One man has sweeping power over the economic engine that drives New England, able to dictate almost arbitrarily who gets to build and do business and who doesn’t.

And it’s not the Boston Fed chief, or for that matter Boston’s mild mannered chamber of commerce president. Nope, it’s Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Menino’s power over the region’s economic capital comes after patient and steady accumulation of municipal power that has pretty much neutralized any checks and balances.

And it is increasingly a cause for concern given high-profile dustups over the past few years with the likes of Chick-fil-A, Walmart and developer Vornado, and the overriding importance of Boston to the region’s economy.

Menino may well go down as one of Hub’s greatest mayors, a consummate big-city politician who ruled with the authority of a Daley or a LaGuardia.

But with all due respect, who in the world elected this guy to be Boston’s economic czar?

Increasingly Arbitrary

OK, it’s hard to argue that barring Chick-fil-A from Boston city limits will be a blow to the region’s economy.

Menino’s ham-handed attempt to pile on Chick-fil-A’s thickheaded owner – an outspoken, Bible-thumping opponent of gay marriage – backfired spectacularly. Conservative activists and radio talk hosts seized on Menino’s comments to launch a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, stuffing the fast-food chain’s registers with cash.

But while laughed off and ridiculed in the press, Menino’s threat to block the chain nevertheless unwittingly highlighted the raw power the mayor holds over Boston’s economy – and the somewhat arbitrary way it is sometimes exercised.

After all, it was just the latest in a long line of puzzling edicts by Boston’s economic czar.

Who can forget the Wal-Mart dust up, in which the mayor has effectively blocked the chain from opening a store in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, leaving residents to buy groceries from a few, thinly scattered, high-priced local markets? Of course, Wal-Mart is not a favorite of labor unions, but why make hundreds of thousands of Bostonians pay the price of this grudge?

And even more damaging has been Menino’s long history of grudges against developers, whose plans for new office towers and waterfront projects are crucial to keeping Boston’s economy – and, by extension, New England’s – growing.

There was the years-long feud with Frank McCourt, owner of a key chunk of the Seaport, today considered one of the East Coast’s most valuable development sites. That has been followed by a years-long feud with the current owner, Boston developer John Hynes, who, like McCourt before him, had an ill-advised habit (in Boston, anyway) of tooting his own horn instead of deferring to the mayor.

And we can’t forget International Place builder Don Chiofaro, whose plan to replace the hideously ugly Aquarium parking garage with a pair of twin towers was dead on arrival. A similar personality clash with the mayor did that one in as well.

Of course, projects the mayor likes sail through, like Liberty Mutual’s new headquarters in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood. Next up is plans for a casino at Suffolk Downs, a proposal long-favored by the mayor and pushed by one of his long-time friends in the business community.

 

Amassing Power

Of course, Menino didn’t bring the powers he now enjoys with him to office in Boston, by far New England’s largest and richest city and its economic nerve center. Instead, he has quietly amassed them over his 20 years, just as many other big-city mayors have done in our nation’s history.

When he took over in the early 1990s, Menino inherited a big stick with which to wield authority over Boston’s booming development sector: The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Created decades ago during urban renewal, the BRA has long been endowed with powers that even other big-city bureaucrats would lust after, from power to take property by eminent domain to the ability to all but ignore or circumvent pesky zoning rules. 

Always a bit of a mayoral pet, the BRA during the Menino years has become particularly slavish, with the mayor taking care to appoint carefully chosen cheerleaders to ostensibly run the city authority.

Meanwhile, Menino – himself a former city council president – has long ridden roughshod over the particularly spineless and clueless institution he once led. In most towns and cities you can easily find a critic or two to throw a rock at the powers that be. Sadly, city councilors in Boston long ago gave up trying to check Menino’s authority, or even exert effective oversight of the mayor’s beloved BRA.

And let’s not mince words here, the BRA gives the mayor real power with the helpful illusion of working with an independent body.  There a thousand and one ways for a project to die or slowly fade away at Boston City Hall, and if you want to build in the city, but buck the mayor, that’s exactly what will happen to your plans.

All that said, Menino is a good mayor and a good man – in a town where city councilors have gone to jail pocketing bribes, Menino is scrupulously honest. 

But too much power is never a good thing, even for the best of us, and a few checks and balances wouldn’t hurt.