Battle for Boston

Flaherty is the best choice for mayor

By Maximilian W. Mason

Harvard students may not live in Boston, but they have a vested interested in the outcome of the Boston mayoral election. The Novem­ber 3 contest pits the Democratic incumbent Thomas Menino against Democratic City Councillor Michael Flaherty. Menino is running for an unprecedented fifth term after four overwhelming consecutive victories. Flaherty has served eight terms as a city councillor and has been City Council President for five years. The most salient issues to Boston are economic recov­ery, crime control, and health care, and on these issues Flaherty’s proposals are far superior.

With respect to economic recovery, Mayor Meni­no’s plan is deficient. His campaign website provides a three-paragraph outline of his plan to stimulate Bos­ton, which boils down to applying “for every appro­priate grant available through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act.” Menino’s plan to turn “Bean­town into Greentown” involves converting taxicabs to hybrid cars, installing solar panels, expanding man­dated recycling, incorporating LEED standards into building codes, and renovating hundreds of recently acquired acres of parkland. Menino apparently be­lieves that funding tangible public works will create capital for Boston. But paving a new highway does nothing if people cannot circumvent environmental red tape to drive on it. More urgently, this spending binge would require a tax increase that would raise costs for the very entrepreneurs whose activity must be stimulated to revive Boston’s economy. Mayor Menino should rearrange his priorities: it is nonsensi­cal to divert funds to an unsustainable green move­ment, especially at a time when business can least tolerate redistribution.

Michael Flaherty’s campaign website includes an eight-page plan to stimulate Boston’s economy. Fla­herty understands that the secret to generating new capital is the removal of bureaucratic red tape: he would reduce the number of steps necessary for busi­ness owners to establish themselves. His plan further proposes a Hynes Seaport Square project in South Boston to replace acres of parking lots, which would include buildings for offices, housing, and hotels. With respect to the environment, Flaherty provides a cursory plan to create green jobs and incorporate green curricula in city schools, a policy that appro­priately prioritizes economic stimulation over hyper-environmentalism through unbearable taxation.

The most pressing issue for Harvard seems to be on- and off-campus crime. Mayor Menino foolishly disbanded the most successful program in reducing city crime, Operation Ceasefire, a partnership be­tween Boston police and the community to root out criminals. He did so on the supposition that crime in Boston had permanently disappeared; it resurged immediately afterward. In its place he instituted Safe Streets Teams of police officers to patrol for crime and enforce his gun control regime, a strategy that proved far less effective than the initial community-based program.

Flaherty has devised a more extensive plan that would reliably reduce crime rather than trust in the permanence of the status quo. He would also encour­age community watch programs to expand full-time employment for youths and institute more extracur­ricular opportunities in city schools.

Michael Flaherty has largely based his campaign on health care reform, as he believes Boston cannot wait for national reforms while people are losing in­surance as quickly as they lose jobs in the current re­cession. He supports a policy to circumvent high drug costs by setting up a partnership with Canada to allow Americans to purchase cheaper drugs. Flaherty plans to further reduce costs in Boston by eliminating “sick building syndrome,” whereby people develop injuries and illnesses by living and working in dilapidated buildings; he would accomplish this by taking ad­vantage of environmental audits already in place and bringing old buildings up to code. Would that the na­tional Democratic Party might take a few pages from Flaherty’s playbook.

Though it is clear which candidate deserves the support of conservatives, recent history bodes poorly for Flaherty’s chances. He has well-developed ideas whereas his opponent has offered little more than vague rhetoric, a lack of effort resulting from justi­fied overconfidence. Menino has won three elections with at least 64 percent of the vote, one of which was a landslide victory, and another a one-man race. Al­though Flaherty’s positions are difficult to refute, this election disappointingly is likely to be won based on past laurels rather than original ideas.