Foul Play! Outside Interference and the Real Estate Transfer Fee.

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Today we will be talking about corporate interests, lobbyists, and how they influence housing bills, from the state level to the city level here in Medford. We focus on the case of the real estate transfer fee and repercussions that we've seen recently.

Jonathan Cohn and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 49. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to incorruptible mass. We are here to help us all transform state politics, because we k​​now that we could have a state that truly represents the needs of everyone who lives here. And today we will be talking about corporate interests,corporate lobbyists, and how they are influencing housing bills, specifically the real estate transfer fee, as well as others.

We are going to be talking about how lobbying groups are affecting one specific city, the city of Medford. We'll be telling some stories from there. We will also be talking about the money that they have spent previously.

This particular lobbying group, real estate lobbying group in other cities, will be talking about their influence on state politics, that they have already had an influence on state politics just in the last week or two, or certainly we've seen the results just recently.And so that is our topic for today. Before we do, I am going to have my co host for the day, Jonathan, introduce himself.

Hi, Jonathan. Cohn he his. I'm an activist in Boston and I've been active in state and city politics here for a little over ten years.

Wonderful. And I am Anna Callahan. She her, coming at you from Medford.

Been involved in local politics across the country as well as now a city councilor here in Medford. And we are going to just dive in. 

So, Jonathan, do you want to give us a little intro to what we're going to talk about today? 

Yeah. So when we were thinking about what we could talk about today, the one thing that I thought could be an interesting framing is how Anna, as some of our listeners like may already know, Anna is now a city councilor in Medford. And now that we're the first five months of the new year passed, I don't know what date is that we probably hit or recently or will hit your 1st, 150 days as the city councilor.

And most of our episodes focused on state politics. So what I'm interested in having us talk about for this show is what have been some of the surprises, lessons learned, et cetera, from those days, particularly what has the experience as a city council, city councilor, local elected official, what have those experiences given you? The ability to better illuminate about what happens at the state level, because you get to be on the receiving end of all of the different kind of the lobbying, all different advocacy work, all of the different pressures that we talk about that exists on the state level, that in many ways exist in microcosms in cities and towns across the state. Yeah.

So I will say that just as a little preface, folks may or may not know that here in Medford, we have a local organization that I've been involved with for a while. And we have been running candidates on a platform for three cycles now. And that platform is, youknow, it really is a progressive platform.

It is focused on affordable housing. It's focused on climate change. It's focused on community building.

It's focused on hearing from marginalized voices. There's a lot of stuff that, many other things, a lot of the stuff that we talk about here at Incorruptible Math is on the platform of the group, it’s called Our Revolution Medford. And over the last three cycles, we have picked up every available seat. And we now, folks who have been endorsed by this organization, just like Progressive Mass or, you know, endorses candidates, you know, Mas Alliance endorses candidates.

We endorse candidates. Normal, right? But people who, candidates who have been endorsed by our organization now occupy six of the seven city council seats. So, you know, this really is about a few things.

It's about the changing nature of the people who live in Medford. Right. With the housing crisis, it is a gentrifying, quickly gentrifying city.

So there's a lot more folks who have come into the city more recently who have progressive tendencies, who are sort of white collar, working from home people. And we also have a pretty diverse, we have some diversity in our city as well that has been there for a long time. So we have a lot – a mix that our organization has been able to find and talk to as voters.

And we talked to, wow, 10, 12 thousand people at the doors during a cycle, during this cycle where we had six, actually had seven candidates, right. And one of them did not win. But of those seven candidates, we probably talked to 10,000 people through door knocking over the summer.

You know, we won six of the seven seats, which really says something about the electorate and what they want. And probably the number one issue that most of the other candidates ran on was affordable housing. It is also important to me as people, I'm sure, know from listening to this podcast, but because I knew there were so many other affordable housing champions, I sort of put myself on the climate change as like, of really being someone who is going to prioritize climate change, as well as talking about our roads and sidewalks, because they are in terrible, terrible condition.

And so that was when I ran, of course I'm going to be a reliable vote for affordable housing things, but that I would hope to lead on. Things like planting more trees, just greening our city in so many ways, our streets and sidewalks, but also a lot of community building things and having our local businesses be supported. So that was sort of my take on it.

But affordable housing was for sure something that we ran on. We talked about, we were very open. All our policies, like the real estate transfer fee and rent control and many other policies were on our websites.

