The Politics of Competitive Regionalism in Greater Boston

ABSTRACT:

Neil Brenner argues that contemporary scholarship often neglects the changing contexts of regionalism and thus overstates the possibilities for organizing new political responses to changing economic conditions. Drawing on Brenner’s analysis, this paper examines the politics of regionalism in Greater Boston, a metropolitan area where state government plays the dominant role in policymaking. It examines how state elected officials have responded to the region’s volatile economic context, and in particular how they have attempted to enhance the region’s competitive advantage through tax cuts, deregulation and downsizing government. Their successes, however, have complicated efforts to reform local land use regulation, an issue increasingly seen as central to the region’s economic future.

Notes

1 Regions where the state government had decentralized decision-making power and where fewer local governments accounted for a greater share of expenditures demonstrated the strongest economic performance.

2 Unless otherwise noted, employment data have been taken from the U.S. Census County Business Patterns.

3 Of the 34 initiatives on the state ballot since Proposition 2 1/2 in 1980, 13 have involved taxation. Between 1919 and 1980, just 17 initiatives were placed on the ballot and none involved taxation though the voters did consider, and reject, four legislative referenda to graduate the state’s flat income tax and one referendum petition to abolish the recently enacted state sales tax.

4 One recent article estimated that the single sales factor tax formula gained by manufacturing and mutual funds firms has cost the state $1.5 billion in revenues since 1995 (LeRoy, 2008).

5 Proposition 2 1/2’s overall consequences are not clear since the law forced high tax municipalities to reduce their tax rates and thus narrowed tax differences among municipalities (Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation Inc., 1986). 171 of 351 had to lower their rates (Euchner, 2003).

6 Under the law, municipalities can shift increase the commercial, industrial, and personal property share of the total tax levy by no more than 50% subject to state supervision and the overall levy limits of Proposition 2 1/2.

7 To count as affordable under the law, initially, units had to be funded by federal or state housing subsidy programs. In 1999, the state agency in charge of Chapter 40B ruled that loans from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston qualified as a subsidy. Twenty-five percent of the units must be affordable. In rental projects, all of the units, not only the affordable ones, are counted toward the municipality’s subsidized housing inventory under Chapter 40B; in homeownership projects, only the affordable units are counted.

8 Hamilton, Miller, and Paytas give the Boston New England County Metropolitan Area (NECMA) a metropolitan diffusion index of 11.16 compared to 5.31 for the Los Angeles PMSA and 5.73 for the San Francisco PMSA (Hamilton et al., 2004, p. 168).