District 7 candidates debate land use, White Stadium at Boston forum
But the one issue that remained unsaid during the nearly three-hour forum was the reason Fernandes Anderson's seat is open — her conviction on federal corruption charges.
The event, held on Zoom, was organized by the District 7 Advisory Council, a group formed by Fernandes Anderson to lead community efforts and create policies that benefit the area.
Despite the elephant in the room, the candidates who participated in Thursday's forum largely praised Fernandes Anderson's work on the City Council, particularly her engagement with District 7 residents and her work increasing citizen participation in the city budget process.
'One thing that I appreciate, and many of the residents appreciate, from Councilor Fernandes is the approach she brought to educating everyone on the budget, but also the funding sources, like where the money comes from, for different projects,' Samuel Hurtado said. 'The residents felt that they were now ... more knowledgeable and more empowered to fight for our priorities.'
Said Abdikarim, Mavrick Afonso, Said Ahmed, Miniard Culpepper, Hurtado, Jerome King, Roy Owens Sr., Wawa Bell and Tchad Cort participated in Thursday's forum.
Five other candidates—Natalie Juba-Sutherland, Joao Gomes DePina, James Grant, Shawn Dwayne Nelson and Robert Stanley — are also running for the seat and returned nomination papers to be placed on the ballot. It is the largest field of candidates for any Boston city office in the 2025 election.
One of the predominant issues in the discussion was the use of city-owned land for future development, particularly for housing. Multiple candidates said that much of the city-owned land in District 7 was taken by eminent domain during the 1960s Urban Renewal movement, which primarily affected families of color.
Culpepper and Bell specifically called out Fernandes Anderson's 2022 proposal for a moratorium on the development of this land for housing, saying they would continue to support such an effort to get more community input about the future of the land.
'If you're not taking into account that the land that was stolen from families ... you're doing a disservice to the community,' Bell said.
Another major topic of discussion was the redevelopment of White Stadium in Franklin Park. The project has been criticized by a vocal group of residents for its high cost and the fact that the city is partnering with a new professional women's soccer team that will share the Boston Public Schools facility.
While some candidates were more strongly opposed to the project itself, all of them agreed that the city should have had more conversations with the community to ensure that the redevelopment was beneficial for all.
Ahmed, who ran track for BPS and later became a coach, said the stadium was very special to him, but he believes the aging structure did need to be rebuilt.
'However, there were a lot of missed opportunities,' he said. 'Some community members feel that they didn't get a voice. ... I want to make sure we utilize that facility and make sure it stays in the hands of Boston Public Schools.'
Fernandes Anderson attended the Zoom call Thursday evening and spoke at the end of the forum to thank the candidates for participating and the organizers for hosting it.
She also participated in the discussion, repeating the questions asked or adding her own comments. At times, she disagreed with the candidates, particularly about the work the District 7 Advisory Council had done. On one occasion, when Afonso said he would add new subcommittees to the council, she wrote, 'That exists.'
After Tchad Cort suggested adding a student representative to the council, Fernandes Anderson noted that one of those subcommittees was a 'youth group' and said she was 'looking forward to helping with passing on the baton."
'Great minds think alike,' she said on camera at the end of the event.
Fernandes Anderson was arrested in December on charges that she ran a kickback scheme with a family member whom she employed in her City Hall office. She admitted to using public funds to help with her own financial struggles. She pleaded guilty earlier this month.
Though Fernandes Anderson has indicated she would resign, she has not yet stepped down.
After her sentencing, scheduled for July 29, Fernandes Anderson's seat is expected to remain vacant until a new councilor is elected in November.
District 7 voters will narrow down the field of candidates in the Sept. 9 preliminary election before selecting the next councilor on Nov. 4.
