The home rule process is broken
Jonathan Cohn, “Letter: The Home Rule Process is Broken,” Boston Globe, December 13, 2024.
The Senate’s refusal to take up Mayor Michelle Wu’s home rule petition to shift the city’s tax burden is a damning indictment of the home rule process in Massachusetts (“Wu’s defeat could put her on defensive: Tensions high with Senate, business leaders,” Page A1, Dec. 11).
Whenever a Republican Legislature in another state tries to block its liberal capital city from passing its own laws, liberals in Massachusetts are rightly outraged. But our Commonwealth beat those other states by almost half a century, reinforced repeatedly in the years since by Boston’s business class, who rallied behind Proposition 2½ in the early 1980s and against rent control in the early 1990s.
If the petitions from cities and towns to pass their own laws can’t even get a vote at the State House — and this is just one of a few examples from this session, including rejected petitions on real estate transfer fees and rent control — the fundamental mechanisms of democracy are not working.
Jonathan Cohn
Policy director
Progressive Mass
Boston
