Episode 239: Breaking the Mass Ceiling

12/15/22-- This week on The Horse Race, our hearts are warmed by the opening of the Green Line extension! Folks came out early to take a ride on the much anticipated train line. Steve also digs in to some new polling for the 2024 presidential race, and what those numbers could mean even this far out from the election.

Lisa tunes in from Washington, D.C. to run us through the representation of women in the MA legislature. Then later, Sean Cotter of The Boston Herald, drops by the pod to talk about potential changes to residency requirements for Boston city employees.

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Full Transcript Below:

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:26] This week on The Horse Race we're talking about women in the legislature. Then we're looking at potential changes to residency requirements for Boston employers. It's Thursday, December 15th. [00:00:35][9.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:00:48] Welcome back to the horse race, the weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Steve Koczela here this week with Jennifer Smith. Our good friend and beloved co-host Lisa Kashinsky will be joining us a bit later to talk about women in the legislature. But we've got some big news to get you up here at the front: The Green Line extension is actually running. There are trains moving down the track and people on them. [00:01:30][41.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:30] I was so moved and delighted it got my cold little heart like like a little. Speaking of green, I guess like the Grinch, my heart swelled multiple sizes. The number of people that showed up to ride a train. [00:01:44][13.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:44] Yeah, it's just, like. [00:01:45][0.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:47] Just really nice. [00:01:48][0.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:49] Gotta be one of the train pioneers, I guess. But it is exciting. You know, the Green Line extension is something that we've at least been talking about, if not waiting for, if not planning for building for decades. So to actually have it running is nice. I'll save my take for some other time, for about the worst possible form of transit. And yet this is the only thing we've expanded. [00:02:09][19.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:10] Oh, Steve's out here on out here, just personally laying some tracks like a cartoon villain to try and reroute the train to some kind of different place. [00:02:20][9.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:02:21] Yes, I myself will bring the orange line to Melrose. I will do it. There's already a track. I'm going to just run it right up here to Wyoming Hill. [00:02:28][6.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:28] Oh, my gosh. Well, I had such an insane flashback to, if you can believe it, the year of 2018, which was the first year of The Horse Race. So mazel to everyone who was involved at that point, but a name that doesn't really pop up that much anymore but is integrally tied into the Green Line extension. Is that a former congressman is that of former Congressman Mike Capuano. So in kind of launching the Green Line extension, Governor Charlie Baker specifically shouted out the former congressman who spent an awful lot of time trying to get exactly this extension out to this place. So that was that was kind of a strange what year is it moment for me? [00:03:10][42.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:12] 2018 is a very important year in the history of the horse race, also an echo of what was just absolutely wild race that year, of course, Congressman Michael Capuano and now Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley squaring off in an that particular year. So in a little bit, we're going to be talking with Lisa about women in the legislature. But we have some other electoral news to get to. But we have some other electoral news to get to first. And that, of course, is polls. There are polls coming out for 2024 already. It's still early 2022. [00:03:43][31.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:44] Do you have a little twinkles in your eyes whenever you get one of those little new news briefs go in across the health site timeline here. Did The Wall Street Journal tell you anything today? [00:03:54][9.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:55] I think it did. I mean, it's one it's the time when a lot of people get anxious about like, why are we already doing polls in 2024? It's only 2022. And there definitely is something to be said for that. Nobody should see these as predictive. Nobody should see like, oh my gosh, the margin between DeSantis and Trump was 15 and therefore it's going to be a big win for DeSantis. But what did happen was that there was a Wall Street Journal poll coming out. It did have a margin in the teens for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Donald Trump. And that tells me that there's interest in somebody other than Donald Trump. And that, I think, is the notable thing about it. We shouldn't see them as predictive, but it does tell us that there's something going on within the Republican Party that if you look back, even a couple of months was not there. And that's just interesting, potentially electing somebody else, you know, and I think that there's a good possibility that that throws the Republican nomination wide open. And we start to see other candidates and we start to see a real debate about what the party future of the party is actually going to be. [00:04:55][59.