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Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Jewish Tacoma candidate opposed by PAC backing ‘interests of Jewish community'
With funding coming largely from outside Tacoma, a political action committee that backs candidates who 'support the interests of the Jewish community' is spending thousands of dollars to oppose a candidate in Tacoma's District 5 City Council race. The PAC, called Washingtonians for a Brighter Future, spent $15,000 on mail and postage to send flyers opposing Cook to voters of District 5, and another $1,000 on text messages with the same goal. The group, according to a substack article linked on its website, is endeavoring to 'oppose hate in all forms' by elevating or opposing candidates at the local level who could move up to national positions. It's modeled after a California-based PAC called California Against Hate, which in 2022 worked to oppose a city council candidate in San Diego who was 'anti-Israel,' according to the article. 'Many of the most dangerous people crop up in the small cities,' Jared Sclar, co-founder of the California-based PAC, said of the Washington PAC in the substack article. 'If there is someone problematic, we may not know. We may not know someone is going to sneak by and get on the city council, and then they're the next Ilhan Omar,' Sclar wrote of Omar, a Democratic U.S. representative from Minnesota. Cook said she wasn't surprised to see such opposition to her campaign. 'I think these are the kind of hurdles that are very common when it comes to trying to win people-powered campaigns against corporate interests,' Cook told The News Tribune. The mail campaign came around mid-July, ahead of the Aug. 5 primary election that will whittle the slate of three candidates for the District 5 race down to two. Cook has raised the most money in the race so far at $47,012.98. Incumbent Joe Bushnell raised $35,744.14, and candidate Brandon A. Vollmer raised $851.03. The PAC as of July 24 raised $32,768.09 this year, only $1,000 of which came from a donor with a Tacoma address. The rest came from donors in Washington cities like Mercer Island, Seattle and Medina. At least one contributor listed an address in Naples, Florida. According to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, the PAC spent $18,076.61 by July 24, $16,000 of which paid for the campaign against Cook. The mailers that the PAC distributed depicted her standing in front of a building with broken windows with graffiti that reads 'don't burn' and 'ppl live upstairs' overlaid with text that stated, 'Zev Cook cooking up chaos for Tacoma.' It also implied that Cook supported defunding the police and stated that doing so would result in increased crime, gang violence and home invasions. Cook, a community organizer and activist, has the backing of groups like the Tacoma and Pierce County Democratic Socialists of America, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 3000, and the Washington Education Association's PAC. Incumbent Joe Bushnell, who is running for re-election, has the endorsement of several state representatives, current and former council members, and the Tacoma Police Union, International Union of Police Associations Local 6. Bushnell also has Washingtonians for a Better Future's endorsement. 'Council Member Bushnell is a friend of the Jewish community,' the PAC's website reads. Bushnell said he didn't solicit an endorsement from the PAC but said he wasn't surprised to see the group oppose Cook, given her support from the Democratic Socialists of America. 'The groups that are supporting my opponent have very public rhetoric that rubs a lot of folks the wrong way,' Bushnell told The News Tribune. Cook, who is Jewish, said she feels the group is going after her because of her vocal support of Palestine. 'I'm the only candidate running for city council this year that's made public comments in support of Palestine and against genocide, in alignment with my Jewish values of community repair and justice,' she told The News Tribune. 'I think this is very similar in some ways, but certainly at a smaller scale, to the attack ads that were run against Zohran [Mamdani] for being a pro-Palestine candidate that he is continuing to be,' she said of Mamdani, who recently won the Democratic primary in New York City's mayoral race. 'But like Zohran I'm intending to win by continuing to just focus on how we make life better for working people in our city.' Nevet Basker, the PAC's co-chair, told The News Tribune the group is seeking to combat antisemitism and said it was Cook's 'rhetoric against Zionism' that the PAC opposes. 'We believe that the rhetoric in some of these campaigns, including Zev Cook, creates a permission structure for antisemitism that results in issues in our own communities, in Tacoma, in this case, where the Jewish community feels unwelcome and sometimes unsafe,' Basker told The News Tribune. Basker said the PAC's concerns also go beyond those of the Jewish community, to what she described as Cook's support for abolishing the police and prisons. 'She's also a leader of an organization that advocates for abolishing prisons and all incarceration releasing, even violent criminals, murderers, rapists, back into our communities,' Basker said. 'We believe that that is unsafe for everyone.' Cook, according to her website, has served as an officer for the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. The group also endorsed her in the District 5 race. The Democratic Socialists of America's political platform calls for the 'abolition of the carceral state.' 'For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society,' the platform reads. Cook told The News Tribune that she doesn't think that defunding the police 'is a very good framework for understanding public policy' and instead supports specific policies like increasing funding for Tacoma's non-police crisis response team. 'Generally, I think that we as a community need to be focused more on not just addressing the symptoms, but addressing root causes when it comes to crime, which is why our platform is so focused on addressing income and housing inequality in our community,' Cook said. She said she wasn't surprised to see the PAC's efforts to oppose her campaign and said the group wouldn't have sent out the mailer if they didn't think Cook had a real shot at winning. Some commenters on Reddit said that the anti-Cook flyer made them want to vote for her even more. 'Getting an attack ad like this just tells me that they've seen how effective our campaign has been at mobilizing the support of working class Tacomans,' she added. 'It tells me that they're scared that we might win this year.' Solve the daily Crossword
