All you ever wanted to know about the BRA... or at least -- all I could find out.

Boycott that BRA magic

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The skill of a good magician is to set the trick in motion before the audience arrives, and distract the viewers with unrelated activities while it appears to be happening before their eyes.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) runs a great magic show. It conjures out of thin air approvals of projects not even faintly resembling the zoning laws, all before the neighborhood audience is even notified that the show’s in town. We’ve seen the performance. Thick proposal documents are presented, residents sit through meetings about "impacts studies," special advisory groups are appointed to represent the "community voice," there are detailed comment letters and impassioned testimony. Then, shazzam!-a tower pops out of a tiny site! The audience is amazed! Wait-didn’t we all say NO? How could they do that? And look at the zoning code-isn’t this ... illegal?

More amazing, the audience members keep returning, project after project, year after year, and are astounded every time the act ends the same way. How can the BRA get away with this?

Well, the heart of the trick is actually the audience participation. We let them get away with it, not by agreeing, but by just being there.

Developers want to build tall; that’s where the big money is. The BRA doesn’t want to do a legitimate rezoning of the city at the heights it plans to allow, in part because they fear (possibly wrongly!) that the public wouldn’t accept them-but more important, because that would let developers build by-right, vastly diminishing the political power of the mayor and the BRA to direct development. And asking the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA) for a variance is risky. A denial will stop or diminish the project, and a ZBA approval that doesn’t qualify under the legal "hardship" criterion can be challenged in court; most huge projects won’t qualify.

So the BRA has created an assortment of regulatory wands to wave, to tailor the code to the project. But-how can it do that legally? Isn’t that "spot zoning?"

Not if it’s called "planning."

Zoning is a codification of local planning. Even site-specific zoning can be considered legitimate if it is shown to be consistent with the city’s plans. And the planning agency-here, the BRA, since it grabbed up the planning board in 1960-gets to say what is the plan.

The BRA can write into the zoning code (it staffs and advises the puppet Zoning Commission, which nominally approves the code) site-specific loopholes for almost every occasion (Planned Development Area, Chapter 121A, U-District, Institutional Master Plan, etc.), and, if that’s not enough, it simply amends the zoning to match the project. Then it can declare this custom zoning to be consistent, as the code itself requires, with its "general plan for the city as a whole" (which doesn’t exist) or bits thereof. Think "Alice in Wonderland": planning means what the BRA says it means.

The courts, as the judicial branch, avoid interfering with legislative functions, including planning and zoning law-making. So when the BRA wraps its customized zoning within its mantle of planning, it protects the developer, the City and itself-by depriving the public of legal recourse. Legal means what the BRA says it means.

And-here’s where the magic happens-the public process, our audience participation, constitutes the "planning" needed to legitimize the tailored zoning. Can we have a volunteer up on the stage? Yes, many, and, of course, the more egregious the proposed zoning violation, the more active the audience participation. Bogus as it is, it’s banked for future use, should anyone try a court challenge. There, on the record, are enough studies, public meetings, and comment letters to prove that there has indeed been "planning," and the resulting rezoning is not arbitrary and capricious.

So all of us who participate in these project reviews, who attend meetings and submit comments, are enablers of the BRA’s hocus pocus. We consent to being distracted by its made-up review requirement, and thus we legitimize the outcome. Without the "community planning process," and the "public benefits" that the BRA decides will outweigh the burdens of the project, the BRA’s zoning finagles would stand starkly exposed as "spot zoning," and often also "contract zoning," i.e., zoning sold in trade for public goods and services (also unlawful).

We should boycott. We need a citizens’ strike. If we want the rule of law, with the protections that brings, we should not let ourselves be used as participants, but be active as protesters. Carry signs at meetings. Submit letters saying simply that this is not legitimate planning and zoning, and declare this so-called community process null and void. (Do, however, write substantive comments to state agencies if they have jurisdiction.)

Reach out to other neighborhood groups and stick together. Don’t let the developer or BRA meet with sub-groups or individual representatives, to divide and conquer; they will dub the first to be co-opted as the "community voice." Don’t accept those flattering appointments to IAGs (Impact Advisory Group) and CACs (Citizen or Civic Advisory Group) and other bogus community advisory groups, and don’t accept their recommendations and reports as meaningful. Don’t let the developer or BRA dangle benefits of any kind before you; they are a ruse. Don’t let the mayor send you off to negotiate for public services-schools, parks, libraries, etc.-from developers; public services are not their job, but his, and we can easily afford them if we don’t squander our money.

The tower projects now on the table would be among the tallest in the city: Government Center Garage, Harbor Garage, Simon Copley Mall, Christian Science Center, North Station, the thousand-foot (or whatever the Federal Aviation Administration will allow) Winthrop Square tower, all wildly beyond the zoning. Yet, we keep trooping into the theater, peering intently at shadow studies, lamenting the traffic projections, writing out our benefits wish-lists. We have been hypnotized.

Wake up. Stop wasting your time at the BRA’s magic show. Stand up and say, "This violates our zoning laws, and you don’t qualify for a variance. Come back when you have a project that respects the law."

Don’t be distracted by irrelevant "process" while your hard-won zoning protections disappear and elephantine towers pop up out of nowhere. Let’s picket the theater, and replace the hocus-pocus with planning that’s real.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

The BRA: end it, don’t mend it

Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) is planning its 50th birthday celebration. Boston has endured over a half century of neighborhood destruction, lawless development and financial assaults by this quasi-public agency, an "independent" urban renewal authority that, long after urban renewal has been discredited as a city-building strategy, has extended its fingers into almost every aspect of Boston’s governance.

But because it has such ubiquitous powers, most citizens, the media, and even public officials don’t realize that the BRA is not an integral or necessary part of the city’s government; knowing nothing different, they think it can’t be eliminated. We often hear politicians promise to reform the BRA, to make it more responsive to the community, or more accountable. This is illusory; it is structured as an authority precisely for the purpose of avoiding accountability, and its core mission will always be to promote development. It cannot be transformed. It must be structurally dismantled.

How do we do it? And what should replace it?

The BRA has three general roles: urban renewal, planning/zoning, and community service programs. Each must be terminated and these critical functions must be brought under accountable city control, on the city budget and subject to public oversight.

