Tom Keane

Rhode Island’s fool’s game with Curt Schilling

I have never felt so proud to be a Massachusetts resident upon hearing how Curt Schilling snookered Rhode Island.

An overstatement, perhaps. But still, the Commonwealth is coming out a rose on this one. Rhode Island is staring in the face of a possible $75 million (or more) loss to its taxpayers after Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios LLC, just defaulted on a $1.1 million loan payment due the state. Meanwhile, Massachusetts (the Evergreen Solar state, lest one forget our own transgressions) improbably looks to be a fount of conservative, fiscal rectitude. How did we manage to pull that off?

Schilling (Martha Coakley’s favorite Yankee fan), a pitcher of no small renown who is also a video game fanatic, started up 38 Studios (nee Green Monster Games) in 2006, basing it in Maynard. Even while he was still with the Red Sox, it sometimes seemed as if Schilling’s true passion was less on-the-field than it was on-the-couch. A few years after leaving the game of baseball, Schilling set up a new game in 2010: tug-of-war, one that pit the Bay State against the Ocean State.

Rhode Island pulled first, proffering a $75 million loan guarantee to 38 Studios if it would move operations to the state. In effect, that guarantee was an investment in the company — the state’s credit rating got 38 Studios the money and it was the state’s citizens who were on the hook for any losses.

Schilling then went back to Massachusetts to see what it would offer. He had a pretty compelling case. He was, after all, a near demi-god; the man whose bloody sock broke The Curse. And Massachusetts, desperate to pump up its “creative economy” industries, was eager to become a video gaming hotspot. Plus, there was the potential embarrassment and political fallout of losing out to Rhode Island.

And incredibly, Massachusetts refused to play.

There were talks, but they didn’t come to much. “It was very hard to get to anyone,” Schilling complained at the time. Granted, back then the state was broke and it didn’t have in place a loan program along the lines of Rhode Island’s. Still, if it had wanted to, it could have come up with something. Instead, Housing & Economic Development Secretary Gregory Bialecki said through a spokesperson, “We are not willing to get into a bidding war.”

Kudos to Bialecki and the state for resisting. Rhode Island’s deal was never a good one: $75 million for a pure startup promising 450 jobs (which works out to a hard-to-believe $166,000 for each new hire). Even many in Rhode Island — including current Governor Lincoln Chafee — were opposed. (One has to feel sorry for Chafee, who is now in the unhappy position of trying to fix a mess left by his predecessor — and prime advocate of the loan guarantee — Donald Carcieri.)

Still, the problem with Rhode Island’s loan guarantee to 38 Studios isn’t that it was a bad deal. It’s that the state had no business doing it in the first place.

States love to compete against each other for economic development, using loan guarantees, tax breaks, and other favors to lure companies away. It’s a fool’s game. Absent extraordinary circumstances (such as a failure of capital markets), making such investments in individual businesses is the province of private investors, not government. (The unwillingness of private investors to put money in 38 Studios itself speaks volumes.) Government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers. Indeed, it is uniquely unsuited for the job. Success to investors is measured by profits. Success to government is measured differently — jobs created, taxes collected, social welfare, environmental concerns, and so on. When the two conflict (e.g., if productivity improvements mean shedding jobs), government will be under pressure to make decisions that undermine the long-term profitability of a company.

The best way for states to improve their economies is to make conditions better for all businesses, not just a favored few. Companies need government to create educated employees, good infrastructure, safe communities, level playing fields, fair taxes, and predictable rules. Do those things well, and local economies will grow. Rhode Island would have been better off building new schools than the Kingdoms of Amalur.

 This column originally appeared on the Boston Globe's op-ed page on May 19, 2012.

The Boston waterfront has arrived

It feels like the newest, coolest, and most vibrant part of the city, pulsating with activity, suddenly crammed with tourists — and even longtime Boston residents.

Boston’s waterfront has exploded in the public consciousness. It feels like the newest, coolest, and most vibrant part of the city, pulsating with activity, suddenly crammed with tourists — and even longtime Boston residents — who marvel at newly discovered delights around every corner of its 47 miles.

