BPR Full Show 8/12/26: Ask The Mayor

Support for Boston Public Radio comes from the Cape Playhouse in Dennis Village, now playing Tina Faye's Broadway comedy hit Mean Girls, rooting for the new girl in high school in this warm and snarky musical. Tickets for Mean Girls at capeplayhouse.com. And MIT Sloan Executive Education, a global community of leaders seeking fresh insights on strategy, innovation, and AI. More than 90 programs offered year-round. More at executive.m.it.edu. I'm Jim Brady, head on BPR and GBAM. Live from the library. We'll start today with Trump's Air Force One Disappearing Act. His mid-meeting Oval Office, Nass, his latest retaliatory prosecutions and his incompetence in Iran. Can you take another two years of this? Call her text. Then Congressman Seth Moulton joins us to talk about his Senate primary campaign against incumbent Senator Ed Markey and Eastern Bank's chair. Bob Rivers stops by. to discuss his plan to increase housing in Massachusetts. I'm Marjorie Egan, and hour two is the August edition of Ask the Mayor with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. She'll answer our questions in yours on steady street safety, housing, the upcoming school year, and the latest on her property tax battle. If you have a question for the mayor, come on down to the library and ask her in person, or call her text us. All that ahead, VPR live from the Boston Public Library.

PR and GBAH and 8 p.m. Jim Browdy and Marjorie Egan. We are broadcasting live from the Boston Public Library. Thank you and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News. At 1130, we're going to be joined by Congressman Seth Moulton. He, of course, is running to succeed Ed Markey as a senator from Massachusetts. At noon, it is Ask the Mayor with Michelle Wu. She'll take our questions and yours. And tomorrow we're going to be joined by Congressman Jake Ockincloss. Hello, Jim. Hey, can I add one to tomorrow, so I'm really looking forward to this. David Steiner is going to join us tomorrow. He is half of this native couple. who were terrorized by eBay. And terrorized is the word. And to their credit, they fought back. And it's an incredible painful and wonderful story. People hear it tomorrow. Some horrible, incredible stuff done. But they paid a price because these people paid a price and fought back. They're really... role models for a lot of people. So we teased this topic yesterday at the end of the show. Trump in the White House telling the public in the press that he was aboard Air Force One as he left the NATO summit in Turkey. Instead, nobody knows this, an elaborate ruse, this is first reported by the Washington Post, involving a catering cart and truck had him traveling home on a secret military aircraft, leaving the press corps and his top staffers vulnerable, all because... of an unnecessary war that he started and has absolutely no idea how to end. So today we're holding an informal, let's call it a dangerousness hearing for Donald Trump. To recap, this is just some of the stuff from one week, lying daily about the state of everything, from the economy to saying we own this. I can't even read. We own. We're in total control of the strait of our moves. That's why no ships go through it at all because we're in total control. He falls asleep regularly during important meetings, most recently about the one about childhood vaccine, when the head of the NIH is lying about autism. And then Trump issues an executive order dangerous to every child in this country. He once prosecuted a guy that his own... U.S. attorney in Washington dropped charges against. This is the guy with the algae in the pool, reflecting pool. Why did she drop the charges? Because there was no evidence he did anything wrong, yet Trump wants somebody else to charge him. Our question for you, it's one we ask ourselves every day, can we do two more years of this with this guy? And are you concerned? I read a lot about this last night, including a wonderful piece by Jonathan Reiner. Often on CNN, he's a doctor who is Dick Cheney's a physician asking a lot of questions about the physical and mental condition of Donald Trump. And are you concerned that he is so incoherent and on the verge of being so incapacitated that for the final two years, and this has happened with other presidents, he won't be leading the country, people that almost nobody knows, Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, and the vile racist Stephen Miller.

will essentially be the de facto president. Call us or give us a text, 877-301-8970. And since Marjorie always loves what we call a side pickle issue, we also want to know, where is Mitch McConnell? Yeah, 77-301-8970. thought that Stephen Miller was tight with the president, but we know now that he's not tight. Why? Stephen Miller was on the decoy plane with all the reporters that the president didn't care if they were going to go up in smoke. Marco Rubio was there. Apparently Marco Rubio did know he's a national security guy. He took Pete Hegseth along, though. He took Pete Hegseth along with him, yeah. He took Pete Hegseth along with him, and he took the human reporter, what she called the human printer. Explain who who she is. She is a very young woman who apparently is quite close to the president. Where is her name? quite close to the president. Well, I don't know. What she does is she... She's with him in the middle of the night while he's posting on true social. She is with him in the middle of the night. But he took her with her in the food cart. Food cart. And he left Miller on the airplane to possibly... And we should point out that when other presidents have been in these very dangerous situations, they have either warned the press... to shut up about it until they're out of the situation, or they have not, as Bill Clinton said, in one of these incidents when he was going into, I think he was going to, was he going to Bosnia? He said the press was not going to be used as a decoy. So this is unusual for the president to do this kind of thing. I'm sorry, it was not Bosnia. He switched planes to avoid detection, but he said he was not going to leave the press on a plane to be. shot. Can I play just to make me happy and probably make you miserable? Here's Trump yesterday from the tarmac at the Joint Face Andrews in Maryland, asserting again that the U.S. has total control of the Strait of Hormuz. Here's Trump. I'm the last person that Tresorat. They've lied to me constantly. We have total control over the Hormuz Strait right now. They don't have control. We have total control. We own it. Now, by the way, there are a lot of Trump supporters who listen to the show who mostly just text. If you identify yourself as a Trump supporter and call, we will put you at the top of the list. We rarely do that. If you were willing to say that obviously Donald Trump is right, we have total control of the straight-horred moves and explain it to us. And if you watch, by the way, the last thing before we get the calls, 877301, 8970, if you watch this meeting yesterday, like all other meetings, I think it's the head of the NIH, is making up stuff about vaccines and autism, making it up out of whole cloth, Trump is fast asleep. I know. Fast asleep in the middle of this press availability in the office. You add the incoherence to the sleeping, the questions. This guy, Jonathan Reiner, who asks a bunch of questions. I think there's seven questions in this piece he wrote for the New York Times headline was, I was Dick Cheney's cardiologist. Trump has not looked well. We should know why. One of the things he says, which is always my favorite.

The president has spoken about how well he performs on cognitive testing. However, the exam that Mr. Trump describes is a Montreal cognitive assessment is a brief and basic screening tool with questions like, draw a clock and identify a camel. And the President of the United States apparently can identify a camel, at least for now, and can draw a clock. 877301.89. How worried are you? Okay, I just mentioned it's Natalie Harp, who is the human printer. Human printer. The young woman who spends a lot of time in the President's office. Why don't you mention the notes, that private notes she is sent to the President of the States. How much she adores him. She thinks about them every minute. But anyway, it's important to point out that the people that did make the cut got into the military plane were all... people who worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago during the four years between his presence. He's Dan Scavino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Natalie Harp, the human printer, as they call her. And Steve Wals Nata, remember he was in trouble for a while, Trump pardon him for involving the moving the documents to Mar-a-Lago. Those are the three. But everybody else got stuck on the decoy plane to have, and by the way, did you hear Trump say? He thought really he was on the more dangerous plane than the people who were on the decoy plane unbeknownst to them. Anyway, 8773301-8-970 is the number. Jane in Concord, thank you for calling. Hello, Jane. Good morning. Hi. I am really worried about what's going to happen after Trump. I mean, I'm horrified by Trump now, but I really think we have to be concerned about serious fascism. Just think of all the people in Germany that started to believe the crazy lies and stories. And it seems like that's what's happening in the U.S. I have friends that think Trump's the greatest president ever. And he just... There's so many crazy, stupid things, and people believe what he says. It's awful. Why do you say you worry about what comes after Trump? I have to say, and we've been saying it for a while, but my concern has grown exponentially. Are you not concerned about how we get after Trump? I mean, how do we get through two years and X number of months of this sickness? Yes, so I'm very worried about the next couple of years. But over the weekend on NPR, you probably one of you heard, the book, Nerd Reich, the Silicon Valley Fascism and the War and Democracy books discussed. I know about the book. I didn't hear that. But go ahead. Yeah, there's another book that I can't remember the title, but they're talking about how like the bro technology people. truly believe that we don't need democracy and we need dictatorship and, you know, Peter Thiel and all this awful stuff and they have a lot of financial control. Wait, that was the response to my question about how are you not worried about the next two years? Doesn't it make you worry more? That's JD Vance. That's JD Vance that's in with that crime. I know that. I think that's what you're talking about, Jane, right? He and Peter Thiel are very tight and these Silicon Valley people. Yeah, and he's the vice president, obviously.