We talked about them at the doors, and we won six out of seven seats. So with that preface, now we're going to talk about what has been happening. And like, it has been really a surprise, even though I knew, not really an intellectual surprise, because Iknew this stuff does happen.

But it has been a little bit of a shock to find that the same, like 50 people are showing up to our meetings and for a while, just making us, making everyone stay up until 01:00 in the morning or later, because they each take their five minutes multiple times. And they are, you know, the vast majority are coming out to speak against the real estate transfer fee or rent control or the one that surprised me because I was the one who sponsored this particular piece of, there's no legislation yet, but wanting just to give it a number so that we could talk about it in committee was a rental registry. And a rental registry just means if you have a rental property that you just have to, like, register with the city and say, I have a rental property, and all it is, is like the address of the rental property and some contact information for you.

That's it. And what it helps is for cities and towns to know how many of their properties are owned by corporate interests. Right.

Many are owned by just, you know, small in town landlords as well as. There's tons of reasons why it's really useful, and it's useful for environmental purposes, it's useful for affordable housing purposes, it's useful for a lot of things. But there, like I was, it's just totally innocuous policy.

Innocuous. It's like $15 to sign up the first time and $5 per year after that. I mean, it's like nothing.

And there's no penalties. Nothing. It's like, I mean, maybe a penalty if you don't, if you don't, like, fill it out, 

But it's just kind of like getting a better sense of who's living and who's living there, who's owning, 

– Not who's living there, who's owning the property. Because you never have any information about tenants. It's just about who owns.

Well, what I meant in terms of who's living there. Like, knowing, like, a renter versus ownership population, right. In the sense that you can get a sense of…. There are certain ways. By looking at deeds, you can get a sense of, like, who owns the sale of property. But, like, it is useful to know, like, what percent, like, what the rent, like, what the renter population is.

And do you see who's renting out units? You can see if there is an area that has a high renter population versus a large homeowner population, and that can help inform what outreach the city council does. Because when I think of Medford, Medford Close to Tufts, I intuitively know that it's a high renter area, but that's just because of, like, you can kind of glean based on the population and based on turnover. But it's useful for a city to actually know that for real.

Absolutely. And, you know, another thing is the estimates that we have in Medford, which are, like, 45% renters, were from before COVID. And my guess is that it's probably higher now, but we don't know. So, you know, so what I want to say is that the surprising thing is, was at first to realize that, like, this flood of people, and it's the same people, and it's a lot of the same people who challenged the election and forced a recall, a recount.

And the recount came out, like, exactly like the original count. So there was nothing, you know, bad happened. But, like, even after that, a lot of these people were coming out saying that, like, it was rigged and it wasn't a real election and have said personally to me that they don't think I was actually elected, and that's why they think I can't make it….

It was like, it's a little bit crazy, but. And not all of them. Right.

So a lot of them are just coming out. But what really was a shocker to me was to find out that the reason why they're coming out to all of these meetings is because a corporate lobbying group from outside of Medford is spending a lot of money to send emails and forms they can fill out and snail mail, that's thousands of dollars. When you're sending snail mail to present this fear mongering, like, not realistic portrayal of what these policies even are, and to force everybody, like, get everybody, make all the homeowners afraid and to get them to show up at city council.

I mean, and it is amazing. It's amazing how much money this corporate interest group. And I will say, you know, they, they have to sign their, you know, they have to put on their mailers who is paying for it? And they are paid by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board.

So, you know, they're against the real estate transfer fee. And you can go online and find out that this greater Boston real estate board is spending tons of lobbying dollars against the real estate transfer fee.

And, you know, some of that money is being spent in Medford for, you know, how many mailers, emails, like, all these forms that they fill out, we get the exact identical email from, like, 100 different people that says all the same, you know, literally there's not one letter of difference because they have these forms they can fill out and they don't have to do anything and just click a button and whatever, and it goes to us. So there's out of town corporate lobbying groups trying to affect our policies here in Medford. 

The sheer spending from the greater Boston real Estate board reminds me of how earlier this year back, actually, this is last year, where the Boston Globe reported that the greater Boston real Estate board was planning to spend just under 400,000 on its campaign opposing rent control in Boston.

And that's obscene. Like, they wanted to basically run in terms of funding ads or mailers or even. They're even considering hiring people, like hiring organizers for their energy rent control campaign.

It's like these are often people who treat. Who like to be treated as good stewards of the community. Often the same organization like to treat themselves as they're part of, like a good civic class in the city when they're actively trying to make every part one of the city's problems worse.

