Editorial Roundup: New England
Bangor Daily News. October 14, 2023.
Editorial: More work to address Maine’s housing shortage needed at state and local levels
Maine lawmakers have some big ideas to try to address the housing crisis in the next legislative session. And they better, because it continues to be a big problem.
It may be repetitive and it may be overly simplistic, but it is worth emphasizing once again: Working to ease the housing challenges in the Bangor area and across Maine will take an “all-of-the-above” approach. First and foremost, that must mean an all-of-the-above approach to increasing Maine’s housing supply — particularly affordable housing.
There are many different forces and factors at play in this crisis, there should be doubt about that. But we must not lose track of the primary driver, as new BDN housing reporter Zara Norman pointed out recently, “that overall supply remains the biggest factor in the state’s affordability crisis.” For all the attention that things like short-term rentals get, the fact that construction of new housing falls well below demand is the issue at the core of the problem.
So when looking at the list of some ideas heading into next year’s legislative session, we think everything needs to be on the table. Proposals relating to zoning changes, tax incentives, rental assistance and other ideas are all part of a complicated puzzle. But as lawmakers rightfully consider a host of different ideas from across the political and ideological spectrum, they should remember that the most fundamental, if long-term, step Maine can take is to facilitate growth in the housing supply itself.
This thinking must extend beyond the halls of power in Augusta to every municipal board room as well. There needs to be a better balance between preserving local control and addressing statewide needs, at least when local control has too often been synonymous with NIMBYism and inaction.
That shift can and should come from local communities themselves, which must realize that these housing challenges are everyone’s to solve. If municipalities don’t want the state to step in with one-size-fits-all solutions, then they should be working on solutions sized specifically to their circumstances. But deciding that Maine’s housing crisis is something for other communities to solve is clearly no solution at all.
At both the state and local levels, policymakers need to be exploring ways to remove barriers to building more housing — of all types.
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Hearst Connecticut Media. October 19, 2023.
Editorial: Fear vs. facts on crime statistics
What are crime statistics really worth?
According to the latest numbers, crime was down 4 percent in Connecticut in 2022 compared to a year earlier. That includes a 13 percent reduction in homicides and an 18 percent drop in robberies. Property crime was also down. Once again, Connecticut ranked as one of the safest states in the nation.
Those numbers do not mean much to victims of crime. Anyone who has firsthand experience in this area does not care what the overall numbers show, nor do they mean much in high-crime areas of our cities.
So much of the rhetoric about crime, however, is not actually about victims. It’s about fear. Opportunism leads politicians to play up fears of crime even in places where incidents are rare. In the minds of some politicians, it’s helpful to focus on crime and keep people worried, even if the real danger is low.
The unfeeling statistics, which are simply numbers and don’t have an agenda, should be a strike against that kind of rhetoric, but that’s probably too much to ask.
When the numbers say crime is rare, that does not mean it is nonexistent. No one is pretending otherwise. What would be helpful would be if politicians would stop playing up fears based on something that is unlikely to happen. No one gains by living in fear, and no one is better off by thinking Connecticut is a dangerous place.
The truth is that crime is a national phenomenon, driven by a number of factors, including the easy availability of firearms. Judged by the standards of the nation, Connecticut does very well. Fears of a return to record highs from decades ago that accompanied the onset of the pandemic have proven groundless.
Rather than fear mongering, it would be nice to see people in positions of power take on this issue by working to make all of Connecticut as safe as most of the state already is. The cities feature neighborhoods where crime is a part of everyday life, and nearly everyone has been touched by it in one way or another.
It’s not a given that people have to live that way. We could do better. But it would take concerted effort.
What remains to be seen is whether the rhetoric will be affected by the numbers. Republicans are in the minority in both chambers of the General Assembly, and they have spent a lot of time in recent years talking about the scourge of juvenile crime, in particular, and making the case that Democratic policies aren’t working.
The new numbers don’t prove that current policies are working. There are far too many variables to make a concrete case on that score. But they should put the lie to the notion that Connecticut is only getting worse every year, and that people take their lives in their hands by, say, going to the grocery store, or getting gas.