Urban Renewal:

The BRA was created under a state enabling law (Chapter 121B) by a city council vote in 1957. It was to create and implement 40-year Urban Renewal Plans as approved by the council, to stimulate the city’s depressed post-war economy by replacing "blighted" (read: poor) neighborhoods with middle-class housing (and residents). The BRA also has the power to qualify development projects for city property tax exemption through Chapter 121A, a program created to subsidize affordable housing in blighted areas. Over time, the BRA has elbowed the council out of its oversight roles under both statutes through legislation that exempts Boston from provisions that apply to other cities.

Today, the councilors do not seem to understand how the BRA works, nor do they realize that it was supposed to be fully accountable to them. In its 3,300 acres of urban renewal land, occupying much of the central city area, the BRA controls land use and has eminent domain power; and it can create site-specific urban renewal areas with so-called "demonstration projects," without council approval. It also exacts perpetual transfer taxes from subsequent owners of properties it sells to developers. In 2004, the BRA, negotiating with the council in unlawful secret meetings, herded the councilors into voting to give up most of their remaining powers over the BRA’s urban renewal activities and to perpetuate the urban renewal plans, from which it draws its basic power and legitimacy. But certain reporting requirements were set as a condition of the vote, including annual reports on the BRA’s urban renewal planning and land disposition activities, and from personal interaction with City Councilors I believe the BRA has failed to meet them, denying the council the stipulated tools for accountability.

The council should rescind its 2004 vote and either let the Plans expire over the next few years or vote to terminate them.

City Planning:

The BRA was never meant to be the city’s planning board. Indeed, no other urban renewal authority in the U.S. became its city’s planning agency. It is a conflict of interest, since the authority is a development interest and should be seeking approvals from the planning board and city council. Yet, in 1960, legislation (Chapter 652 of the Acts of 1960) was passed abolishing the Boston planning board and giving all its powers and properties to the BRA; this was to assure that planning would not get in the way of the BRA’s redevelopment agenda, and indeed, it never has. Thus, instead of a disinterested, professional planning and zoning operation accountable to an elected legislative body as provided under our state laws, Boston has a quasi-public redevelopment authority at its helm. Instead of taking, clearing and selling land to private developers as intended, the BRA has amassed a huge land empire of its own, in and beyond urban renewal areas (notably, the seaport industrial area), becoming one of the largest land-owners in Boston. As the planning body, and the staff and legal adviser to the Boston Zoning Commission, the BRA can plan and zone its own land to maximize its lease or sale profits. And it can manipulate the zoning process to enable private developers to escape the zoning laws, protected from legal challenge. Boston mayors have been empowered by this legal shield to effectively re-zone the city site-by-site for developers they favor, who in turn fill their campaign coffers. Since the BRA’s core mission is to promote development projects, particularly large and very profitable development for desirable demographic groups, we have no comprehensive, proactive, long-range city planning. The city council and mayor should file a home rule petition (Boston-specific state legislation) repealing the relevant section of the 1960 law, and reestablish a city planning board, under the oversight of the elected legislative body, the city council. Mass. state laws (Ch. 40A and 41) lay out provisions for planning and zoning agencies in cities.

City service programs:

The BRA has taken over the implementation of many city programs related to jobs, literacy, youth, etc. Some state and federal grants for these services, which should be run by the city directly, run through the BRA. This grip on the purse strings of much-needed public services also adds to the BRA’s political power.

These programs, and their funding, should be put back into the hands of accountable city departments.

When the BRA is dissolved, its billions of dollars’ worth of real estate, (some of which it took, with mayoral permission, from the City of Boston without paying compensation), should be taken into city ownership, and either dedicated as necessary for public use, or surplussed by the city council and returned, through competitive bids, into the private market for productive development conforming with genuine city plans and zoning laws. The council should obtain a list and map of BRA-owned property, and get accurate appraisals.

The council should hold extensive public hearings to receive community input on the structure of the planning board, and it should consult legal and planning advisors as necessary to write the by-laws for the planning agency. A new or modified zoning agency may be deemed desirable as well; for this another legislative change may be necessary with regard to the Boston Zoning Enabling Act (Chapter 665 of the Acts of 1956 sets up our Zoning Commission). Boston has been excepted from other state laws affecting planning, zoning and eminent domain; these will require modification as well.

The city charter should be reviewed and revised as necessary to support these changes, and to further improve the checks and balances between the council and the mayor.

The elimination of the BRA and reestablishment of a planning board, funded and operated as a part of publicly accountable city government, is not revolutionary but simply a restoration of normal order. Election season is the time to get it done.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

McCann revelations eye-opening

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The April 27 Boston Globe story on Paul McCann, who is collecting a full pension as well as a consulting contract totaling more than his original salary, is eye-opening for several reasons.

During his recent coffee hour in my neighborhood, I asked Mayor Tom Menino for a comment. He said he didn’t know about it and that he had asked the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) director to cancel the contract.

He didn’t know about it? This retirement strategy dates at least back to 1994, when The Boston Globe printed a story on Kane Simonian, the BRA’s first executive director, who got the same golden treatment. The Globe reported then: "Mayor Menino also defended the deal. ’For many years he gave a lot of good service to the people of Boston,’ he said late last week. ’I respect the FinCom [Finance Commision], but this was common knowledge 10 months ago. Where were they then? Mr. Simonian has a historical knowledge of this city like no one else has.’"

So, Menino thought it was all right to break the pension law for old-timers, he admitted that he had known about the unlawful contract for almost a year, and he blamed the Finance Commission - which doesn’t have jurisdiction over the BRA - for not doing anything about it. Now that the same news is out about a person he calls "a true friend," Paul McCann, Menino’s shocked and outraged. The Globe writes: "After being advised of the results of the Globe review, Menino administration spokeswoman Dot Joyce said late Friday that the city’s retirement board will investigate. ’The city and the retirement board will absolutely review this case,’ Joyce said." (The board, while they’re up, should also review the no-bid consulting contracts the mayor has been giving to laid-off City employees; the BRA has no monopoly on double-dipping at City Hall.)

He had the director cancel the contract? Since when does the mayor make contract decisions for the BRA? In the Globe story, Director John Palmieri is quoted to say, "On advice of counsel, we’re going to be suspending the contract of Paul McCann, pending further review." This raises a crucial question: How much accountability does the mayor bear for what the BRA does?

Paul McCann, the point person for this issue, told the Globe that he didn’t notify the BRA of the excessive contract because "he didn’t think the law applied to him."

"Why would I, knowing it was not a legal requirement?" he asked.

