SANDED DOWN
Baker softens tone on construction bans
Gov. Charlie Baker appeared to stand down a day after pushing for cities including Boston to drop their construction bans amid the coronavirus.
“Boston and several other municipalities have said — and it’s a fair point — that they don’t believe that they’re in position at this point to do the work that would be associated with ensuring that those guidelines are being adhered to on the ground with all the projects that are either underway or planned,” Baker said in a press conference on Thursday.
“If you think about Boston in particular, they probably have somewhere between 10,000 or 11,000 construction workers working in the city at any point in time, and I’m very sympathetic to the mayor’s point of view,” Baker added.
But Baker’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment looking to clarify whether that means that he’s acquiescing to Boston and the other municipalities with bans to keep them.
This comes a day after Baker sought for cities and towns to get rid of their bans. On Wednesday, Baker’s chief legal counsel Robert Ross sent a letter to all of the chief executives of Massachusetts’ cities and towns, aimed at giving “guidance” over the order the governor issued on Monday that shut down all work deemed “non-essential.”
The letter singles out the construction industry, as portions of the order “designate construction projects as COVID-19 essential services” — though Boston, Cambridge, Somerville have put bans into place and not removed them.
“Local policies, regulations or directives that provide otherwise are in direct conflict with this Order and should be withdrawn,” the letter states.
But later on Wednesday, Mayor Martin Walsh doubled down on the city’s two-week ban on most construction, extending it indefinitely as the city works on rules for construction sites. Walsh said new policies have to be in place before the city will consider allowing the industry, which had been mid-boom, to restart.
“Construction is still not allowed in the city of Boston,” Walsh insisted Thursday in a conference call with small businesses.
Cambridge and Somerville both said they are maintaining their own construction bans.
Baker on Thursday noted that the feds also list infrastructure as essential.
He said the state has concerns “about the importance of many forms of construction as long as people act on the guidance that was issued by state agencies and by the command center to help people safe. There is a lot of work there that is, I’d argue, essential to the commonwealth, whether you’re talking about housing, or transportation or infrastructure.”
Suffolk Construction on Thursday announced that their Somerville High School worksite has had a third-party worker test positive for the virus in the days since Somerville shut work down.