Hey, Jane, thanks for the call. You know what's also so troubling? The guy that's run, the Republican running for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, who used to be, I think, House Chair of the Armed Services Committee, I think, Rogers. And this is a guy who criticized, when he was a congressman, was criticizing Trump because of pretending he won the 2020 election, how dangerous it was. Now that he's a Republican nominee. running against El-Sayed, there are a lot of issues around election and integrity in 2020 we have to look into. Meaning with Thom Tillis gone, who was a coward until he decided to resign from Carolina, North Carolina, yeah. With Bill Cassidy, another coward from Louisiana, the doctor who voted for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. and voted the other day for Todd Blanche, he'll be gone. And John Cornyn, another coward, who never stood up to Trump until he was defeated in a primary. by another criminal or an almost criminal, to be fair. Ken Paxton there. There's going to be nobody left on the Republican side who will say boo. We have to hope that the Democrats prevail in the 2026 elections, and that will at least put a hold on a lot of his power. By the way, for all those people, the vaccines, things that Trump's idea now, and I think he's got this thing about autism because I think he worries about, I think he's worried about his younger son. He was, what, 60 when he had that kid or something like that? And older men and has been linked to autism. Maybe there's something a little off about his youngest son. He doesn't, that makes him think it has to be the vaccine, nothing to do with him. But, you know, just imagine. Measles, mumps, rebella. Usually you go, you have to get it, you know, you have to go and get them all three at once, right? He doesn't want that anymore. That's one shot for the kid and that one day, and you have to make sure the kid doesn't get a fever. He wants you to bring him separately, go once for measles, then come back and get mumps, and then come back and get rebella. Three shots instead of one shot. I mean... Nobody wants to do that, Jim. Well, particularly young doctors, young people who are doctors that care for young children, almost universally opposed to what he's proposed. Yeah, and young parents would have to deal with worrying about the child at every shot and screaming at every shot and worrying about having to take time off from work. It's crazy. David from Connecticut apparently thinks Trump does have everything under control. So, David, welcome to the show. Glad to have you. What's up? Hey, how you doing? Thanks for taking my coffee. Pleasure. Yeah. I'm just wondering, who do you believe does control the state of Hormor? I don't believe I know who controls the state of Hormuz. Iran. Yeah. Let me ask you. Can I ask you? You can ask anything you want? I asked you to call, and you were kind enough to call. Ask away. Right. No, what I'm saying is if Iran controls it, why don't they kick the U.S. out of there? They have. What's the next question? But we're still there. No, excuse me. How many ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and the fact that they aren't is why the cost of living in this country is totally out of control, as I'm sure you know, David. It's out of control. It's out of control. But I think it's, let me ask you a question. You already did. Ask a third. Joe Biden, do you think Joe Biden cognizant?

was better than Trump's copy? I don't do those what-if questions. I mean, David, with all due respect, and I really appreciate calling. Whenever a Trump supporter has no idea what to ask next. They say, what about Joe Biden? We don't do the what about thing on this show. We talk about who's president now, and when there's an ex-president, we'll talk about him or her. But thank you for your excellent call. We appreciate it. And anybody else who is a Trump supporter wants to call will pop you up, and you can ask the same questions. Well, I think he keeps thinking that since so many people have believed the lies he's told right along, that they'll keep believing the lies he's told right along. It's hard to believe the one about the Iran straight being totally open when we know that... It's not. It's not. You know, we've said this many times on the show, but for new listeners and for people who've not seen some of the... incredibly wonderful documentaries that Michael Kirk has done for Frontline. This whole lying relentlessly and thinking it will convince people, which it does, unfortunately, all goes back to a housing discrimination lawsuit when Donald Trump was a private citizen. Who was his lawyer? Roy Cohn from McCarthy Committee hearings. And Trump lost a racial, Trump, as in Donald Trump, lost a racial discrimination case around housing, lost it across the board. And what Roy Cohn, his lawyer, said to do was to go out and say they won. And he relentlessly did it. And the lesson he has learned that he has perfected. And I mean that not sarcastically, is when you lose, you say you win. And if you say it enough, there is at least a core of people and our election time, a majority of people, or at least a plurality. who will buy it. Well, we forget to mention Mr. Pillow and Mike Lindell lost in Minnesota. He was one that was, you know, he was sued successfully by these election machines for lying about the election machines. He's lost again. Now he's still blaming irregularities in the election. He's going to come up with the proof any day, is that he is. Right under the pillow. Zach in Springfield, welcome to the show. Hi. Hi, Jim. Hi, Marjorie. Hi. Hi. What's up? So. Yeah, basically, we're kind of seeing a manifestation of the problem we've been afraid of since 2015, that he was going to tweet his way into a crisis so that he couldn't get out of. We saw what COVID kind of, he didn't, wasn't able to tweet his way into it, but he certainly made a mess of things, and he couldn't bluster his way out. He can't do it with Iran now either because, like, the war went hot. We got stuck with things. I agree, Jim, I think we're in a very dangerous phase these next couple of years where he might do something worse.

And to put a fine point on it, to any caller that asks about that Biden's cognition, he never got us into a – he didn't start a war in his term like this. But also, I hear you, Zach, but a comparative analysis does not help get us out of Iran unless there's a history lesson that might apply now. But it's the – it's when you can't – defend Donald Trump as a Donald Trump supporter, you always resort to Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Zach, thanks for Cole, though. Appreciate it. I shouldn't do the what-aboutism, but I will do it in this one instance. Can you imagine if Barack Obama got on a different plane and left his age and White House staff and the pilots on the crew and all the reporters on the decoy plane and just took off? Can you imagine the uproar? He would be called the low-t president, Jim. Exactly. Now, by the way, this will make you happy. Our staff apparently, I don't know if it's from the Washington Post, whatever. Oh, no, we have exclusive cockpit audio from the decoy plane. Here it is. Roger. Huh? LA departure frequency, one, two, three point-nin. Roger. Huh? Request vector, over. What? Flight two-09er, clear for vector 324. We have clearance, Clarence. Roger, what's our vector, Victor? It makes Marjorie and me laugh. Of course, it's from the great and hysterically funny movie airplane, which still holds up. They could never show it today, though. It's very un-PC. But, you know, the guy, remember that Harrison Ford movie in 97 Air Force One about the Air Force One being hijacked? I don't remember. The guy that wrote the screenplay for that was queried about the instance with Mr. Trump getting on a different airplane. He said it would be very difficult to make a hero out of the person that got into the snack trolley, as one of our textures call it, and wrote it. a military airplane. An honest texter says, I hear Mitch McConnell is busy catching up with Chuck Grassley's vacuum cleaner. We're going to discuss this by on Friday. There is a beautiful story in the New York Times. Chuck Grassley is a United States Center from Iowa, who is a mere 93 years old. And there's a actually... the part that is real is there's a beautiful story in the near times about his sadness that his vacuum cleaner, its name was Beth, if I... I think it was, he named it. Which had been in his family for more than half his life, I think, 47 years. I'm not a big fan of Chuck Grassley, but this made me like him who are hearing about his attachment to his vacuum cleaner. You know what Chuck Grassley believes in? Cameras in the courtroom. Well, there you go, Jim. He's right on one thing. Let's go to Kristen Gloucester. Welcome to the show. Hi, Chris. Hey, thanks to take my call. Of course. We got to get by the midterms, but I think after we take the house, we go after Todd Blanche, impeach Todd Blanche, and cut him off before he gets going, and then go after Pete Hegseth and try to dismantle this project 2025 piece by piece.

Well, I think that's part. We'll find it. We're going to have a Democratic congressman with us in about five minutes. We'll find out what their plan is if they take over, they do take a majority in the House, and thank you for their call. 877301-8970 is the number. Joseph in New Hampshire. Thank you for calling. Hello, Joseph. Hi. How are you? I think we're good. Thank you. Okay. So, I mean, I'm listening to your show, and I normally don't, but. I'm listening to about Donald Trump. What do I think about the future with Donald Trump? And I think the biggest part that most people are to call in not even noticing is what's being talked about in the back rooms in this country. And the things that are being talked about, which I don't condone and I don't want. But you're talking about a revolution, and there's a lot of people throughout New England that I have talked to because I travel between Maine and New Hampshire a lot and Massachusetts about this. People are so disparaged with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. It's not just both. I mean, we have watched, as I have watched over years, 62, I have watched while things in the political system are they're going to go after this one, they're going to go after that one, and nothing is ever done. Everything's whitewashed. No one goes to jail. No one's ever prosecuted. And nothing has changed. And that's where I believe this country is heading. Unfortunately, I think we're waiting for the second shot around the world, and this is going to be... Donald Trump's fault for having it occur. Well, Joseph, if I can quarrel with at least one thing you said, we don't prosecute anybody, we don't hold anybody accountable. Hundreds of people were prosecuted for their effort to overturn the government of the United States at the behest of Donald Trump on January 6th. A lot of them were convicted. A lot of them, proud boys, oath keepers, heads sentenced to decades in jail. That was under a Democratic president and a Republican president, I don't know if I can't remember who was day one or not, chose to pardon all those people who, again, I want to repeat, attempted to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States of America. So while I would agree with you that Democrats are as unhappy with their own party as they seem to be with the Republicans, you can't say that the opposing party hasn't tried at least. to hold people accountable. Sadly, it was undone by a felonious sex-abusing president. Joseph, thanks for the call. Appreciate it. Well, you know why I'm not worried about a revolution. Why is that? Because I don't think we're really that busy protesting. You mean you have to leave your house, which are people that are not. You're talking about the Albanians. They've been protesting almost nonstop because Ivanka Trump wants to... Out in the streets about the island, she wants to take over for a resort. And it's difficult... She being the daughter of the president and her husband. But we did get lots of people out for these different rallies that we had. I mean, there were tons of people down there for the... The Albanians, though, are relentless. The Albanians are relentless, and we periodically...

get up and do something, but we're not consistent. Anyway, that's all the time we have for. Thank you for calls and texts. After this quick break, we're going to talk with Congressman Seth Moulton. He joins us here at the library to talk about his challenge in the Senate to Ed Markey and some other things are going on. Congress. I'm Marjorie. He's doing in Browdy. Listen to BPR, GBAH, and NEPM Live from the Boston Public Library and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBH News. Welcome back to BPR and GBAH and NEPM. Marjorie Egan Jim Browdy, live at the library streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News at noon. Today in 30 minutes will be joined by Mayor Wu for an hour of ask the mayor, tomorrow, Congressman Auchin-Klaus, and half of the family from Natick who were terrorized by eBay and fought back brilliantly. We're joined now live at the library by Congressman Seth Moulton. He represents the sixth congressional district. He is running in the Democratic primary for the Senate against the incumbent Ed Markey. We spoke with Senator Ed Markey last week in the show. You can find that interview at YouTube.com at GBAH News. Congressman, good to see you. Thanks for being here. It's always good to be back. Pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us, Congressman. So tell us why you want people in Massachusetts to vote for you instead of Ed Marquis. Because I think we need a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party. I mean, you just can't look at what's going on in Washington or even here at home in Massachusetts and say that the status quo is working. And the question before voters is after 50 years in Washington, Senator, what are you going to do differently for the next six? Now, meanwhile, I'm putting forward a very positive agenda. I've been on your show many times talking about my regional rail agenda. I'd love to get into that today, how we can bring down housing prices. What we need to do to bring down electricity prices here in Massachusetts when one in three people in the state thought about leaving last year just because costs are so high. How we ensure that everybody in America gets health care when the Republicans are trying to take it away. And how we reform our education system so that my kids five and seven actually who are going to grow up in an AI-enabled automated world. can survive and thrive because the education system needs to be reformed to meet the challenges of this new world. Yeah, just to clarify, because you've occasionally said a complimentary thing about Senator Marky. If he wasn't 80, if he was 50, would you be running against him? Well, I think the question is, is this working? That's really the question, right? It's not just about the age. It's, is the status quo getting things done? So if you were 50, you'd be running too. No matter, age is not the critical ingredient. You'd be run against him even if he was not 80 years old. The problem is the Washington establishment. That's the fundamental problem. Now, I'm not going to say that age is not an issue, though, because if you think about it, he would be 86, closer to 90 at the end of his next term than 80. If we win back the Senate, it will almost certainly be by just one vote. And we can't afford to lose a vote due to a health issue or anything else. It's one of the reasons why I've said that we should be just transparent about our health records. That could mean another conservative Supreme Court justice, another Trump appointee, just because we miss a vote. And I don't think that's a risk that voters in Massachusetts should take or that the party should take, given the stakes are so high. Speaking about Supreme Court, you've for court expansion? Kamala Harris the other day said we should expand it to 13 as many federal districts as there, are you?

