They really think you are going to buy this bull$hit, Boston:
"Low-tech methods hinder BRA’s work" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff July 19, 2014
The Boston Redevelopment Authority’s compliance division, targeted in a recent audit that found the city failed to collect millions of dollars owed by developers, is largely run out of a single, gray cubicle on the ninth floor of City Hall.
How many times have I $aid government $erves certain intere$ts?
The man in that chair is Aaron Hallquist, who spends several days a week combing through a crude database that lists hundreds of obligations by developers to pay for everything from tree plantings, to donations to civic groups, to road and sidewalk repairs.
Okay, but Boston and the federal government have fusion centers to accumulate data, search databases, and spy on damn near every movement.
Just wondering if you get as $ick of this lame-a$$ $hit as I.
There is no computer function to send him reminders when payments are due. His database is not connected to other city departments, whose actions often trigger those charges. There is not even a way of determining when money is paid — or if it arrives at all — unless a community group complains.
Your city government at work, Bo$ton, Just letting wealthy people keep the cash while services are being cut!
His task brings to mind a man trying to mow the lawn with a pair of dull scissors.
OMG!
So when auditors swept through the agency in recent months, they found what was utterly predictable: Millions of dollars have either gone missing or are past due, and the BRA has no idea how much more could be lost.
But you know what? The wealthy sections of Boston are thriving. Who cares about the rest?
“We do have a system for tracking these commitments,” said Hallquist, a trim, soft-spoken 37-year-old who has worked at the BRA since 2006. “However, it is limited. There is hardly any automation. I link information into it to create a record, but it’s labor intensive because everything is inputted manually.”
Look at the (Jewish?) DOUBLE TALK!
So WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO, and why did ISRAEL just $pring to mind?!!!
“I am particularly angered by the lack of data collection and compliance monitoring,” at-large City Councilor Ayanna Pressley said Friday said in an e-mailed statement....
In the months after he took office, Mayor Martin J. Walsh fired the former head of the BRA’s compliance division, Christine Colley....
So MENINO'S LEGACY is going to be one of RANK CORRUPTION, huh?
No wonder he stayed on so long. And thought no one would notice?
The 26-page audit, released by the Walsh administration Wednesday, is filled with other criticisms, as well. It found that the agency has no effective systems for tracking an array of agreements, including lease payments, funds used to pay for transportation upgrades, and deed restrictions meant to preserve affordable housing.
Maybe they should call the NSA and have them comb their data collection sources.
The compliance office itself has only existed since 2004. It is staffed by a handful of employees of the EDIC and BRA, who work in separate buildings. Although the two agencies share the same board of directors, they operate like separate entities.
Yeah, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, right. Not falling for that one anymore.
One group of EDIC employees monitors whether developers are complying with commitments to hire minorities and women, while another tries to track and collect lease payments.
Hallquist, the official who works in the BRA’s City Hall office, is responsible for tracking commitments connected to dozens of development projects at once. For each one of them, he sifts through lengthy legal documents, enters the commitments into his Microsoft Access database, and tries to monitor whether they are paid.
Since much of the money is sent to city treasurer’s office — not the BRA — Hallquist receives no direct notification about payments. And since most of the agreements stretch over years, he said he finds himself asking the same question over and over....
I know the feeling.
--more--"
Related: At BRA, the rent is due
They owe millions:
"BRA left millions in fees untaken, audit says; Failure to collect fees, enforce pacts with developers" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff July 17, 2014
Boston’s chief development agency failed to collect millions of dollars in lease payments and fees owed by developers for affordable housing, according to an audit that uncovered deep problems in the agency that has controlled building projects in the city since the 1950s.
The audit of the Boston Redevelopment Authority described an agency incapable of performing basic functions, such as tracking payments, collecting rents on public property, and enforcing agreements with developers to improve roads and parks in exchange for city approval of their projects.
That looks like FAILURE to ME!
The review was ordered by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who said he was shocked to learn an agency that oversees billions of dollars in development keeps most of its records on paper and has not collected huge sums of money because it does not have a centralized system for monitoring its contracts.
So WHO HAS been STEALING ALL the MONEY?