Well, one reason might be that he’s a lawyer, and he’s been in the Authority since Genesis. And also, because he used a different excuse for his colleague in 1994, saying, according to that year’s Globe story, that the law didn’t apply to Simonian because "as a military veteran, he is exempt from any law that would reduce his pension." The law still applied, of course; the reduction would be in the contract, not the pension. But as a lawyer, he should know that, too.

Most astoundingly, McCann told the Globe he believes the BRA is "an independent authority and not a government agency covered under the income-limit clause of the law." The BRA certainly believes it is a government agency when it takes property by eminent domain, when it does city planning and zoning, and when it insists it should remain exempt from taxation. And as the state retirement officials point out in the story, "the BRA is a government agency and full-fledged member of the public sector retirement system, which is how McCann qualified for his pension in the first place." If attorney McCann is right he doesn’t qualify for any pension at all!

Director Palmieri was brought in to testify at a recent City Council budget hearing, but he didn’t bring the BRA budget, and he kept telling the council that the BRA is "self-sustaining." How does it sustain itself? On sales and leases of land that it takes from the city without paying, or land it took from private property owners by paying with public funds and kept for itself instead of selling it to developers as intended. By paying none of the Payments in Lieu of Taxes that its enabling law allows the city to collect, on its billions of dollars worth of property. By up-zoning its own land, and land of developers with whom it forms joint ventures, to increase its profits. By selling extensions of expiring property-tax breaks, at huge cost to the city. By occupying the entire ninth floor of City Hall rent-free, space worth over a million dollars a year, while the city departments pay for outside office space. By selling "air rights" owned by the city. By buying up city land for a dollar and selling it for millions. By diverting millions of dollars of state and federal grants meant to help the needy through its mill and skimming off hefty administrative fees. It is "self-sustaining," I testified, in the same way that a tapeworm is self-sustaining. And it sustains itself handsomely, with generous salaries and, evidently, unlawfully generous retirement schemes. An investigation of all its double-dipping would be most productive at this time, while we lay off teachers and police. And the first stop on a fact-finding tour should be the mayor, who approves the BRA’s off-budget revenues, to spare it the public disclosure and accountability that would have toppled it decades ago if people knew what it does to the city.

In 2005, in the course of collecting signatures for a candidate, I traipsed around City Hall Plaza where I might find registered Boston voters in city employ. I approached two such employees, and they snapped: "I’ll only sign for a candidate who will eliminate the BRA."

"But why do you want that?" I asked.

They replied, "Because what goes on up there is criminal."

Maybe this election year, we will actually find out what goes on up there.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

The Greenway’s shadow governments

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Code Green: the Greenway, that expensive shred of "common ground" cut from the tattered cloth of the Big Dig, is in grave danger. First, it was leased to the private Greenway Conservancy. Now it is in the crosshairs of the quasi-public Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Between the two, the park’s social and environmental potential will be lost, and it will become, simply, real estate.

A few months ago, Mayor Tom Menino announced that he wanted to protect the Greenway from development that would overshadow and "canyonize" it, and that the BRA had already begun planning for a new "Greenway District." The first public meeting, on Feb. 17, was a vague discussion about criteria and principles by Kairos Shen, the BRA’s Planning Director, appointed by the mayor. But the March 18 meeting was more revealing.

Someone asked about "activation" of the park. Mr. Shen answered that the BRA may have to make "trade-offs," allowing bigger buildings along the Greenway to bring people to the open space. The reality is that corporate towers and occasionally occupied seventh-home sky-condos, urban renewal’s failed recipe for 24/7 vibrancy, are not going to make a more lively street life. The BRA is using the public’s yearning for a rich, diverse urban social environment as an excuse for a real estate coup.

The BRA discussed the huge increase in private property values that would result from the newly landscaped corridor, and how we might capture it for the benefit of the park. This typically leads to an argument that we have to let developers build taller towers so that they can afford to make some contributions to our amenities. The "value capture" model is what eventually led the state to lease the Greenway, for free, to the private group of business interests called the Greenway Conservancy, and, as it turns out, to pay them millions of public dollars to take care of it with private dollars.

One suspicious resident asked point-blank, "What about the zoning already existing in this area?" Mr. Shen stated that the consultants would not be bound by such an obstacle, and that their mandate is to "start from the asset," the park, and to recommend what we should do now, as if there were no existing zoning laws. He stated that he could not predict if that would mean an increase in height or a decrease. I think we can guess.

Another citizen asked how this plan would deal with the state law recently proposed by state Representatives Marty Walz and Byron Rushing to limit shadows on the Greenway, as the Boston Common and Public Garden were protected. Mr. Shen took the position that the state should not be making our city planning decisions, which belong right here in the hands of...well, of his quasi-private Redevelopment Authority.

Mr. Shen also assured us that the private developers and the BRA would be "partners," not adversaries, in this endeavor. This is not comforting. The BRA is already likely to partner, financially, with Raymond Properties, which plans to build its 700-foot tower on a land near the Greenway that is, or will be, under BRA control. A partnership with the BRA, the city’s development regulator, guarantees permitting for maximum profit.

One audience member asked for a sense of the vision that would be guiding the district development. Mr. Shen informed the group that "vision" was beyond the consultant’s scope and budget. I think the questioner was wondering if it was within the Planning Director’s job description.

In my remarks, I summarized what I had learned in 15 years of participating in BRA planning processes: #1) the only purpose for any BRA planning endeavor is to create a rationale allowing developers to build even higher towers than they could using existing BRA zoning loopholes; and #2) the only purpose for these public meetings was to use innocent citizens, thinking they are providing "input," to legitimize #1. My message - to the citizens, not to the BRA, which already knows - was that the outcome would be to capture public value for private parties and not the reverse, rewarding with higher investment returns those skygrabbers who turn the Greenway into a canyon.

And I asserted that the Greenway Conservancy, which lauded the BRA’s undertaking at the public meeting, is effectively an arm of the Artery Business Committee. It is chaired by the managing director of a public relations firm representing Raymond Properties, as well as the New Center for Arts & Culture proposed for a Greenway road-ramp parcel. The Conservancy welcomed the tower replacing the historic Dainty Dot building at the Chinatown section of the Greenway, and the developer’s promised contribution for park maintenance. A Conservancy member who was working for the nearby Russia Wharf tower developer at the time of the project’s Zoning Commission hearing won approval by testifying that it would have no environmental impacts; the commissioners dismissed my comment (reflected also in the record of written comments by others) about the tower’s park shadows, saying that if the park were threatened, the Conservancy would have been there to defend it.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway: Sunny open space or shadowy canyon? We’ll have a pretty good idea at the May public meeting.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

Living in ’The Matrix’ of the BRA

Wed, 4 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

It’s so hard to describe the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), because there is nothing like it in all of America. Nowhere else has a quasi-private urban renewal authority been given the municipality’s powers of planning, zoning and project approval; it’s effectively outsourcing your brain. In other cities with urban renewal authorities (not every city has one), the agency proposes specific projects in Urban Renewal Plan areas and seeks City Council approval. Here, City Councilors line up at BRA hearings to testify, express gratitude, and beg (oh, please, a little more affordable housing!).

