The Mumbles Chronicles - continued

Again, PLEASE don't let this article from the Boston Globe destroy your faith in your elected officials. Was that sarcastic enough? I could turn it up a notch if need be.

File this one under "Gee, John Kerry's Been Telling Me the Republicans Are The Party of the Rich and the Special Interest Groups".

A decade after Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared residency a cornerstone of his administration, more than two-thirds of city employees are still exempt from a law requiring Boston workers to live within city limits.

Just 4,836 of 16,695 city employees are subject to the residency ordinance, and most of those are workers who can least afford Boston’s skyrocketing housing costs - clerks, secretaries, laborers, and others at the bottom of the salary scale.

Meanwhile, higher-paid employees who are members of more powerful unions often have found ways to remain largely unaffected. Teachers secured an exemption through state legislation. Police superior officers refuse to abide by the law because it was never written in their union contract. Other unions have negotiated lenient grandfather clauses that allow the bulk of their members to remain exempt. And ever since unions challenged a rule that requires grandfathered employees to move to the city when they are promoted, it has not been enforced.

On second thought, let's file it under "Unintended Consequences".

Enacted in the 1970s, Boston's residency rules were touted as a way to boost property values by stemming the exodus of middle-class workers from declining neighborhoods. But not all employees were bound by the law, including police and firefighters. Teachers won exemption in the Legislature, and the City Council routinely approved waivers for individuals.

[snip]

But low-paying service employees have had to abide, and many tell nightmarish tales of struggling to get by in a city where rent control has been abolished and the median price for a two-bedroom apartment last year was $1,400 a month. The median sale price of a single-family home in 2003 was $333,000, triple what it was two decades ago.

Charles Strange, a custodian in the Department of Public Works, said he lived in his old Mercury sedan for two years after the bank foreclosed on the house he was renting in Dorchester with two roommates. He said the cheapest apartment he could find was $950 a month, beyond his reach.

Or maybe we can file it under "Idiotic Policies That Ignore the Free Market Concept" - I think there's some room in that file next to Minimum Wage.

"Values were low and we were trying to get people to invest," said Councilor at Large Maura Hennigan, of conditions in the early 1990s when she voted to beef up residency. "But Boston has become a desirable city for a lot of reasons. Now it's really wrong to make them live here when, for the most part, they can't afford to buy on the salaries that are being paid."

Tell you what, read the whole thing and then file it the trash under "Talking Mumbling Out of His Ass".

Menino's aides say that, despite the loopholes, about two-thirds of Boston employees have chosen to live in the city. But some unions question that figure and have circulated a videotape of Menino telling an interviewer last year that anyone seeking affordable housing should look outside Route 495 -- perhaps to Fall River or New Bedford.

Hey, we know they gots lots of Keno there, dude! Sweet!