I am for everything being on the table because the Republicans are willing to fight harder for this than Democrats in the United States Senate right now, and that is wrong. I mean, you look at what they did to just railroad in these Supreme Court justices like Brett Kavanaugh, who couldn't even be honest in his confirmation hearing. I mean, I was out on the Supreme Court steps the next day saying this guy does not deserve to be a Supreme Court justice, not just because of his extreme views. But because he couldn't even be honest in his confirmation here. Is there anything that shouldn't just be on the table in terms of Supreme Court reform, but that you actually support that you would fight for in the Senate? Like, first of all, I've talked about expanding the court for a while. Do you support expanding the court? But I think, again, it should be on the table, and that should be a, maybe that's not where we end up at the end of the day, but absolutely should be a bargaining chip. We obviously need basic ethics reform. in the Supreme Court. I mean, these guys gallivanting off with conservative billionaires and thinking that that doesn't influence their decisions is absurd. You know, let's review some of the things that were discussed in the debate the other night. You took a lot of grief several months ago when you talked about trans kids that didn't want your little girls when they grow up to be run over on the field, and you apologize for that in the debate. But I wasn't clear. Are you now saying that trans kids should be able to compete? Trans women should be able to compete in men's sports or boy sports in high school and college or not? No, look, I've never weighed in on the details of that debate. I've never said I'm an expert on it. What I am saying, my full quote, was, we need to be willing to discuss this as Democrats. If we are not willing to have this debate, then the only people that will are the Republicans, the MAGA Republicans who have put forward... piece after piece of hateful legislation. What I made clear in the debate, and I have this, I have done this several times before, is that my intention was never to hurt anybody. And anybody who was hurt by those comments on top of all the pain that they're experiencing with Trump and everything, I feel bad for that. But my intention absolutely is to say, Democrats need to have this debate, too. Don't just cede it to the Republicans. So if you have the debate, where would you vote be? Would it be for trans women in high school sports and college sports or not? Marjorie, I'm just not an expert on the issue. I'm just saying that what kind of political party are we if we can't even have debates on contentious issues? And that's how we actually fight forward on other things? Like, how do we ensure that they are guaranteed health care access when Republicans are trying to take that away? How do we ensure that people don't get... fired for who they are or what they were to work. Those are things that Democrats should be fighting forward on. But when we can't even have these difficult debates, we're not doing that. Another issue is immigration, in fact. I brought this up in the same New York Times interview back after the 24 election, where it's interesting. I've done 53 town halls across the state. which is an interesting contrast to the one that Senator Ed Markey has done. And I get a lot of questions from constituents. One question that I often ask them is how many of you are opposed to Trump's immigration enforcement? Unsurprisingly, every hand in the room goes up, right? But next question, how many of you can tell me what Democrats' immigration policy is? Not a single hand. I mean, I've asked thousands of voters this question, right?

And yet this was like the biggest issue in the 24 election. It's the biggest domestic issue before us today is ISIS terrorizing cities and shooting people in the streets. And so I've put forward a very clear three-point immigration policy. One, not just abolished, but prosecute ICE. I think I was the first Democrat to use that verb. They need to be prosecuted for breaking the law. Number two, have an immigration system that incentivizes people to come here legally, not illegally, because frankly, it's easier to walk across the border than go through the bureaucracy right now to become a citizen, and that's totally backwards. And three, you need a pathway to citizenship. But the point is, Democrats need to lead on these issues. Everyone knows one thing about the Democratic Party, which is that we're opposed to Trump. We need to show where we stand on these issues. That's why I've put forward such a robust progressive agenda on things like affordability, on high-speed rail, on issues like that, because I think that's the kind of leadership that we need in the face of Trump. You mentioned housing policy before, and housing is a big crisis in Massachusetts. What in the Senate would you do? So the number one thing we need to do in Massachusetts to lower housing prices, it's not complicated. We need to build more housing. And the question is, why haven't we been able to do that? Because 50 years of policy hasn't worked. I mean, think about how much housing prices have gone up since 1976 when Senator Ed Markey came to Congress, right? I mean, it's just skyrocketed. And so that's why I've put forward this aggressive... regional rail agenda, to make it faster than driving to get around Massachusetts, because what that does is it incentivizes not just the public sector, not just taxpayer subsidized housing, but the private sector to build a lot of housing, a lot of affordable housing. Take Fitchburg, for example, great town. I toured some apartments that are being refurbished in their downtown. They actually have a lot of vacant land right next to downtown, this historic downtown because of an old GE plant that's no longer there. Why are there not houses there in Fitchburg already? Well, because it takes an hour and a half to get to the city on the train. But if you could do that in 45 minutes and get not only to north, not only to North Station, but to anywhere on the system, because every train from the north flows through the to south and the west, then that would be transformative. You've had so much more housing in Fitchburg that's actually much more accessible to jobs in the state. Congressman... Not yet, Jim. Well, I know. I just got that there. Seth Moulton, on the housing front, we had Elizabeth Warren standing there a few weeks ago. You know that thing finally became law despite Donald Trump having a little hissy fit and not signing it. Marky mentioned at the... Senator Ed Markey mentioned in the GBAH Channel 25 debate the other day. You weren't even there for the... final vote on this thing. What kind of message do you think that sends people, even if you had something else important to be doing that thing? Well, first, to be clear, I voted on the bill when it first came up. So I did vote on the bill. I did miss that one vote. I have a very, very small number of missed votes. It's kind of striking coming from someone who in his last two campaigns missed 80% of his votes, eight out of 10 votes.

in the United States Senate, he missed. So, look, occasionally stuff comes up. I have sometimes missed votes, for example, for my kids. I occasionally will say, okay, this vote is going to pass anyway, so I'm not going to be there. But... The reality is this is another example of him sort of deflecting from his record, which is pretty abysible and trying to attack my own. We're talking to Seth Moulton, who is a current congressman running in the Democratic primary, September 1st against the incumbent Ed Markey. I want to stay on the debate for a second. The moment that got the most press, I think, by far, was when you each got to ask each other a question, here's the question. You asked Senator Ed Markey. Here's Congress from Seth Moulton. But I just want to ask one question. And I ask it from the perspective of a father of two young girls at home. Why would you even take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein? How could you do that long after he was convicted? Do you regret having asked that question? You got a lot of blowback from that? This is a question voters should ask. Don't you think it's publicly... When the underlying issue... around Epstein is the horror that was visited on young girls and the suffering that they've obviously lived with, some of them not living anymore. Do you think it sort of cheapens that when you're asking a question about whether or not he met with a lobbyist about the president of Senegal's son? Let's be clear. He met with a lobbyist hired for hundreds of thousands of dollars by Jeffrey Epstein. to try to get his sex trafficking friend, this guy you're talking about in Senegal, out of prison. You don't know that you're a congressman respected. You don't know that you're in fact. Your spokesperson, Taylor Hebel is quoted saying nowhere in our post. Do we claim that Marky knew that Epstein was involved in Wade's case? That's your own spokesperson saying we didn't even, we don't even have proof of that. Jim, have you looked at the emails? I have, the Crow emails, yeah. Okay, I mean, the emails are very clear about what this is. Well, it's your own spokesperson, though, Congress. Okay, but look, the emails are very clear about what the point of this meeting is and why, I mean, Epstein was back briefed on the meeting. But my question was just about why you would take the meeting. And to me, that goes to the heart of your question, which is after everything you said about how horrible this guy is, which people knew, why would you even take a meeting with him? Do you know that Marceau-Center Ed Markey met with this lobbyist? It's very well documented in the email. No, that they suggest that there was a meeting with Ed Markey's office. You don't know, with due respect, you don't know that Ed Markey himself was involved in this meeting or even briefed about it. Look, if you look at the emails, it's very clear. But here's the point. How is it that a lobbyist on behalf of Epstein can get a meeting with Ed Markey when ordinary people in Massachusetts can't? Like, that's the fundamental issue, right? Again, I've done 53 town halls. He won't even meet with voters in the course of this campaign. They don't get it to ask him a question, but a lobbyist working for Epstein does. And that's just what's so broken about Washington today. And that's why I had such a narrow question. I didn't have all these other things. I mean, when Ed Markey talks about, oh, I didn't know Epstein or whatever, that's just classic Washington deflecting to a charge that was not even made.