I usually call the BRA "an imperial power of which Boston is the sole colony." But recently I found a better analogy. In the sci-fi movie, "The Matrix," humans create machinery that eventually takes them over. It programs them to see only an artificial, rosy world while their actual world decays, letting them think they are really making their own decisions for their lives in order to keep them docile while it steals their energy and resources (and wrecks their nice historic buildings).

That’s what the BRA does, keeping us plodding along in a simulated world of rules and procedures, thinking we are "participating" and "commenting" and contributing "input" on our city’s development while our energy is sapped and our real environment is transformed beyond recognition.

The "public process" surrounding the Prudential Center provides a stark illustration.

The BRA, created in 1957 to capture federal money for urban renewal (bad enough!), also grabbed up our planning board in 1960. It was done via a provision tucked into legislation giving the Prudential Insurance Company a 40-year tax exemption under Chapter 121A (meant to subsidize affordable housing in poor neighborhoods). The provision abolished the planning board and gave all its powers and properties to the BRA, elbowing the legislative body, the City Council, out of the way. The purpose was to preempt planning, to be sure real planning didn’t get in the way of redevelopment. Indeed, for over a half century, it hasn’t. And although urban renewal was intended as a temporary program to jump-start the post-war economy with 40-year plans, the BRA’s tentacles now curl around every important financial and regulatory activity in the city-with no public accountability.

Above all, the BRA has eliminated citizens’ rights in city planning and development. Under an elected City Council, zoning is a legislative act, and the courts rightly avoid intervening, leaving the remedy to the voting booth. Planning and zoning normally have this built-in political accountability. But in Boston, zoning is not a legislative act; it’s an executive operation, under the mayor and his appointed Zoning Commission, a puppet body stacked with real estate interests, staffed and advised by the BRA. We lost the legislative level of accountability, but the courts still defer to zoning decisions as political actions.

The constitutionality of this power shift was questioned by the legislature, and astoundingly, it was upheld by the state Supreme Judicial Court, on the grounds that different communities can be justifiably allowed by the state to structure their governance differently. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not, the Court opined, prevent reasonable classification of subjects of legislation, nor preclude legislative action providing treatment of problems differently in different communities, in a manner having a reasonable relationship to the objects of the legislation. Different treatment is justified if the conditions in these communities differ sufficiently so as fairly to give rise to the legislative belief that such different treatment is desirable in the public interest, and if the legislation operates equally within each geographical area with respect to persons similarly situated.

Of course, the similarity of persons’ situations is rather subjective, but, circularly, the BRA gets to decide this within the city. So, here we are. For fifty years, Boston, the cradle of democracy, has been teetering on one (the executive) of the three legs of the stool of democratic government, with severely curtailed checks and balances from the legislative and judicial branches in shaping the city’s growth and development.

At the Prudential, changes in the zoning code, tailored to the developer’s proposals, have been approved by the BRA and the Zoning Commission. This is clearly a violation of the Zoning Enabling Act, which gives the power of zoning relief only to the Board of Appeal (a law-enforcement, not law-making, process that formally provides judicial recourse for aggrieved parties). It is spot zoning, which is illegal. Under the Act, the courts may "annul such action [zoning decision] if found to exceed the authority of such commission..." Yet, among several attorneys consulted, none would take the case. Some feared political retribution for challenging the BRA’s zoning-relief-by-zoning powers, but others-even more troublingly-concluded that, although the text of the law might support a suit, the practice of the courts in deferring to local planning and zoning (even project-tailored zoning, which the planning board can simply declare consistent with the city plan) makes success very unlikely.

This power to shield spot zoning from legal recourse is exactly why the BRA took over our planning board. This is why we must take it back.

Occasionally, I hear community folks rejoicing that they won on a development dispute; others hope to learn how they too can prevail in their protests. But it’s more likely that there was another reason for the change in developer’s plans, one that suited the BRA financially, or the mayor politically.

It’s naive to think that community resistance works if it’s sufficiently loud and prolonged. And even if it occasionally does, the David-and-Goliath method of deciding how the city develops is not a path to a coherent city vision. For that, we need the rule of law. It sounds simple. It’s the underpinnings of the democracy we fight and die to "give" to other countries. Yet, we apparently don’t believe in it here. Or don’t practice it, anyway. Maybe politicians, and even some residents, think they’ll do better if every project is a negotiation, and they can grab a few crumbs in the "community benefits" bazaar. It’s another illusion.

Community people make mistakes; they often disagree; they don’t always have the facts; they may be parochial at times. But decision-making should be transparent, part of accountable democratic government. If we don’t want to be "The Matrix," if we want to know what’s really happening and what we’re really doing, if we don’t want to find out one day that we’ve been laboring in a faux "reality" while Boston has been taken out from under us, let’s eliminate the rule of BRA and restore the rule of law. Election season is the time.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

Take the multiple-choice quiz on BRA

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400

People keep asking me why I’m so interested in the BRA. Well, it’s because the BRA is really the big game in town. We all work for the BRA; the city is a big fee farm and power playground for the BRA. It’s the only Urban Renewal Authority in America that has taken over its city planning and zoning, and it has metastasized into every nook and cranny of the city’s operations. Despite the fact it is so powerful and ubiquitous, most people know nothing about it. Even after 15 years of delving into it (or trying to), I have barely touched the tip of the iceberg and keep learning astounding things.