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:57] Yeah. And of course, if we're thinking about crowded primaries in the past, you do have to think about Trump coming out in a pretty dominant fashion. In the last one, where it did look like every single prominent Republican figure was running for president, and the least likely outcome from the jump was, in fact, the television businessman that ended up president. So, again, wide open here. It is funny that DeSantis, even though you know he is interesting, I think that DeSantis, even though he has pulled some pretty dramatic stunts, the Martha's Vineyard, one comes to mind with sending migrants out to an island without adequate information. He represents a return to maybe a more traditional type of Republican candidate. He is the governor of a state. He's already, you know, pretty much in line with his party positions. So it is interesting to me to see, even after Donald Trump was already president, that there is at least a bit of interest in what you might call a more traditional Republican political figure in the race so far. But we will, of course, see if this ends like Jeb. [00:06:16][79.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:06:17] Yeah, definitely. I mean, it traditional in the sense, as you mentioned, of where, you know, his resume, even if his position certainly wouldn't be familiar, you know, looking back a decade or two. But just a quick look back at some of the other kind of early polls. Back in 2008, of course, we had Rudy Giuliani leading early. You mentioned in 2016, we had everybody from, you know, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker all in there early on. You know, then 2012 was the year where we had all these different candidates that had their moment. You know, they have like a wave of positive polling. Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain. You know, all to say that, of course, there's, you know, many, many miles to go in this race. But just a very interesting dynamic that, you know, we haven't seen recently, which is that the Republican Party may be looking elsewhere. [00:07:02][44.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:07:03] Yeah, well, speaking of looking elsewhere, let's look a little bit more local because we are here for apparently a reason today. What what I hear, I don't know. Can't be confirmed. Steve, can you confirm we're here for a reason? [00:07:14][11.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:07:15] We're podcasting. Best I can tell from the fact that I have a script open and audacity running on my computer. But specifically, what are we doing here? And I think the answer is Lisa Kashinsky is going to join us from D.C. to talk about women in that Massachusetts state legislature. Then a bit later, we're talking to Sean Cotter from The Boston Herald about residency requirements for Boston city employees and why they may be changing soon. So, Jenn, ready to ride? [00:07:37][22.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:07:39] Let's go. [00:07:39][0.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:07:46] Two new Democratic women will join the legislature after recounts and two state rep races. Though we're still a long way from gender parity in Massachusetts, so what do the numbers show and where do we go from here? Joining us for this segment, we also have our beloved co-host, Lisa Kaczynski. Lisa, start us off. Since we last talked, we have two new results. What happened? [00:08:06][19.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:08:07] Well, first of all, hello from the district. So we got the results in the past few days of Tuesday representative races that were outstanding. And what happened is in the first test in the first Middlesex District, Margaret Scarsdale ended up leading Republican Andrew Sheppard by seven votes after a recount. And in the North Shore, second Essex District Democrat Christine Karsner edged five term incumbent GOP state rep Lenny Mirra by just one vote. And with that, that should bring the number of women in the legislature next session to 61 out of the 200 seats. So I guess the math on that one, if I pretended like I did it on the back of the napkin and wasn't just reading from the script with the actual percentage means worried about what 31% of our legislature made up of women. Is that good? Is that bad compared to most of the country? Is that good or bad? From a moral reason? We can get into that later. It's about 30.5%, which is where it was in February, a kind of the start of this wave of departures of women lawmakers that we saw this year in the state. Nationally, it's on par, but it's starting to fall a little bit behind after the results of this most recent election. So now there are two states, Colorado and Nevada, that have majority female legislatures. And at least six states will now, starting in 2023, I should say, have at least one legislative chamber, either their House or Senate, that's majority female. [00:09:41][93.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:09:43] The other thing that sticks out about the stats are reading from a massive report where they had looked at the percent of women in the Massachusetts state legislature going back to 2009 is that it's really barely moved, like it's gone up a couple percentage points. You know, maybe it was a 28-29% before and now it's at 30.5 or 31% depending on the session and who's departed and all that sort of thing. But it really isn't moving at all. [00:10:07][24.