Tom Keane

Should cars be taxed by the mile?

The state of Oregon is proposing an idea both brilliant and creepy: it wants to install monitoring devices in each resident’s automobile, tracking where they drive and taxing them by the mile. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s numerous revelations about spying by the National Security Agency, the scheme leaves many appalled. But it could just work.

Oregon, like Massachusetts, taxes motor fuels. It uses the revenues raised to maintain its roads and bridges. The motor fuel tax is a kind of user fee. Rather than everyone being charged for roadways, the burden falls on motorists. And even better, since the more you drive the more you pay, the burden falls heaviest on those who use the roads the most.

All of this once seemed sensible because the amount of fuel drivers purchased was a roughly accurate measure of how much they drove. But that’s changing. Drivers of fuel-efficient vehicles such as hybrids are, in effect, paying far less per mile traveled than are those using conventional cars. And those driving electric vehicles are in fact paying nothing. In Massachusetts, for example, the gas tax is 24 cents a gallon (fairly low compared to other states, by the way; close-by New York and Connecticut are at 50.6 cents and 45 cents). A Bay State car getting 20 miles per gallon is paying 1.2 cents a mile. But a hybrid fetching 50 miles per gallon is paying less than half a cent per mile driven.

If you think of the fuels tax as a mechanism for encouraging energy conservation, those numbers probably delight you. But new fuel-efficient cars mean gasoline consumption is already dropping, and as state roadway planners look ahead to even tougher federal mileage mandates, they worry that eventually revenues will be far less than they need.

So why not tax motorists directly for the miles they drive — a far fairer system than what we have now?

That’s what Oregon is trying to do, a first-in-the-nation experiment

Of course, if you’re prone to just a little bit of paranoia — and who isn’t these days? — the first thing that comes to mind is that now the government will be tracking your whereabouts any time you drive. Big Brother will be taking another giant step forward.

It’s a reasonable worry, so much so that Oregon requires that participating drivers can opt out of tracking devices and simply pay by taking a reading from their odometers (meaning, however, they’d be paying for out-of-state travel). And the state has also put in place a tough set of privacy requirements, including that personally identifiable information has to be destroyed within 30 days. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, which had originally expressed reservations, has now signed off.

Oregon’s tentative steps forward suggest the way we need to start approaching our fears about technology and privacy. EZ Pass transponders make toll collection simple, but they can also be used to figure out whether we’ve been speeding. Monitoring cameras help identify criminals, but could also make our daily lives grist for voyeurs. Drones, Facebook, Twitter, Google Glass, and smartphone apps all offer great benefits — as well as enormous risks.

The solution is legislation and regulation that robustly protects privacy and sharply limits the uses to which information can be put. Technology isn’t going away — nor should it. But careful approaches such as that taken by Oregon mean that one day we might all be paying road-mile fees — and not think twice about it.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on November 26, 2013.

More council power? Change city charter

Mayor-elect Martin Walsh says he’d like to see the Boston City Council become a “partner in government.” Councilors! Quick! Take him up on the offer before he changes his mind. You have nothing to lose but your irrelevance.

City councilors are accustomed to seeing themselves dismissed and derided. It is not that they individually lack merit. Many are smart, full of good ideas, and committed to Boston’s betterment. (How could I write otherwise? I was once a member of that august body.) But the council itself is structurally weak, at best (or worst, depending on one’s perspective) a minor nuisance for the mayor. The weakness is intentional, the product of a series of state laws that collectively make up what is sometimes called the city’s “charter.” As a result, mayors rule with near dictatorial power. They answer to the people in quadrennial elections, true, but once in office they essentially have the run of the place for the next four years.

There’s an easy way to change that: Amend the charter and grant the council a meaningful say over the city’s budget.

The key to political influence is the power of the purse. Each year, usually in early spring, the mayor proposes a city budget — right now, $2.6 billion. The council then busies itself with hearings, hauling in department heads and making them explain themselves. It makes for good theater, but at the end of a long process, the body has only three choices — accept the budget as is, disapprove it, or approve a lower total budget. What the council can’t do, however, is increase or decrease individual line items. Think that playgrounds need more funds for maintenance? You can ask for it but you can’t require it. Upset about some particularly outrageous spending by the administration? You can complain, but you can’t cut it. (The council could exercise the third option — reduce the entire budget — but the mayor, not councilors, would control what actually was cut.)