That’s not true, and never was. The Connecticut suburbs, where most residents live, are very safe. Nothing has changed on that score.
There have got to be better political strategies than playing to people’s worst fears.
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Portland Press Herald. October 13, 2023.
Editorial: Pine Tree Power not the answer to Maine’s utility challenges
Mainers want to save money, reduce outages and, focused on climate change, exert more control over grid decision-making. How do we best achieve those ends?
The existing proposal for the creation of the publicly controlled nonprofit utility Pine Tree Power – Question 3 on the November ballot – comes with major unknowns that stand in the way of our editorial board’s support.
Faced with the soaring cost of living and the demands of the climate emergency, many Mainers are asking: Why not?
This board has to ask: Why? We share in the frustration with the poor performance of Central Maine Power and Versant, the assets of which would be acquired under the proposal. We’re alarmed by the specter of underinvestment in grid modernization, integration of renewable energy and climate resilience.
In theory, stopping hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from leaving the state and instead investing them in Maine infrastructure is sensible and promising, as is the long-term benefit of the much lower cost of borrowing available to a nonprofit company.
In practice, nobody has taken over two statewide utilities before. Successful publicly owned utilities have been built from the ground up or involved takeovers at a smaller scale.
If Question 3 is approved, Pine Tree Power will have to engage one or more third parties to run the transmission and distribution system. Third-party operators bidding for the business will be required to keep on non-executive employees from CMP and Versant.
The proposal calls for an operator “fitness test” based on a list of eight deal-breaking criteria. We won’t know for months if a single company fits the bill; it’s possible that Pine Tree Power will wind up hiring separate entities for separate business functions.
Supporters of Question 3 suggest that this entity or entities can be easily found; that – despite the likelihood of it being another large for-profit company – it could be a not-for-profit group; and that it could even be a group of committed individuals with the right managerial experience.
In short, there are a lot of different ways this could go. For an ultimate assignment as serious and complex as distributing renewable energy across our state, this is too unsettled.
While Pine Tree Power supporters say the new utility would prioritize lower costs, better reliability of service and better uptake of clean energy, these three goals often conflict. Adding a political layer to the undertaking – the new company would be overseen by a 13-member board, seven representing state Senate districts and six chosen by those seven elected members, all to be residents of Maine – risks further complexity.
The six board appointees “must collectively possess expertise and experience” in six named arenas, ranging from utility management to environmental and social justice.
The terms and conditions set out for the expert side of the board, while well-intentioned, leave too much wiggle room. When it comes to accessing diverse and useful professional experience at scale, it may also be short-sighted to exclude prospective members located beyond Maine.
Additionally, we can’t know what Pine Tree Power will cost our state without voting for it.
In the absence of any robust independent projections, we’re reliant on estimates from opponents and detractors, neither of which carry the needed weight of a range arrived at by an impartial analyst.
A price tag of $13.5 billion, a regular on our airwaves and repeated by Gov. Mills and other officials, was arrived at by consultants for CMP and Versant. A local lawyer’s estimate put it at $7.5 billion. The trouble is we have no idea.
The duration and expense of the legal challenge to Pine Tree Power, if it passes, is also the subject of disagreement (supporters say between three and four years, opponents say 10). What’s not up for debate is the fact that, in that period, any investment that isn’t absolutely essential, including investment supporting climate goals, will be put on hold.
If not Pine Tree Power, then what?
The delivery of electricity, like other essential services, falls under government oversight. Where the regulated public utilities tasked with delivering electricity fall short, or take advantage of consumers, that regulation has failed.
The Pine Tree Power campaign has led to a heightened focus on our energy grid by the public and improved energy literacy across the board. This has already applied pressure on Augusta.
The Legislature passed a law last year, L.D. 1959, aimed at holding utilities accountable when they fall short on customer service, reliability and clean-energy integration.