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:10:08] And, you know, the context on that as well is not only have our numbers not really changed much in terms of proportion, but exactly like you mentioned, Lisa, the rest of the country is not in the same level of status that we seem to be in here so very slowly over time, even though we have seen slight ticking up of like one or two women entering the legislature at any given time, the rest of the country is kind of scooting further and further toward gender parity. So when we think about the reasons that it might be particularly difficult for women to enter legislative chambers as opposed to, of course, what we will talk about, which is which is general barriers to not incumbents entering legislative chambers. What are we seeing for some of the bigger complicating factors? Well, I'll go back to February when I kind of first wrote about this, and what I was able to write about and play about this week was very much a sequel to or a follow up to that is that you were seeing these women departing the legislature either to run for higher office, to seek other jobs, you know, in the Biden administration or something like that, or retiring after long careers. And the fear was that because of the pandemic, because of the strain on child care, because of all of these other factors, you know, the people, you know, women advocates, political operatives were really afraid that women were not going to run this year for these open seats. And that was kind of the fear heading into this cycle, is that, you know, the legislature had just hit this high watermark for women, which again, was about 32%. It was 63, you know, after a couple of special elections and in session, 63 of the 200 seats were held by women. And they were just really afraid that because of the pandemic, the strain, you know, the issues with childcare, people starting to have to go back to work and juggling both again, that that was really going to deter people from running. And I think the conclusion then the follow up there is it didn't deter people from running to kind of hit where we already were, but it doesn't seem like there was some sort of, you know, wave of a bunch of new voices coming in to then, like bring those numbers up. So so I think that's kind of where my head's out here, which is it's interesting that we didn't see kind of the stagnation in terms of there being a drop in seats that are held by women. But in a race where people have pointed to, for instance, the threat to Roe and other kinds of kind of gender specific health care issues or gender equity issues, we didn't see a bump in in women running for office. So is there anything to kind of piece apart why that is? Why just why does Massachusetts seem to love being at that? One third of the legislature is women bar so much. [00:12:58][170.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:59] Some part of it, too, is just the general competitiveness question that, you know, we've talked about, not in the specific context, but just in the context of the lack of legislative turnover in general. You know, that Massachusetts just doesn't produce a lot of competition. You know, we have I feel like we could probably play a compilation of me saying that's the least competitive legislative elections in the country right here in Massachusetts. We've had them in 2020. We had them I think in 2018 and 2016, you know, either the least or the second least, you know, going back for a bunch of sessions now. So, you know, if you want to elect somebody different, somebody to make the legislator more diverse in terms of race, somebody to bring us closer to gender parity, you need people to run and you need a landscape that permits people to run and gives them some realistic shot of winning. And that's just not something that we have here in Massachusetts. [00:13:45][45.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:13:46] Well, and another thing, too, is the to run for the legislature here. It's every two years. I mean, you basically when you legislate for a year and then you're back to campaigning and you contrast that with the four year terms that you have in statewide offices where we have seen, you know, kind of this increase in women running and winning these races with five of the state's six constitutional offices about to be held by women in January. So that's something, too. It's a lot of strain to have to run continuously, basically, you know, for these legislative positions. And one thing you mentioned in your write up in Playbook was not just kind of the impact of Roe on people running for office, but also how redistricting factored into it. So how did the map look this year? Well, redistricting is one of the reasons that the second Essex race on the North Shore ended up the way that it did. Lenny Mirra, the incumbent, had held that seat for five terms and they drastically redid it in redistricting, you know and they drastically redid it in redistricting, which gave the Democrat an opening in a seat that had long been held by a Republican. You saw women who were able to win several of the newly created majority minority districts, including in Brockton, Framingham and Chelsea. So it definitely had a factor in helping elect women and also women of color. And so you kind of allude to it, but was there a party breakdown that we were seeing? [00:15:21][94.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:21] You know, we've touched on the fact in general that there is a much smaller representation from GOP electeds in the state of Massachusetts. Big surprise here. But then when you're looking at kind of the gender balance, are these numbers of women mostly swelling on the Democratic side? [00:15:35][13.9]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:15:37] In this era entirely. On the Democratic side, the number of Republicans in the legislature, I should say, while both Republicans and Republican women in the legislature is shrinking, there is not a Republican woman senator and the number of female lawmakers in the House is declining. And I believe I read this in State House News Service, that out of the incoming class of lawmakers, there is only one Republican writ large. [00:16:03][26.