BAKER BUCKS
GOV, POLITO SPREAD $88M ACROSS BAY STATE AHEAD OF ELECTION DAY
The Baker administration has doled out more than $88 million in grants in cities and towns statewide in the past two weeks — in an all-out pre-election blitz that one financial watchdog called blatant “vote-buying.” Since Oct. 16, Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash have traveled to various parts of the state handing out 26 grants ranging from $100,000 to $4.9 million, generating positive local media coverage for infrastructure projects in the runup to Tuesday’s election. “Well, it’s obviously votebuying — that’s not a stretch,” said David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute. Citing the proximity to Tuesday’s election, he said, “What a coincidence.” The Baker-Polito campaign would not respond to questions about whether handing out the grants is a vote-getting strategy. The campaign and the governor’s office both directed comment to Ash’s office, which administers the
grants from MassWorks, a program that accounts for 21 of the announcements so far. “It’s a fall timeline,” Ash spokeswoman Colleen Arons said of the grants from MassWorks. The Baker-created program, which is in its fourth year, funds a range of capital projects for municipalities and other organizations. For MassWorks’ first two years, the awards largely came in November — after election season — but the state moved the timetable up starting in 2017, so the awards started being announced earlier. Ash’s office says that’s in response to feedback from the municipalities and developers, who wanted the funding in place earlier so they’d better be able to get started on work come springtime. The grants were handed in from Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, to Lee in the Berkshires — a nearly $5 million grant that made headlines in the Berkshire Eagle. Other cash dumps were made from Taunton near Rhode Island to Amesbury on the New Hampshire border. Yesterday saw Polito in the central Massachusetts town of Ashland delivering $3 million for road work, a day after Ash gave Kingston $3 million for a wastewater treatment plant and Scituate $2.2 million for stormwater and sewer work. The state plans 16 more MassWorks grant announcements in the coming weeks, according to Ash’s office. Much of the rest of the money comes from one big announcement Oct. 25 of $40 million in Chapter 90 money, which is distributed to cities and towns for road work. The remainder include a mix of other announcements, such as $1.3 million announced yesterday by Polito for upgrading law-enforcement technology. Baker is running against Democrat Jay Gonzalez, and polls have indicated the incumbent Republican is winning by a wide margin in his bid for a second term.