That’s right: 47 miles. The waterfront stretches from the southernmost tip of Dorchester through South Boston, to downtown, the North End, Charlestown, and finally to East Boston. Eighty-five percent of the shore is pedestrian-friendly, part of the groundbreaking public way known as the HarborWalk. New apartments and condos are popping up everywhere, notably in South Boston, but also, hopefully, East Boston. And the list of attractions along its course is staggering. There are the marquee names (the USS Constitution, the Aquarium, the soon-to-reopen Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum), parks galore (including the launching point to one of the most stunning of them all, the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area), and myriad smaller amusements (tasting room of Harpoon Brewery, anyone?). And, of course, there are the retailers and restaurants that stretch its length, upscale and everyday, famous chefs and casual cooks. More are slated as eager businessmen and women, sensing money to be made, realize that the waterfront, no longer ignored and neglected, has arrived.

It’s been a long time coming. When road builders in the 1950s erected the “highway in the sky” — the elevated expressway — the land they chose lay right along the edge of the harbor. “Waterfront simply wasn’t valued,” says Richard Dimino, Boston’s transportation commissioner from 1985 to 1993 and now head of the business association A Better City. By 1988, the region’s abuse of Boston Harbor — widely known as “the dirtiest harbor in America” — was a national story, an attack line used by Vice President George H.W. Bush that helped derail the White House ambitions of Governor Michael Dukakis. “Two hundred years ago, tea was spilled in this harbor,” Bush said on a chartered boat in Boston that year. “Now it’s something else.” He was, sadly, correct. The harbor was little more than the metropolitan area’s sewer, a dead, stinking zone that repulsed anyone who got near.

But even as Bush was beating up on Dukakis, things were changing. A series of lawsuits brought in the mid-1980s resulted in a decision by US District Judge A. David Mazzone forcing a cleanup. Many years and more than $4.5 billion later, things are different. Since the new Deer Island sewage treatment plant began going online in 1995, the harbor has been restored by measures obvious (smells and floating feces) and not-so-obvious (water quality and the return of marine life). It has become today, almost unbelievably so, what the Environmental Protection Agency called “a great American jewel.”

But making the harbor into a place folks could love didn’t mean they could actually enjoy it. The elevated expressway, unregulated development, and years of mistreatment had left the waterfront almost inaccessible. And landowners along the way had built right up to the water’s edge. So even if people could get to the water, there weren’t many places they could go without hitting a dead end.

On a Monday night in late April, several hundred folks gather at the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf for a fund-raiser on behalf of The Boston Harbor Association, one of many advocacy groups that for years fought often lonely battles on behalf of the harbor. The association’s signature issue was the HarborWalk, a project that had its genesis under Mayor Raymond Flynn and focused on one simple goal: Make the entire waterfront accessible to the public.

The plan had an element of the quixotic to it (who even cared about the harbor?), with proponents often belittled as they harangued landowners over something that seemed so inconsequential. But that’s changed, as evidenced by the heavyweight guest list for this event, one that features financiers, developers, and senior government officials. The fund-raiser, billing itself a “celebration,” bubbles with the enthusiasm of those who see a long-sought objective within reach.

On a bright Saturday afternoon, I walk portions of the waterfront with the association’s president, Vivien Li. The HarborWalk is filled with pedestrians and bicyclists. Families picnic. Couples stroll hand in hand. Li points out the new headquarters for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, two 18-story buildings under construction near the ICA; empty sites ready for hotels and housing; and the location of the $5.5 million Boston Innovation Center, which would have its groundbreaking on May 1.

The HarborWalk is one critical piece of infrastructure that helps make the waterfront accessible, but certainly not the only one. The most visible efforts, in fact, were the tearing down of the elevated expressway in 2003 and 2004 and the construction of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Where once there was a huge, green barrier (Mayor Thomas Menino used to call it “Boston’s other green monster”), now clean water beckons, aided by the city’s own “crossroads initiative” to reconnect its streets to the shoreline.

Then, too, there is the much-mocked Silver Line, a mass-transit link between Logan International Airport and South Station. The stations on the South Boston Waterfront initially seemed oversize and unneeded. Now, as cranes loom above them, they are better understood as a lure attracting billions of dollars in investment.

There are still risks. Development is concentrated on the South Boston Waterfront, but while the money is largely in place, another financial crisis like the one in 2008 could derail everything. The city has big ideas for new dwellings in East Boston, but they are still dreams that depend, in part, on a successful rollout of a water shuttle that would connect Maverick Square to Fan Pier. And there is a kind of chicken-and-egg problem that confronts the creation of any neighborhood. People are attracted to areas where there are basic amenities — supermarkets, for example. But those amenities won’t open until there are actually new residents. Residents and retailers both need to make a leap of faith.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that Boston’s center of gravity is shifting, moving away from Back Bay and downtown and toward the harbor. There is something about the water that stirs the soul, and it is remarkable how for so long Boston had figuratively turned its back on that water. Today, the city is reorienting itself.