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:16:05] And Steve, you've been doing a lot with the polling on this over the years. Has there been anything that's kind of indicated, any sort of change to this trend, or do we end up kind of bogged down in the kind of larger incumbency question and larger inertial question? [00:16:24][19.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:16:25] Yeah. The polling doesn't necessarily show any particular, you know, impetus for change on this. I mean, it does tend to show that, well, let's see, election results tend to show that when there are open seats and, you know, there's candidates competing on equal footing, that very often women win those seats. And we see that. And we saw that in the statewide election results this year. But just in terms of, you know, some sort of public urgency that showing up at the polls, we don't see much kind of evidence of that at this at this moment. [00:16:57][31.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:16:57] And that connects as well to kind of a broader question of, well, what is the case, for instance, for a more representative legislature, generally speaking? So, Lisa, what's the response been from party leaders about this kind of I, I hesitate to say ballooning. You can't really say ballooning up to 30% again. But but this kind of consistent maintenance of the the gender ratio that we have in the legislature. And is there any discussion about, for instance, why this is something that maybe legislators would like to change, but not enough to really get into incumbency reform? [00:17:36][38.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:17:37] Having more women and more, you know, people with different backgrounds, more diversity, etc., at the table is always better for policy making. I mean, we know that Massachusetts has been dominated by white men, you know, in kind of all levels of government. And the more, you know, diversity in in gender, in ethnicity, etc., that you can bring to the table, the more it informs the policy making that governs everything from, you know, childcare to affordable housing, which is one of the biggest issues in the state right now. So people are really hopeful that, you know, increasing this diversity, you know, will help with that policymaking to really address, you know, what's happening to various groups across the state. And it's also, you know, people are hoping it will break down kind of the stereotypes. And, you know, as the Obama Family Foundation tends to put it, this, quote, imagination barrier around women running for office and kind of a race, some of these long held stereotypes in office. And even though it might not be increasing with the legislature, it is in other offices from, you know, the Boston mayor's office to the governor's office. [00:18:44][66.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:18:45] The structures that that have built up around who gets elected and how often we have competitive seats, I think just need to change, you know, and the problem or the challenge with that is that the people that need to change them are the ones that already have the power. You know, if you think about it in terms of there are like 200 points of power, 200 elective seat elected seats that are available. Some of those that are held by men have to be given up. You know, there's no additional power that can be created to give out to people who don't already have it. So you know that both in terms of who is currently elected and then also other people and groups that, you know, hold on to power because they have relationships with those people also need to give up some portion of that comfort and some portion of that power. So thinking of people like interest groups who just reflexively endorse the incumbent, you know, if that's your practice, then you're contributing to structural racism and structural sexism. If you're a donor and you just give to incumbents, then that's also something that you're contributing to. So it's not you know, I think oftentimes people recognize the goal of something closer to equality, as worth striving for, but don't really want to take a hard examination of their own contribution to it. And how the system, you know, that we have created basically guarantees it. You know, it guarantees that the set that this inequality is going to persist and really gives it gives a difficult role to play to people who have power, that they just must surrender some of it if they want anything closer to equality. [00:20:17][91.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:20:20] All right. A depressing and moving note to end on from one. Steve Koczela. Thank you so much, Lisa, for calling in from D.C. to walk us through this. Again, I hesitate to describe it as any massive change, but a maintenance of of where we have been. And good luck out there. [00:20:39][19.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:20:40] We're holding steady. [00:20:41][0.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:20:50] As the cost of living rises in Boston, or I should say it continues to rise in Boston. Residency requirements for city employees are on the bargaining table. Here to talk to us about what that means, we're joined once again by our good friend Sean Cotter of The Boston Herald. Thanks for joining us, Sean. [00:21:05][15.2]