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
NYC is in Trump's immigration enforcement sights
Presented by Resorts World New York City With help from Amira McKee Mayor Eric Adams has been setting himself apart from other 'sanctuary' city leaders with a more diplomatic approach to President Donald Trump's deportation agenda. 'I'm not warring with the president. I'm working with the president,' Adams said earlier this month, drawing a contrast between himself and the mayors of Los Angeles, Chicago and other blue cities fiercely resisting the mass roundups of migrants. But it seems Adams has only delayed Trump's wrath, rather than spare the city from it completely. The Trump administration sued the Adams administration Thursday over its sanctuary policies, POLITICO reported, charging in its complaint that 'New York City has long been at the vanguard of interfering with enforcing this country's immigration laws.' At 26 Federal Plaza, just blocks from Adams' City Hall office, Trump's Department of Homeland Security has been detaining migrants — including those with no history of violence — in conditions that surreptitious videos show are crowded and unsafe. So what could be next for New York as the president begins to intensify his crackdown thanks to $170 billion in the 'one big, beautiful bill' for border and immigration enforcement? Look to Chicago, as one example. The Midwestern metropolis was slapped with a Trump lawsuit in February over its policies limiting cooperation between federal immigration officers and local law enforcement. A recent Chicago Tribune analysis revealed a 'sharp overall increase in the number of people booked' in detention facilities in the area. Adams, once an NYPD captain, is so far still trying to play good cop with Trump — and has cast the City Council in the role of bad cop. 'No New Yorker should feel forced to hide in the shadows,' his spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement responding to Thursday's lawsuit. 'That's why the mayor supports the essence of the local laws put in place by the City Council — but he has also been clear they go too far when it comes to dealing with those violent criminals on our streets.' The council isn't budging. 'Cities with sanctuary laws are safer than those without them,' council spokesperson Rendy Desamours said. 'It is the Trump Administration indiscriminately targeting people at civil court hearings, detaining high schoolers, and separating families that make our city and nation less safe.' But Adams has pushed back in some ways too, asking the Trump administration to inspect conditions on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza and speaking out in immigration lawsuits. Trump is targeting his hometown after an off-duty customs agent was shot in the face, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant in Manhattan over the weekend. That man was federally charged Thursday with possession of ammunition by an illegal alien while his alleged accomplice now faces an accessory charge. The president also touted a nationwide surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests this week, then tailored a press release to New York City about a 400 percent spike in ICE detainers and gave Fox News the exclusive to slam Adams for 'protecting criminal illegal aliens.' On Thursday, immigrant and civil rights advocates denounced the Trump lawsuit against the city as frivolous. Some urged Adams to step up, way up. 'New York must reject Trump's continued assaults to its Constitutional right to pass local laws that serve our communities best,' New York Immigration Coalition president Murad Awawdeh said in a statement. 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Santos won election to a Queens and Long Island seat in 2022 despite a falsified résumé (selling himself as a Wall Street superstar) and served nearly all of 2023 in the House fighting allegations of campaign fraud (including spending on designer duds, lavish lodging and Botox). A White House spokesperson would not comment this week on whether there's a pending clemency request concerning Santos. Santos' fabulist-but-make-it-fabulous vibe has dissipated as his prison time nears. He said he's fearful of being targeted for violence as a gay man — and a former politician at that. And while he has managed to reinvent himself in small ways since he was ousted from Congress, including as host of the 'Pants on Fire' podcast, Santos said he sees 'no light' at the end of his incarceration tunnel. 'I'm not allowed technology at all, and I've been notified that I will not be allowed to do interviews either,' Santos said. 'They're shutting me up essentially.' There's not much left to say anyway, the one-time member of Congress said. 'I guess I put it all out there,' Santos said. 