to refuse to answer something that's actually documented. And I think that's a question. I mean, whenever I go on these town hall tours, I go a lot to parts of the state where people say, like, the center doesn't even show up. Like, I don't even see him. How is he supposed to represent my interests if I don't show up? Can we change gears? You serve four tours of duty and obviously have great expertise in matters of war. We have this nightmare in Iran that I think it is, I feel, objective in saying the president has no clue how to deal with, how to get out of. You have a much bigger platform, obviously, if you're the senator from Massachusetts. Concretely, what do you do to try? Hopefully, it'll be resolved by then by January. But if it isn't. What are the concrete steps, things you would do to extricate us from this nightmare? Well, first of all, I'm going to give you a three-point plan, but I just want to acknowledge what you said up front, which is that this is not only a disaster, it's totally backfired. It's actually empowered Iran. I mean, since when has Iran actually been able to control the whole world economy, right? This has been an utter disaster, and you would think that after a few failed wars, we would learn not to do this again, right? I mean, Senator Mark, you voted to send me to Iraq. Big mistakes. Shocking that he couldn't acknowledge that when he was asked if he made a mistaken vote in his time of service. But as he said in that same debate, you voted for the Iran funding most recently. No, no, no, no. That is not most recently. That's not true at all. When was it? When the war started, I voted against a defense bill. You know, most Democrats typically support the troops, and I have supported the defense bill in the past. But after Trump started this war, I voted against it. And in fact, I proposed the biggest cut by amendment to the defense budget in history. when it came before a committee. But let's get back to your points, right? Because I don't think anyone has a clue here, right? Here's what I would do. Number one, you've got to just stop the violence. And that means absolutely peace, no longer this escalation. I mean, look at the pattern here. Every few weeks, Trump escalates, Iran escalates, but gas prices go up, he capitulates, and we're back to square run. Number two, you've got to actually take... leverage away from Iran. They have so much leverage because they control the Strait of Hormuz. What I would actually do is start shipping the oil north through Iraq into Turkey. There's actually an existing rail network in Iraq, and there is one that's being built in the Gulf, in part to transport oil to the west, but that hasn't worked either. Ship it north. You can protect those trains. You can take the leverage away from Iran. And then number three, we have to get back to a strategy of actually empowering the moderates in Iran. This is what Obama did with his nuclear deal, right? It was a tough sell, not just to people in the United States and the Republican Congress, but to the hardliners in Iran. They were against it, but the moderates in Iran supported it. And we've got to get back to supporting a moderate Iran government that's actually more in touch with the pro-American people of Iran. That's in the long run how you solve this problem. You know, Congressman, we're almost on time here, but you voted to end A to Israel. Why did you do that in term limits? Oh, first of all, I...

absolutely support term limits. And this is another place where I think, you know, let's just be honest here, folks. Like, it's probably a good thing to have some turnover. What about Israel? I voted for the Thomas Massie Amendment, which did not end all aid to Israel. But what it did say is that we are not going to have $3.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to Israel. At a time when costs are skyrocketing and when Benjamin Netanyahu is a disaster, I was one of the first members of Congress to call on him to resign, we shouldn't be using your and my taxpayer money to support his wars. What's your website, Congressman? Sethmolton.com. We've got an amazing team, and it's not hard to figure out. He says so himself. Sethmolton.com. Great team, amazing campaign. Come and join. Be a part of their success. Good to see you. Thank you, thank you, very, very much, Congressman, for coming in. We're speaking with Congressman Seth Moulton, who's running in the Democratic primary against Senator Ed Markey. And again, thank you for your time, Congressman. After this quick break, how to increase housing? We're going to talk about that again. This time with Eastern Bank Executive Bob Rivers. I'm Marjoriegan. He's Jim Brow, BPR, GBA, and NEPM at the Boston Public Library.

Support for Boston Public Radio comes from Bonsai Bar, hosting pop-up beginner bonsai workshops at breweries across New England. Come hang out, dig in, and discover the joy of tiny trees. More at bonsaibar.com. And Harvard Business School Baker Library, featuring an exhibit on Muriel Seabert, the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, open to the public. Details at library.hbs.edu. Welcome back to BPR, GBIH and APM. Marjorie Egan, Jim Browdy, live at the library streaming YouTube.com slash GVH News. And a couple of minutes, the mayor. Mayor Wu will be here for an hour of asked the mayor. Tomorrow, Congressman Jake Auchincloss, and a courageous half of an incredible couple from Natick that were terrorized by eBay and fought back. There's a new push by some business leaders to back a new ballot measure. It would be question seven in November. It would require many communities to allow single-family homes on smaller lots. It's a move that advocates say would help increase a number of more affordable, so-called starter homes. Leading the charge of secure political and financial support for this question is Bob Rivers. Bob is the chair of the Board of Directors for Eastern Bank shares and Eastern Bank. And I have to say one of the few high-profile business leaders willing to stick his neck out. on issues that matter to a wide swath of people in the state. Great to see you again, Bob Rivers. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. See you, Michael. Before we get to what you're going to do by housing, there's been a lot in the papers, TV, we're going to go down the tubes around here. Everybody's leaving Massachusetts. Nobody can afford to live here. You know, MIT, they're getting all the grants and Harvard and all that kind of stuff. You had a great quote in a piece. This is from a year ago. But we've got to stop whistling through the graveyard. Bob Rivers said the trends are moving the right direction. Are they still moving in the right direction a year later or should we be worrying about abandoning the ship here? Not at all. Now, I think at this point, things have sort of bottomed out, if you will, and are starting to stabilize. And I think it's by the actions of many people, most in particular, the Healy Driscoll administration and some of the things that they've done. Downtown Office real estate has begun to stabilize. It certainly is not back where it was. But really, the quote that I made is really speaks more to this tendency that we have sometimes in the business community and elsewhere. to just admire the problem and complain about the problem. And I'm much more interested in what are we going to do about it and how are we going to fix it. And there's no one silver bullet to anything. But I think it takes all of us to step up and do what we can to move the trends in the other direction. You know, by the way, before we continue this topic, Derek, who is one of our favorites, who keeps us safe here at the library, says before he worked here, he worked at Eastern Bank, quote, I know Bob Rivers. He's the, and we can't say the word of you, but it means he's the best. So you have a pretty good endorsement for our friend Derek over here. You know, Bob Rivers, when I moved here, there was something called The Vault.

which was a bunch of powerful people like you in the business community that met. Some of the problem was was behind closed doors, et cetera. But they got deeply involved in things that mattered. After that, there was a guy by name of Jack Connors, who snapped his fingers, and legislation would happen on Beacon Hill. Jack died, sadly, not too long ago. It seems to me that we have a dearth of business leaders willing to stand up in this community and address, whether I agree with their position or not. major issues unless they affect directly their own business. Is that a fair picture of where we are in 2026? I think it's very fair. And I think it's a function of the fact that Boston is no longer the headquarters city that it was back 30 years ago when the vault was in full force. Back then, the vault was comprised of many companies that no longer exists, lots of banks that consolidated into one another. other companies that have been purchased by other companies outside of the state. And what it's led to is you've got two groups of people in the business community. You've got some that have a lot of will, but they have no agency or resources. You have another group that has lots of agency and resources, but they don't have the will. And what I mean by that is those companies that are headquartered here, unlike the vault 30 years ago, are no longer have their business almost entirely here. They have places elsewhere, throughout the nation, throughout the world that sometimes compromise and limit their ability to lean in as much as they used to here. Yeah, but one last thing about this, then we're going to get to the housing thing. It seems to me if you're part of a community and you have power and you choose not to use at least some of the shame on you. I mean, a bunch of years ago, you... led the charge to defeat this effort to repeal protection for trans people in the state. I don't know if that was benefiting the bottom line of your bank, I would assume. No, it was consistent with our mission. It was important, exactly. It was important. I mean, this may be a naive question. I don't understand why there's not. more of that. I'm not suggesting that every business leader do drop everything and speak to our housing crisis and the afford, whatever the hell it is. But it's so rare to hear it. It's painful. So when you reach out to these guys or women and say, I want you to join me with X. When they don't join you, what's their excuse? I think there's lots of reasons. I remember back when Dobbs was passed a few years ago. And I went up... Yes, the removal of what we did. And I approached one of the CEOs of one of the largest companies headquartered here in Massachusetts at a reception. And I said, you know, we've got to do something about this. And his response to me was, well, when you get letters from the district attorney of Texas or of Florida, Let me know. Now, he knew darn well because we're a community bank that's entirely rooted here in Massachusetts and eastern New England. Then I'm not going to get those letters. So you hear those kinds of things that set people back that things they might do here that they don't like over there compromises their business over there. Who's that guy? I can't say. Okay. We're talking to Bob Rivers. Tell us about this thing that ended up on the ballot question. What would it do?

Well, I mean, it really would help be another piece, and again, it's not a silver bullet, but it's another piece to gin up more housing production here in Massachusetts. And this one is very personal to me. When my father bought his house in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in 1968, he paid $18,000 for that house for a house that is on less than a quarter of an acre. And that's what we're talking about here. He had a mortgage of 6.75%, about the same as today. And he paid $110 a month in principal and interest, 18% of the median household income at the time. Fast forward, that same house today is on Zillow for $650,000. And if you were to buy it today and pay the same mortgage rate, His P&I payment would be well over $4,000, and his percentage of the median household income would be over 50. And it's really a function of zoning. Here in Massachusetts, the average new home is on lot sizes of at least 20,000 square feet. Now, that's not all that huge in perspective. It's about a half an acre. But what we've cut out is a lot of the homes that were built back in that generation that were really the first rung on the ladder to the American dream. And that's been sought off. And it's been sought off by zoning regulations and local zoning boards. So what would your proposal do? So this particular ballot initiative is very simple. What it requires is that minimum lot sizes can be down to 5,000 square feet. You can't legislate them bigger. You can put more houses in. It makes the project easier to finance because you're not buying as much land. I mean, think about it. When you're buying 20,000 square feet or more, you've got to buy a big house as a developer to make the numbers work. And that's what they do. So we don't end up with these smaller homes that most people can afford to buy. This legislation does nothing to zoning other than the minimum lot size, 50,000 square feet in frontage. It's got to be already equipped for water and sewer. 50 feet in frontage. Right, 50 feet of frontage. Hold on for a second. I was stunned to learn that 80% of Massachusetts does not have sewers. Yeah. It's a big issue that we don't talk enough about in housing is the access to water and sewer that really restricts us. And we're just thinking about that, that's probably some of the big suburbs, a lot of land. So that's going to, I don't mean to burst a bubble here, but that's going to limit how many homes you can do, right? It certainly is. But the good news is there's enough of these opportunities out there that it's estimated that somewhere between 3 and 6,000 units can be built. Now, again, that's a drop in the bucket against our $220,000 goal in the coming years. But I think all the things that we've seen happen in housing, every single one matters. It's not going to be one thing that solves it.