Granted, good information can be gleaned from hearings. And councilors can use the prominence of their position — the bully pulpit — to on occasion shame the mayor into changing a few items. But because the council’s authority is so limited, the mayor can easily pick off votes, cutting side deals with individual members to gain their approval without having to change the basic budget itself. Since where and how much one spends is fundamentally a reflection of priorities and vision, the budget ultimately reflects the mayor’s priorities and the mayor’s vision. Councilors just nibble around the edges.

The weakness of Boston’s City Council is an exception to a general rule. Most legislative bodies operate on a far more equal plane to their executive branches. On the federal and state levels, Congress and the Legislature have clout when it comes to determining annual budgets. Other cities — New York and Washington, D.C., for instance — also give their councils far more authority.

Doing so in Boston would be a straightforward proposition. The council would pass what’s known as a home-rule petition, proposing a state law to give itself line-item authority. The mayor would sign it and then the city would send it to the state. If the Legislature and governor approved, the city charter would be amended. Suddenly, Mayor Walsh would have the partnership he said he wanted.

Dream on. I suspect Walsh’s notion of a partnership with the council is the same as when parents tell their children they should make their own decisions — that’s fine as long as they do what we want them to do. A home-rule petition along the lines I describe would enhance the council’s influence but, of course, it also would diminish the authority of the mayor. It would mean a real partnership, where power is truly shared. It would mean sometimes — indeed, often — the mayor wouldn’t get his way. To be frank, it’s hard to see why Walsh would agree to give up the power of the position he just won.

But perhaps he is sincere. The opening is there and the council should consider taking Walsh at his word. It’s either that or remain the equivalent of a backup quarterback: well paid, eager to help, and watching from the sidelines.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on November 24, 2013.

A wide-open governor's race

Three years ago, commentator Glenn Beck called him “the second-most dangerous man in America,” a label Don Berwick carries with pride. “I was insulted. I think I should have been first,” he wryly says. Berwick is speaking to a crowd of perhaps 20, gathered in a semicircle around him. It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon in November and we’re at a house party, the classic set piece of grass-roots politics. Berwick is introducing himself and his ambition: to be Massachusetts’ next governor.

A few weeks ago, there were rumors circulating that Massachusetts Democrats were going to clear the gubernatorial field for Martha Coakley, the attorney general whose career has resurrected itself from the ashes of her 2010 loss to Scott Brown. Certainly the party had done so before. The 2012 race for US Senate saw several decent candidates pushed aside to make way for Elizabeth Warren. Just months after her win, the party attempted the same maneuver in a second Senate race, this time for the benefit of Ed Markey. One candidate — the irascible Stephen Lynch — refused to comply, but still the establishment favorite cruised to victory.

The Republicans already know who their candidate will be — Charlie Baker, same as four years ago — and some Democrats wish they could focus their attention on him and avoid the family squabble that is a primary election. But Coakley now finds herself embroiled in a mess involving the Federal Election Commission. Her anointment seems unlikely, meaning the governor’s race is wide open.

Coakley’s missteps may be unfortunate for her but should benefit Democrats as a whole. After eight years of Governor Deval Patrick, the Democratic Party needs to figure out what’s next. The City of Boston just finished a robust election with 12 candidates in the preliminary race and two in a hotly contested final. The process was bracing and salubrious. Competition shouldn’t be feared.

Five Democrats want to be governor. Coakley and Treasurer Steve Grossman are the best known, the ones for whom the job of governor seems the next logical step up the political ladder. Others include surgeon and health care executive Joe Avellone, homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem (also a former columnist for this newspaper), and, of course, Berwick.

Berwick’s house party listeners are interested and engaged, some pushing back with hard questions. He handles it all with aplomb, a mild-mannered man with a hint of steel, a surprisingly good speaker for someone new to the political hustings. Already, though, he’s familiar with the house party routine. He’s attended dozens so far and there will be more, perhaps hundreds more. They are doubtless a grind, but a necessary one, a way to connect, learn, and network. Berwick wouldn’t mind a few donations, naturally — that’s modern politics. But this isn’t a fundraiser. Most guests are uncommitted, there simply to listen and assess.

