Free Boston - The Boston Globe (2025)

Last year, Boston residents faced an estimated property tax hike of 9 percent, on average, although Wu knew many would face much higher increases. “For years, we’ve been hearing about how hard it is for people to stay in the homes they’ve known, in the communities that they have helped build,” says Wu. So Wu asked the state Legislature to shift more of the tax burden onto the city’s commercial property owners, to spare homeowners. Unfortunately for Boston residents, Wu’s proposal was rejected by the state legislators and residential taxes rose by an average of 10.4 percent for single-family homes and 14.9 percent for condos, duplexes, and housing of other types.

But why did the mayor have to ask the Massachusetts Legislature for permission about the city’s local taxes in the first place?

The answer is a century-old set of rules that places startling restrictions on Boston’s autonomy. It’s not uncommon for a state government to have oversight of some major aspects of a city’s infrastructure — like the perpetual tug-of-war in New York between the city and state over New York City’s subway system — but Boston’s limitations go well beyond tussles over the MBTA or Logan Airport.

For example, the number of liquor licenses in Boston is capped and controlled entirely by the state — something that applies to no other city or town in Massachusetts and has severely affected the hospitality sector in Boston. Licenses can cost up to $600,000, which drives smaller and independent restaurateurs out of the city.

Boston also has to seek state approval to make even superficial changes to local elections and on trivial matters like renaming the city’s pension program for municipal employees. And when Wu tried to address Boston’s alarmingly high cost of housing by slow-walking property tax hikes and introducing rent stabilization measures — a promise she ran on in 2021 — her only recourse was to file a petition with the state Legislature (called a Home Rule petition) and hope they would get around to voting on it.

But the Legislature doesn’t always vote on the petitions Boston files. Wu’s Home Rule petition for rent stabilization effectively died last year when the Legislature declined to let it move beyond a hearing. Whether the decision to let the petition die stemmed from ideological opposition or from the Legislature’s notoriously lackadaisical work ethic, it was Boston residents who paid the price.

While most of the state’s restrictions apply to all cities and towns in Massachusetts, they often have an outsized impact on Boston, given its economic and demographic dominance in the state — a fact that has troubled the city’s advocates for decades. In 2007, the Boston Foundation published a report called “Boston Bound” that lays out how Boston has less power over its own affairs than do other major cities such as Chicago and Denver. This limits Boston’s ability to respond to shifts in the population and local economy, the authors wrote. But there have been few, if any, major legal challenges to state oversight. The closest thing to reform was the state’s 1966 decision to allow municipalities to file Home Rule petitions. That came after decades of even more onerous oversight.

This is no way for a state to look after a city.

Today’s lopsided power dynamic between city and state has an odious origin story. It was the outcome of xenophobia in the latter half of the 19th century, as the Massachusetts Protestant majority recoiled from the waves of Irish Catholic immigrants arriving in the Bay State around 1845.

“Over 230,000 Irish immigrants became part of Boston between 1845 and 1855,” says Jake Sconyers, the historian who hosts and produces the HUB History podcast. Massachusetts Protestants were determined to limit the influence of Boston’s Irish communities, especially after Hugh O’Brien became the city’s first Irish Catholic mayor in 1884. The state reacted by consolidating power.

And it will be reluctant to give it up.

“Boston is the dominant cultural, political, and economic force in the state,” says Keith Mahoney, who served as Boston’s director of state relations under the Thomas M. Menino administration from 2006 to 2010. “The state Legislature is less apt to take a hands-off approach to Boston than they might to another city in the Commonwealth,” he adds.

Given that Boston is the most populous city in Massachusetts — a hub of commerce, health care, transportation, and much more — it shouldn’t come as any surprise that a lot of state investment goes toward city infrastructure and services. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s current five-year, $16.7 billion capital investment plan includes $800 million for the MBTA. “I think the argument that the Legislature should be a steward for Boston in a unique way does hold some water,” says Ben Forman, director of the MassINC Policy Center. “But the liquor license [limit] is a case when hamstringing the city actually undermines a major economic asset. Because as we know, a big part of a city’s vitality and economic base is eating and drinking establishments.”

Since state oversight technically applies to all municipalities in Massachusetts, Forman would like to see Boston and smaller cities like Lynn, Worcester, and Pittsfield form a coalition to push the state Legislature on issues that benefit all Massachusetts cities. “I would be working with people with aligned interests, trying to move the Legislature — because none of us can do what we need to do without the support of that body,” Forman says.

Mahoney points to another potential way forward for Boston — albeit a narrow and potentially thorny one. The Municipal Empowerment Act is a proposed law that would give towns and cities more power to decide whether to change local taxes, particularly on hotel stays, restaurant meals, and motor vehicles.

The act was written by and put to the state Legislature by the Healey-Driscoll administration in 2024. After the Legislature failed to take up the bill, the governor’s office refiled it in January.

Adam Chapdelaine, executive director for the Massachusetts Municipal Association, helped to shape the bill, and he’s quick to highlight its strengths — especially when it comes to creating new revenue for cities and towns. “In these challenging financial times, local governments are interested in exploring local options,” Chapdelaine says. “Additional revenue is incredibly needed by towns and cities across every region of the Commonwealth.”

The Municipal Empowerment Act also contains a subtle yet intriguing provision for Boston. While the act would apply to all Massachusetts cities and towns, Boston would get at least one unique privilege: the option to raise its lodging taxes to half a percentage point higher than other municipalities. As much as this might feel out of touch with how costly it is already to visit Boston, including this perk in the Municipal Empowerment Act reads as a quiet acknowledgment that empowering the state’s largest city is not going to look the same as it would for a town in the Pioneer Valley or on the South Shore.

And this is the key point. For too many years, the state has gotten its relationship to Boston backward. Instead of placing unique limitations on Boston, it should be giving it more freedom. Imagine a bolder version of the Municipal Empowerment Act that would loosen Boston’s tight leash after more than a century of rigid oversight. The Healey-Driscoll administration could use this act to reverse the policymaking restrictions that are placed on Boston alone, like the liquor license limits. This would at least put Boston on equal footing with other cities and towns across Massachusetts.

But equal footing is only half of the solution. The state needs to find a way to resolve its ambivalence toward Boston. On the one hand, Boston is an economic powerhouse for the state. On the other hand, the city receives a lot of state support for public transit and infrastructure. Is Boston an investment to be managed? A liability that requires strict supervision? Or a city with the right to manage its own affairs?

I know what I would answer. I only hope one day state legislators will agree.