But anything that we can do to drive more supply isn't going to improve affordability. And I just want to make sure. So if this ballot question passes, you know, we saw Charlie Baker's effort to have more, you know, you could rezone around the T and towns are fighting it and seems like it's, you know, litigated over and over and over again. Would this just say you've got to do it? Or we have 351 towns, however many towns would be affected fighting you. It would say you had to do it. The zoning, not the building, but the zoning. In his ballot thing. We would mandate the zoning. Again, it's the plot of land that is being legislated. It does, it has nothing else about restrictions on height, on setbacks from wetlands. It does, you know, the argument is it undermines local control. It really doesn't in so many ways. It just. requires that we're building more homes on smaller lots that are more affordable. Well, let's speak to that for a second. First of all, our research on this, which was not exactly deep, but because it wasn't hard to find, there's virtually no opposition of this except Mass Municipal Association is concerned because they want all zoning to be decided locally. If there's virtually no opposition... to this. Instead of doing a ballot question, we've got to raise a ton of dough and spend months campaigning about this. Why didn't the legislature just pass the damn thing? You know, I really can't speak to that. Raise your right hand when you answer this. I know the answer. Can I answer my own question? Because they won't ever, almost never do anything that requires the city or town and do something. A rare exception to the credited Governor Hillier, you mentioned, these granny flats, the accessory dwelling units? Yep. It's not a local decision. It is mandated by the state. Your thing would be mandated by the state, and the legislature doesn't have the courage to stand up to cities and towns and say we have a housing crisis. We're going to require you to have this zoning change. But in fairness to the legislature, I think we're making a lot of progress in the legislature around issues of housing. The heli-drysical put forth and got passed. A record-sized $5 billion housing bill. There's been a number of zoning changes that are made. ADUs have come through. Yigby, yes in God's backyard, that allows developable houses on religious properties that are largely abandoned in some cases. Again, it takes some time, but we've got to get on this very quickly. But the reality is, you said I don't want to say, I don't know why they did it, but. It would have been far better if they had done it, and we'd be X number of months ahead of the game, and you'd be able to spend the million or whatever you're going to raise on something else, right? Sure, but I could point to many other things. Well, point to some other things. That's my next question. Point to some other things that matter to you that you think the legislature, the governor should do, the public should support. What are some other issues? The business community should be getting on it. Well, I think many of them revolve around this ballot initiative process, which is broken. and it allows a very small group of special interest people on all sides of the political aisle to put forth initiatives that override the legislature by law.

that has to be fixed. And I think there's a lot of times if the legislature isn't able to move these things forward, isn't willing to move these things forward, they end up on the ballot. And this is what we're doing because we're trying to move this thing forward. It's an unfortunate circumstance. It's probably a story for another day because it's one of my projects coming up, is we have to change. We have to have a ballot initiative to change the Constitution around ballot initiatives. There was a brilliant op-ed in the Boston Globe about a month ago about reforming the ballot process. Did you read it? Oh, yes. I wrote it. And one of the issues for this, which I take issue with you, when you said, I don't know what verb used, overruled the legislature, when Article 48 in the Constitution was conceived of, which is the article you're talking about, it basically was a check on the legislature. If the legislature doesn't do something, the people under certain rules, maybe the rules should be changed. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying, Jim. But look at this. There were nine questions that are on the ballot, Bob Rivers. There were 11. No, but nine that made it to the... There were actually 12 counting the rules change for the legislature that also got knocked off. The legislature had from January to May. to pass any of those into law, change them maybe, but make them law, including yours, which has virtually no opposition. Did they do it on any of them? No. And that's why the public decides to take to the streets and do these things, right? I completely understand why the public does it. What I'm saying is we put people in office at a 50% plus margin. and we have an opportunity to vote them in or vote them out, we should not be able to circumvent that process with the same margin under ballot, it should be at least 60%. Do you want to sit down and talk to me about it? I would love to. Okay. I don't think so, because we will. We will. Is this something else I want to talk about? I know five or six years ago you led this group that was going to try to get more money for early childhood education. There were a bunch of employers that were with you. As you know, it's still astronomically expensive for really good child care here in Massachusetts, sometimes more than people's mortgages. So where are we? Is this something that, where did you get on this one and where are we going in the future? Well, I think on early childhood education and care, we made a heck of a lot of progress. I mean, we started to stand up the business coalition for early child care and education back in 2019. And sadly, the pandemic gave us an opportunity. Because all of a sudden, folks like myself who had a spouse that stayed at home with the kids and never worried about this, all of a sudden realized their employees couldn't come to work. That's right. And so now the words critical infrastructure around early childhood suddenly emerged.

The coalition, which was building slowly and we're gaining some traction, took off. And Tom Weber, who is a member of our foundation now, longest serving commissioner of early childhood in Massachusetts history, was on point for this. And combined with the legislature and the administration, pass some landmark and really groundbreaking investments in early childhood that continue to this day. It's not everything we want, but it's a heck of a lot better than it used to be. And so what is it? Is it income dependent and all that kind of? Oh, sure, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. So, but there's still huge waiting lists for child care. Of course. We have so much more to do. I think in so many things like housing, we have so much more to do. And when you talk about this particular initiative, the thing I worry about this. You know, many in the business community, myself included, were delighted that the rent control ballot initiative was foot faulted off the ballot. In my opinion, while I understand people are suffering, this would only reduce supply and hurt affordability. So it could take it out. And when that happened... What I noticed was, rather than do victory laps about this happening, that hasn't done anything, taking it off to improve affordability. More housing does. And when that came off the ballot, immediately the legislature, which was in negotiations, dropped the negotiations because there was no hammer hanging over their head. How do you feel about that? There were more to those negotiations, Jim, I think. We'll be talking. Bob Rivers, congratulations on this ballot thing. Question seven. We'll talk to the fourth. We didn't say the size of basketball court. So we can all envision what it looks like, right? That's how big the loss of it. Yeah, right. That's pretty big. I think we've got plenty of room in that basketball. Comes with a hoop, too, by the way. Single family and a hoop. Bob Rivers, good to see. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for coming in. We'd be speaking with Eastern Bank President.

Oops, Robert Rivers, excuse me, coming right back after this break with Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston. Bob Rivers from Mr. Bank, thank you very much for coming in. Eastern Browdy on Marjorie Egan. Welcome back to our number two of Boston Public Radio, BPR 897 GBIH, broadcasting live from the Boston Public Library, streaming at YouTube.com slash GPH News. We're going to be joined tomorrow by Congressman Jake Graham Platner and by a gentleman who was, in his family, who was terrorized by eBay's incredible story. We're going to be telling that tomorrow. Hello again, Jim. And they fought back Gallium, by the way, and they'll tell that story tomorrow. It's time for the August edition of Ask the Mayor with noted long-distance runner in Boston Mayor Michelle Wu or short-distance runner, regardless. Yeah, congratulations. For the rest of the show, she's here. We'll explain a minute. Take our questions in yours. You can call her text to Mayor at 877-301-89-70, or if you're at the library, come find our colleagues, Hannah or Jack, and you can ask a question directly to the Mayor. Mayor Wood's good to see you. How are you? Great to see you. Well, as long as Jim mentioned it. You ran a 5K? Yes. At 41 years old, I did my very first ever 5K this past that. I can still feel it a little bit. Did you win or not? Well, I didn't actually think I was going to be able to make it the whole way. I ran with both of my sons. Blaze is 11 now, and so he said he would run with me since it was my first time. Cass is nine, and he said he wanted to just run. So he left us when we took off. And Blaze was kind of like, okay, let's just, what we're going to get to the end of the park, then we start walking. And it was always one more thing to get to. And then by the time we were. Back at the park on the second loop, it was already over, and I could not feel my legs anymore, but it was a lot of fun. And meanwhile, Cass had, this is our first time doing the Matapan Unity 5K together, so he didn't know the route. He didn't realize it was only two loops. He did three loops and then still finished before us. Good for him. Good for him. And, you know, just an amazing. neighborhood initiative. Ruth and Rob put this on together to really highlight health and well-being and that every neighborhood needs a race. Every neighborhood needs the opportunity for people to come together and talk about your physical health, your community health, your mental health, and it was really powerful being out there with everyone in Metapan. So, and Miru read this headline in the Globe a couple of days ago about ICE looking for 250 parking spots in downtown Boston. Are they looking to put some kind of facility there? What's happening?

We don't have any specific information, not that we ever have gotten any information from ICE, even when we have asked, even when we have exercised our legal right through submitting FOIA requests to get any sense of data on what their operations are and who they're targeting and why. So we don't have anything beyond just the national news that they put out a nationwide request in certain locations to secure what looks like private parking. And we continue to make very clear that Boston does, has, will continue to oppose any expansion of their illegal and immoral actions. They are not a public safety agency. So if they want private parking, what can you even do about that if it's private parking? There's not too much that. We can directly prohibit in terms of business contracts that they could theoretically arrange on their own. We in Boston have signed an executive order alongside seven other of our surrounding municipality saying ICE is not permitted to stage any of their operations on public property at the city level. They're not permitted to use public spaces that are open to everyone, but for specific purposes, like libraries or community centers, they cannot conduct. other operations here that are not in line with these institutions purposes and the governor has also signed an executive order similarly around state property that the legislature has codified to some extent with the protect act now and so we where we can at the city level and the state level have carved out areas like public spaces, churches, schools, other institutions. But we're going to keep fighting and keep holding on. I will say not too long ago, the federal government's lawsuit against Boston, the sanctuary city lawsuit that they had had much fuss over, and that was about going to D.C. and all of this. that was tossed out in federal court. And so Boston soundly won that lawsuit fairly recently. And so we are going to continue to follow the law and continue to protect our community. Before we get to the calls in the text at 877301, 8970, one more question about the savagery of the Trump administration and a related thing. We talked yesterday to the Attorney General. We spoke last week or two weeks ago to the governor about this TPS decision by Trump and the ruling supporting it essentially from the Supreme Court of the United States. Beyond urging Congress to do something, does the city have any ability to protect individuals here? And a corollary question, your buddy, Zohran Mamdani, announced the other day that he had to lay off a ton of Haitian employees of the city of New York because the work permit thing, which you understand far better than I, had expired under this ruling. Have you encountered a similar situation? So the responsibility of employers is very clear in something that we've been communicating alongside the governor and the Attorney General's office that we have to follow employment law, including federal law. It is employers' responsibilities to ensure that when someone is hired to your organization that they have legal authorization to work.

