Marty Walsh swept into Boston City Hall by assembling a team of former campaign rivals behind him. Endorsements from former mayoral hopefuls Felix Arroyo, John Barros and Charlotte Golar Richie helped Walsh turn a narrow geographic base along Boston’s coast into a dominant performance in the city’s minority neighborhoods during November’s mayoral final. Marty Walsh won the mayor’s office because he won Boston’s minority neighborhoods. He won the city’s minority neighborhoods, in part, because his campaign assembled a formidable group of supportive politicians of color. And on Monday, Walsh moved to make his City Hall look more like his campaign, tapping Barros as Boston’s new economic development chief.
Barros, a Roxbury native, Dartmouth grad, and former school committee member, traded a job on Wall Street for a position atop a Dorchester and Roxbury nonprofit over a decade ago. Barros and Walsh both campaigned on a pitch to bridge the deep divisions between Boston’s wealthy downtown and its poorer neighborhoods. It’s now Barros’s job to put those pledges into action.
Barros’s cabinet post will oversee the city’s tourism, licensing, and small business departments, as well as the city’s jobs policy. It will also work alongside the Boston Redevelopment Authority, although the BRA will retain its own director and board. Walsh has pledged to expedite small business development, focus on neighborhood development, and streamline a licensing process that forbids dancing without a permit. At Monday’s announcement, staged at a school that trains city teens for restaurant jobs, Barros vowed to make Boston “a place where everyone can climb the economic ladder to success.”
The Globe notes that the appointment of Barros, the son of Cape Verdean immigrants, brings some promised diversity to Walsh’s cabinet. But it also deepens the links between Walsh’s campaign, which won on the strength of coalition-building in minority neighborhoods, and Walsh’s City Hall. Walsh previously tapped Arroyo, who campaigned tirelessly on Walsh’s behalf, as the city’s chief of health and human services. With Barros on board, Walsh now has two of the top three minority candidates from last fall’s mayoral race working in his administration, charged with making good on the promises that they all made last fall.
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
Senate President Therese Murray joins the chorus of critics laying into the state’s problem-plagued Health Connector website. Meanwhile, The Cape Cod Times talks to the departing Senate President about her career in the Legislature.
More questions emerge about the ties between the state’s public health commissioner, whose department oversees the new medical marijuana licensing, and former congressman Bill Delahunt, whose team was awarded three licenses.
Margery Eagan speaks to Debbie DiMasi, and wonders why none of her husband’s former friends on Beacon Hill are clamoring to have the former House speaker moved from North Carolina to the federal prison hospital at Devens.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong is accused of steering the job of economic development director to Jerry Beck, a former museum director and high school teacher. The only other applicant for the job was her assistant. Wong denied the allegation of favoritism by City Councilor Dean Tran, the Sentinel and Enterprise reports.
David Bernstein calls Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s proposed gun-buyback program “moronic.”
The honeymoon’s over. The Brockton City Council rejected funding for the mayor’s office, forcing new Mayor William Carpenter to make cuts in his staff, reduce salaries, or institute furloughs.
Seekonk voters approve a temporary tax increase to fund a $2.5 million senior center.
CASINOS
Attorney General Martha Coakley wants to see new regulations that would prohibit casino companies from attaching liens on the homes of gamblers they extend credit to.
A month after Steve Wynn criticized Mohegan Sun’s casino plan before the state gambling commission, Mohegan returns fire, blasting Wynn for demanding all sorts of concessions from the state, ranging from environmental issues to taxes. Mohegan’s CEO pushes back, again, at Boston’s claim that it’s a host city.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
US Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Durbin of Illinois stop by a burrito restaurant in Boston to plug an increase in the federal minimum wage, the Associated Press reports.
US Reps. Niki Tsongas and John Tierney deliver a special report from Washington to the Merrimack Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
New York magazine asks whether Bill de Blasio’s brand of liberalism can move from Park Slope to Peoria.
Californians love their state lawmakers.
Esquire argues that conservatives should be wild about President Obama’s America, which features sky-high corporate profits, robust defense spending, fewer abortions, fracking galore, and tax rates on the rich that are closer to George W. Bush than Bill Clinton.
ELECTIONS
Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker calls on Olga Roche, the head of the Department of Children and Families, to resign.
The Wall Street Journal ties Democrats’ control of the Senateto three southern women.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The Woolworth building, abandoned for more than 40 years in downtown Haverhill, is about to be replaced with a high-rise harboring a UMass Lowell satellite campus as the primary tenant, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
A Newton real estate trust will pay $1.1 billion for two towers in the red-hot market of Boston’s Seaport District.
A dispute over unpaid bills totaling $450,000 is the latest battle between the developer of the former naval air base in Weymouth and the quasi-public agency overseeing the mixed-use project, with the agency threatening to file a lien and foreclose on it.
The former CEO of Evergreen Solar, the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer that became a controversial symbol of the state’s energy grant program, sold his palatial home in Hingham for $7.1 million, the second-highest price ever paid for a residential home on the South Shore.
General Motors will pay its female CEO $14.4 million, about 60 percent more than her male predecessor, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac battle with the Treasury over billions in profits from the bailed-out insurance firms.
EDUCATION
The New Bedford School Committee approved a plan to extend the high school day by 33 minutes, a move that will result in three weeks of additional learning time over the course of the year. Meanwhile, about 100 teachers and supporters held a vigil outside the School Committee hearing last night to bring attention to what they say is a “climate of fear” caused by increasing student violence against other students and educators.
HEALTH CARE
The federal government resets the deadline for small businesses to comply with the employer mandate of Obamacare, NPR reports.
The heads of South Shore Hospital and Partners HealthCare told a Patriot Ledger editorial board that their proposed merger would result in less expensive care for patients, even though they admit it would reduce options.
TRANSPORTATION
The National Transportation Safety Board says the captain of the HMS Bounty, who was lost at sea when the replica ship sank during Hurricane Sandy, made a reckless decision to sail the ship in the storm and is responsible for the death of a crewman and loss of the ship.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The EPA lists the state’s top polluters, with a Springfield chemical plant topping the list. The coal-fired Brayton Point power plant in Somerset came in second, the Salem News reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A Swampscott woman is held without bail after allegedly beating her son with a belt for refusing to get out of bed, the Item reports.
MEDIA
The Nieman Journalism Lab explores the rise of single-focus nonprofit news outlets in the wake of Bill Keller’s departure from the New York Times for a criminal justice website.