I believe that if everyone knew what goes on in the BRA, it would immediately be dismantled. I was once collecting political nomination signatures on City Hall Plaza, and walked up to two people who turned out to be City Hall employees. They said they’d only sign for a candidate who would eliminate the BRA. Since I would only collect for a candidate who would eliminate the BRA, I was happy to tell them that they were in luck! But I asked why they felt that way, and they answered, “Because what goes on up there is criminal.” I realized that people in City Hall, even other than BRA employees, do know what the BRA is doing, but they are afraid to tell anyone. Other people who happen to find out things are also fearful to reveal them, even anonymously, for fear of discovery and retribution. That’s why I refer to the BRA (only half in jest) as the KGB. I was a Russian Studies major at Brandeis University, but I have learned a lot more about Russia in Boston than I ever did in college. A major purpose for opening this blog is to wholesale the BRA information I’ve collected over the years, which I’ve been painstakingly and tediously retailing to groups, individuals, and newspaper reporters.

Someone asked me to do a FAQ on the BRA, to present things in a more digestible way. Here are some fun facts about the BRA.

1. The half-century-long de facto director and eminence grise of the BRA, Paul McCann, explained at a City Council hearing that the BRA was established to:
a. Create decent housing for people living in substandard housing resulting from owners ignoring building codes
b. Create jobs for Boston residents and increase Boston’s commercial tax base
c. Throw poor people off their land and do all the dirty things while protecting the mayor from political retribution

2. In taking over the planning and zoning of the city in 1960, the BRA was:
a. Chartered to do so by its state enabling legislation
b. Supported by widespread popularity among Boston residents
c. The only urban renewal authority in America ever to do so, because it’s a conflict of interest

3. The BRA’s four kinds of self-zoning districts (Planned Development Area (PDA), U-District, 121A, Institutional Master Plan) are:
a. Created only with inclusive community input, and provide full public legal recourse for violations
b. Limited by law to 10% of the city’s land area of 30,000 acres
c. In violation of the Boston Zoning Enabling Act granting zoning relief power only to the Zoning Board of Appeal

4. No PDAs have ever been created in
a. areas that don’t have the required one acre of land
b. areas whose zoning forbids PDAs
c. Hyde Park, Mayor Menino’s neighborhood

5. The number of acres of self-zoning districts in Boston is about:
a. 1,000
b. 5,000
c. 10,000

6. The BRA must pay compensation to owners for all its eminent domain takings except:
a. Private property in urban renewal areas
b. Private property outside urban renewal areas
c. Public property owned by the City of Boston

7. The BRA owns tax-exempt land valued by the City at:
a. zero
b. fifty million dollars
c. five hundred million dollars

8. The BRA is by law accountable only to:
a. the city council
b. the mayor
i. itself

9. According to its state enabling legislation, the BRA can only be dissolved by:
a. the mayor
b. the city council
c. itself

10. The BRA’s disposition process is to convey property to:
a. developers whose proposals conform to zoning laws
b. high bidders
c. anyone they want to

11. If a chosen developer proposes a project for a BRA parcel doesn’t conform to the urban renewal plan, the BRA:
a. requires that he revise it to conform to the plan, since the plans give the BRA its powers
b. asks for other developers’ proposals to choose a more conforming project, to work toward the plan
c. changes the plan to conform with the proposal

1. The BRA’s 40-year urban renewal plans, which were to expire in the next few years:
a. will expire as the urban renewal program intended
b. have all been accomplished
i. were perpetuated by a City Council vote in 2004

13. The BRA-controlled tax breaks for two dozen needy projects on “blighted” sites, including the FleetCenter, Genzyme, and the Post Office Square Garage, annually cost the city approximately:
a. $10 million
b. $50 million
c. $70 million

14. The BRA did not take by eminent domain:
a. The air between the cornice overhang and the sidewalk of One Court Street
b. City Hall Plaza
c. The blighted buildings owned by Kensington Investments in the theatre district

15. The Compliance Officer hired by the BRa in 2004 to enforce promises made by developers has:
a. set up a data base to track commitments made by developers
b. requested community input on commitments that were unmet
c. never looked at any commitments

16. The Mayor told the BRA to take by eminent domain a City-owned parking lot in Chinatown (Hayward Place) and give it to his developer friends at the Ritz towers across the street, although it had fetched a cash bid from another developer of:
a. $3 million
b. $13 million
c. $23 million

17. The Ritz developer is not developing anything, but he is collecting parking revenues that should be going to the City, costing us every year about:
a. $25,000
b. $100,000
c. $2,500,000

18. Although the BRA doesn’t answer to City Council, it received, between 1993 and 2000, City tax money for its operating expenses totaling:
a. $10 million
b. $20 million
c. $40 million

19. A few years ago, a Chief Planner for Boston, Rebecca Barnes, was hired through a City budget appropriation; she was accountable to:
a. the mayor
b. the City Council
c. the BRA director

20. When Barnes left, the acting Chief Planner for Boston, Ken Greenburg, was:
a. a resident of Boston
b. a resident of Brookline
c. a resident of Toronto, Canada

21. In recent years, BRA’s de facto director, deputy director of planning and zoning, chief architect, and chief project engineer have been residents of:
a. downtown Boston
b. West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park
c. Brookline, Melrose and Hingham

22. The BRA doesn’t pay property tax because:
a. Its property is worthless
b. Its State enabling legislation exempts them from taxes
c. The Mayor and City Council never asked it to

23. The BRA sources of operating funds do not include:
a. Selling or leasing City-owned land it takes by eminent domain without paying
b. City budget appropriations
c. Operating affordable housing for residents displaced by its urban renewal demolitions

Just to make it easy: All the correct answers are c.

Shirley Kressel

The BRA shapes our city without us

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In my last column, I reviewed some of the ways the Boston Redevelopment Authority takes money from all of us. Now, let’s turn to some of the BRA’s impacts on development, planning and public policy.

The BRA, created in 1957, used stealth legislation to eliminate our Planning Board in 1960, elbowing the City Council, our legislative branch, out of its rightful role in planning and land use regulation. It has since taken over many other Council roles, depriving us of essential checks and balances.

The BRA uses its planning/zoning role and its urban renewal powers to make what is illegal, legal. The BRA confers enormous wealth on favored developers with its loophole-laden zoning code, shielding them from lawsuits for violating laws meant to protect the community. Politicians can make private deals with developers, drawing campaign contributions that keep them in office. The BRA conducts the "public process" of review and approval and absorbs the helpless wrath of citizens, while the officials remain insulated from public retribution.

The BRA’s "four finagles," as I call them, are:

- Planned Development Areas (PDA), projects of an acre or more;

- Chapter 121A agreements granting tax breaks, zoning relief, and eminent domain power, for sites the BRA declares "blighted" (in Boston, City Council is cut out of 121A review);

- U-Districts, within the BRA’s 3,000 acres of original Urban Renewal Plan areas and constantly added "Demonstration Project" areas, where the BRA conveys land to a developer; and

- Institutional Master Plans (IMP) of expanding tax-exempt institutions.