Yeah. The other thing I want to mention and get your thoughts on as well is, you know, it really strikes me that the policies we're trying to put forward are going to be either helpful or not impactful on small homeowners, even small local landlords. They're not going to have an impact on these people.

And yet this lobbying group and other real estate groups, I understand they are incredibly good at convincing small landlords and homeowners that they are allied with their interests and that we are against their interests. And it's. It's false.

It is false. But they're so good at painting this picture. Yes.

It reminds me, particularly with the rent control fight, like Boston's home world petition on rent control. It's like the cap is pretty high that you're allowable. It becomes this, like inflation plus six, but I believe it's inflation plus x, but no more than 10%.

And like, if you talk to a lot of, like, your kind of landlord, they're probably like, oh, no, I wouldn't be raising rent by more than that. So what is your problem? Like that? Yeah. And that it's just the idea of it that bothers it.

And then they get to get worked out about in the same way in which a lot of people who are upset about the idea of a real estate transfer fee and like to don't acknowledge that it's only for property over a million dollars. And that means that most people's property, like most people, are not affected by that. And not just only properties over a million dollars, only the part of the property that's over a million.

So your property sells for 1.1 million. You're only taxed on the $100,000, not on the 1.1 million. And so it's been wild to see that. The other thing that's been striking to me to see in that, in the fight with the local option real estate transfer fee on the state level, which is reminded of folks, is just to allow cities and towns, if they so vote to pass such a policy, to put a small fee on high end real estate transactions to raise money for affordable housing locally, something that can help dampen real estate speculation in the community and also help kind of often increasingly unaffordable communities from becoming increasingly unaffordable by creating more, by kind of having dedicated funding for an affordable housing trust.

Trust fund, that we see the type of argument that because this won't solve everything, we can't do it. And from a legislature that never puts things that are more than just partial solutions forward for any problem, seeing them argue that something's a partial solution so we shouldn't do it at all feels incredibly dishonest.

And we've seen them invoke kind of some of the poorer cities in the commonwealth where that, yes, if you're a place like Lawrence or Springfield, you probably don't have very many properties above a million dollars. And that policy isn't the might, it might not be the best policy for your community where it would be for one that has a lot of, that has a lot of real estate speculation and growing cost, but that's not a reason to prevent a city or town from doing it. And it feels like a very disingenuous objection from people who don't want to do anything against the real estate industry to pretend that their actual concern is for, is forcommunities that probably want rent control, which those same people also oppose.

So we're not offering any, like, so there's their counter proposal for wanting to have something that benefits all cities and towns is,in fact, nothing, or at best, the monopoly money. That is bond authorizations. Yeah.

You know, and I, let's, let's be clear, too. The healy, the governor's housing bill included a real estate transfer fee proposal. Yeah.

The house version, which recently, like, I've been getting emails about it just in the last week, like, yeah, that is no longer, that is not part of the House version. And it's, and it speaks also, and I want to reiterate, as we're talking about this, about one of the things that we've often spoken about, about the problems with how the House in particular operates, is that they release the spell on Monday to the public and members. They're voting on it tomorrow.

Amendments to that bill that was released Monday morning were due end of business on Monday. They will have a full day today,and then tomorrow they'll be voting on all of those. That is not a deliberative process.

It's crazy. That is what you do when you view everything as a foregone conclusion and that something will remain largely unchanged with the only things getting back into it are things that you've already given blessing to and want to give credit to a specific state representative to have their name attached to it in its inclusion, and to prevent any organ like grassroots organizations, from ever being able to have a say or to mobilize people or anything. Exactly that.

Because it's much more difficult to do that if you're trying to get people to contact their legislators or something. Not everybody is reading every email that comes into them every, every minute and every hour of the day. So by the time some people might even see an email asking them to contact their legislators about something, it's already done.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I have to say, it has been fascinating to see from a local perspective, the way that they spend money,because you think, oh, they're spending money at the state level.

Like, how. What does that look like? Oh, they're talking to state senators, and they're talking to the leadership, and blah, blah, blah.It's all invisible.

But, like, it is not invisible. In Medford. We have all supports of people who support us, who are, like, we're getting these.

These postcards and letters and all this stuff, and it's so ugly. And, like, how do we….

How do we work against it? You know? And the truth is, like, yeah, they can get 50 people to show up and keep us up until 01:00 in the morning. But we talked to, we talked to 10,000 people, and we didn't win three seats or four seats out of seven.

