BREAKING THIS MORNING — "Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson arrested on federal charges," by Danny McDonald and Shelley Murphy, The Boston Globe: "Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested Friday morning and is set to appear in the Moakley Courthouse in South Boston later in the day to answer to federal charges, the US attorney’s office announced. Fernandes Anderson was indicted on six counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud in connection with the use of federal monies through her role on the City Council, according to the federal indictment unsealed Friday." U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy is slated to host press a conference at 9:30 a.m. at the Boston federal courthouse to announce the arrest. A NUMBERS GAME — Good news about Boston’s property valuations looks like bad news for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s property tax shift home petition. But don’t declare time of death on the proposal just yet. Wu pledged to keep her push alive as she accepted an endorsement from the city’s hotel and food workers union, UNITE HERE Local 26. And she urged the union — some 12,000 members — to help her. “We picked up this fight knowing it wasn't going to be easy ... and we are this close to making sure that our communities can have the full benefits of being able to stay in the homes that they have worked so hard to buy or to find and to live in,” Wu told the rowdy crowd last night. “And I need your help in that fight.” With time ticking down before the Legislature wraps up its work for the year — and with the city’s deadline to print and send its tax bills nearing — here’s where things stand. THE GOOD: The sky, as state Sen. Nick Collins told reporters yesterday, isn’t falling in Boston. Commercial property tax valuations haven’t dropped as much as business groups and the city feared they would, and the dreaded post-pandemic urban “doom loop” some expected to see isn’t hitting quite as hard (at least not yet) as initially expected. But… THE BAD NEWS FOR WU: Those numbers have generated a fresh round of opposition to the home rule petition that’s already faced pushback at every step. Collins, who blocked the measure from moving forward in the Senate earlier this week saying he wanted to see the updated valuations before moving forward, delayed passage again yesterday after those numbers were released, saying he needed more time to “digest” the data. With the new valuations, the city says residential property owners would see a 10.5 percent increase in their annual tax bills — well below the initial projections from early this year, down from the roughly 14 percent increase city officials estimated in October, and not a massive leap from the 9 percent increase the city has averaged over the last five years. “I think having this discussion absent that data we received last night was regrettable,” Collins told reporters after the Senate gavelled out. “Now we are dealing with information that allows people to be reading from the same sheet of music.” Senators could use procedural moves to run out the clock, holding up the bill until the legislative session ends Dec. 31. THE COMPLICATIONS: Adding to the debate, business groups who previously reached a compromise with Wu over a new home rule petition that would lock in a the shift with a more limited scope, said yesterday they now want to press pause on the bill, given the certified property valuations “materially differ from the data provided by the City in discussions in October.” The 10.5 percent increase “would be in line with the increases in the past five years and would also ensure stability for the commercial real estate industry during this challenging time,” the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, NAIOP, and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said in a joint statement. There’s also the City Council schedule. Councilors will have to vote to certify the numbers themselves, and their last scheduled meeting for the year is Wednesday. If the bill doesn't make it to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk by then, they could be forced to hold an emergency meeting as the holidays approach. Wu’s take: The mayor expressed “disbelief” that business groups are “looking to renegotiate or walk away from a deal that was settled a month and a half ago,” she said in a statement last night. The shift is still necessary, she argued, to avoid imposing a “significant burden of compounding high tax increases for families and especially seniors struggling to afford to stay in Boston.” “When we come to a deal – when I sit at the bargaining table with someone, whether it is a union for the city, whether it is business community members and legislators, to come to a deal in the best interest for our residents, I expect that deal to hold,” she said at the UNITE HERE event. And the 10.5 percent bump is still within the range that was presented to the business groups during negotiations this fall, she told reporters. The bottom line for Boston residential real estate owners: Not passing the bill means a 10.5 percent bump in their annual tax bills, slightly above the 9 percent average over the last few years. And passing the bill would mean residents see a 5 present increase — their lowest hike since 2018, according to the Globe’s Larry Edelman. GOOD FRIDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS. TGIF! Tips? Scoops? Tired of talk about the tax shift bill? Email me: kgarrity@politico.com TODAY — Gov. Maura Healey has no public events. She’s set to attend the Democratic Governors Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles that begins today. Auditor Diana DiZoglio speaks at the Mass Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives meeting at 10 a.m. in Marlborough. THIS WEEKEND — DiZoglio attends the LLP Food Drive and Holiday Celebration at 7 p.m. in Saugus and the Saint Anthony’s Club at 8 p.m. in Woburn Saturday. Jon Marcus, a higher ed editor for the Hechinger Report, is on WBZ’s “Keller @ Large,” at 8:30 a.m. Sunday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is on WCVB’s “On the Record” at 11 a.m. Sunday. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is on NBC10 Boston’s “At Issue” at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.
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