In these self-zoning districts, development rules are simply negotiated with the BRA. But such relief is illegal. It violates the Boston Zoning Enabling Act, which gives the power of zoning relief only to the Zoning Board of Appeal, whose process provides legal recourse: aggrieved parties can sue. Thus, the BRA, having disarmed the legislative branch, has also largely deprived us of the judicial branch, leaving the "three-legged stool" of democratic government standing on the executive alone.

No neighborhood is protected from the BRA’s magical self-zoning wand, given its liberal criteria - although the BRA routinely violates even these. Even a project with only a half-acre of land has been made a PDA, by counting nearby streets and sidewalks. Abracadabra!

Even when the zoning code included provisions that the BRA’s own lawyers warned cannot be changed by a PDA, it used a PDA designation (indeed, the half-acre one) to remove the code protection of the historic Gaiety Theatre and destroyed it for an unlawful tower. Hocus pocus!

Even where the code prohibits PDAs altogether, the BRA simply gets the puppet Zoning Commission to delete the prohibition when it approves a PDA. The tower replacing Filene’s in Downtown Crossing was legalized this way. The Columbus Center project was given a PDA, when, as a Turnpike air rights area, it is not even subject to city zoning. The BRA’s project manager on the Columbus Center wrote in a memo in 2003 to the several local neighborhood associations: "PDAs are not permitted in the Bay Village Neighborhood District, the Open Space Urban Plaza subdistrict of the South End Neighborhood District, or the portion of the Downtown IPOD that includes the Site. Text Amendment No. [blank], submitted by the BRA for approval immediately prior to approval of the PDA Plan, would make such provisions inapplicable to the Site." Presto!

The BRA granted a 121A to Two Financial Center, a tower proposed in the booming historic Leather District. Residents sued and lost: the BRA, the court said, may declare blight at its discretion. That developer’s revised proposal for a still over-sized building stated that if the community opposed a variance, he would take the 121A and not only over-build but take the tax exemption as well. Loew’s (now W) Hotel near the Theatre District got a U-District when the BRA seized a few square feet of land near the site and conveyed it to the developer. Shazam!

Coming up: the redevelopment of the Government Center Garage. It’s big enough for a PDA, but the BRA owns the adjacent parcel. By adding it to the project, it can make a U-District, become an equity partner, and profit by approving the biggest possible building. A 121A is also possible, and would leave more money in the developer’s budget for the BRA’s lease fee.

Institutional Master Plans are by used all colleges and health care facilities. With their unfettered expansion, residential buildings become student dorms, neighborhood-serving retail disappears, neighborhoods are destabilized, voting power diminishes, families move out. And the tax burden of their exempted property is shifted to the rest of us.

The BRA owns hundreds of acres of land rights, where it simply writes it own rules, an egregious conflict of interest the Boston Globe editorialized about on April 6, 1999, "On top of South Station?": "The BRA ought to be the watchdog for the project, but it owns the air rights over the station and stands to gain a fortune in lease payments..." It is a profit-seeking - and unfairly advantaged --competitor in the real estate market. It tilts the playing field with cronyism in developer designations (it is exempt from competitive bidding laws), encourages (and engages in) speculation, permits development that hurts our environment and quality of life, causes an artificial land scarcity, and drives up land costs, driving up housing and business costs.

These few examples barely scratch the surface; the BRA’s zoning shenanigans could (and should) fill a book.

Meanwhile, for a half-century, we, in the cradle of democracy, have been without a planning entity that cares about anything besides the profits of big developers (including itself). Its social mission remains to remake Boston for better people. Its political mission as an "ethics laundry" remains as well: to do the dirty work while keeping politicians’ hands clean.

Accountable only to its own board, dissolvable only by its own hand, and apparently out of reach of the ethics commission or any law enforcement agency, the BRA is "da bums" we can’t "t’row out."

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

An RX for city’s finances? Follow the BRA

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

City Council has finished another budget review, an exercise in which, unfortunately, few councilors and even fewer citizens participate. And now that it’s all over, we still know little about the outlay of our $2 billion budget.

Although it is not the biggest budget item, one of the biggest factors in the city’s overall revenue picture is the Boston Redevelopment Authority. This year’s BRA hearing was scheduled for a very short time slot, not nearly enough to probe all the BRA’s many financial impacts. It was adjourned without opportunity for the public (in this case, only myself, perhaps because no public notice was posted for the hearing) to testify. Hopefully, the councilors will schedule a second hearing with appropriate public notice, inviting in the many people who may have comments to make about the BRA.

Here are some of the BRA-related financial questions that I think need to be examined - and unfortunately weren’t this budget season:

The BRA has, in its 50 years, drained untallied billions of dollars from the economy of Boston, and continues to do so with mayoral blessing. It gets millions a year in city capital funds directly, and takes many more millions from us indirectly. The BRA claims to be "self-funding," serving the city of Boston without cost; At-Large Councilor Michael Flaherty insists we must preserve the BRA because "we can’t afford a Planning Department." But the BRA has always been publicly funded, by federal money from its creation in 1957 to the mid-1970’s, and since then by city money, directly or indirectly (and without Council review).

The BRA testified that it sustains itself on land sales and leases, and on what Director John Palmieri called "kickers" from various projects. Where did the BRA get all that land? And what are these "kickers"?

The BRA began by seizing "blighted" land, for which the federal taxpayers paid compensation. Now, the BRA takes private property using city money. A few notable examples: in Chinatown, the China Trade building; and the Glass Slipper adult entertainment club, which the city gave the BRA $2.3 million to seize for the benefit of a developer (the BRA received reimbursement from the developer and was to reimburse the city, but the BRA has not responded to my request for the record of the payment to the city.

More problematic, it takes city-owned property and the Mayor waives compensation, bleeding our capital fund. Examples: City Hall Plaza: $400 million estimated development-site value. Hayward Place: $23 million bid value. Winthrop Square: city garage lease rights already taken; BRA says parking revenues are up to $1 million, but city only gets the maintenance bills. BRA will take the development rights next, worth hundreds of millions. Yawkey Way: BRA took lease rights from the City and collects all fees for Red Sox use of street; about $1 million by now, and growing. The Mayor also sells the BRA city land for token amounts: e.g., 24 parcels of land in Dorchester were "sold" to BRA by the Department of Neighborhood Development for a dollar and resold by the BRA for $2.4 million. An unknown number of takings and re-sale of city-owned "air rights" under building cornices have contributed to the BRA’s coffers. Indeed, the BRA has admitted to taking thousands of city properties. We need a list of them, and their current status.