Berwick makes a good case for himself. He’s a pediatrician who has become one of the world’s experts in improving health care systems and also spent 17 months running Medicare and Medicaid for the Obama administration (it was there that he earned Glenn Beck’s ire). But Berwick pitches himself as less about health care than about problem solving. His is an activist vision of government, one that tackles huge, seemingly intractable issues. He is not for the faint of heart; why not finally end poverty, he wonders.

Berwick’s notion of government may be out of step with the rest of the country but not, perhaps, with Massachusetts. The Commonwealth is doing well, its economy humming despite — or perhaps because of — its progressive bent of politics. Berwick points out the many times the Bay State has been a model for the rest of the nation — from political leadership to health care reform to same-sex marriage — and thinks the nation needs its example again. The room is abuzz after he concludes his remarks. On such small events are winning campaigns built.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on November 19, 2013.

Boston schools improve, but not enough

Boston says its schools are getting better. Critics say they’re awful. The data suggest they’re both right. Boston’s schools have improved over the last few years. But they are nowhere near good enough.

The numbers come straight from the Boston school system itself. Several years ago the city agreed to a collaboration with private funders that included some of the region’s top charities — The Boston Foundation, the Barr Foundation, Catholic Charities, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the United Way, as well as a number of local businesses. (Disclosure: I work for a D.C. nonprofit that provides early childhood education.) The public-private collaboration bills itself as the Boston Opportunity Agenda. The funders and the city settled on seven key benchmarks they hoped would generate reliable measures that got beyond anecdotes and politically driven agendas. The 2008-2009 school year was their “base” year, and they set goals for 2013-2014.

If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, the good news is there’s been progress. The number of 10th graders passing the MCAS — a critical step to high-school graduation — grew from 44 percent to 55 percent last year (although some changes in MCAS standards means that’s not as good as it seems). Dropout rates are down slightly. Early literacy climbed to 59 percent. Third-grade reading is up from 2009 (but actually down from 2012). In some cases there’s been a big jump. For example, the number of kids enrolled in Algebra 1 (considered a necessary step to getting into college) grew from 4 percent in 2009 to 38 percent last year.

Don’t get too excited, however. Compare last year’s scores to the goals the school system set for itself for June 2014 — that’s this school year, mind you. Most are wide of the mark and barring some miracle (and no one expects one), they won’t be hit.

One exception is Algebra 1; the goal is just 40 percent and should be easy to attain. The other is college completion rates, a complicated measure. The city’s hope is that 70 percent of those who enter college will graduate within six years. We actually won’t know whether that’s achieved until 2017 (that is, six years after the class of 2011 left high school), but there’s some reason to believe it can be met. If so, that’s the product of an enormous effort made by those involved in the Opportunity Agenda to help coach Boston students as they pursue their post-high-school studies. College can be intimidating and it appears that one-on-one help can make a difference.

But it’s not good enough. Right now, about 76 percent of Boston Public School graduates matriculate to college. If we achieve the goal of 70 percent of those students actually going on to graduate from college, that still means that, overall, only 53 percent of BPS graduates will get a college degree.

Why does all of this matter? Consider this striking fact: Back in 1973, just 28 percent of all jobs required some education after high school. By 2020, 65 percent will need it, according to an estimate by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Moreover, the quality of jobs varies markedly depending on one’s education. Adults with only a high school degree earn an average of $652 a week, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, while those with a bachelor’s degree earn $1,066.

In addition, adults with college degrees find it far easier to get and hold a job. In 2012 the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree was a remarkably low 4.5 percent. Those with a high school degree only were almost double, at 8.3 percent. (And those without a high school degree? A whopping 12.4 percent were unemployed.)

So I look at these numbers from the Opportunity Agenda and draw the following conclusions: Given the course we are on, the best case is that about half of Boston public school kids will get through college and become part of the middle class. The rest will be consigned to low wages, high unemployment, and grinding uncertainty about their lives.

Cheer if you want about the upticks in the latest report card. But it’s like going from an F to a D. No one should be happy.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on November 17, 2013.

The privacy line

Three years ago, I was one of those who objected when the Transportation Services Administration rolled out dramatic new security measures, including “near-naked” full-body screening and aggressive patdowns. Others protested too, but eventually — what choice did we have? — we fell in line. If you fly, you know the routine: belts, shoes, and jackets off, pockets empty, laptops out, lotions in a plastic bag, assume-the-position for the body scan and, after all that, there’s still a good chance for a re-screening. You’d be amazed the trouble a bottle of Poland Spring can cause.

