Local control has gotten completely out of control here in the Bay State, with suburbs and small-towns shooting down everything from badly needed housing to casinos.
But our giant neighbor, the Empire State, is moving in the opposite direction, with the New York Legislature poised to give the state, not local communities, final say over whether a casino has the right to set up shop.
And New York’s big push to prevent the local yokels from hijacking a major state initiative may just provide a few lessons for Massachusetts in how to move beyond the mindless NIMBYism, a plague that has made it so difficult to build anything, anywhere here in our increasingly boutique, development-averse state.
“New York State is trending away from local control of large scale initiatives,” noted Karl Sleight, head of the racing and gaming practice at Harris Beach in Albany, N.Y.
Demoting The Locals
Too often developers in Boston’s affluent suburbs are treated is if they were crack dealers intent on ruining the character of one community or another. God forbid they should propose “affordable housing,” with suspicious neighbors reacting to harmless, mostly market-rate rental projects as if they were crime ridden, public housing towers.
So it’s interesting to see New York’s approach, which is increasingly bent on preventing local towns and cities wreck state initiatives.
In the case of casino gambling, New York’s Legislature is preparing to pass a constitutional amendment this year to legalize full-scale commercial casinos. A statewide referendum would then follow in November.
But while local input will be weighed, Gov. Andrew Cuomo also recently made clear he has no interest seeing the state referendum repeated over and over again on the local level in communities where casinos are proposed.
In fact, potential casino sites won’t even be listed on the statewide referendum that will go before voters. Cuomo, with the apparent backing of legislative leaders, contends he wants to give casino developers the latitude to come up with the best possible proposals.
The bid to give the state final say over the siting of casino projects follows a similar approach the Empire State has taken to the siting of high-profile wind and alternative energy projects.
“This is the best example of where something was a patchwork of local controls,” said Sleight, the Albany-based gaming expert, on the New York experience. “The state realized it wasn’t really working.”
Stark Contrast To Massachusetts
Of course, all this is radically different from how things are now done in Massachusetts.
The state’s 2011 casino bill armed local suburbs and cities ensured that local officials have not one, but multiple vetoes and powerful pressure points to exert.
First there is the requirement that a casino developer work out a deal with selectmen or town and city councilors on a mitigation agreement.
If the local officials won’t play ball, as in the case of Foxborough, where selectmen refused to even negotiate with Steve Wynn, then all bets are off.
But provided a casino developer manages to work out a deal with local officials, the deal still has to pass a local referendum. And even that’s not all, with many communities requiring another, two-thirds vote at town meeting to change zoning rules to allow for casino gambling.
Beyond that, casino developers are also mandated to ink pacts with neighboring towns, arts organizations, you name it.
It’s local control gone haywire, and the result has been a dearth of competition for the Boston area casino license, the one that should be the big money maker for state government. As it stands right now, there may be only one challenger to Boston racetrack Suffolk Downs, with Wynn looking to take a second shot at the deal as he scopes out an industrial site in Everett.
Of course, that’s provided the former chemical plant site works out and doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of Love Canal.
Yet even you agree that casinos are a special case, relatively innocuous proposals, such those for new suburban housing, also face the same ridiculous local gauntlet.
Developers who want to put up a classic single-family home subdivision have a tough road ahead of them in Massachusetts, with local communities, with a few exceptions, bent on discouraging anything that would bring more school children into town and drive up costs.
The one hammer developers have is the increasingly outdated 1960s era 40B law. Given it can often be the only way in for builders looking to do business in otherwise locked up suburbs, it gives developers a big fat incentive to get what they can while they can get it. Oftentimes, the end results are large, multifamily apartment and condo complexes that can appear out of character.
Shabby Motives
Local control freaks like to think they have the moral upper ground, defending the grassroots against big developers and big state and federal agencies.
But the reality, as seen again in New York and in Massachusetts as well, can be much less pristine.
Yes, New York has its predictable contingent pushing for local votes and veto powers over casino proposals.
It’s organized under the rather noble sounding New Yorkers for Local Approval of Casinos. Dig a little deeper and you will find the main financial supporter, the Oneida Nation, which operates a casino on its Upstate New York reservation, which fears competition from Cuomo and the Legislature’s push to open the door to commercial casinos.
Don’t think for a minute the local approval process in Massachusetts towns can’t and isn’t abused in the same way.
Wynn, the casino magnate, probably deserved the drubbing he got in Foxborough, though who knows how much outside forces, including allies of other would-be casino developers, helped grease the skids for him.
Moreover, the fact that most of Eastern Massachusetts suburbs are effectively off-limits to casino developers thanks to local control gone mad has mainly benefited a few insider business and political types in Boston, who have spent years currying favor with Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
In the Massachusetts context, more state control and less stifling local control over every little building plan could be a badly needed blast of fresh air in a very stale system.
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
