Menino Plan Offers "Stimulus" to Real Estate Industry, Shaft to City Workers
A most instructive piece in the Boston Business Journal's online edition caught our attention this afternoon. Actually it was the headline that really made us sit up and take notice here at Open Media Boston HQ ... "Menino extends aid to businesses, challenges unions." What could be a better expression of the neoliberal ethos of our times than that short sentence? Businesses - that is, the corporations who are primarily responsible for the economic crisis - get "aid." Unions - that is, the only organizations fighting for decent pay, benefits and working conditions for all workers - get "challenged." We've already seen what Menino is challenging over the past several days with his increasingly frantic demands for unionized city workers to accept wage freezes. But what is this aid he speaks of? And to whom will it be dispensed?
The BBJ article says that the money will go "to help keep certain companies in Boston if their leases expire over the next 24 months." Not many details on specifics yet, but some tantalizing clues like this choice quote, “'The competition for business is steep, and I want to make sure we don’t lose jobs to other cities,' Menino told a Boston Municipal Research Bureau audience. 'Working with commercial real estate companies, we will target these businesses, get a firm grasp on their needs and we will provide financial and technical assistance where appropriate. Boston will give businesses every reason to stay in our city.'”
So he wants to give money to commercial real estate companies to keep businesses here in Boston. No talk of controls on this money. Or much discussion of public oversight of the plan. Or public debate about whether this is the right place to put scare resources.
Looks an awful lot like he's planning his very own bailout of the commercial real estate industry. A conservative Republican couldn't come up with a better top-down elitist "economic stimulus" package. And speaking of stimuli, where might His Nibs be getting money to pay for this little venture?
The article wasn't too clear about that, but did mention that "the city will use federal stimulus dollars to jumpstart stalled construction projects." So apparantly we'll be bailing out construction companies along with commercial real estate companies - all while subsidizing rents for other corporations instead of tenant families in need all over Boston. Good news for construction unions operating under prevailing wage agreements - which is the one positive thing we see in this "plan" (probably sketched out on a cocktail napkin earlier this week over drinks with various real estate moguls). But bad news for everyone else.
The fact that the pro-business and profoundly autocratic Boston Redevlopment Authority is going to run this new slush fund does not inspire much confidence from our corner either.
Clearly this is where Menino plans to put a huge chunk of any federal stimulus dollars that are going to come through City Hall. Rather than ramping up public jobs programs, public education and much needed public works projects, the mayor is planning to tackle a 2010 budget gap he told BBJ would be $131 million by giving away money to large corporations - mirroring the bulk of the federal response to the economic collapse quite handily.
Meanwhile, he expects city workers to accept wage freezes - which he has the temerity to call a "shared sacrifice" because he and his well paid cabinet members are "volunteering to take 3 percent pay cuts." Even as other Boston media has reported him threatening to lay off several hundred workers if they don't accept the wage freeze. Some of the city's smaller unions have already caved to this threat. And given the lack of proposals for progressive taxation reforms to raise cash from the rich and corporation in service of preserving public services, the other unions may have to follow suit soon.
But that doesn't mean any unions think it's right to do so.
And Menino blusters on, "You may think I will bow to political pressure. I won't."
Right. Unless the pressure is the exquisitely obvious pressure from corporate donors to his campaign war chest - including real estate and construction interests among many others. [Not that Menino has officially announced his candidacy for a firth-term yet, but if every other election since his first is any guide, he's just playing coy while his opposition shows itself then he'll move in for the kill when the time is right.]
We're sorry but we just don't think this is the way a popular public official should be representing the trust of the people that put him in power. Menino should be doing the exact opposite of what he's doing. He should be working with the unions and city's many community non-profits to hammer out a stimulus strategy that will put money and jobs where they belong - in the public sector and in the service of the Boston's neighborhoods.
City Councilor Sam Yoon, who has announced his candidacy for the top city office in the upcoming election, has at least shown some signs that he has a better feel for the zeitgeist by showing up at event's like yesterday's hearing on the need for more education funding - organized by Jamaica Plain's Hyde Square Task Force (and 4 other community organizations) and attended by hundreds of high school students. It should be remembered that he said that the council can't do much and that students should focus their ire on Menino. If Yoon wins the election, we can only hope that the students hold him to his strategy for education funding reform and push him to use his new-found power to their benefit.
Of course, we haven't been too impressed with Yoon yet, and he too has made a habit of attacking unionized city workers - plus he already has to beat fellow Councilor Michael Flaherty and Kevin McCrea. But we do hope that someone other than Menino gets a shot at the corner office, and that this new mayor pursues very different economic strategies than the present one.
There's still time for progressives to affect the course of Menino's new plan - and other related plans - for the better. And it's still not entirely clear what the full extent of the plan might be. But in this waning age of business triumphalism, it's usually (sadly) a good bet that when there's large amounts of public money flying around most of it will be steered to top corporate campaign donors by politicians they've bankrolled for just that purpose. Politicians like Da Mayah.
It is for the citywide progressive movements yet to come to change our quid pro quo political establishment for the better.
We can't precisely prefigure the shape of these movements, but we can say this. They will be fiercely independent of the existing political machines. They will be led by people from Boston's many disenfranchised neighborhoods. They will be multiracial. And they will be angry. Particularly angry at "plans" like Menino's latest.
So maybe the Mayor and upcoming politicians cast in his image should consider this a word of warning. Attack Boston's working families at your peril. Continue upon this path, and you will all see your undoing.