It is not an employer's responsibility to every single day or week monitor everyone's employment authorization throughout your entire workforce. And so we have had employees who have taken leave from the city of Boston now that they are not able to... live and work and are trying to figure out other situations. But we are a city that does not ask or make decisions based on immigration status other than that sort of following the letter of the law when it comes to hiring. What if you didn't follow the letter of the law? And I don't mean that as a reckless question, just screw them all kind of thing. Let's assume you didn't follow the letter of law vis-a-vis the right to work of... Haitians in this country. And again, as we said yesterday, people should know. Marco Rubio's office has released information at travel advisory saying it's unsafe for any American to go to Haiti, yet he wants to deport Haitians back to the country. They left for reasons of fear, economic hardship, etc. What if you failed to comply? What would happen in the city? There are specific consequences around violations of law that could be anywhere from audits to penalties around how knowingly the law was flaunted or not followed. I think, you know, there's a... an entire legal movement right now as well, particularly focusing on our TPS holders or former TPS holders about going through the court system and asserting the injustice of what's happening. I think in the day to day, we never want to put the city of Boston in a place where we're opening ourselves up to legal liability when we are stewarding the entire city's resources. We have... We are in court against the Trump administration. We've now been, I think, over 30 times involved in one lawsuit or another, whether they were attacking us on our own public safety laws related to protecting immigrant residents or attacking our fair housing program, which they say discriminates against white residents, which is absolutely false. federal funding that we have actually won the right to continue to use and deploy for our residents. We are very careful that when we make decisions, it is whatever we can do to protect our residents, we do it and we stand on the law. And in this case, there are also other avenues to help individual employees when they do want to come forward and avail themselves of the Office of Immigrant Advancements, legal consultations. If you are not able to lean on TPS as employment authorization, there are other avenues if you have a pending application for another kind of pathway to legal status or citizenship.

There are other ways to secure work authorization. So our legal services community is doing incredible work right now. Our legal community, I should say, is doing incredible work right now in legal services. Many, many attorneys volunteering their time, getting involved, helping sort out person by person, family by family. What are the options and how do we stabilize each family? Adam in the North End, you are first with the mayor of the city of Boston. Welcome to the show. Hi. Yes. Good morning, Jim. Good morning, Marjorie. Good morning, Mayor. Good morning. Morning last year, last week, Councilor Flynn blocked a measure in the city council that was proposed to help people from Haiti and other ethnic area too with who have lost their TPS with housing issues. I understand he was concerned about the financial impact of it, but can you speak to that? And would you urge a city council to change his mind and come back to the city council doesn't meet until August 26th, so I think that's too much time to wait. What do you think? Would you urge the council to change his position? Can the council come back early and pass this? Yeah, I mean, it's very disappointing at a time when our residents are under attack for their housing stability, for their right to education, for their very ability to survive and support their families and have a sense of safety and belonging in this country. when Boston is a city that has seen what happens when we're a community for everyone. We become... the safest that we can possibly be. We become the most economically powerful and supported that we could be. We become the best World Cup host city because people recognize the sense of diversity and belonging and fun that can cross cultural and neighborhood and other boundaries here. So it is really important to speak. in one voice protecting our residents and sending that message on this particular instance a city council resolution is non-binding so it did not necessarily mean that there was a a dollar amount that would have been spent that all of a sudden is not going to be spent. We are on the administration side doing everything we can possibly do to support our residents, including our Haitian community members, including our TPS holders, and the idea that the statement that Councilor Louis-Gen brought forward around, and Council for Pepin, around ensuring we were coordinating all those services to make it as easy and simple as possible. is a really important initiative and one that we are going to continue working with them on. So we are going to keep doing that regardless. So rest assured, it doesn't mean just because Councilor Flynn was, again, blocking a particular measure that is causing calamity. We're doing it anyway. But it is a disappointing message at a time when...

Our residents need to know that we have their backs, and we are going to do anything possible as urgently as possible to be the city that they have helped build. Adam, thank you much for your coal and your concern. We appreciate it. You know, we've talked to you a lot about cycling in the city and making the streets safer for cyclists. Terrible tragedy, 36-year-old. Louis Agag, who was a city transportation planner, an avid cyclist, and someone that you knew was struck and killed by an 18-wheeler on Mission Hill. That was early this summer. I know you told BUR that you were very upset, furious, never going to get over it. Is there anything post this awful tragedy that has changed? There's been work prior and certainly in the days since the loss of Louisa to ensure we're doing everything that we can. Boston has long been a city that is working to lead on keeping people safe in every way. That is how one might traditionally think about public safety and violence prevention, and that is on our streets too. Our streets cut through. every aspect of your life and every single resident in Boston has feedback and is impacted by how our streets are designed. Pedestrian safety, cyclist safety, whether seniors can cross the roads, whether you can count on the bus getting there on time, or whether the T has slow zones or doesn't have slow zones, whether car traffic is unbearable and causing you to want to move out of the city, or whether you can put all the pieces of your life together and access the great opportunities that we're working on. It all comes back to whether it's connected, reliable. affordable for everyone to access. And so I have... I wanted to make sure to communicate very clearly what had been in progress and what we're continuing to do, ensuring first and foremost that we are prioritizing the work of well-designed, well-maintained, reliable, safe streets across our city, 800 miles of roadway, plus all the sidewalks and crosswalks and everything to maintain, closing key gaps in our various networks for...

transit priority and for cycling as well as making sure those are protected and safe along the way. Effective enforcement, because you could design a street perfectly to accommodate every... use, but then if a car is still blocking the crosswalk or the bike lane, it makes it unsafe for everyone. Or if cars are zooming through red lights, it makes it incredibly dangerous. And we're working, one, to be able to more effectively and efficiently issue those tickets. We need some support on legislation that would allow the city of Boston to have that power. We are now the... Okay, I want to make two points on this. One on moving violations, there is legislation up at the state house that would allow for red light cameras like other states already have to capture when people are breaking the laws and then to immediately issue them a ticket that does have a clear and immediate deterrent effect on behavior. And then the other set of violations is parking violations. So right now, the city of Boston is bound by state law that we can only issue a ticket. when someone, one of our traffic enforcement officers, physically goes and puts a ticket on the windshield of a vehicle that's violating something. We are the only city in the Commonwealth that still has that requirement. Other cities now are able to use photo enforcement in different ways or are moving towards that. We should be able to do that too because we get... photos all the time and if we could set up photo enforcement that would go a long way we are going to begin to take the 311 and we're setting up a different app for people to report issues But we are going to begin to take those photos that we have and communicate once we have the license plate numbers of vehicles who are parking in dangerous ways. Send them a letter, since we can't issue the ticket yet until the law changes, send them a letter that they are putting others' lives at risk, that this is illegal behavior and a violation that we were not able to get to their windshield ticket. but that we expect them to change their behavior. And we're also working towards bike enforcement and, you know, sending enforcement officers on bicycles to move more efficiently through bike lanes and other more congested areas. And then, sorry, last big, big topic. Two more. School zones and pedestrian safety targeting where our kids are. The most crashes that we have for pedestrians are near schools and parks and playgrounds. And so really focusing there on how we add the crosswalks, add the protections so that our little ones and their families are safe. And then ensuring we're using technology to manage traffic for traffic flow that is efficient for everyone. We now have changed the signal timing at...

nearly 200 intersections throughout the city using AI and analyzing Google Maps data of when traffic is red, yellow, and green at different times of day. If we can continue to improve and upgrade our signal technology, we should be able to have buses. go right through and get a green when they approach a stoplight, and we should be able to have more real-time adjustments of the signals to help traffic move along as quickly as possible. Who could change that law about being able to ticket without physically? The state legislature. There's another thing that the state legislature has to change. Before we leave this topic, and it's clear, I listen to the Bior interview. I've heard you speak about this. You've been criticized around some street and transportation issues for... wanting too much control, which slows down the process. In retrospect, do you have any regrets about how you handled these kinds of issues in the wake of the death of this, again, this woman who you knew? I take every detail of our city very seriously, and I see it as the job of any leader within an organization to be able to understand at a 30,000-foot view and also at the ground level how decisions are being made and where resources are being allocated. And so we are still in the midst of rebuilding and getting our streets and... roadway operations to a point where it's not only responsive but also sustainable and able to be carried out in the long run. There have been, you know, over the history of Boston's 15 years of working on multimodal streets, there have been different reports written and internal audits done over many years. In the last several weeks, I've gone through and read probably 400 pages of all of them. And any one of those snapshots from 2020 to from 2017. you could have applied it to, if you didn't see what the date was, you could have thought easily that it was being written about right now based on what some of the headlines and the concerns have been, that historically there has always been a push and pull in every transportation and streets department about when are you maintaining and managing the operations of repaving, making sure you're... keeping crosswalks and sidewalks built up and smooth and safe. And when are you doing new things and using your dollars and capital investments to add a pedestrian bump out or to add a new bike lane that is protected with either posts or concrete or some other barriers? We haven't gotten that balance right all the time in the city and it's always been a push and pull over the last 15 years. And so when we, over the last four years,

made a historic investment in closing key remaining gaps in the cycling network. We more than doubled the amount of protected cycling mileage that existed in Boston, but we did it in a way that was fast and cost effective with plastic posts that quickly become damaged after every single snow season. And then at $300 a post. They get knocked down by trash trucks one week or snow plows one winter, and then it's another cost, another cost, and soon the money is going there instead of repaving streets when we began to see falling behind and deterioration of roadways when we weren't getting that balance right. Now, over the last year, we've been retooling, and I have been involved in every single detail to say, how are we deciding where speed humps go? Did we ask the community? Do we have a process that's beyond just... an algorithm that feeds things in. Are we going on site and talking to neighbors? Are we thinking about the context of this street versus that one differently? And are we... coordinating all of our processes so that instead of thinking do we put our dollars to repaving so we have smooth streets for drivers or do we and bus riders and cyclists or do we build new things so we can improve safety and urgently close gaps that are there and safety we have to do both so that our repaving is driven not only by how deteriorated the road is but also by where the most urgent safety concerns are And anytime any street is being repaved, that's when you also go in and look to see, should we add a crosswalk? Should we change the configuration? So very quickly, do you think the criticism has been unfair of your involvement in this? There's no fair or unfair. I think the reason why Boston is the best in so many categories is because we hold ourselves to really high standards. And that is a role. in city government to take any bit of feedback, criticism, complaint, or raising a concern or a fear that someone, experience that someone tells you, and to really think about what are the options to translate this into something better, what can we do to fix this situation, and how do we then ensure that that is also what the larger community needs in terms of balance and that. What's good for cyclists is good for drivers. And I think sometimes we've created this false dichotomy between the two camps. But when we do our services right, when we do our community engagement right, if we do our street design right, we're able to serve everyone's needs. That's Mayor Wu if you want to talk to her, 87-301-89-70. Craig is at the Boston Public Library microphone, Craig. Go ahead. Hello, Craig. Hi. I have a question about the elections that are upcoming. There's a rumor. I'm going to be a poll worker in Charlestown. There are rumors that there are going to be federal agents coming into the poll stations. And is your office or is there any guidance from the state regarding how that's going to be approached?