“That should not happen,” the mayor said in a briefing Wednesday. “If somebody gets a parking ticket we put a boot on their car for $30. And here we have multimillion-dollar deals where money is left on the table.”
For example, the BRA did not know for seven years that a developer leasing property at the government-run Marine Industrial Park in South Boston owed the agency nearly $1 million. In another case, the agency failed to collect $600,000 in affordable housing funds and other fees from developers of a massive project in the Fenway.
But they did get a tax break.
City officials are attempting to collect the owed funds, but they acknowledged Wednesday they do not know how much more is lost in the system.
BUT WHAT?!!! If you or I owed it.... !!!!!!
“There is a distinct possibility we’re not enforcing the terms of leases in other instances,” acting BRA director Brian Golden said.
In some respects, Walsh said, the audit uncovered more urgent problems than he had anticipated. He has ordered a deeper review of the agency’s agreements, leases, and contracts and will target how the BRA reviews projects and other planning functions.
Walsh’s predecessor, Thomas M. Menino, declined through a spokesman to comment on the audit. The most recent BRA director under Menino, Peter Meade, could not be reached for comment.
I can $ee why they are $ilent.
The audit clears the way for Walsh to launch a wholesale restructuring of the agency, which the mayor had promised during his campaign last year. He had held off until the accounting firm KPMG LLP finished its audit....
The audit is validation of critics’ long-held concerns that the BRA approves major building projects without ensuring developers follow through with promised community benefits, such as building more affordable housing....
I'm glad no one said anything during Menino's time. That would have ruined the golden age of Bo$ton.
--more--"
Globe been more concerned with slumlords (who happen to be Arab or Muslim!) than whether the cla$$ they $erve is bilking the $y$tem. They must have been staying out to late. Time to get home.
"College graduates head to elite cities; Data suggest gentrification across nation" by Emily Badger | Washington Post July 20, 2014
WASHINGTON — Picture low-skilled workers increasingly excluded from Washington and San Francisco and segregated into cities like Toledo or Baton Rouge — a kind of nationwide gentrification effect — ‘‘Wage inequality gone a step further to economic well-being inequality.’’
The NEW WORLD ORDER!
**************
‘‘New York, San Francisco, Boston — those places are the ones that get the most press because they’re the biggest cities and they have the most extreme changes at this time, but it’s everywhere: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta,’’ Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond said. ‘‘It’s an across-the-board phenomenon.’’
**************
So what’s changed over the last several decades? Obviously, industry has. Good-paying jobs that didn’t require a college degree have been vanishing.
Where they go?
Related: "Many college grads are stuck working jobs that once went to high school dropouts."
But we need more immigrants!
Cities like Boston, meanwhile, have shifted their labor demand away from such jobs and toward college grads who now work in industries like biotechnology or medicine.
Are you sick of the lame-a$$ rationalizations and $elf-$erving excu$es yet?
Detroit, once a mecca of a good manufacturing jobs, has had a harder time with that same transition....
What is going on in Detroit these days anyway?
--more--"
At least Bo$ton knows how to throw one hell of a party:
"Convention center director leaves no loose ends; With a grip on the details, Jim Rooney steers a massive expansion" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff July 14, 2014
Jim Rooney was fuming.
His legislation to spend $1 billion to expand the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center was under attack. Opponents had accused him of sneaking $110 million of subsidies into the bill for a private hotel project. Amendments were under consideration. The process was becoming a mess.
But rather than fight the changes, the powerful head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority took a different approach: “What’s the easiest way to just put that to bed?” Rooney said in a recent interview. “Agree to language that says a [hotel subsidy] can’t be in there.”
What was it doing in there in the first place?
It was a classic Rooney fix, pragmatism at work behind the scenes.
I'm already getting the feeling this is a felting piece of slop, aren't you?
The state Senate passed the bill days later, and Governor Deval Patrick is expected to sign it into law soon. Rooney’s five-year quest to expand the convention center is nearly complete.
Yup, and it is ONLY GOING TO COST ABOUT DOUBLE in INTEREST PAYMENTS ALONE!
That project will increase the size of New England’s largest building by 60 percent, adding 1.3 million square feet of exhibit space, ballrooms, and conference rooms. It will also give Rooney control of a huge pile of taxpayer money, thousands of new jobs, and prime real estate in one of the most rapidly developing neighborhoods in the country.
