Boston state Senator Nick Collins received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from prominent members of the city’s commercial real estate and hospitality industries in the weeks leading up to his move on Beacon Hill Monday to delay Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposal to hike commercial property tax rates.
According to Collins’s campaign finance filings, the donors include several real estate consultants, the chief executives and other executives of local real estate firms and hotel operators, and two attorneys from the firm that owns the Prudential Center and other major office towers. All told, Collins raised more than $25,000 in October and November, public records show, with almost all of it coming from real estate interests. By comparison, in November 2022, when Collins was previously up for reelection, he raised just $1,323.
Many big landlords would see their companies’ property tax rates increase under Wu’s plan, which seeks to soften a sharp jump for homeowners by boosting collections from commercial properties. Coming amid slumping values in the office market, commercial real estate trade groups had fiercely opposed the tax shift for months until finally reaching a compromise in late October.
However, the measure still needs final approval by the Legislature. It has passed the House but stalled in the Senate as Wu and the chamber’s leadership have been at an impasse.
Coming after the Legislature has ended most formal sessions for the year, the bill’s timing gives Collins, or any other single lawmaker, considerable power. The House and Senate are now meeting in informal sessions, which are usually sparsely attended and, most importantly, allow individual lawmakers to more freely wield parliamentary moves to stall legislation.
Meanwhile Boston officials face a fast-approaching deadline to get tax bills to businesses and residents by early January. Without action on the tax shift, they project the average owner-occupied single-family home would see its tax bill climb 21 percent.
Collins on Monday moved that the bill be “laid on the table,” which under the Senate’s rules immediately postpones any vote “without question” and without debate. He said he asked for the delay because the Senate had not yet seen final property valuation data, which the city had promised to provide earlier this fall.
In an interview, Collins said he’s heard from small business owners, commercial property owners, and residents across his district — which includes the Seaport, the South End, and a slice of the Back Bay — about their concerns over the plan. When asked why he hadn’t asked for data before the measure came up for a vote on Monday, Collins said the matter wasn’t before the Senate until now.
“It wasn’t our turn to act,” Collins said. “We expected it the whole time.”
When asked if there was any connection between the fall fund-raisers and his request to delay Wu’s home-rule petition, Collins said simply: “No.”
Collins said he hadn’t ruled out asking for another delay at the Senate’s scheduled session on Thursday and would wait until he saw final, certified property valuation data.
“I’m going to wait until I get the official data before I make the decision,” he said. “I have a lot of constituents who are concerned about this on all sides.”
Late Wednesday, a city spokesperson said the state Department of Revenue had certified Boston’s property valuation data and the city was sharing the data with the Senate.
Collins is the latest lawmaker to try to slow the tax plan as it moves through the Legislature. In October, Norwell Republican David DeCoste delayed it twice in the House, though it was eventually approved. But as a member of Boston’s Senate delegation, Collins could carry extra weight on the issue, as legislative leaders often look to local elected officials for guidance on these sorts of home-rule petitions.
Collins is also a political ally of City Councilor Ed Flynn, a fellow conservative Democrat from South Boston. Flynn, too, had used a procedural method to slow the bill when it was before the City Council and is rumored to be considering a mayoral challenge to Wu next year.
Collins, who recently won reelection to his senate seat, held several fund-raisers this fall. One was hosted by COJE Management Group chief executive Christopher Jamison at the company’s Fort Point restaurant Lolita shortly before Election Day, and another was hosted in mid-November by Boston developer Jonathan Davis.
“As a long-time Boston resident and business owner, I was happy to host a fund-raiser in support of Senator Nick Collins’s reelection,” Jamison said. “He has been a tireless supporter of locally owned restaurants in his district and throughout Boston and the 1,000 people that COJE employs, and we are thankful for his advocacy about issues important to this industry and its workforce.”
In an interview, Davis said there was “zero connection” between the fund-raiser and the tax bill. His company has worked closely with Collins for years, he said, on projects including the $550 million Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport.
“We had no idea he was even opposed to the [tax plan],” Davis said. “I would think he would be very careful, given the number of homeowners he has as constituents.”
Real estate executives are often among the most generous donors to state and local politicians. Builders need approvals and permits from multiple local and state entities, and many in the industry consider staying on the good side of the elected officials who oversee those approvals to be good business. And Collins’s district is chock full of high-end commercial real estate.
That makes Collins a natural recipient of the real estate industry’s largesse, said Jonathan Cohn, policy director of left-leaning advocacy group Progressive Massachusetts. There doesn’t even need to be a quid pro quo on a hot-button issue.
“It’s not like they’re donating to him and he’s doing something in response — they’re just politically aligned,” Cohn said. “The real estate industry rewarding him, or staying close with him, is something I’m sure both of them find mutually advantageous.”
Amid months of debate over Wu’s tax plan, Collins generally kept a low profile on the issue. And even after the home rule petition landed in the Senate, Collins’s public position on it proved somewhat elusive, including an episode after a session last month where he avoided reporters as well as advocates from the Massachusetts Senior Action Council who were lobbying in favor of the bill.
The senior advocates told Commonwealth Beacon they ultimately met with Collins this week, but they reportedly left the meeting unimpressed. That same day Collins issued a statement and spoke with reporters outside his office, contending the concerns he’s now airing publicly “have been raised the whole time.”
Some of Collins’s recent donors have large development projects in the works in his district, some near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, a major state asset that has long been under consideration for expansion. For example, Lincoln Property Co. has city approval to develop a 650,000-square-foot life-science campus in the Seaport. Scott Brown and Scott Faber, two Lincoln executives who oversee the Seaport Circle project, donated a combined $750 to Collins in November. Both also gave to Wu last year. Neither responded to a Globe request for comment.
At least two other real estate developers who gave to Collins in recent weeks — Richard Taylor of Nubian Square Developments (which was also part of the Omni development team) and Synergy Investments chief executive Dave Greaney — have also previously donated to Wu. Greaney declined to comment.
“My contribution to Senator Collins represents a relationship over several years and an appreciation for his support for the Omni Seaport Hotel and several other in projects in the Seaport,” Taylor said in an emailed statement. “In addition, I am a strong supporter of Mayor Wu and made a contribution to her this month as well.”
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock. Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.