'To keep it simple, I should have done better, not for me, but for everyone else as well. Sorry to everyone.' — Emily Ngo CITY HALL: THE LATEST WHAT'S COOLER THAN A FREEZE?: Longshot independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden is one-upping Mamdani's plan to freeze the rent for rent stabilized units and has a proposal to lower the rent for more than 250,000 New York City tenants. Walden's plan would cap rent at 35 percent of income for low-income and severely rent burdened tenants and would directly subsidize landlords to make up the difference — effectively a city-funded version of federal Section 8 vouchers. He'd fund it by finding $348 million of savings in the budget, shaving less than 1 percent off the capital program by taxing the rich — enacting a 0.1 percent tax on 'high end goods and services' including stock transfers, luxury real estate and 'high-end jewelry.' 'Freeze the rent' is 'the other guy's slogan,' Walden said in a video posted Wednesday. 'We're about solutions, not slogans.' 'I don't see it as pandering,' Walden told Playbook. 'I see it as problem-solving.' — Jeff Coltin ADAMS REACHING NEW HEIGHTS: Former City Council Member Robert Cornegy is hosting a fundraiser for Adams next week, while the 6-foot-10 ex-pol's casino bid is seeking an OK from a mayoral appointee. Cornegy told Playbook the Wednesday night Fort Greene fundraiser had nothing to do with his lobbying work for The Coney casino. 'I told Eric's people, this has nothing to do with one thing or the other, and here you are, bringing it up off the bat,' he said with a laugh. 'He's been my guy for a long time,' Cornegy added. 'He's done a tremendous job as mayor.' Cornegy isn't the only casino connection getting in front of the mayor. Marc Holliday, who's pushing a Times Square casino with his real estate firm SL Green, hosted a massive fundraiser for the mayor earlier this month. — Jeff Coltin WHAT ZOHRAN IS READING: No single issue will be more challenging for a Mayor Mamdani than policing. But there are concrete steps he can take to reform the NYPD and curb its culture of impunity, 'The End of Policing' author Alex S. Vitale writes in The Nation. More from the city: — New York City schools adopted a new cellphone ban policy, but the chancellor vowed to make adjustments if there are issues. (POLITICO Pro) — Adams is staking his reelection bid on falling crime numbers, arguing to voters that he has made New York safer and can continue to do so. (New York mag) — A vote on the proposed makeover of a mile-long stretch of industrial Brooklyn coastline has been postponed for the fifth time this year. (THE CITY) NEW FROM PLANET ALBANY GUNS AND ROSES: Rep. Elise Stefanik is taking aim at New York's gun laws. The Republican, who's mulling a run for governor, called Thursday for a federal bill designed to override gun regulations in blue states like New York and California. The bill would block states from requiring loaded chamber indicators, magazine disconnect mechanisms and microstamping for handgun sales. The measure, which is also backed by Rep. Darrell Issa, is being trumpeted by Stefanik a day after moderate Rep. Mike Lawler announced he would not run for governor — a move that opened a clear path for the North Country Republican to win the GOP nomination. 'I am proud to re-introduce the Modern Firearm Safety Act to end the unconstitutional gun-grabbing agenda thrust on law-abiding New York residents by Far Left Democrats like Kathy Hochul,' Stefanik said. It's an interesting move for Stefanik, considering the broad support for gun control in a deep blue state like New York. Polls over the years have shown support for the state's SAFE Act, a sweeping package of gun regulations approved during Andrew Cuomo's governorship. A majority of New Yorkers have supported requiring permits for semiautomatic weapons. And Hochul has embraced efforts to address the flow of illegal guns into New York and touted a statewide decline in shootings. Yet gun rights is an issue that resonates deeply with the Republican base — especially in Stefanik's deep red House seat. 'Thanks to Governor Hochul, gun violence in New York is down to the lowest level in 20 years and more than 10,000 illegal guns are off our streets — but Elise Stefanik wants to undo it all to score political points with Donald Trump,' Hochul campaign spokesperson Addison Dick said. 'Stefanik would rather push Trump's extreme agenda than protect her own constituents, and New Yorkers will hold her accountable.' — Nick Reisman More from Albany: — Fiscal watchdogs warn state lawmakers and Hochul are punting on a special session to address federal cuts. (NYS Focus) — The governor is being urged to sign a measure bolstering protections for gender-affirming care. (Gothamist) — Hochul approved a law requiring schools to have cardiac emergency response plans. 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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
The £70bn pension tax raid Reeves may not be able to resist
Rachel Reeves is eyeing up your pension. The Chancellor is struggling to balance the books, so where better to look than Gordon Brown's favourite cash cow? It is becoming increasingly likely that she will have to follow in the footsteps of the chancellor whose framed photo she kept as a student, by launching a raid on retirement pots this autumn. As Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, highlighted conspicuously last week, the Government offers tax relief worth £70bn every year to encourage workers to save. While he insisted that incentives to save were 'a good thing', Bell refused to rule out a raid in the future. But while pensions might be a tempting target, the risk of unintended consequences is high. By taking a slice of pension savings, Reeves could inadvertently discourage people from stashing money away or lead to lower pay for the very people that Labour promises to protect. Roughly £12.8bn of individual contributions were made to personal pensions in 2022-23. Data published by the taxman show that in 2022–23, the Government gave up £46.8bn it would have collected if pension