It’s a good start, though still too gentle on the utilities. Gov. Mills and the Legislature must prove themselves capable of putting new pressure on CMP and Versant, with real penalties applying when they fall short as they have in the past.
The documented failures of the utilities are not enough by themselves to warrant a “yes” vote on Question 3. A “yes” vote demands more assurances that no unforeseen problems would take the place of the problems we want to be rid of.
There’s not enough evidence that Pine Tree Power would be an improvement on what we have now. For that reason, we endorse a “no” on Question 3.
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Boston Herald. October 19, 2023.
Editorial: Gun bill a great idea as long as criminals obey the law
When it comes to preventing crime and keeping communities safe, the new gun bill passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives is shooting blanks.
As the Herald reported, the bill expands a list of banned firearms, adding most popular AR-15 styles to a list of “assault style weapons.” It would also require licensed concealed carry holders to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm and require additional training for license holders, among other points.
For law-abiding gun owners, it adds layers of compliance on top of the state’s already-strict firearms regulations.
For criminals, it means nothing.
After a pair of fatal shootings in Boston last week, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden pointed out that the arrests of two repeat offenders on firearm charges are a “prime example” of how a core group of people drive the “illegal gun possession menace” in Boston.
Those repeat offenders were arrested after traffic stops just days before two more men lost their lives to gun violence in Dorchester and Mattapan on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning.
“These cases also highlight the need for us as a society to recognize the concentration of guns among a core group of individuals — in this case, two repeat offenders — and to find ways to break the cycle, which so often leads to violence and tragedy,” Hayden said.
He noted the gun-related arrests were “cases where prior convictions and prior incarcerations have apparently done little to dissuade these individuals from repeating the offenses.”
That’s the problem – those who follow pre-existing gun laws will follow new ones. Those who don’t follow the law at all won’t start.
Criminals who carry unlicensed guns are highly unlikely to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm. Training happens on the street, when members of that “core group” discharge weapons during commission of a crime.
Those who obtain illegal guns, hide guns and fashion ghost guns to commit crimes don’t care about gun laws in the slightest. Yet they are the ones racking up the deadly numbers of shooting deaths.
It’s those deaths that have gun bill proponents concerned.
“The Massachusetts League of Women Voters supports HD.4607,” Art Desloges, speaking on behalf of the group, told the House Ways and Means Committee last week. “Statistically we have the lowest gun death rates nationwide, but gun violence archive reports 83 people killed by firearms in the Commonwealth through July of this year. We must get to zero. Even one person lost to gun violence is too many.”
True. That’s the sentiment echoed by those who’ve lost loved ones to gunfire in Boston, whose children fear walking to school, and who know that an act as simple as sitting on the front porch can be deadly if they are in the crossfire of a drive-by.
The gun bill won’t stop this, a key reason why the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association won’t support it. As the organization’s executive director Mark Leahy noted, the bill simply won’t reduce crime.
We need to get illegal guns off the streets to make our communities safe. Having law-abiding gun owners jump through more hoops doesn’t help the cause. Perhaps the Senate can clear the fog.
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Boston Globe. October 18, 2023.
Editorial: Why the state’s right-to-shelter law needs to change
Massachusetts has found shelter for 23,000 people. But as migrants continue to stream into the state, the state can’t be expected to conjure up beds indefinitely.
On Monday, Governor Maura Healey bowed to the inevitable and announced that the state would no longer automatically provide housing to the migrant families that are streaming into Massachusetts. The state, she said, had done its best but had simply maxed out its available resources, sheltering more than 23,000 people — the population of a small city, as Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll pointed out.
The state has been providing emergency assistance shelters — often in motels or other less-than-ideal sites — under its unique right-to-shelter law, a policy that exists in no other state and whose inherent practical problems have been revealed by this crisis. Although she insists she’s not, Healey has essentially put that law aside. Indeed, while the law reflects a noble aspiration to put a roof over every needy family’s head, the experience of the last six months has shown why the Legislature needs to rework it into a policy that gives the state more leeway in crises like this one.
