Legal professional Common Andrea Campbell’s heavy-handed techniques are forcing beleaguered cities and cities in Massachusetts to waste cash combating the MBTA Communities Act in court docket as a substitute of spending it on police, hearth departments, parks and colleges.
Some Massachusetts taxpayers are primarily getting double billed – paying for Campbell’s bloated wage, employees and court docket prices whereas additionally spending taxpayer funds for the native communities’ protection.
Campbell has chosen to struggle cities and cities in court docket to defend the MBTA zoning legislation whereas ignoring the voter-approved legislation which permits Auditor Diana DiZoglio to audit the state Legislature.
So moderately than problem lawmakers, she lets them get off the hook, whereas wielding her cudgel towards poor cities and cities that received’t adjust to the elitist legislation.
Campbell’s reply for every little thing – whether or not it’s native Massachusetts cities or President Donald Trump – is to sue from her excessive perch at her Dartmouth residence.
She rejects the folks’s will in auditing the Legislature, despite the fact that she’s purported to be the folks’s lawyer. Campbell not often seems in public, until it’s on pleasant public radio, and customarily solely solutions by press launch from her Duxbury property.
We’ll sue you is the reply to every little thing. That brings in depositions, affidavits, hearings, city legal professionals, and a few cities should get costly exterior counsel.
Campbell has already filed swimsuit towards Trump dozens of occasions, spending tens of millions of {dollars}, and is now taking purpose at her personal state’s financially-strapped cities.
A dozen communities are resisting the legislation, which seeks to create multifamily housing round MBTA stations. So Campbell is concentrating on them as adversaries – utilizing her AG cudgel – moderately than working with them to discover a resolution to the housing disaster.
The AG is pitching her personal story as a former tenant who was almost evicted from public housing to push the legislation.
“Whereas I couldn’t afford to personal a house for many of my grownup life, it remained a precedence for my husband and me, and we ultimately purchased a home and broke the cycles of instability and poverty for myself and my boys,” she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed.
She definitely did break the cycle. Campbell, together with her $223,495 annual wage, can now afford to stay within the comfortable city of Dartmouth on Massachusetts’ South Coast, transferring from Mattapan in 2025. They purchased the home for $865,000, one thing most Massachusetts residents couldn’t afford.
“The choice was not a straightforward one, however after vital prayer and significant dialogue and reflection, we finally determined that it was the most effective resolution for our household,” she wrote to supporters in Dec. 2024.
Her story about being almost evicted has little to do with what cities are scuffling with, however oh nicely.
Campbell has determined the state is the enemy and cities and cities should do regardless of the state decides is greatest for them.
Why is Campbell being so heavy-handed in defending the legislation? Does it have something to do with the truth that among the “multi-family” housing items created by the MBTA Communities legislation can be going to newly-arrived migrants?
Campbell and Gov. Maura Healey have determined that migrants get first crack at drivers’ licenses and meals and faculty help, making them a precedence.
Will they get desire for reasonably priced housing too?
Now that Healey has ended the follow of housing migrants in accommodations, they want different locations to stay, and the creation of reasonably priced items close to T stations is among the prime areas left in Massachusetts.