contributions had been subject to income tax. That is in addition to £24bn it would have raised if employer pension contributions had been subject to National Insurance (NI) contributions. Another telling statement by Bell this week was that the Government wanted to ensure that people are not 'taxed twice' on the money they save for retirement. He said: 'What does the pension tax system do? It makes it easy for people to smooth their incomes over their lifetime. We're not taxing you twice. That is an important feature of most tax systems, and it will remain an important feature.' But that statement still leaves some low-hanging fruit for the Chancellor to pluck. The first is salary sacrifice, where staff agree to forego a portion of their salary in return for the same amount being ploughed into a workplace pension. As a result, employees can reduce their NI contributions and benefit from tax relief on the money they add to their pension. Employers, who already don't pay NI on an employee's pension contributions, can also reduce their tax bill further because the sacrifice serves as a pay cut. Pensioners do not pay NI, leaving scope for the Government to start taxing one side of this equation and still abide by this principle. HMRC estimates that it lost out on £3.9bn in NI receipts because of salary sacrifice schemes, which would be a princely sum for a cash-strapped Chancellor. In addition, employees currently benefit from roughly £6bn a year in income tax relief through salary sacrifice. 'A generous and opaque subsidy' The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has urged the Government to go further by moving towards levying NI on employer pension contributions as a principle. Carl Emmerson, the deputy director of the IFS, describes the absence of NI on employer pension contributions as 'a very generous and very opaque subsidy' that if removed entirely, could boost the Treasury's coffers by more than £17bn a year. However, with businesses still reeling from a £25bn NI raid on employers, this would be a politically toxic move, and one that Emmerson says will have consequences for working people. 'It would almost certainly put downward pressure on pay, and would also make government spending less generous because lots of public sector workers get generous employer pension contributions, and those public sector employers would find their national insurance bills going up,' he says. To ease pressures, Reeves could choose to reimburse public sector employers as she did during last autumn's raid. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that doing so would cost £5bn – though the measure would still raise £12bn. A more radical option would be to restrict the income tax relief that applies when a worker makes pension contributions at a flat rate of 30pc. This would benefit those on modest income, but at the expense of higher earners. Economists estimate the measure would affect up to 6m higher and additional rate taxpayers, costing the wealthiest savers about £2,600. HMRC estimates show that 37pc of income tax relief on total contributions is provided at the basic rate, just over half at the higher rate and 7pc at the top 45p rate. However, Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister, says the Treasury has shied away from this reform because of its hideous complexity, as well as the significant impact it would have on public sector workers and the implications for their gold-plated, final-salary pensions. Sir Steve says: 'The challenge for the Government with potential cuts to pension tax relief is that a significant part of the existing tax break goes to long-serving and senior public servants, typically in defined-benefit pension arrangements.' Any cut to higher rate relief or tax-free lump sums would affect many such workers adversely at a time when the Government already has issues with the public sector workforce over pay. As this group is part of Labour's core voting base, it is likely to be wary of alienating them further. 'Constant meddling' Baroness Altmann, another former pensions minister, warns that changes to pensions, including Reeves's decision to bring pension pots into the scope of inheritance tax, could leave many people without the means to support themselves later in retirement. 'The constant tax meddling has been a disaster for pensions,' she says. Altmann warns that private sector employees are likely to be left footing the bill for any further changes. 'We're already subsidising hugely generous public sector pensions that the private sector can almost never dream of,' she says. There is also another element of the pensions system that is currently tax-free on the way in and out: the amount that can be taken from pension pots. Tax-free lump sum Currently, people can take up to 25pc of any pension as a tax-free lump sum when they reach 55, up to a maximum of £286,275. Reducing the amount to £100,000 would affect about one in five retirees, and raise £2bn in the long run, according to the IFS. A similar proposal is being pushed by the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society, and it is understood that Treasury officials have urged previous chancellors to look at the relief, which costs about £5.5bn a year. Emmerson says: 'If you've already got £900,000 in your pension pot, it's not obvious why the taxpayer should be subsidising you to put more in your pension. These people can't really claim that they're under-saving for retirement.' However, he makes a more obvious point that should make Reeves think twice if she wants to raid workplace pension savings. 'This would almost exclusively be paid by workers,' he says. A Treasury spokesman said they were 'committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible'. However, it's now clear that they're going to go up. The question is by how much. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