In the meantime, the fact that even a liberal-minded state like Massachusetts is throwing in the towel on housing migrants ought to focus attention on Washington, where neither Congress nor the Biden administration have shown the appropriate urgency on addressing the migrant housing crisis. The Biden administration has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants — fleeing instability in Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere — to enter the United States this year, but hasn’t allowed them to work to support themselves or provided states enough assistance in housing them.
The result has been scenes like what is occurring in Chicago, where thousands of migrants are sleeping near police stations; New York, where the city’s mayor said that the immigration crisis will “destroy New York City”; and now Massachusetts, where it’s unclear what will happen to migrants who arrive once the administration’s cap goes into effect.
When it goes into effect Nov. 1, the cap will limit to 7,500 the number of families in emergency shelters. The administration will attempt to triage families to make sure those most in need — the emergency shelter system also includes homeless Massachusetts families — get first dibs on the available beds.
It’s a wonder — and a testament to how hard the Healey administration tried to meet the mandate of the state shelter law — that this shift didn’t happen sooner. State officials, nonprofits, volunteers, and communities have shown great generosity in helping people in need. But no state can just conjure up enough beds practically overnight to meet demands created by an unexpected international crisis. Nobody wants to see migrants sleeping on the streets, and it is incumbent on the federal government to now make sure that doesn’t happen.
“We’ve really done all that we can,” Healey said. And it has come at a cost. “At some point, you become so overwhelmed financially and logistically that you’re going to sacrifice services to other residents of the state,” state Senator Ryan Fattman told the editorial board. Across the state, as the Globe has reported, schools are struggling to accommodate migrant children.
Many of the communities receiving migrants also get little notice before families’ arrival, which has created problems both for communities and migrants. Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, who oversees emergency housing, told the editorial board earlier this month that “it is a challenge as we get to bigger and bigger numbers … that’s why sometimes we’re not able to give the kind of notice that we want to give to communities because we’re scrambling.”
For migrants, this has increasingly meant living in suboptimal conditions. State law supposedly guarantees locations that are “geographically convenient to families who are homeless” and promises to “administer the program in a fair, just, and equitable manner.” But many migrant families are being placed in questionable locations. In Sutton, families were placed at a Red Roof Inn on a major highway, secluded from grocery stores. That’s hardly “geographically convenient.” That the property caught fire last month, despite warnings from local authorities about its safety hazards, raises questions about whether being placed there was “fair, just, and equitable.” The Baymont Hotel in Kingston — where there are more than 400 migrant and Massachusetts families — was evacuated after children used the microwave, filling the building with smoke.
In announcing the cap, Healey played a bit of a semantic game, saying that the state isn’t “ending the right-to-shelter law,” while at the same time insisting “we do not have enough space, service providers, or friends to safely expand beyond 7,500 families.” Healey would be better off simply stating the obvious: In an extreme situation like this, the law is unrealistic. Even if one believes the Healey administration could have found a few more beds here or there, it should be obvious that there is some practical limit on what the state can do.
Instituted in 1983 under governor Mike Dukakis, the right-to-shelter law reflected a spirit of compassion that still runs strong in Massachusetts’ DNA. But the law has become untenable, and Healey’s move should prompt the Legislature to amend it. If nothing else, the Legislature could explicitly allow what Healey is doing — prioritizing the most urgent cases — to protect the state from lawsuits. It could give more flexibility on the type of shelter offered. It could add a residency requirement. It could also provide a version of the relief that Mayor Eric Adams has requested in New York City, if the number of people seeking housing rises by more than a certain percent in a period of time (Adams proposed 50 percent over a baseline). Any reform should leave intact the general expectation that people in need would get shelter but account for exceptional spikes.
There’s little appetite in legislative leadership for revisiting the law; nobody wants to be accused of abandoning needy families. Healey is right to characterize the influx of migrants as a federal problem, due to federal policies. But Massachusetts is responsible for its own laws. The right-to-shelter law sets a noble goal, but it needs to be flexible enough to account for circumstances truly beyond any governor’s control.
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