Legal professional Basic Andrea Campbell’s heavy-handed techniques are forcing beleaguered cities and cities in Massachusetts to waste cash combating the MBTA Communities Act in court docket as an alternative of spending it on police, fireplace departments, parks and colleges.
Some Massachusetts taxpayers are basically getting double billed – paying for Campbell’s bloated wage, workers and court docket prices whereas additionally spending taxpayer funds for the native communities’ protection.
Campbell has chosen to battle cities and cities in court docket to defend the MBTA zoning regulation whereas ignoring the voter-approved regulation which permits Auditor Diana DiZoglio to audit the state Legislature.
So reasonably than problem lawmakers, she lets them get off the hook, whereas wielding her cudgel in opposition to poor cities and cities that gained’t adjust to the elitist regulation.
Campbell’s reply for all the things – whether or not it’s native Massachusetts cities or President Donald Trump – is to sue from her excessive perch at her Dartmouth dwelling.
She rejects the folks’s will in auditing the Legislature, though she’s presupposed to be the folks’s lawyer. Campbell hardly ever seems in public, except it’s on pleasant public radio, and usually solely solutions by press launch from her Duxbury property.
We’ll sue you is the reply to all the things. That brings in depositions, affidavits, hearings, city attorneys, and a few cities should get costly outdoors counsel.
Campbell has already filed go well with in opposition to Trump dozens of occasions, spending tens of millions of {dollars}, and is now taking intention at her personal state’s financially-strapped cities.
A dozen communities are resisting the regulation, which seeks to create multifamily housing round MBTA stations. So Campbell is concentrating on them as adversaries – utilizing her AG cudgel – reasonably than working with them to discover a resolution to the housing disaster.
The AG is pitching her personal story as a former tenant who was practically evicted from public housing to push the regulation.
“Whereas I couldn’t afford to personal a house for many of my grownup life, it remained a precedence for my husband and me, and we finally purchased a home and broke the cycles of instability and poverty for myself and my boys,” she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed.
She actually did break the cycle. Campbell, along with her $223,495 annual wage, can now afford to reside within the comfortable city of Dartmouth on Massachusetts’ South Coast, transferring from Mattapan in 2025. They purchased the home for $865,000, one thing most Massachusetts residents couldn’t afford.
“The choice was not a simple one, however after important prayer and significant dialogue and reflection, we in the end determined that it was the perfect determination for our household,” she wrote to supporters in Dec. 2024.
Her story about being practically evicted has little to do with what cities are combating, however oh nicely.
Campbell has determined the state is the enemy and cities and cities should do regardless of the state decides is finest for them.
Why is Campbell being so heavy-handed in defending the regulation? Does it have something to do with the truth that a number of the “multi-family” housing models created by the MBTA Communities regulation might be going to newly-arrived migrants?
Campbell and Gov. Maura Healey have determined that migrants get first crack at drivers’ licenses and meals and faculty help, making them a precedence.
Will they get desire for reasonably priced housing too?
Now that Healey has ended the observe of housing migrants in motels, they want different locations to reside, and the creation of reasonably priced models close to T stations is among the prime areas left in Massachusetts.