Yes, it is, as we know, more than a rumor. First of all, I like your shirt. I love your shirt. We got to bring back the vibes. We did get notification through social media that we are among the handful of cities that the Trump administration is planning to send federal election monitors to. We run... safe, secure, free elections every year with multiple avenues to vote. The primary election is September 1st this year, so it's coming up very, very soon, and mail ballots have already gone out the door to the first wave of residents who requested them. So residents are voting now by mail. You also have early voting starting very soon in a couple days, and then Election Day, September 1st. So we will... be monitoring the monitors in the situation, but we have been working very closely with the Secretary of State's office to ensure that we have the latest technology. Now, all of our poll workers using what are called poll pads so that we can check in every voter, know how many ballots are given out, how many are needed, monitor the supply of all the ballots. The upgrades and technology over the last year, year and a half have been... really, really intensive. And our elections department has worked incredibly hard, done a great job on that. And we are prepared to administer elections as we always do, including in this current federal context. Craig, thanks for your call. You know, before we take a break, I'm just thinking about what you said in the first 30 minutes here. The mayor of Boston learned about federal monitors being targeted at Boston from social media. Marjorie asked you a question. about is there an ice facility on the way in downtown Boston? You've done FO Freedom of Information Requests can't get a response from our own government. This is not, you're not asking Vladimir Putin to... It's not just that they're not responding to us. They're attacking us. They're suing us. They're taking away our funding. They're doing everything they can to... undermine the places that prove why they are wrong about everything. Their philosophy under this current administration at the federal level is that public is bad. Public is where you meet people who look different than you and speak a different language or worship differently or love differently. And when public gets together, that's when billionaires can't make as much money. in order to do what they're doing, to cut science funding, and to pair back environmental protections so that the coal, gas, fossil fuel companies make as much money as possible, so that the financial executives make as much money as possible, they need to be able to have the money come from somewhere to go to gigantic corporate tax cuts. gun violence, public education.

Fair housing. Those are all ways that we build power at the grassroots level that is stronger than any dictator or any autocratic administration. That is the single biggest threat and the way that they are trying to dismantle cities like Boston who showed the entire world over the summer what it means when you are beautiful, welcoming to all, family friendly, investing in the public good. It's tactics of intimidation, of drawing our resources into legal battles, and we know we're on the right side of the law. I hope that these midterm elections will also continue to just dampen the momentum here as we get towards 2028. But we're going to have a lot of rebuilding to do. And I would say... Again, going back to the last question about September 1st, we have to hold ourselves accountable to that too. There are legislators, there are people on the ballot right now who have taken votes alongside. those who are trying to terrorize our immigrant communities or undermine reproductive rights or take us backwards on climate or give tax cuts, tax breaks to corporate interests over residents. If our proposal that we had put forward for residential tax relief that the city council passed three times, that the House of Representatives passed twice and then got blocked by the Senate when Senator Susan Collins and Senator Brownsberger stepped up and blocked that if that had gone through, Boston residents would have saved more than $150 million over the last two years in property taxes. Instead, that went to tax cuts for corporate interests here in Massachusetts, here in the city of Boston. And so this is all important and real to talk about at the federal level and to organize. But our everyday... government and our local decisions also have to be held to the same standards. Before we leave, we're going to take a break, but since you brought it up very quickly, there was a piece in the globe the other day, which I'm sure you read by a leader or something of the group that is responsible for the repeal of rent control in 1994 on the ballot, citing a study from the Lincoln Land Institute, wherever it's called, saying that vis-a-vis your plan that you're just referencing, that the effective tax rate for owner-occupied houses in Boston is half the national average. Is that true? Okay, so I have read that entire Lincoln Land Institute report. I didn't get to read the one that just came out this year, but I went through it extensively last year and the year before as we were going through the tax legislation conversation. And there's a, the key sleight of hand that they're doing, first of all, this organization's goal is to advance corporate, in this case, trying to reduce, property taxes for commercial interests rather than homeowner-occupied residential interests. And I do not begrudge than that. That is what a lobbying organization is supposed to do is to make their best case that they possibly can. But it is important to understand what they are...

I think sometimes confusing or putting out in confusing way, that a rate is different from an amount. And so if you go through that exact report, it goes through all 50 states and the largest cities in each of them and what the tax rate is for residents and what it is for commercial interests. It is true that Boston ranks about halfway in the pack or lower down in the rate that is assessed on residents. We are about halfway in the middle of the pack when it comes to corporate rate. But when you turn it into absolute dollars, the report, at least from the last one that I read from last year, notes in there that when you apply that rate to the rapidly increasing property values in Boston, we have among the highest total tax bills anywhere out of those cities. And these, I mean... It's all, you can sort of pick and choose cherry pick data to make whatever case you want to make, I suppose. But there's nothing more real than hearing from our residents. And I have been in conversations with the state senators. I've spoken with senators who represent multiple communities, and Senator Brownsberg has said he believes that Boston paid too little in property taxes relative to Belmont and some of the other communities. At the same time that they prevented Boston from having our compromise temporary. provision go through that Boston had already put in place under Mayor Menino and it was temporary and it worked, it stabilized things, and then it returned to the usual tax code. At the same time, they blocked that for Boston. Watertown had... just about the same tax just proposal go through. And for all the, oh, we can't take change precedent. This would affect entire state if Boston gets to do this. Other communities have had the same exact problems. And I'm thrilled for Watertown that they were able to have their solution move forward. We just wanted to have the ability to do the same to protect Boston residents. But, you know, I think what's clear here through... this situation which is really wonky and hard to understand when it's about municipal finances and taxes and is it this data point or that data point however complicated a policy newsletter or op-ed or however wordy the explanations are the result is the same we have senators representing boston right now who don't feel the urgency to act because they don't see government's role They don't take government's job as needing to take charge of problems that communities members are facing. This is Susan Collins and Brownsburger you're talking about. That's correct. And there are great people running for office right now who feel very differently. Daniel Brad Lander running in Fenway, Alston Brighton, and then Watertown, Cambridge, Latoya Gale, running in South Boston, Dorchester, Chinatown, South End, September 1st's election day. Please, no matter...

where you live, no matter who your representation is, get involved, get out to vote. It matters just as much to vote in 2028 for a new president. It matters just as much to vote for your local state legislators this cycle. That's the voice of Michelle Wu. She'll be with us to the top of the hour, taking our questions in New York. You're listening to Boston Public Radio, 897 GBAH, broadcasting live from the Boston Public Library, streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News. Welcome back to Boston Public Radio, Jim Browley, Marjoriegan, streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News and the U.S.A. We're at the Boston Public Library and we're joined for the rest of this hour in the first half of the hour by Mayor Michelle Wu. You can contact her at 877301.8970 or talk to our colleagues and we'll get to you as fast as we can. Okay, the mayor, as usual, has brought us presence. Okay. What do we have today? Please pass us along to a little one in your life. These are from our Boston Reeds program where we're trying to encourage literacy and really the experience of reading together. So the book, Abuela, is one that all of our kindergartners will read in school this year. And we have also created story stops now where out in the neighborhoods, there are... stickers on the sidewalk that have a QR code of a particular story you can stop to read. We launched one outside a fire station that was about Boston firefighters. And anyway, this is summer fun as we're starting to move into back to school and getting our readers engaged. Dolever, well, can I take this one here? Oh, sure. Deliver from Northeastern, you're on with the mayor of the city of Boston. Welcome. Hi, Meru. I was wondering if you've been following the ongoing crisis of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which I'm familiar with the Red Flower Campaign, which has actually started by two Boston residents as the port of the BSO musicians, as well as my fellow, Andres Nelson's. Those two gems have been managed to mobilize thousands of people to stand in solidarity with the musicians. And I was hoping you could share your thoughts on what it means when a non-profit such as the BSO. Pushes aside, those artists who create most beautiful music and ignore the thousands of fans that have been speaking up over the past ending up. Thank you for your service in our beloved city. Thank you, Dolan. Thank you for calling in. You know, as... At least Jim and Marjorie know, the BSO has a very special spot in my heart. It was the first kind of expenditure that I made as a young professional before I could really afford it to have a young professional subscription to the orchestra to be able to go. And I've now had the chance to... see how involved they are in the community and to even play alongside some of the incredible, incredible artists and musicians who are there. And it is deeply painful to see a rift and...

