Gov. Deval Patrick is taking a lot of heat for his administration’s bet on Evergreen Solar, but the state’s financial partnership with the Marlborough company began under former Gov. Mitt Romney. Romney, who made his name as a venture capitalist at Bain Capital, invested $2.5 million in Evergreen in 2003 through an obscure state agency […]
Paul McMorrow
Paul McMorrow comes to CommonWealth from Banker & Tradesman, where he covered commercial real estate and development. He previously worked as a contributing editor to Boston magazine, where he covered local politics in print and online. He got his start at the Weekly Dig, where he worked as a staff writer, and later news and features editor. Paul writes a frequent column about real estate for the Boston Globe’s Op-Ed page, and is a regular contributor to BeerAdvocate magazine. His work has been recognized by the City and Regional Magazine Association, the New England Press Association, and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. He is a Boston University graduate and a lifelong New Englander.
Posted inTransportation
T projects $1.1 billion deficit over next 5 years
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is facing a combined budget deficit of more than $1.1 billion over the next five years – a figure that exceeds even the “bleak” estimates outlined in David D’Alessandro’s sobering 2009 report on the agency’s troubled finances. According to an internal T budget document obtained by CommonWealth, a controversial plan to […]
Posted inEconomy
Convention center questions
A panel weighing the expansion of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center said on Tuesday that state lawmakers would have to identify between $78 million and $117 million annually in new revenues to support a planned $1 billion expansion of the South Boston facility. That sum could prove difficult to generate in a narrow, targeted […]
Posted inPolitics, The Back Story
Rumored corruption
The FBI used Ron Wilburn, and then tossed him aside. The feds got Wilburn, a Roxbury businessman, to wear a wire while passing bribes to Dianne Wilkerson and Chuck Turner. But after snaring the two black Boston politicians, they shut their investigation down, leaving all sorts of white political crooks untouched. That’s Wilburn’s take on […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics, The Back Story
Lynch pushes for public option
Don’t get Back Story? Sign up here. Congressional Republicans saw their sweeping midterm gains as a mandate to roll back the nation’s sweeping new health care reform package. After staging a loud but symbolic repeal vote in the House, national health care opponents are now focused on weakening the new regime’s funding at every possible […]
Posted inPolitics, The Back Story
Grossman moving money
Don’t get Back Story? Sign up here. On the campaign trail, Steve Grossman’s stated desire to run the Treasury as an activist invited frequent barbs from his Republican opponent. Grossman charged right through those attacks, and at his swearing-in ceremony last week, he reiterated the call to harness the Treasury’s funds for public policy purposes, […]
Posted inPolitics
DeLeo doubles down with casino allies
House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s dramatic leadership shakeup today did more than put an end to the power struggle between would-be future speakers James Vallee and Charles Murphy. It also consolidated power among the reps who stood with DeLeo last summer during the speaker’s bitter casino showdown with Gov. Deval Patrick. Legislators who backed DeLeo’s gambit […]
Posted inPolitics
Turner done in by his own deeds and words
Chuck Turner was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday, and afterward, he repeated what he’s been saying all along about the case against him – he’s innocent, he was set up, the government was “trying to do everything they can do to shut my mouth.” He added a nice kicker at the end, warning […]
Posted inEconomy
Money talks—and delivers
until his arrest last year, few Bostonians had heard of Martin Raffol. Many more people, however, had probably heard of his boss, Arthur Winn—one of the state’s most prolific affordable housing developers, the businessman behind the failed Columbus Center development, and a highly public business figure who had become entangled with Dianne Wilkerson, the disgraced […]
Posted inUncategorized
Feds float Turner perjury charge
Federal prosecutors have stepped up their pressure on former Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, alleging Turner committed perjury while testifying at his corruption trial this past fall. In court documents filed during Wednesday’s snowstorm, Assistant US Attorney John T. McNeil identified 15 instances in which he alleged Turner lied under oath. They include 14 in which […]