Meet the new board
Healey overhauls Convention Center Authority
As Gov. Maura Healey swore in her seven new appointees to the board of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority on Tuesday, they were joined by another new member who had already been quietly appointed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
Boston City Councilor Michael Flaherty, who earlier this month announced he wouldn’t seek reelection after two decades on the council, was introduced as a new member of the board that oversees two convention centers in Boston, the MassMutual Center in Springfield, and the Boston Common parking garage.
After the State House ceremony, the mayor’s office said Wu swore Flaherty into his new post on July 17. Flaherty’s name does not appear on the MCCA’s list of board members on its website, and he was not mentioned in a Healey administration press release on June 29 that included other mayoral appointees.
Flaherty stood off to the side and appeared to take a ceremonial second oath of office next to fellow South Boston resident Michael Donovan, another of Wu’s appointees to the MCCA board who earlier this year retired after nearly 50 years as the elected clerk of Suffolk Superior Court for civil business.
Earlier this year, Flaherty joined Sen. Nick Collins and City Council President Ed Flynn of South Boston in critiquing a planned MCCA land deal in their neighborhood, which they called a “most unusual and uncompetitive process.” In a letter to board members and the administration, they called for MCCA to halt the planned deal so that “the community and taxpayers can be sure that their assets are handled with integrity.”
Collins attended Tuesday’s ceremony and said the new members bring “a fresh set of eyes,” and that it “looks to be a new day at the MCCA.”
The seven new Healey appointees who took office Tuesday were: new Board Chair Emme Handy, a former aide to Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh; Dr. Aisha Miller, vice president of permitting, community and corporate engagement for Related Beal; Carlos Aramayo, president of UNITE HERE Local 26; Back Bay Association executive director Meg Mainzer-Cohen; Sheena Collier,
CEO of The Collier Connection and Boston While Black; Lighthouse Capital Partners managing director Gwill York; and Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council chief of staff Xiomara Albán DeLobato.
“It’s an exciting time for the state. It’s exciting in terms of, you know, the possibilities,” Healey told the new board members in her office. “It’s also a time where there’s a nervousness about the direction of things — both, you know, when it comes to the city and when it comes to the state, when it comes to the country, right? So for me to have people in these positions who I know will be great listeners, who will be thoughtful, who will think about how to make the most of this authority, and, you know, achieve what we want in terms of economic development, opportunity, equity, is super, super exciting to all of us.”