Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Thoughts from City Hall and the State House

I had to go to City Hall today to get some stuff from the BRA, so I stopped in at the City Council meeting of the Rules committee. It was held in the Curley Room where they don't video tape and show the banter on TV. Not as transparent as having it in Council Chambers and posting it on the city website. Also, President Ross's proposed Rules changes are not available online. I thought he was going to post everything online?

Anyway, I was just there a couple minutes (didn't want to get a parking ticket!) and one of the changes he proposes is changing from 17 committees to 13 committees so that council staff could be more efficient. Also it will make special committees more important such as his committee on Boston Common. He thought maybe they would have a groundwater committee, as an example.

Interesting that so few Councilors were there: Flaherty, Murphy, and Connolly were 3 of 4 city councilors at large not there. Consalvo, Tobin, Turner, Yancey were certainly not there either. Where could they all be on wednesday at 2 pm? Maybe in their law offices? I guess they don't care too much about how the council will be run, or for lobbying for any of the committees they care about.

Councilor Yoon's spokesperson says Sam is going to re-propose his 1/2 penny sales tax to aid safety in the city.

Also, I went and congratulated Sonia Diaz at her open house at her Senate Office. It still seems surreal that we have a Senator in our District who you can get in contact with and get an honest answer from.

1 comment:

Rob said...

Only Flaherty and Connolly are attorneys out of that group so swing and a miss there. Maybe they were meeting with constituents?