Sean Cotter: [00:21:06] Thanks for having me. [00:21:07][0.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:21:08] So start off easy currently. What are the general residency requirements to be hired by the city of Boston? [00:21:14][6.2]

Sean Cotter: [00:21:16] So Boston has had a residency requirement on the books since the mid seventies and that sort of softened for a lot of the unions in the late 2000s dropping down to ten years for nonunion city employees. It's an indefinite hard requirement for many of the unions. It is that they have to live here for the first ten years. [00:21:45][29.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:21:46] And what's the rationale for that? What's that? The reason why you'd want local employees living here in Boston? [00:21:52][5.4]

Sean Cotter: [00:21:53] Well, the reason currently and the reason that the time of the inception of the law are probably slightly different. The law in the seventies came at a time when Boston was in the midst of a lot of turmoil, in the midst of the desegregated bussing that was going on. And I believe a charter reform and shifting city council and all of that. And a lot of people were just leaving if they had the means to. Now, we live in a very different Boston, where I many people say we just don't have enough housing and you can give people away. But the advocates for residency requirements say, look, basically we want some we want Boston to be run by people who live in Boston because it creates more cohesion between the government and the community and means that the people who are implementing policies and enacting policies and creating policies have to live with those policies and that they're more in touch with the city is the rationale. [00:23:03][70.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:23:05] So how is that kind of softened or changed over time? It occurs to me this conversation happens sort of in conjunction with the very heated issue, also with like resident preference for jobs and resources. This idea of Boston for this kind of idea of what Bostonians are in, that Bostonians should be the ones in charge of governing Boston. But no one can afford to live here anymore. So so why is there a softening and what form has that taken? [00:23:32][26.9]

Sean Cotter: [00:23:34] Well, going back to I believe it was 2009 under then Mayor Tom Menino. I think it was first one of the police unions negotiated that very firm residency requirement back down to a ten year version or not back there, just down to a ten year version. And then because of the way most bargaining cycles go, then therefore that sort of ended up applying to everybody. I should note this doesn't apply to teachers who are just by state law exempt from residency requirements. But now then, for the past ten plus years after that, it very much sort of wasn't all that much of a discussion on the bargaining side. But now, as both the city tries to grapple with the fact that it's having a really hard time hiring for a lot of positions, and the unions, especially those with members who make less money, they both want to take a look at it essentially. That is going to vary in forms that like, I'm sorry, unclear, clear. Mayor Michelle Wu does not want to get rid of residency. Her state position is that residency is good to have, but that she still wants to get creative around the edges with it. And different unions. Some things are fine with it, as is. Some unions want to do something similar to what she was talking about in terms of like waivers and softening around the edges. Some want to cut down the time period and some just want to get rid of it entirely. [00:25:11][97.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:15] And you touched on what has become a hot button issue and this and pretty much every other part of public policy these days, which of course, is housing costs and the cost of actually living in Boston, you know, and the disconnection between that and what you're able to make as a public employee or, you know, in lots of areas of life these days. But how does that factor into the current negotiations? [00:25:35][20.7]