The BRA collects a 2 percent "fee" on condo sales on land it had owned. Absent a service, this "fee" appears to be a "tax," and thus unconstitutional. How many such units have there been, where, how much have they paid?

The BRA collects fees from developers for proposal kits, etc. What are all these fees, and how much money do they bring in?

The BRA declares sites "blighted" to qualify them for tax breaks (and zoning relief). We should be able to calculate the amount of the public subsidy from legally required true assessments; instead, the BRA helps developers negotiate their preferred tax assessment, so we can’t even know what we’re losing, although councilors have asked many times. The BRA demands from owners $1 per square foot for transferring a 121A at sale; e.g., the One Beacon St. tower escapes about $4 million in property tax yearly, while BRA gets $1 million with each transfer.

"Blight"-based Tax Increment Financing (TIF) tax waivers went to Back Bay and seaport projects, to subsidize luxury condos, four-star European hotels, a glittering office tower, and a deal between landlord (Beal Company) and tenant (JP Morgan).

The BRA gets "anti-speculation fees" when it helps speculators. Thanks to BRA rezoning and a sweetheart deal on City land, developer Henry Kara turned $2.5 million into $14 million; the BRA’s cut was $2 million.

The BRA has amassed a huge real estate empire of leased property, by being both developer and regulator. Its property tax-exemption costs us unknown millions a year. Hundreds of acres cleared for "urban renewal" and still vacant have cost us decades of taxes. Why aren’t all BRA properties out in the private development market, as originally intended?
The BRA rezones many parcels in the city for tax-exempt institutions, transferring the tax burden of exempted properties to the rest of us. The BRA lobbies the legislature to pass state tax breaks for developers. The BRA piggy-backed its own 5 percent affordable-housing requirement onto the Mayor’s Executive Order for a 10 percent set-aside - but developers can buy out at $200,000 per unit, totaling, so far, over $10 million. What affordable housing has been built with this money?

The BRA, a self-funding quasi-private authority, occupies the 9th floor of City Hall rent-free. How many square feet of office space does it occupy, and what is a comparable rental rate? Does the BRA occupy other city buildings free of charge? The BRA says it gives the city free use of its own space. Where?

The BRA is an equity partner in several big projects (Rowes Wharf, Charlestown). What zoning relief and public contribution were provided? What are the incomes?

The BRA administers federal and state grants to Boston. How much does the BRA take in fees?
What is the BRA’s role in the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC), and how much EDIC money is used by the BRA?

In 2004, Council voted to extend the BRA’s urban renewal plans, conditional on certain reporting requirements. The BRA has failed to comply. Since the BRA is impeding legally required oversight, the Council should rescind the vote and let the plans terminate as originally intended, ending the BRA’s urban renewal powers.

And even this list still doesn’t get at all the information we need. Council should have ongoing BRA hearings, with public input, until it understands the BRA’s grip on our city’s financial health.

Shirley Kressel
Published in the South End News

http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=columnists&sc=city_streets&sc2=&sc3=&id=76879

No more handouts

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

New Boston Redevelopment Authority director, John Palmieri, hired for his "economic development" experience, has now shown us what that means. The BRA always worked for developers to get buildings built. Now, he tells us, it will also work for commercial building owners, to get their properties "tenanted."

Witness the TIF ("tax increment financing") tax-break the mayor and BRA are pushing for JM Morgan Chase. It is actually a 14-year discount on the city property tax for a building owned by Robert Beal, to cover Beal’s rent discount for JP Morgan and to help poor JP Morgan redecorate Beal’s space when they move into it from their downtown buildings.

The Beal Company, one of the region’s most successful developers, is asking the beleaguered taxpayers of Boston for a handout. The Beal building is assessed at $45 million - more than double the $19 million assessment of 2000 and up nicely from $9 million in 1993. Since commercial assessments are based on income, Beal must be doing very well with this property. But he has a vacancy. High rents and changing use plans - these are the likely reasons for the vacancy. Normally, an owner in a hurry for a tenant just lowers the rent - free market, supply and demand, etc.

No more, apparently. Director Palmieri testified to the City Council that it’s the BRA’s job to get buildings built and tenanted (at taxpayers’ expense, of course, the way the BRA always does things). And chief assessor Ron Rakow added that, while Boston relies heavily on property tax, this TIF is worthwhile because filling the building would increase the property value and therefore raise its tax bill double the amount of the TIF, so we’re just splitting the new tax - how could we afford not to give away this money? Maybe the buildings JP Morgan is vacating, whose value would therefore fall, would be next to qualify for a subsidy.

The TIF backers acknowledged that the building hasn’t been vacant for long and yes, another tenant might well have come along in the normal course of business. But why wait - and lose the opportunity for a mayoral photo-op, featuring Tom Menino congratulating himself for "landing" such a big company in the Seaport? Will he also accept blame for the resulting downtown vacancies?

JP Morgan Chase is one of the biggest companies in the world, with more than $20 trillion dollars in assets under management. This unimaginably wealthy conglomerate is actually threatening that without $2 million, spread over 14 years ($140,000 a year), from Boston’s taxpayers, and another $2 million from the state, it cannot move from downtown to the Seaport and instead, will move to Braintree. Braintree! Well, if the world’s titan of corporate capital has an opportunity to enter that suburban bastion of corporate power and still save the shareholders a few pennies, I say, go for it! JP himself would surely be proud of such a shrewd bargain.

What about paying JPM to become a "catalyst" for office space on the Seaport? Nonsense. There are already many office towers there, many of them with bogus tax breaks of their own - we’re losing a fortune on all this economic development.

And the claim of blight? It’s next door to the gigantic new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and the spectacular new W hotel, in the booming Seaport. Yet somehow, it’s been included in the Crosstown-South Boston Empowerment Zone, a designated disinvestment area where taxpayer subsidies are meant to help poor people.

