When Greg Bialecki’s former boss resigned abruptly this past winter, Bialecki inherited the reigns of a cabinet agency charged with overseeing the state’s housing and economic development agenda – at the bleakest moment in recent memory for business and housing.
As he has battled the recession and doled out federal stimulus dollars, Bialecki has also vowed to change the way the massive secretariat talked about the work it does, emphasizing linkages with private partners and other government agencies.
"In the day to day substance of what we all did, it was probably going to be 90 percent or more what we’d been doing for the past two years," he said. "The important part of that was, we weren’t reinventing the wheel. We weren’t starting from scratch."
Greg Bialecki
Title: Massachusetts’ Secretary of Housing and Economic Development
Age: 49
Experience: 23 years
How much has the economic downturn, and the presence of these stimulus dollars, changed the way you approach your job?
There’s been an enormous difference. The governor frequently talks about governing for the long term. That’s a strong direction that he’s given all of us, to really think about what could make the Commonwealth a better place from a ten-year perspective. We’ve done that from the beginning. The life sciences initiative was consciously a ten-year initiative. That is a great approach, but when you’re dealing with a very serious economic downturn, you have to also appreciate that there are businesses and homeowners and families that are affected, and everybody in this secretariat has to be spending a good part of their day just trying to help people to get through the coming year. We have to give priority to the urgent needs, but it’s important to us not to abandon or put aside those long-term goals.
Stimulus is a good example. The immediate objective, in some sense, is to get people back to work. But depending on where you put the stimulus dollars to work, you can use them in ways that will make the Commonwealth a better place in the long-term. So the question is, can you get a two-for-one out of that? Can you make those investments in places like Assembly Square, where you’re putting people to work today, but you’re also creating a place that’s going to be important, a place for business growth, over the next twenty years?
Before those kinds of projects were announced, there were criticisms that those opportunities were being wasted. Did that catch you off guard? Or does it come with the territory of the way that these programs have to work?
Congress could’ve done it a different way, and they didn’t. Congress clearly decided they were going to send a lot of money through existing channels. That’s understandable. But it didn’t allow us to do what we thought were some of the more innovative, creative, game-changing kinds of things. Frankly, it was very difficult to explain to people. We understood the rules we were under, and why we had to do it that way. It was just very difficult to explain to people why we did Project A instead of Project B. It didn’t make sense why you would do A over B, and only when you understood all the rules do you understand that maybe you had to do A.
It’s hard to explain a TIP list to somebody?
You start talking about TIP’s and MPO’s, and I don’t blame them – the average person doesn’t want to hear it. I don’t blame them for that.
These bigger game-changing type projects – have you had to exclude projects because there isn’t enough money? Or is it more thinking about how to take money from various pots to create the dollar figure in the task force reports?
What we’re seeing is that, even with stimulus, in most cases we have to bring together two or three or four different state and federal resources in order to make these things happen. Fitting all these pieces together is complicated. The components have different eligibility requirements and so forth. A lot of the projects that have not gotten funding, some people come to the conclusion that, I didn’t see that it got funded, therefore it’s not being funded. That’s just not true yet.
Do you have a handle on how many more will be funded, or the available pool of funds that would be split between projects?
It’s hard to say. As we’re making these evaluations, there are some pretty significant projects that we think are important, but they take a lot of resources, and we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars to do something – Assembly Square was one. SouthField would be one, the Fall River interchange would be one. Then there are other projects that are maybe a few million dollars around the state. We’re going to do both kinds. The governor has emphasized from the very beginning that he wants us all to be making decisions in a way that is consistent with regional balance and regional equity. We are looking to try to get regional balance. It doesn’t mean that we’re going literally divide it into 351 pieces all the time. We don’t think that’s what equity means. We think equity means every region of the state benefits, and whatever part of the state you’re in, stimulus will be touching part of your life.
On 40B, are you happy with the way the program is being executed now, and what changes, if any, might people be looking for in response to the Inspector General’s report?
We’ve actually made a number of changes to the program. You’re not going to find anybody in this administration who says it’s a perfect program. We understand that it’s not a perfect program. But we believe the idea that every community ought to play a fair share in providing affordable housing in Massachusetts is very important principle. I’m open to thinking about changes. Do you have suggestions for change that still support the principle that every community should meet its fair share of affordable housing? If your suggestion is to change the way we count, or something, and the effect of that change is now your community won’t have to do any more affordable housing, then I can’t agree with that change. If you’re willing to meet me halfway, and say, Greg, I have an idea for a change that would be better for my community and just as much affordable housing would still be produced, I’ve always been wide open to those changes, and I’m glad to talk to people about them.
Even with 40B, we consistently rank among the lowest in the country in the production of affordable housing. It’s still a major issue, our affordable housing production is still low, and any change to 40B has to be one that still helps us get where we need to be in affordable housing production.
Where are we on land use reform? And, given the history of land use bills in the legislature, how realistic is it to expect that something gets done before the session is over?
It is very important to us. There are some things we can do under the existing system, and we have done, like the 43D program to encourage communities to do their permitting differently than they have in the past. But, fundamentally, if we’re going to move communities in the direction we would like to see them go, then we do need legislative change. It is important, and it’s something we’re going to push for.
The two basic things we’re asking communities to do is to plan ahead more, and to take their neighbors and their regions into account in that planning, more than they do right now. We were aware that was a significant change from where things are, and that’s why zoning reform is built on an opt-in model. We acknowledged that the kind of changes we’d like to see would be a considerable change for a lot of communities, and just making everybody do that today would be too much to ask, and there would be a lot of resistance. So we’re willing to say, we think it’s the right thing to do, we think we can convince communities that it’s the right thing to do.
I’ve heard from a number of legislators that one advantage of zoning reform is it’s something the legislature can do that doesn’t cost any money. That’s the kind of opportunity they’re looking for. If you look at what’s happened this year with the reforms that the governor and the legislature have been involved with, it’s not a coincidence that the most significant pieces of legislation this year – unlike, say, a life sciences bill – the bills passed this year have not cost the state any additional money, and some of them are actually designed to save the state some money. Zoning reform is in that same category, and I’ve heard from a number of legislators that that’s what makes it attractive, it’s the kind of thing they can work on.
Is structuring significant changes as opt-ins something we’re going to see more of? Is the best way to get people to take that leap not to push them?
It is the most likely path to success. What I found in zoning reform is that, when I talked to local communities, they’d say, "Greg, does zoning reform involve the state making us do something? Because if it does, we’re not going to be interested." I’d say, "Would you give me a chance to explain why these differences might be good?" They’d say, "No, what I’m trying to tell you is, we’re not going to be interested in Beacon Hill telling us what to do." That’s the nature of where we are in Massachusetts right now. I understand that. There are a number of people who have been disappointed by my decision to make zoning reform an opt-in bill. They feel that it should be imposed on anybody, whatever it is. I accept the fact that opt-in is the more likely path to success, and frankly, it’s fair. We are making the claim that if communities planned differently, they would be better off for it, and under the opt-in approach, the burden of proof is on us. I think that’s fair.
Bialecki’s 5 Key Elements Critical To The Success Of The State:
1.) Economic opportunities for individuals and families
2.) Strong communities
3.) Regional prosperity
4.) Technology
5.) Innovation