We won six seats out of seven, and we ran on these policies, and people will be there. And it is also. And this should not be a surprise.

Like, people say really ugly things. They say how they're absolutely horrified and shocked that this city council is not listening to the community. We're Undemocratic.

We're, you know, all this stuff. And it's like, guys, we talked to 10,000 people about these policies, and we won six out of seven seats. And you think that….

And it's never 50 people who actually comes and speaks. There's, like, 25, 30 people. And because they.

The other thing is, sometimes, especially for the real estate transfer fee, about a third of the people speaking were in favor of the real estate transfer fee. But those one third of people were. They were polite, they were soft spoken.

They said their piece. They didn't accuse anyone. And they were literally jeered and laughed at and interrupted by the crowd.

It was. It was crazy. I was like.

I was pretty shocked. And those people don't want to come back. They don't want to come back to the city council meetings.

Yeah. You know. Yeah, no, they're trying to make it a hostile.

Trying to make it a hostile space for the other attendees and for the counselors to be able to win on that rather than on merit of argument. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I'm grateful that I'm with other people who are not gonna be, you know, immediately influenced by a hostile environment and by the same 30 people showing up, you know? But the situation Medford has often reminded me of is I remember when we were talking before, and you noted studying how different efforts to get more progressive city councilors work is that after a period of increase there typically ends up being a backlash. Yes. And I think that you had noted, having been surprised, not seeing more of that during the election cycle, and here we are.

Then they're materialized afterwards. And it's very much so in that backlash period that even though that there are distinctions that they're a distinct minority in the community, as the election demonstrated, and even when it becomes something like a real estate transfer fee or another policy that we've talked about it being rent control, there's some policies that have strong majority support in Massachusetts, and I would presume like Medford, which tends to be more progressive than the state at large, even.Probably even larger support for both of those in Medford, that it's a small group of people trying to make themselves a small group of people who are sad to see that their felt sense of power in the community is diminishing, want to try to pretend that they're representative of the whole.

Yeah. I also think that in Medford, it happened particularly fast. Right.

Yeah. Six years ago, this basic understanding of the world and this basic sort of political bent was seven out of seven people.Pretty much.

I mean, not exactly, but, you know, nobody was on the affordable housing, climate change. Like, nobody was really doing those things. Maybe there were a couple people doing union rights, which is good step in the right direction, but really nobody ever even considering any of these policies.

And, for example, Medford has not, is one of the only cities to never even put on the ballot a debt exclusion or a prop two and half override. No one has ever allowed it to be on the ballot. So, like, this is where the city council and the mayor has been for 40 years or whatever, forever.

Who knows how long, right? And so this very quick change, I think, is part of this feeling of, you know, anger at diminishing power that the other side feels, you know, and I get it. And I also want to be really clear, like, I am not, I feel for the individual homeowners and small landlords in Medford who are being convinced by this rhetoric.

Right. I don't think they're bad people. I think they're being influenced by folks who do not have their interests at heart.

I think they're hearing stuff that is not accurate, and I think they are genuinely scared. But, like, you know, you gotta look at where the money is coming from. And when it's from a corporate lobbying group from outside of your city, maybe you should hesitate for a second and find out more information, you know, and I'm not saying that then there wouldn't be people who disagreed with us, that's fine.

You can disagree all you want. But like, the rhetoric that's coming out, I mean, I don't even want to. It's literally being….

And it speaks to, as well as the dynamic where what they're trying to do is to get the debate to exist on a fully emotional plane for people. So that because people often, people's emotional reactions to something is what they, is often what they remember. Andso even if somebody like you can explain to somebody actually know what they were telling you was that was false, that it can become so difficult, more difficult to dislodge it from something if they've done fear mongering tactics that get it to exist in an emotional basis, that this is low enough.

Yep. Well, I'm going to ask you for closing comments maybe on how this affects things at the state level and ways that you've seen this before or expect to see it again. 

My own personal comment on this is the fact that it just speaks to the need for continually greater organizing on kind of on our side, on a progressive side of knowing that we typically have majority support behind what we want to do and broad support, but that, and we're up against organized money.

And so that speaks to the need to kind of increase engagement amongst people so that those voices that actually do support the good policies that we talk about get heard and so that they can kind of, so they can be better reflected in the conversation than just those trying to moving forward. Absolutely. Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much. Always good to have everyone listening in. Please send us your requests for whatever topics you want us to cover.

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