Last week I’m queuing up for security when an agent directs me to another line. I wonder what I’ve done wrong but start removing my shoes anyway. “No, you can keep them on,” a TSA screener says. Coat? Keep that on too. Computer? Stays in the bag. Even my glasses. Usually in my shirt pocket, they almost always trip me up. No longer. The only thing I need to send through separately is my smartphone. And instead of a full-body scan I simply walk through a standard-issue metal detector.

I’m elated, feeling as if I’ve just avoided some dreaded hazing and gained back a measure of freedom. But it turns out that this freedom itself comes at great cost.

Two years ago, the TSA began a program called PreCheck, which allowed a select few to bypass regular security lines. Enrollment was tough and included an extensive background check. This year the agency has decided to expand PreCheck, hoping by the end of the year to have about 25 percent of the traveling public using the faster and less-intrusive screening. Clearly, a quarter of travelers aren’t going to go through background checks within a month and a half, so instead the TSA is working with airlines’ frequent-flyer programs, inviting members to participate based on their traveling history. There’s nothing for the passenger to do but agree, and the agency does the rest.

The new program makes enormous sense. In the aftermath of 9/11, as the TSA was created and security dramatically escalated, some people suggested that it was foolish to target everyone. Just go after those with a swarthy appearance, they said, the ones who look like they might be from the Mideast. The bigotry of the argument notwithstanding, it was also foolish; remember Timothy McVeigh? And besides, terrorists could readily exploit such crude distinctions. If we had a policy of exempting, say, seniors, the disabled, men in business suits, and the like, then such folks would easily be recruited.

Still, there is something to the claim that not everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. Rather than asking who it thinks to be unsafe, however, the TSA is doing the reverse, trying to figure out who is actually safe. If you fly a lot, if you’ve got a stable job, if your credit rating is strong — all of these become indicators that you are probably not a danger. By using lots of data to exclude those who are unlikely to be a threat, screeners can focus their attentions on those about whom there is less certainty. Everyone, seemingly, ends up winning.

However, the only way to qualify for PreCheck is to let the TSA learn an awful lot about you. And as the push grows to include ever more of the flying public in the program, the TSA will have to have available to it all sorts of information: not only flight records, but also financial data, tax returns, family status, employment history, living situations. No question, all of those data collected together would provide a good profile about whether someone is going to be a danger or not. But it’s also breathtakingly intrusive.

Earlier this year, while defending the National Security Administration’s widespread spying efforts, President Obama talked about the “tradeoffs” between security and privacy. The right to travel is an inherent American freedom, something we usually do without any background checks. But with PreCheck, that right increasingly comes only if we are willing to allow further expansion of the government’s surveillance of its citizens. Sadly, I suspect, most of us — and perhaps me too — will do as we’ve done before: shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to yet another tradeoff.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on November 13, 2013.

Election Results

Connolly’s mistakes: Focusing on one issue and playing nice

The funny thing about elections is that the moment they are over we look back and regard their results as inevitable. Actually, we do this with much of life. It was hardly inevitable that the Red Sox won the 2013 World Series. But for a few well-timed hits (particularly a three-run homer by Gomes in Game 4), the Duck Boats wouldn’t have been rolling on Boylston Street. But now in our mind’s eye we think the Sox a team of destiny.

The same is true of Boston’s mayoral race. Loser John Connolly says he has no regrets — “I would run it the same way” — but, with a margin of only 4,908 votes separating him from winner Marty Walsh, the result was hardly foreordained. There are two big lessons to be drawn from the Connolly-Walsh matchup. One is that single-issue candidacies are perilous. The second is that playing nice is no formula for success.

The one thing almost all voters knew about Connolly was that he would be the “education mayor.” Education had been his theme ever since he entered politics, and he based his entire candidacy around the need for dramatic reform of Boston’s schools. That’s great and worthwhile, but it’s not enough.

Education reform is like environmental protection: Everyone agrees with it in general, but there are a lot of disputes about the specifics. As bad as Boston schools might be, there are many people — and a lot of them Boston voters — with a stake in the current system. That includes school teachers, administrators, and even those with children in the system who, having figured out how to make it work for themselves, don’t want to rock the boat. Small changes are fine; wholesale reform scares them.

