Maura Healey has set some pretty ambitious housing and energy targets: building 200,000 new homes statewide, while also developing a power grid that fully relies on clean electricity.
Yes, the governor has said she wants to see both happen — by 2030. But achieving even one of those targets is challenging enough. They will take considerable time and money, not to mention a willingness from enough private sector developers to advance all the projects needed for those goals.
Then there’s that little issue of getting the state’s vast array of cities and towns to go along.
In recent weeks, the Healey administration has found out just how vexing that last obstacle can be.
Healey’s enforcement of a new zoning law for cities and towns served by the MBTA caused a backlash in Milton, where residents voted to overturn a multifamily housing plan; it would be the first of several municipal revolts over the issue. A separate proposal of Healey’s, tucked into her $4 billion housing bond bill, is getting pushback because it would allow owners of single-family homes to add an apartment to their property regardless of the local zoning. Meanwhile, the select board in the town of Harvard accused Healey of a “breach of faith” for proposing to erase a strict cap on housing construction at the former Devens military base northwest of Boston.
On the energy front, a commission that Healey formed to speed permitting of clean energy projects just recommended wrapping all local approvals into one comprehensive permit and guaranteeing a decision in 15 months’ time. On the commission, the representative for the Massachusetts Municipal Association voted against this idea, saying the MMA would prefer this kind of expedited permit be voluntary for cities and towns, not a mandate.
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Healey, who is well aware of the political ramifications of alienating local officials, held forth about both topics at a recent Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce meeting, in a conversation with chamber chief executive Jim Rooney. To boil it down: She doesn’t want the state government to bigfoot cities and towns, but she also doesn’t want NIMBYism to hinder the state’s progress on these two major priorities.
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Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll — the former mayor of Salem — has been Healey’s point person on tricky municipal issues like these. Housing and clean energy, Driscoll said in an interview, are crucial to making Massachusetts more economically competitive. The administration doesn’t want to thwart local decision-making but also needs to approach these goals from a statewide perspective. State officials, for example, can’t have a housing agenda based on 351 individual goals and plans. Collaboration and regional planning are essential.
Few people around here know that better than Marc Draisen, longtime leader of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which often advises cities and towns in Greater Boston. Draisen sees the housing crisis up close: He has lost staff members to jobs in less expensive states. Massachusetts has a centuries-old tradition of “home rule” and local control, particularly for land use issues. That’s a good thing most of the time, Draisen says, but it’s not always a good thing. And when local control blocks something needed by the entire commonwealth — it’s no accident Draisen uses the word “commonwealth,” not “state” — then reasonable limits should be considered.
Even the new head of the municipal association, an influential advocate for cities and towns on Beacon Hill, seems agreeable. Executive director Adam Chapdelaine says Healey and her team seem to be trying to incorporate municipal leaders’ opinions as they take on these legitimate challenges. On the energy siting commission vote, Chapdelaine says his group isn’t fundamentally opposed to streamlining local permitting as long as it’s clear that a municipality’s voice can still be heard. Despite objections in Milton and elsewhere, dozens of MBTA communities are moving ahead with their multifamily zoning plans. And Healey is looking to help cities and towns in other ways: In January, she came to the MMA’s annual meeting and announced a proposal that would increase the state’s limit on local taxes for meals and hotel stays, while her housing bond bill would give communities the right to tax high-end real estate sales to raise money for affordable housing.
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But there’s still plenty of discontent out there — if you know where to listen.
The select board in Chelmsford, for example, penned a letter on April 2, with a lengthy criticism of Healey’s plan to allow extra housing units on single-family lots. By allowing these “accessory dwelling units” in single-family zones, the select board argues, the Healey administration is usurping local control. The select board wrote that the potential strain on communities from this proposal, when combined with other state housing requirements such as the MBTA zoning, is simply “unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, Community Land & Water Coalition cofounder Meg Sheehan expressed concerns that the clean energy commission’s report will serve as “window dressing” for energy developers seeking speedy approvals to build solar farms, transmission lines, and battery storage projects. The recommendations, she said, run contrary to four centuries of home rule in Massachusetts.
Running into resistance at the town level doesn’t just hurt the governor’s chances of getting new housing units or renewable energy projects built. She also runs the risk of losing political capital, particularly in a State House packed with representatives and senators who themselves worked their way up from the local ranks and whose reelections often hinge on their popularity back home.
State lawmakers, as a result, have long been deferential on issues of local control — and Healey needs their blessing for several of these proposals. The MBTA zoning is already law, proposed by the state Senate and signed by then-governor Charlie Baker in 2021, although it has fallen upon the Healey administration to interpret and enforce. Lawmakers still need to approve her proposed expansion of accessory-dwelling units and lifting of the Devens housing cap, as well as the expedited permitting proposal for energy infrastructure.
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Senator Mike Barrett, co-chairman of the Legislature’s energy committee, does worry that the brunt of new clean energy infrastructure will be borne by the state’s rural communities, because they have more available land.
There are no easy answers when it comes to addressing the state’s housing and energy woes, he said. From his perspective, everybody deserves a seat at the table on these issues of statewide concern, but no one deserves a veto.
That sounds logical, maybe even simple. But how to strike that right balance? That’s shaping up to be one of the most complicated challenges Healey faces as governor.
Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.