Sean Cotter: [00:25:38] And you're right, Steve. I mean, a lot of this is centered around the discussion around housing costs, because that is why some of these unions, again, especially those who represent people who are on the lower end of the wage scale, think everything from like janitors to librarians to just sort of like administrative staff, cafeteria workers, 911 dispatchers. A lot of these like essential jobs that you need to have filled as the city that the city from a city perspective, they can't find anybody who wants to take these jobs and also live in Boston because they don't, frankly, pay enough money for somebody to just have that job. And especially if you're trying to, like, have a family or something live in Boston. And the unions, therefore, that represent these positions are their members who are currently in those positions, want more freedom to not live in Boston and also continue to work in these jobs. [00:26:46][68.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:26:48] So what's the finagling looking like kind of against changes to the residency requirements? I couldn't help myself. I have to bring up that. There is the Dorchester connection of Eileen Boyle, who has been working with the I think it's Save Our City coalition. But that goes back to, you know, the the mid to early 2000, how long that kind of anti or sorry that kind of goes back to the early to mid 2000s in terms of this opposition to changes to the residency requirements and to stay on the issue of housing. What really struck me in your article was that Eileen was specifically saying it's the city's job to get more creative with housing, don't change the rules around residency, make sure that people can actually live here. So what is the balance right now that Wu is considering that the city councilors might be pushing for in terms of where the city's primary role is? Is it in changing the rules but keeping the city of Boston a pretty difficult place to find either available or affordable housing in and maybe messing around the edges there? Or is it keep the residency requirements with a few waivers, but really kind of put all of your muscle behind making sure that, generally speaking, there's more available and more affordable housing. [00:28:03][75.6]

Sean Cotter: [00:28:05] Yeah. I mean, I think everybody agrees that Boston is an expensive place to live. I don't think I'm editorializing too much with that take. And so people are sort of broadly. Sympathetic to that as a concept. But the way to deal with that as you identify, looks different to different people. Where somebody like Eileen, who you're correct, Save Our City is the organization and they've been around since they think a lot of the reasons the arguments in 2000s for her and other people who really prioritized residency as sort of the very important intrinsic good. They say residency is not something to be really touched in general with some specific there have been specific areas in which people broadly have said, yeah, we're fine waiving residency for certain jobs like arborists. We don't have a lot of arborists in the city of Boston City, not a lot of tree people live here. And so that was something where everybody said, Yeah, we get it. Like we can look outside the city for arborists. But in general, the residency purists will say this is there is a problem with affordability in Boston, but the way to tackle it is through housing. I mean, Eileen, when I interviewed her, she suggested the city even like setting up temporary housing for temporary housing units for city workers, like at the at the hotel on Morrissey Boulevard. They're talking about having be supportive housing. She suggested, how about that? And so like those sorts of ideas are things that people put forward. Woo is who sort of comes down, I think a little bit more towards the middle of wanting. She has already sought some waivers for jobs such as the aforementioned arborists, but also three year waivers for lower wage jobs, including cafeteria workers, nine on one call center workers, bus drivers like those sorts of jobs that really don't pay very well. But you sort of got to have them. And if if nobody's in them, then like that things go wrong. And so so that's sort of where things are at now, is that the mayor is. And entering these sorts of waivers. Oh, another recent one was for new police officers. They get a bit like a six month grace period, and that's an effort to recruit, essentially poach police, police officers from other cities and towns, because those places also usually have residency requirements. So that means that technically, on one day you're required to live in one place and the next day you're quite live in another place. And that's just sort of like a logistical issue. And so the Wu administration proposed and the Residency Compliance Commission granted that sort of extended grace period. And then after that six months and then residency applies and they got to live here. [00:31:38][212.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:31:39] So there's a lot of different kind of dynamics pulling in in every direction, really. But one thing that seems unlikely to change in the very short term is housing prices aren't suddenly going to crash to the level where, you know, relatively low paid municipal employees are going to be able to afford to just move to Boston. So what is next? What where do we go from here and what should we be on the lookout for? [00:32:00][21.0]