And this is all a GOOD THING, according to the Globe!
The success of the expansion plan is Rooney’s latest triumph in a government career spanning more than three decades. Over that time, he has quietly become one of the state’s most influential public figures, without ever having run for elective office.
This is GRO$$ -- although if I were a member of the elite of Bo$ton for whom this is of and for, I would be very interested in this.
A former state transportation official, Rooney briefly ran the MBTA and helped create the finance plan for the $16 billion Big Dig, which brought new highway connections to the convention center’s doorstep. He also was chief of staff for Thomas M. Menino when Menino was Boston’s mayor.
OMG! He's the one that left us DEEP in DEBT for DECADES and PAYING OFF BILLIONS!
Related: US calls Big Dig chief a tax cheat
Oh, how surprising -- NOT!
Since he proposed the convention center’s expansion in 2009, Rooney has carefully guided the project through every stage of the process. He convened the community panel that recommended the expansion in the first place. He wrote the legislation to pay for it, and then he edited the bill during its final stages.
So HE PUT THE SUBSIDY IN THERE, huh?
Related: The Perils of One-Party Politics: Massachusetts' Democracy
Nothing has changed!
“The result was never in doubt,” said Charles Chieppo, a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute, a policy research group that has opposed the expansion project. “Jim did what he does best. He basically took something that did less business than anticipated and parlayed it into a rousing success, thanks to very assiduous PR work.”
UNREAL!
No wonder this state is such shift shape!!!
*******************
Rooney, 56, relishes the opportunity to prove critics wrong, and he hopes to do it again in the coming years. His challenge now is to attract more business to Boston as cities from San Diego to Orlando to Las Vegas are considering or already pursuing expansions.
Yeah, this all about them having a nice place to party!
“I come at this with an unapologetic belief in this city,” Rooney said as he sat in a conference room at the cavernous convention center on a recent afternoon. “Boston has demonstrated an ability to compete head-to-head with any city in the world for conventions and meetings. I’ve seen it. I believe it. We can win.”
But... "we" could lo$e like all the other times!
He said the expansion will make Boston one of the nation’s top five convention destinations by attracting larger meetings and hosting simultaneous shows that cannot be accommodated now. He has also advocated for public money to help build more hotels around the facility.
Well, that's why he put the $ub$idy in!
Even the project’s critics praise Rooney’s managerial and political abilities, skills he honed growing up in a large South Boston family.
I'm not interested in his life story, and you have something on your chin there.
****************
Rooney became the T’s general manager at the end of the Dukakis administration but was bumped from the position when Governor William Weld took office. He then was appointed chief financial officer at the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
His lengthy service in the state’s transportation bureaucracy helped boost Rooney’s compensation. Although still working in state government, he collects a $68,000 pension from the T on top of a $257,500 annual salary.
Oh, the GREAT HERO of BOSTON is a DOUBLE-DIPPING BA$TARD and WELL PAID, too!
Yup, a Globe $ucce$$ $tory!
With the expansion of the convention center all but inevitable, Rooney will also increase his influence over the development of the rapidly growing waterfront Innovation District....
Rooney has said public financial assistance might be necessary.
Someone should tar and feather this f***er and dump him in the harbor.
Rapid growth of the complex has raised patronage questions from opponents about the potential for more convention center jobs to go to South Boston residents or to friends and relatives of lawmakers who back the expansion....
And we have had enough of THOSE!
“Many of the opportunities in our industry are middle class, middle skilled, blue-collar jobs,” he wrote....
Through all the criticisms of the proposed expansion, Rooney said, he has never doubted it will pay off for the state. He said it will produce at least $184 million a year in additional spending by visitors on hotels and meals, but will have a bigger impact by connecting people in industries crucial to the state’s economy.
It's all $elf-$erving.
“You and I sitting here have no idea how to measure how much knowledge and information exchange goes on out there and what business deals are being made,” said Rooney, nodding toward the main exhibit floor. “I believe it matters for Boston’s broader role in the world economy.”
--more--"
Related: Look What Was Tucked Into the Convention Bill
Well that $ucks!
Time to say bye-bye for my cup overfloweth.
