Hub residency rule needn't be renewed

April 2, 2004

Boston Herald

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Copyright (c) 2004 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

It's time to get rid of Boston's residency requirement for city workers.

As Mayor Thomas Menino is now discovering, the 1994 law that city politicians once bragged had "teeth" can bite back. The rapidly rising cost of living in Boston - especially when it comes to housing - means that the city rightfully should be giving its employees heftier raises than it is offering. Yet it can't afford to do so.

So why not trade away the residency requirement? Ten years ago, the city in effect bought unions' acquiescence to the rule with larger-than-normal pay increases. Perhaps this year it's time to do the reverse.

Until Menino became mayor, Boston's residency rules were little more than a joke. After waivers, assorted union contract deals and state law exceptions, fully two-thirds of its employees were exempt from it anyway. The city winked at compliance by the remainder.

A variety of parochial and political forces conspired back then to make residency a hot issue. During difficult economic times, some advocated residency as a jobs program. It was a nonsensical idea - the recession was nationwide, after all - but "city jobs for city residents" made for good sloganeering.

At the same time, Boston was losing its residential base. Workers who had moved outside of the city became scapegoats for urban decline. It wasn't their fault, of course. Rather, it was a high crime rate and lousy schools that pushed them and other families out. (The proof of which can be seen in Boston's recent residential renaissance, driven by private-sector workers moving into a city that, having reduced its crime rate, is now more hospitable.)

There were baser motives as well. City jobs were a perk politicians liked to hand out. It didn't do you much good, however, if the person you got the job for ended up living - and voting - outside of the city. Moreover, by making city workers and their families stay in town, went the thinking, one could create a nearly impregnable political base. Boston elections are small turnout affairs; typically about 70,000 vote. Add up the 20,000 city workers, their spouses, adult children and relatives and all of a sudden, easily over half of the electorate is connected to City Hall by a job. The effect of this is to freeze the status quo, keeping incumbents in power (and, sadly, making electoral prospects much more difficult for minorities and others who represent the fast- changing demographic face of the city's population).

The law that came out of this political stew was strict. It wiped out exemptions, allowing one year for employees to move back. Many were fired; others left. A residency commission investigated suspected violators. And union contracts all had to include a residency requirement.

All of which leads us to today's labor negotiations and, in particular, to the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association.

The BPPA lately has been on the receiving end of near unanimous disapprobation. Over the last few months cops have picketed and harassed the mayor. They've threatened to humiliate him at the Democratic National Convention. They've run ads in the national media denouncing him.

And no question, the BPPA's antagonistic tactics have often gone beyond the boundaries of fair play. Indeed, they may have backfired, losing much good will for the union and its members. That's a hard thing to do, by the way, since the reflexive reaction of most people is to defend those who put their lives on the line on behalf of others' well-being.

Still, one can understand the union's frustration. It is true that Boston police are among the best paid in the nation, especially if one adds in the lucrative overtime they earn whenever a utility worker has to dig a hole in the ground. Yet they also live - must live - in one of the most expensive cities. Add up the recent earnings increases of Boston cops and it's clear their buying power has declined. And given the pay increases the administration has proposed - which, according to the BPPA, amount to about 1 percent a year - their standards of living would continue to erode.

Yet, the administration is almost certainly right when it says the city doesn't have the money. The claims of the BPPA notwithstanding, Boston doesn't have some hidden surplus of cash. And if it did, quite frankly, it would be far better to spend it on restoring cuts made over the last two years to schools.

So how about a different approach? Let's try to cut the amount cops and other union workers need to live by letting them live wherever they want. True, there are better reasons - workers' rights, individual freedom and a more open political system - that justify getting rid of the residency requirement. But if those don't suffice, perhaps dollars and cents will.

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.