Then too, there are a lot of folks unmoved by the issue. Cities and towns around Massachusetts frequently try for overrides of Proposition 2 ½ to boost school spending. Almost always, the vote cuts across demographic lines: people with young kids vote yes, those without kids — or those whose kids are grown up — vote no. Senior citizens, for example, are one of the biggest and most reliable voting blocs in Boston. For them, education reform was far down the list; they could legitimately worry that spending more on schools would mean less spending less on their own needs.

Connolly had probably already won over the city’s young moms and dads back when he first announced in February. A better approach — and one that Walsh took in the final — would have been to drop the unrelenting focus on education and start playing interest-group politics. Identify voting blocs, find out what they wanted, and woo them. It’s not necessarily the most inspiring strategy. But coalition-building wins elections. Just ask the mayor-elect.

Winning campaigns are also unafraid to put on brass knuckles. Walsh was the beneficiary of an enormous amount of outside spending. That spending got him a lot, from TV ads to paid pollworkers, helping Walsh get his message out and also allowing him to go negative without actually seeming to get his hands dirty. (His hands were dirty though; no one involved in politics really believes that independent expenditures are truly independent.)

Connolly should have done the same. In August an outside group, Stand for Children, announced it would spend $500,000 on Connolly’s behalf. After some dithering, Connolly stood on principle, saying outside money shouldn’t be involved and forced the group to back off. It made a good sound bite, but unless your opponent plays by the same rules, it’s more like unilateral disarmament. Money matters in elections. All things being equal (and these were two remarkably equal candidates) the guy with the most money wins. Put differently, consider this: Could a half million or more of additional spending have swayed 2,455 voters? My guess is yes — and if so, Connolly would be the one taking office in January.

I know. All of this sounds a bit cynical. Why not run on grand issues like education? Why not take principled stands in favor of clean and positive elections? The answers lie in the results. Connolly’s campaign was a test case for those approaches, and he lost. Future candidates take note.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on November 10, 2013.

Stores restored

With a sales tax on purchases, online retailers lose advantage

JUST IN time for the holiday shopping season, online behemoth Amazon.com has increased its prices to Massachusetts residents by over 6 percent — 6.25 percent, to be precise. The mall or the corner store look ever more attractive.

The price hike is not something Amazon wanted. Since the dawn of the Internet age, online retailers with no physical presence in a state were able to avoid charging their customers sales taxes. In places like tax-free New Hampshire, that didn’t matter much. But it was a big deal in Massachusetts. Buy a $100 coffeemaker at the mall, and it’s really $106.25. Buy it online, and it’s just $100. For most customers, the choice is easy, and so Internet sales boomed — leaving brick-and-mortar retailers struggling.

The rules have now changed. Amazon owns a few properties in the Bay State, enough for state tax officials to start making demands. After some negotiation, Amazon agreed to start charging a sales tax, which went into effect last Friday.

The agreement applies only to Amazon. Unless they too are located in the state, other online stores are still exempt. And oddly, even Amazon doesn’t always charge the tax. As most frequent users likely know, other vendors often sell products through Amazon’s website. From a user’s point of view, it’s seamless. You’re still buying through Amazon; the company usually fulfills the order, in fact. But those other storefronts don’t charge sales tax. Amazon, it appears, has put itself at a real disadvantage.

Yet the company went into this with eyes wide open. As it has expanded, setting up new offices and distribution centers across the country, it’s had to cut deals with officials in other states. Massachusetts is hardly alone; Amazon now charges sales tax to residents of 15 other states as well.

It could be that Amazon is just cleverer than everyone else. The world, it figures, is changing, pushed by the demands of in-store retailers for tax parity and the hunger of state tax officials for ever more revenue. Indeed, breaking ranks with most Internet retailers, Amazon now supports federal legislation that would effectively close the tax loopholes online stores have long enjoyed. With large inventories, a robust infrastructure, and the ability to deliver quickly, Amazon figures it will have a significant edge over its Internet competitors.

Perhaps. But having been down so long, it is the brick-and-mortar competitors who may now have the edge.

Local retailers know well the galling phenomenon of consumers coming in, checking out the products on display and then — using apps such as PriceCheck — going online to make their purchases. But if there’s no difference in price, why not just buy at the store?

