Just Before Recess, Walsh And Allies Push For Greater City Authority For Speed Limits And Liquor

The city of Boston and the other 350 municipalities in Massachusetts could come out the current state legislative session a bit more powerful than before if Boston Mayor Marty Walsh can push through measures meant to empower local officials.

Walsh is backing proposals that would give Boston greater control over its speed limits and liquor licensing, two powers the Legislature has clung to for decades.

"We are at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis other great cities in this country and arguably in the world, because of these puritanical, antediluvian relationships between the city and the state,"  Former Boston City Councillor Larry DiCara, who's been fighting to get local control of liquor licensing for 40 years, told WGBH News.

Walsh's liquor license push has riled some of his former colleagues from the Boston delegation, who are urging lawmakers to keep the status quo because they say representatives and senators know their districts best.

In a letter to members of the six-person panel that will reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill, Rep. Michael Moran of Brighton argues that a neighborhood's elected state lawmakers are better suited to make decisions over where to place liquor-selling establishments. Another version of the bill called for every municipality but Boston to gain local control over licensing. Boston won additional licenses during the last session in the Legislature and is on track to hand out more this fall.

"Allowing the city of Boston which is already scheduled to increase licenses again on September 1, 2016... will prove detrimental to the neighborhoods we represent in the city," the July 20 letter reads.

Moran told The Boston Globe this week that Walsh had been in the Massachusetts House "for 16 years and he never filed this once. Apparently, it wasn’t that burning an issue when he was a rep.”

DiCara says the laws date back to colonial-era limits on inns and taverns and then from Prohibition-era laws from a mostly-Yankee state Legislature trying to stifle a mostly-Irish American City Hall.

"It's the 21st Century and Boston is one of the great cities of the world," DiCara said. "We should be able to determine our destiny in terms of how many licenses, where they're located, how late they're open. Those are decisions which the other cities of the world make on their own behalf."

DiCara said Walsh had had some success prying power from Beacon Hill when he successfully lobbied to get the liquor licensing board appointed by City Hall instead of the State House.

"With all due respect to my friends in the Legislature, they have plenty else to worry about than liquor licenses in Boston," DiCara said.

Another proposed law backed by Walsh would let cities and towns reduce speeds in thickly settled areas from 30 miles per hour to 25, and in specially designated zones down to 20.

Residents in Rep. Dan Hunt's Dorchester neighborhood are complaining louder than ever about drivers speeding by. It's happening more, they say, because phone apps are leading drivers down side roads not designed as cut-throughs.

That, combined with more pedestrians and bicyclists, has created a growing safety problem in Boston.

"In 2015 there were over 4,000 cyclists/pedestrian accidents and that resulted in 23 deaths and that's just in 2015," Hunt said.

Hunt says those speed limits would only affect side roads and residential streets, not places where 30 and above are normal.

"People are concerned that this is going to focus on major thoroughfares or straightaways and that's not what we're talking about," Hunt said.

City Councillor Frank Baker is also pushing for the speed limit change.

Critics say cracking down on speed limits wouldn't be the best place for Boston Police to spend their resources, but Hunt says signs and speed bumps could go a long way to slowing people down.

"My goal is that no tickets will be written on this and that people will observe the posted speed limits," Hunt said. "Right now on side streets, 30 miles per hour if you have cars on both sides, that's actually quite fast."

There's no guarantee the bill will get through both branches before lawmakers recess for the year at the end of the month.

Hunt does not support including Boston in the bill to allow municipal control over liquor licensing this session, but would be supportive of an effort and a larger discussion of licensing reform when the next session begins in 2017.