It was maybe 15 years ago that an editor who was new both to Boston and the Globe swung by my desk with a question.
“What on earth is ‘mitigation’?” he wondered, after seeing the term in a few stories.
I explained that it was basically legalized extortion, in which developers pledged money for community projects in exchange for officials’ approval of the developers’ projects. Community inconvenience caused by development was “mitigated” by contributions to a new park, say, or maybe a donation to a senior center. Welcome to Boston!
In the years since that conversation, the system of trading community support in exchange for political approval has gotten only more pernicious.
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A story in Sunday’s Globe by Mark Arsenault and Andrew Ryan exposed a series of dubious payments to neighborhood organizations, often in exchange for supportive testimony before the city’s Zoning Board of Appeal, or ZBA. It described a system of support-for-sale.
In one case, a developer simply offered a community group $10,000 a year for 20 years in exchange for support at the ZBA. In another, a group withdrew opposition to a project after a developer paid it $50,000. Then there is the St. Vincent Lower End Neighborhood Association, whose leader has been accused, in court testimony, of routinely selling support for cash.
The ZBA is not a court of law, and this practice does not appear to be illegal. Nevertheless, the perception that the community supports a project can make it or break its chances of approval. And as any developer will tell you, Boston has institutionalized a process in which nearly every significant project needs city approval.
While the goal of giving residents a strong voice is admirable, in practice the system is a train wreck. The public is led to believe that decisions are based on the merits of a project, when in fact, a well-timed donation to the right cause can make all the difference.
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If city councilors determined what they support this way, they would get indicted. Just how different is that from a civic group “withdrawing its opposition’’ once it gets paid?
Community groups operate with virtually no transparency. They don’t have to disclose to the ZBA that they got money from the developers of the project they are supporting. They don’t have to tell the public that cash changed hands as they were formulating their position. Crucially, they don’t have to account for what they do with the money. This would be the definition of bad government — but they get away with it because they aren’t part of government. They just influence it, routinely.
Two decades of covering city government have left me with deep qualms about neighborhood associations and the clout they wield. Typically, a neighborhood group is composed of 30 or 40 people who will attend a monthly meeting. Whether they really represent the views of hundreds of their neighbors, as they claim to, is questionable. Their default position is opposition, because change makes them jittery. It’s a uniquely Boston way of doing business that mostly serves entrenched interests.
Fortunately, Mayor Marty Walsh is looking for other ways of gauging community support, such as online town halls in which people who can’t make meetings can express their views. His office called for greater transparency in mitigation deals Sunday, and for ensuring that any benefits reach the entire community.
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I’d like to see him go even further. Civic groups should not be able to take money from developers looking to buy support, much less solicit payment. It’s one thing to donate money to a public project, like a park. Giving cash to a completely unaccountable group of neighbors is a totally different matter. At a bare minimum, all such payments should require prompt public disclosure.
There is nothing wrong with developers helping to fund community improvements — in fact, it’s often laudable. But support-for-dollars isn’t community support. It’s just another insider game whose time has passed.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at adrian.walker@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Adrian_Walker.