And its promise to try to hire 10 percent residents of the "Economic Target Area" (that’s Boston)? Well, it currently hires 10 percent Boston residents - but the over-all office economy hires 20 percent and the institutions hire 30 percent. JP Morgan has only about 700 employees in Boston - that’s 70 of them Boston residents. And most are high-level management; there’s nothing here for impoverished residents of the Empowerment Zone. And what about the much-touted "new jobs"? The vague possibility of 340 permanent full-time hires over five years is being dangled before us; at 10 percent, up to 34 of them might be for Boston residents: a whopping seven jobs a year, sure to buoy our economy! So much for "job retention" and "job creation." And the tax-break "decertification" provided by the applicants for failure to hire this handful of people can be delayed until it’s all over in 14 years, meaning it doesn’t really exist.

JP Morgan has been operating offices in two buildings that happen to be tax-exempt, 1 Beacon (a 121A "blight" boondoggle) and 73 Tremont (institutionally owned), so the company probably figures it’s a shame to start contributing to Boston’s tax base now. The question is: why doesn’t the Mayor get all those exempt office buildings on the tax rolls, where they belong, instead of looking to forfeit taxes from even more buildings? Because he won’t be held accountable for the harm, that’s why. He simply uses our unfair business-favoring property tax formula to force the rest of us to make up the difference. So why not make his friends and supporters happy and pretend he’s promoting "economic development"?

This is yet another abuse of a program created to help needy communities. And it’s a dangerous precedent for the city’s tax policy; if this is approved, we can expect a parade of businesses threatening to leave town if we don’t make up their mismanagement losses with our taxes. This is a "race to the bottom," a legacy of America’s urban renewal disaster, with the BRA, an urban renewal agency, as eager and able abettor.

It’s well documented by economists that tax-breaks don’t influence business decisions. But politicians like to give away our money in these so-called "incentives," so they can brag that they "lured" businesses here and, at election time, claim credit for "job creation" when companies are merely hiring employees they would hire in any case.

At the hearing, the city councilors interrogated the BRA and JP Morgan, sounding appropriately indignant and adversarial - however, the council’s typical pattern is feisty grandstanding at the hearing, and then obedient approval at the vote. But they know this TIF is wrong. Any Councilor voting for it should be held accountable next election time.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

City Council nullified by BRA

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

We have a new city council. With the room of the forced departure of Felix Arroyo to make for John Connolly, it’s a lot like the old one. And yet again, in the weeks prior to Nov. 6’s puny little vote, newspapers made predictable endorsements and editorial writers dug deep to find laudatory adjectives to justify their choices: “Great ideas,” “is caring,” “has values,” “is hard-working,” whatever. None of it matters.

Not one newspaper (including this one) or radio station came out with a plain statement about the Emperor’s clothes. We don’t have a City Council. We have 13 individuals who take themselves very seriously, put on suits and attend ribbon cuttings, wakes, and each other’s campaign events. They quietly vote themselves a pay raise every couple of years (last year their pay reached $87,500, which is twice the median income in Boston).

In fact, however, we do not have a City Council. And, no, it’s not because of the charter. It’s because we don’t have a real legislative body, with authority over the City’s laws.

Our City Council was sent to its room with milk and cookies in 1960. That’s when the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), then just three years old, slipped a few sentences into an unrelated bill — sentences that abolished the Boston Planning Board and transferred all its powers and properties to the BRA, making Boston, the cradle of democracy, the first and only city in America to outsource its planning, zoning and development to an agency that was accountable to no one, empowered to take property by eminent domain for private commercial uses and charged with expediting and subsidizing development. This was done to lure Ed Logue, fresh from wrecking New Haven with unprecedented amounts of federal money in the name of urban planning, to come run the BRA. Logue agreed to take the job of BRA director only on condition that planning and zoning would never get in the way of the urban renewal agenda. And it never has.

So, unlike every other city council in the country, ours has no power over the most important legislative activity, the shaping of our land use. The BRA has also managed to take over all sorts of other city functions, so very little is left under council oversight. As to finances, the council has no inkling, for example, of what it gives away — in the few items left to its review — in tax exemptions and waivers. The BRA gives them numbers that don’t add up, but councilors don’t ask questions, they just give their stamp of approval.

This jobless herd occupies itself with minor issues, until something important comes up, at which time the mayor calls them at night, or sends around his henchpersons office to office, and tells them what to do and how to vote — or else. Or else, as in, lose access to city services such as street cleaning, lights and potholes. And it’s no fun trying to explain to constituents why they have none. Nine of these worthies are assisted into office by the mayor and then kept on a tight leash, to assure a supermajority on important votes (mainly, tax giveaways). Four councilors (those who make up Team Unity) are throwaway as far as the Mayor is concerned. They always lose on the votes that matter. They are left to deal with fringe issues, while the mayor’s allies always chair the important committees — economic development and planning (yes, in that order), and government operations (where all legislation and resolutions must go). In these committees are bottled up forever the filings of Team Unity. They never have public hearings and they never cometo a vote. Two requests for hearings on Winthrop Square, for example, languish in District 2 Councilor Bill Linehan’s all-powerful development and planning committee (what luck, to get that kingpin chairmanship immediately upon election!) and will never see the light of day. In the end, the mayor will succeed in giving the BRA that $100 million worth of city property, free of charge, without any public access to the information. Since the four members of Team Unity can’t seem to bring themselves to misbehave in a way that would break out of their structural shackles and at least get the word out (they seem to prefer being polite players and negotiating for a few crumbs from the BRA’s table), they will never have any significant impact.

When I learned how the BRA works, I realized that we have to get rid of it (and indeed, the urban renewal program was intended to jump-start the post-war economy with a few specific projects and fade out after 40 years) in order to reinstate democratic, accountable government in Boston. I’ve spent a dozen years spreading the word. Slowly people are starting to listen. But will anything ever change? A Home Rule Petition to reestablish the Planning Board is lying around somewhere. But, after one hearing several years ago, it, too, was stuffed into the committee bottle never to be let out again.

I fear we will never have a City Council. We will always be the only city in America whose planning and land-use regulation is controlled by a quasi-private agency that cannibalizes our land, our taxes and our state and federal grants to feed its sequestered bureaucracy. Our monarchical mayors’ permanent reigns are financed by the development interests they enrich via the BRA’s Rubik’s-Cube zoning. Menino gives the developer a golden handshake at breakfast; the BRA then “makes everything that’s illegal, legal,” as someone at the permitting office once said.

The BRA has just celebrated its 50th birthday. Just think, a half century of black-box government. Boston, the cradle of democracy? Maybe someday, after another revolution.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News