign promises Patrick made, his administration must look at fiscal troubles though a political lens. It’s one thing for the legislature to delay investing in new cops or early education for a few years; it’s quite another for the governor, who’s going to have a reelection fight on his hands well before the economy’s caviar and champagne days return.

And here’s what hurts extra-hard

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

We may be watching the balance of power tip on Beacon Hill. While Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Sal DiMasi go back and forth about casinos and taxes—and whether or not they’re going back and forth at all—Senate President Therese Murray is showing herself to be both smart enough to recognize the power vacuum brought on by the bickering, and strong enough to fill that vacuum with substantive policy proposals.

Urban Renewal Nearly Brings Timothy Leary to the Comm. Ave. Mall

And hello there to you. Not a whole lot of activity on these here internets lately. I know. A light blogging regimen is the sign of a guy with a bunch of work that actually pays.

But who needs rent money when you’ve got totally subversive and unprofessional government memos? That’s what we’ve got here. By all means, please do read on.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Deval Patrick has got to hate St. Patrick’s week. This time a year ago, House Speaker Sal DiMasi appeared before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and absolutely brutalized the governor – much to the delight of the assemblage of reporters and rich people in nice suits.

And now, no sooner had the vomit dried on Broadway than the speaker was back before the Chamber, telling everybody that casino gambling “will absolutely cause damage on a grand scale” and ruin lives and everything. If it’s not the end of civilization as we know it, it sounded pretty damn close.

And with that, the great casino death train of 2008 pulled back into the station. In celebration of the occasion, some people jibbered. Others jabbered. Facts, figures, reports and the like were bandied about, and somewhere along the line, the governor’s casino proposal flatlined.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Hey, guess what, everybody? Governor Deval Patrick wants to build three casinos in Massachusetts. He’s been saying that they’ll bring 30,000 jobs in tow. Turns out, they won’t. Shocking, we know. But it’s this revelation that gripped Beacon Hill this week. All other concerns were crowded out.

Most close observers (depending on whom you read) have known for several months now that the governor’s casino research is compromised and his economic assumptions shaky. And now that the town’s paper of record has spoken on the subject, the fan is really covered in it.

The administration has even stopped citing its 30,000 jobs figure, and taken to speaking of “tens of thousands” of jobs instead.

That’s a significant fact, because it marks the first time in this whole gambling debate that reporting has been able to knock the administration off its talking points.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

The most talked-about man on Beacon Hill continued to be widely talked about this week, as news that Speaker Sal DiMasi has been playing golf with a decades-old friend while not playing golf with a guy with a horrific haircut sparked an ethics uproar. It’s the surest sign yet that the state GOP has given up trying to win elections altogether, and will now focus solely on lobbing wobbly ethics complaints at its Democratic foes. And that Scot Lehigh hasn’t met a bad golf metaphor he doesn’t like.

The threat golf poses to democracy extends far beyond the current casino debate, though. Boston minorities who enjoy voting had better watch their backs: DiMasi occasionally hits the links with former Speaker Tom Finneran. Can federal voting rights violations, disgrace, and tears be far behind?

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

These are strange times for the state’s coastal legislators.

First, in November, they were subjected to an energy bill sneak attack that, unbeknownst to them, opened up their coastlines to unfettered wind farm development. They balked, as did the Senate, which had been pushing an oceans management bill authored by Senator Robert O’Leary as a way to set up a framework for plopping turbines down in the water. The senate had threatened to hold Sal DiMasi’s energy bill hostage if the House didn’t act on their oceans bill, and so, last week, House leadership pushed a gutted bizzaro version of the senate’s bill to the floor.

Turns out, it wasn’t a whole lot more than a reworded version of amendment leadership tried to cram through in November – reportedly at the behest of prospective developer Jay Cashman.