None of this happened by accident. While many players had significant roles, the waterfront’s revival was fundamentally driven by good government — a phrase you don’t hear much these days. It is, argues former city councilor Lawrence DiCara, a shining example of how “activist government triggers economic development.” The story is a complex one, but the shorthand version is that it required the leadership of a succession of politicians and agencies — federal, state and local. That roster included, notably, Menino and the city’s planning agency, the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The aim was to do it right — there wouldn’t be second chances — so everyone took a long and measured view. “We could have done it earlier,” says Menino, “but we were choosy.”

The BRA has suffered its slings and arrows; it is still, one BRA planner laments, “haunted by the West End,” the tragic decision to demolish an entire neighborhood during the 1950s era of urban renewal. The waterfront, a series of new neighborhoods unfolding before us, may well exorcise those ghosts.

 Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine on May 13, 2012.

The thin veneer of civilization

The Bruins lose, and a swarm of racist tweets targets the black Washington Capitals player who scored the winning goal. Five near-naked, shivering Boston University students are found in an Allston basement, victims of a fraternity hazing. Middle- and high-school students torment their fellow students on Facebook and other social media, pushing some to misery, others — such as South Hadley’s Phoebe Prince — to suicide.

Bostonians have been patting themselves on the back for some time now, telling pretty much anyone who would listen how the city has changed since the bad old days of busing. That self-congratulation is now on hold as the old doubts come back.

So too, the recent spate of hazing incidents (others include a stomach-churning account from Dartmouth College and — proving it’s not just a guy thing — a brutal incident at Penn State) raises questions. These are some of the country’s finest schools, populated, presumably, by some of the country’s best and brightest. Yet what kind of ethics do these college students have? After four years of learning how best to torment their fellow students, one shudders to think of the harm they’ll wreak after graduation.

Meanwhile, bullying in grade school is reaching what some call epidemic levels. The federal government, for example, estimates that it happens to at least 20 percent — and perhaps as many as 28 percent — of all children.

One can advance a host of explanations for what’s going on. Maybe hockey fans are just more boorish. Perhaps frats and sororities attract the sociopathic. And grade schoolers are just barely past the age of reason, perhaps unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

All those speculations may be true, but what I really think is this: In every case, they thought they could get away with it.

The tweeters believed themselves to be anonymous. (An error embraced by seemingly all of the digerati is that online communications are private. In fact — as the tweeters themselves are learning — they are not.) Members of fraternities and sororities are in a world reminiscent of “The Lord of the Flies,’’ acting as if — having left the strictures of home but not yet living in the real world — their behavior has no consequences. Children on Facebook and other social media also believe themselves anonymous. Bullying — in the past more directly confrontational — has now become cyberbullying, with levels of cruelty far greater than the pushes and shoves of a pre-Internet world.

One can see this as well in the comments pages of online newspapers and magazines. When commentators believe themselves to be nameless, they will flame and insult with abandon, saying things they almost certainly wouldn’t say to someone face-to-face. Make those same commentators identify themselves, and the vitriol (and number of comments) drops sharply.

It’s enough to make one despair. The veneer of civilization, it appears, is remarkably thin, a front we put on when others are paying attention. But if we think we are unobserved, if we think there are no penalties to behaving badly, the ugly side of our nature emerges.

But this may be too grim of a conclusion. Consider another form of anonymity: the ballot box. During the 2008 election, few if any admitted their votes would be affected by race. But how many actually were? Last November, a novel study conducted by Harvard researcher Seth Stephens-Davidowitz concluded that racism cost Obama between 3 to 5 percentage points of the vote.

That’s not good, but it’s not bad either. The converse conclusion of Stephens-Davidowitz’ study is that at least 95 percent of voters made their decisions without regard to race. A generation ago, that almost certainly wouldn’t have been the case. Today, it appears, racism is now not only socially unacceptable, but a vast majority of people have internalized that standard as well.

So yes, the tweets after the Bruins’ loss were disturbing. But not everyone with a Twitter account posted racist tweets — only a few. I suspect that the same is true of bullying and hazing. It happens and it’s awful, but it doesn’t mean civilization is on the verge of collapse. Just because anonymity causes some people to behave badly doesn’t mean all of us do.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on May 5, 2012.