rupture in the various parts of this institution that the city leans on so much. You know, I don't know the ins and outs of every part of what's happening. I do know that the musicians have continued to produce just gorgeous, unbelievable. sound and concerts and and continue to share their love with the city and at Tanglewood with the larger community and I also know that organizational change is really hard all the time in our institution in the city of Boston there is there are you know conversations every day about what direction we should take the city and to be able to have processes in place or to be able to have leadership that is fully aligned is really important across all the different pillars of that and so I am going to continue supporting the institution and I know Chad has been a great partner for the city of Boston when it comes to expanding our Boston family days and doing work directly in the community Andrus, of course, is a treasure. But there are times when it doesn't work out. And I don't, again, don't know the details of exactly why it hasn't worked out. But I hope that we can get to a point soon where everyone feels cared for and that this institution can be whole. On to the next... phase of a chapter of their story and we at the city of boston will be there to support however and whenever we can by the way i've just urged people who miss yesterday's show thomas dinsmore was with us and did a brilliant job of responding to some of the concerns of the management at the bso that's available at youtube.com slash gbh news charles i'm sorry oh no go ahead charles is it the mic hello charles what's up hello um Hello, Mayor. I'm a proud special education teacher with Boston Public Schools. Thank you for your service. So I just wanted to get an understanding of where you stand on the budget cuts that are going to be made for this year. Boston, well, our budget is done and being implemented at this point. I will say just in terms of how we get to set our budget every year. revenues and taxes are bound by Prop 2.5, and as long as Boston, unlike most other cities in the country, cannot make our own decisions about how to fund city services. We're sort of buckled in, cinched really tight by the 2.5% limit when every year other costs for... inflation for health care to support our workforce are going up by far more than 2.5%. So this last year, our budget projections, every time we got updates on how health care was going, they got worse and worse. Usually you plan for the worst and then it gets better. But this year, you know, a combination of different factors. But we had health care costs grow up by 20% in terms of what the city was being charged. And at the same time,

enrollment as you know enrollment patterns across the country have shown the number of students going down although Boston had had sort of stabilized and then under the Trump administration and their immigration policies began to decline again. We did make some very painful adjustments that probably should have needed to have been reckoned with many years ago in terms of keeping programs or buildings open that we're not matching where the enrollment patterns were actually going. And so when it comes to budget cuts, The total budget for the city went up compared to last year. Our revenues went up compared to last year. BPS and the dollars allocated to the Boston public schools went up by more than any other department relative to all the city departments. But the issue is that it wasn't enough because costs have been going up so much on those fixed things that we can't control that are just, we're in a really high inflationary period. It is incredibly painful. I think if we were not subject to the strict constraints of Prop 2 and a half, or if we had not had just an outright rejection of our ideas and compromises at the State Senate that we had put forward around revenue, or if we had had any of our proposals that we've sent up to the State House for more revenue, like transfer fee, that would have funded affordable housing, which could have then freed up funding for other things, or more funding for MSBA, that would help... redo even more school buildings. There are ways that we need to be getting at the underlying issue here. We only can spend what we have to spend. And when costs are going up so fast, the system that was put in place isn't working for cities across the Commonwealth. A record number of cities had to go to the ballot to ask for Prop 2.5 overrides. And sometimes by just a couple dozen votes, they did not get the authorization to increase their revenues and had to cut firefighters and police and teachers. And we have not had to make direct cuts for budget purposes alone. We did make adjustments on enrollment so that we preserve the student-teacher ratio and sort of went back to the truing up of the baseline that, again, should have been reckoned with a while ago. But I'm very concerned that it may get worse before it gets better. Every city's plight right now to be recognized that the funding systems aren't working out how they need to be in this current economic environment. My kids are in the Boston Public Schools. We're getting ready for back to school. I was just at ALI, August Leadership Institute with all of our school leaders and the superintendent earlier in the week. And this is the most important investment that we can make, the best return that we get on our dollars. And it's incredibly painful to know that we can't provide that soft landing, can't.

go above and beyond to what we want to do because we're cinch so tight. We've done the best that we can to be responsible about that. But it is a larger fight that I am ready and continuing to take on around how we get the revenues overall that will allow us to do what we need to do. You know, you've mentioned several times in your answer to Charles, Prop 2.5, and several months ago you said on our show that you thought the legislature should consider repealing Prop 2.5, and I think you... I don't want to car. I think you may have had second thoughts afterwards. Where are you today on what the legislature should do around Prop 2.5? I'm not back and forth or second thoughts. I think what happened was initially I answered a yes or no question and probably should have just given more details then. But the question would ask was, should Prop 2.5 be repealed or changed? Yes, it needs to be. Do I believe that we should just scrap our tax code entirely? No. But here's what we need. The benefits of Prop 2.5 are that by setting a certain number, it does provide stability, right? So we then give homeowners the sense that, you know, in stable times when commercial values aren't fluctuating wildly, generally there's a little bit more predictability. For cities, it does mean that our 2.5% is something that we can rely on, even though it can be very unfair how that gets allocated between residents and commercial interests in certain years. Stability is important. However, Prop 2.5 was designed at a time when they were not, I don't think, ever anticipating inflationary costs, the rate of inflation being way higher than 2.5%. 10 times higher in certain cases. And so cities need to be able to have the flexibility to make the investments that count. So what should they do? Just give you the power to tax locally rather than what should they do? Other cities around the country have that set up. The city of Boston would gladly do that and we would do that responsibly and we're accountable to the voters and how we do that. If that is not the system that we're starting with, which is not, we need to, at the very least, have tweaks to the current system where in very high inflationary years, cities have the flexibility to a portion between residential and commercial differently or to be able to make investments that then don't count against the cap that is holding us back. So two and a half might be inflation connected is one of the things you're suggesting. Yes. And it also comes down to local aid that New York City, for example. Net, you know, every city receives some amount of dollars from the state.

And we also have to pay dollars to the state and the city of Boston. We have to pay more than $100 million to the MBTA for a local assessment. We have to pay for charter school, chargeback system, this and that and the other. On net, when you even all of that out, state funding is about 2% of the city of Boston's budget net, in and out. In New York, it's about four times that. And their state has also stepped up and provided a billion dollars for... Child care to be expanded to two-year-olds. And so that kind of partnership, being able to work with a shared agenda for the hub city that is connected with every city across the Commonwealth and in conversation with those cities, and then working to access the tax dollars that we all generate and ensure that the state and city are aligned and how we're doing that. That's really important. And again, that is why these... this election matters and why we need to have representation that understands an urgency. You know, speaking of taxes, and we'll get to the BU deal, you cut in just a few minutes, but people realize that Boston is full of tax-exempt property. You know, colleges, universities, hospitals, et cetera. There's something called a pilot program payment in lieu of taxes. In some places, GBAH, are paying their full share, for example, some of the hospitals like Beth Israel, but a lot of places are not paying their full share at all. They're just 20%, 50%, and they just seem to get away with them. That would make a difference if all these places. Roxbury Latin School is playing nothing. I can't, that's a private school with high tuition, so I don't get that. But anyway, can anything be done about that to have people pay what they're supposed to be paying? So more than half of the city's land parcels, if I have my numbers right, are actually tax exempt. It's nonprofits, large institutions like the sectors that you mentioned, and public property. So state property, for instance, or city property. And when our payment in lieu of taxes program was started now probably about 16 years ago, it was really revolutionary because there's no legal way for... cities, there's no legal way to require institutions that are tax exempt to pay taxes, where that is the federal designation they get. But in recognition that they use our city roadways and first responders and other services, and they rely on the stability of their local community for the university to thrive or for the hospital to have patients, we have been revamping that program. It's not only... being able to come to agreements with individual institutions like BU and Northeastern Wentworth to be able to increase the pilot payment that they're making, but also to be clear about where those dollars are going. We now have specific housing commitments, recognizing that student housing and where students live are a big part of the supply that's available for families and for residents in Boston, and being able to engage universities in that, partnership goes a long way. Our hospitals also, I mean, the other, I think the other key thing to keep in mind about these institutions is that just as the city of Boston is under attack, they really are the industries that underpin Boston and they have been.

very directly under attack. Science, research, healthcare, education, higher education, our Boston and Cambridge institutions in particular just in the eye of the storm. And so we want to both strengthen what they're doing, be able to protect the important work that they're contributing to the community. and also ensure that they are working with us so that we make the most of the dollars they put into our neighborhoods. We only have 30 seconds. Couldn't the legislature, I mean, not that they do it, couldn't they mandate that a certain level of what would be the property taxes of a nonprofit have to be paid? They could address the situation rather than you having to go hat and hand one by one to every, I mean, you personally, but one and one to every single institution, right? I know. I'm not sure if it's state law could override federal law. Maybe there's a separate state tax that could be assessed. Well, I'm not churches and stuff like that, but regular nonprofits, universities, that kind of thing. Well, whatever. It's possible. We're out of time. We get to it. I will say a quick example. We created a housing fund. All of our hospitals. turned their community mitigation dollars into that revolving loan fund. It has now helped stabilize more than a thousand families. So there's possibilities of good work. We just have to keep going at it. Mayor Woods, good to see you as always. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you so much. Thank you to the mayor, and thank you those for you listening in another edition of Boston Public Radio. Thanks to people that came down to the Boston Public Library. Keep up with us 24-7, we have our podcast. Check out our TikTok page, Boston Public Radio. Tomorrow we're going to talk with two Lowell residents pushing back against a data center expansion there, plus former Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety, Andrew Cabral, Congressman Jake Alkincloss, and David Steiner, who was terrorized along with his family by eBay, and they fought back, and they won. Thank our crew, Zoe Matthews, Hannah Loss, Ariana Gonzalez, Jack Siciliano, our engineer, John McClough Parker, our executive producer, Jane Bologna. Special thanks to BPL staff, Maddie Geyer, our security team, Darius and Darias and Derek, our host of the News Feed Cafe and across the street at the Lenox Hotel. The Curiosity Desk with Edgar Beard, the Third is right after us here. At the library, he'll speak with, he's actually, he's not the library. Is he the library today? Edgar, no, he's not. He is not. Sorry about that. He'll speak with Sky and Telescopes Kelly Beatty, live from Spain for today's eclipse. There's an eclipse today, Jim. And the culture show with Jared Bowen starts at two. They are going to be here at the Boston Public Library. And you can see Jared and the crew right here at 2 o'clock. I'm Marjoriegan. Jim Browley. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you can tune in tomorrow and have a great day.