Consumer surveys, such as a recent one conducted by Wanderful Media, find that customers generally like online stores for their pricing but otherwise prefer the in-store shopping experience. There’s good reason for that. Brick-and-mortar stores offer immediate gratification; no one likes waiting a few days for their package to be delivered. They allow you to feel and touch a product as well. And, of course, it’s easier to make returns or exchanges in-store. Yes, if the shoes you got from Zappos.com don’t fit, you can always send them back. But that requires a lengthy round-robin of exchanges until you finally find a size that works. It’s a lot easier to just go to a real store.

One thing online stores do well, however, is product research. Look up an item on Amazon, for instance, and you’ll find full specs, possible alternatives, and often hundreds of consumer reviews. Thus it is that online and brick-and-mortar stores could someday find their positions reversed: Customers will look for products online, but then drive into their local store to pick them up. The end of the sales tax loophole may mean that Cyber Monday is soon be a thing of the past. Black Friday rules.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on November 5, 2013.

A welcome end to a civil campaign

Some thoughts before the polls open on Tuesday.

■ It’s been an energizing race for Boston mayor.

The electoral challenges Mayor Tom Menino faced in his 20-year term were, on reflection, dull affairs. No fault to those candidates, but when the vote is a foregone conclusion, no one actually is paying attention. This time around, with a new mayor a certainty, there’s been some real intellectual substance from the candidates and real engagement by the electorate. New ideas have been put forth, priorities identified, and people have had to do some hard thinking about what they want Boston’s next chapter to be. It’s been kind of fun. Hey, maybe we should do it more often!

■ It’s getting kind of boring.

On the other hand, enough. The best part of the race was the stretch that ended with the September preliminary, featuring a slew of candidates from interesting backgrounds, almost all of whom came across as credible leaders of the city. Since that vote, the face-off between John Connolly and Marty Walsh has been kind of a grind. They started off being nice to each other but as the days have worn down to a few, there’s been more sniping and less idealism. Fatigue has set in. Let’s get it over with.

■ The most important issue has been barely discussed.

Once newly installed, the first big test for the new mayor will be this: When the first storm arrives, can he get the streets plowed? Forget the grand promises and new programs. “Urban mechanic” Tom Menino figured out early that most people just want a city that works. Pick up trash, shovel walks, keep traffic lights lit, fill potholes. For a variety of reasons, urban mayors these days are more managers than anything else, and we hardly have any idea how either Connolly or Walsh would perform on that score. Whoever wins will be under pressure to install their own; there are a lot of key supporters expecting jobs. But just because you can leaflet a neighborhood doesn’t mean you can run the Public Works Department.

■ Leadership means following.

The looming possibility of a casino in East Boston has been an issue all year, one on which each candidate has taken a pass. East Boston residents are voting Tuesday to approve it or not, yet when pressed about what they would recommend, both Connolly and Walsh have demurred, offering up instead weak platitudes about respecting the neighborhood’s choice. I understand the politics of the dodge — why wade into a fight your opponent is sure to exploit? — but the lack of leadership on a matter that impacts the entire city is troubling. Chalk it up to the campaign, perhaps, but it raises questions about the political courage of both men.

■ They really are different.

Connolly and Walsh kicked off the final in late September seeming like two white, Irish-American peas in a pod. They don’t appear that way anymore. Significant differences have emerged on everything from temperament to policies to priorities. Where once voters almost saw them as a coin toss — either one would do, which accounted for the large numbers of undecideds — now the lines have hardened and the passions for one or the other have grown. That, of course, is one of the reasons we have political campaigns. They reveal a lot about the candidates.

■ Class creeps in.

In the closing days of the campaign, there has been a shift in strategies from the Walsh camp — he’s run to the left and, in doing so, has tried to portray Connolly as rich, elitist, and out-of-touch. It’s entirely fiction; indeed, Walsh’s compensation — including $175,000 as head of the building trades — dwarfs Connolly’s. Even worse, it’s an effort to create an us-versus-them dynamic that splits the city along a variety of lines: race, ethnicity, geography, education, and even whether one was born in Boston or just moved here. The preliminary race was a model of inclusion. The final has become far more divisive, and Walsh should be ashamed for making it so.

■ You call this negative?

Notwithstanding the above, though, this has been a remarkably civil campaign, especially when compared to other recent statewide or (in particular) national races. Boston’s been lucky.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on November 3, 2013.