Sean Cotter: [00:32:02] I think a lot of people would like to know the answer to that question. But we housing prices continue to be a huge issue here. A lot of people have a lot of different takes. Much like the residency, the related residency issue about what to do about the price of housing. The Wu administration and her allies say that building tons of quote unquote affordable and quote unquote workforce housing essentially into restricted housing for people who either don't make very much money or make life easier in income or something like that is a good way to handle it. Other people, I mean, like that the governor, Charlie Baker, had that bill about just sort of making it easier to change the zoning laws in a lot of the surrounding cities and towns in an effort to loosen zoning. I don't I can't speak as well to state wide politics as I can to say Boston politics. But I know that like these different types of approaches, both the sort of I mean, I think that can be characterized as sort of like the the letting the free market go and try to solve the problem versus like a very sort of city driven. Like affordable housing push or some combination thereof. Those are all things that people talk about in Boston. We are seeing a lot more housing built and a lot more affordable housing required in each big housing development. At least that's sort of the goal of a lot of the advocates and the administration. And so I guess we'll see. [00:33:52][110.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:33:54] All right. Well, looking forward to any developments on that front. It was interesting in your write up on it, a few of the city councilors have indicated that, you know, messing around with the residency requirements is as a lever that we can pull. So watching what happens on the council, watching what happens in the mayor's office, watching what happens at the collective bargaining table, but as that all rolls out, Sean Cotter of The Boston Herald, thank you so much for joining us today to talk us through residency. [00:34:26][32.4]

Sean Cotter: [00:34:27] Thank you all very much. [00:34:28][0.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:34:32] And for our final segment today, we're checking in with the AI chat bots, which have had their faceless minds turned to the impenetrable world of Boston politics and Boston in general. There's been a Boston Globe article produced. We've asked us to write us a podcast script, which we're definitely not going to read for you here on the air. Jokes, all sorts of things. Jenn, what do we have? [00:34:51][19.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:34:52] Okay, well, what I have is an overriding sense of concern that this chat bot seems to think that Bostonians are a bunch of enjoyable, whimsical, happy people. And I'm just, you know, I don't really think we have much to fear right now about them replacing all of us in the analysis market if they genuinely think Bostonians are happy. [00:35:14][22.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:35:15] That's right. I asked to write a speech about Boston and I gave a bunch of platitudes about rich history and a vibrant present which actually could have been read by a number of leading luminaries in Boston. But then it got to the crux of its piece, which was as follows But what really sets Boston apart is its people. The residents of this city are known for their warmth and friendliness, as well as their fierce pride in their city. Fierce pride in their city. Definitely, definitely. Almost to a fault, but warmth and friendliness. I mean. Oh, I'm kind of offended. [00:35:46][30.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:35:48] A little bit. I think one of the things that I really got a kick out of when I first moved to Boston now more than ten years ago, is that one side of the country always thinks that New York is like the meanest place on earth? And I don't know, maybe they'll nod to you or something on a New York subway and then you immediately avert your gaze. But I just as happy as people are about the Green Line extension. This is a city that famously reacted to the mayor suggesting that someone might chat with her on a train with How dare you? Don't look at me. Don't talk to me. I'm not here to communicate with other human beings. Warmth and friendliness. I ask you. [00:36:28][39.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:36:28] Yes. Definitely not, super offended. Probably going to file a lawsuit at some point if we can figure out how to file against that. I but we also asked to write a joke about Boston, and this is what I came up with as this just like perfect on and on. We also asked it, write a joke about Boston and here's what I came up with. Why was the math book sad? Because it had too many problems, but then it moved to Boston and became a Red Sox fan. And now it's happy all the time. That's the joke that the chat bot came up with. [00:37:01][33.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:37:02] Okay, hear me out. This is actually a really, really deep thing that it's doing. It knows that the joke is that we're unhappy. [00:37:09][7.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:37:11] Got it. It's like it's one of those ones that's like, tell me a bad joke to make the joke is so bad. [00:37:16][5.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:37:17] Yeah, because that's the only that's the only punch line I can see here. [00:37:20][3.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:37:21] Amazing. All right. Well, unfortunately, for those of us who would like to just read chat bot scripts all day, that is all the time we have for this here podcast. I'm Steve Koczela signing off for Lisa Kashinsky and Jennifer Smith, our producer, as always, is Elena Eberwein. Don't forget to give The Horse Race a review wherever you're listening to us now, subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico Playbook if somehow you've not already done so and reach out to us here at the MassINC Polling Group if you need either polls or focus groups for now. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. [00:37:21][0.0]

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