Mass. AG threatens ‘legal action’ against Milton
Says town could lose funding if referendum tanks new zoning plan
Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell warned Milton officials in a strongly worded letter this week that the town could face “legal action” and lose “a wide variety of state funding” if a referendum vote next month succeeds in nullifying the town’s most ambitious zoning proposal in nearly 100 years.
Voters in Milton will go to the polls Feb. 13 to decide the fate of a land-use plan adopted in December to satisfy the town’s legal obligations under the MBTA Communities Act, a law passed almost three years ago that compels communities served by the transit agency to create zoning for multifamily housing.
Some residents are resisting the plan, which was due by the end of last year, saying it will have dire consequences for their upper-middle-class suburb of mostly single-family homes. The townwide vote will make Milton either the last of a dozen communities close to Boston to comply with the law, which is designed to address the state’s housing crisis, or the only one that hasn’t.
In her letter to Milton’s Select Board and town administrator on Tuesday, Campbell said her office had received “inquiries concerning what steps the Attorney General’s Office might take, if necessary, to compel compliance.
“Because compliance with the MBTA Communities Act impacts Milton and more than one hundred other Massachusetts municipalities,” Campbell continued, “we wish to be straightforward about our responsibility to enforce the law and how we intend to meet that responsibility.”
“My office will not hesitate to compel compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, through legal action if necessary, should a municipality refuse to comply,” Campbell wrote. “We are also empowered to enforce state and federal fair housing laws, which prohibit municipalities from maintaining zoning rules that impermissibly restrict housing opportunities for protected groups, including families with children, should the facts indicate a violation of those laws have occurred.”
The letter was posted on social media by Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive direc
‘My office will not hesitate to compel compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, through legal action if necessary...’ ANDREA CAMPBELL, Mass. attorney general, in a letter to town officials
tor of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, a statewide coalition of housing advocates. The attorney general’s office confirmed the letter’s authenticity but declined to comment.
Campbell’s letter also warned of financial penalties for breaking the law.
“As [the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities] has expressed clearly to the Town, Milton’s eligibility for a wide variety of state funding will be impacted if the Town rejects compliance with the MBTA Communities Act,” Campbell wrote.
Last year, the state threatened to withhold grants and Housing Authority funds from towns that were slow to meet preliminary requirements of the law.
Michael F. Zullas, chair of the Milton Select Board, said Thursday that “the attorney general has made very clear that her office will take legal action against the town if there’s a ‘no’ vote on Feb. 13, and the consequences would be very serious and very damaging for our town, and particularly for our taxpayers.”
The new zoning plan was approved 158 to 76 by Town Meeting members on Dec. 11 after consultants, who were paid about $80,000, developed 30 proposals and presented them to residents, Zullas said.
“There were, I think, more than 25 planning board meetings, more than 15 Select Board meetings, eight community forums, an informational survey of residents,” Zullas said.
“There was a lot of work that went into this . . . a lot of resident feedback that resulted in the guiding principles, which were [to] preserve the characteristics of our neighborhoods while at the same time complying with the law to the minimum extent possible,” Zullas said. “That’s what this plan achieves.”
Zullas said he isn’t aware of any contingency planning by town officials to prepare for the possibility of failure at the polls, and he hopes residents will continue to support the plan.
“Our Town Meeting representatives ... recognized the seriousness of the matter, and they voted overwhelmingly to comply with the law in December,” he said. “I have great confidence that the Milton residents will follow suit and act in the best interest of the town by voting ‘yes’ on Feb. 13.”
Town Administrator Nicholas Milano did not respond to a request for comment.
The Boston Globe Spotlight team analyzed the stakes of the debate over the MBTA communities law in a special report in October.
Following the 12 communities in a “rapid-transit” zone around Boston that is served by the Blue, Red, Orange, Green, and Silver lines, another 130 Eastern Massachusetts municipalities must draft and submit new multifamily zoning plans by the end of this year, according to the law.
Milton’s plan would rezone six sections of town, mostly in commercial and industrial areas near Boston, as well as a few spots in East Milton. It would allow building heights of anywhere from two-and-a-half to six stories, with some areas requiring commercial space on the ground floor of new development. The zoning changes would cover less than 2 percent of the town’s 13 square miles.