city council

The Dorchester Reporter breaks the news on City Councilor Sal LaMattina's ruminations. Like the city clerk's job, the register job has traditionally been a haven for city councilors who want to move on - if he runs and wins, LaMattina, who now represents East Boston, Charlestown and the North End, would replace Richard Ianella, who retired last year.

City Councilor Rob Consalvo (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), today proposed slapping advertising on city Web sites, including library and school sites - and even the site run by the city's public-housing authority.

Consalvo says cityofboston.gov got 6.8 million visits last year, the BPS site some 4.7 million.

With this kind of traffic, the city and the BPS could potentially raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from advertising on these Web sites as well as advertising on associated city Web sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Housing Authority.

Consalvo said he would want to see "strong content review" to ensure inappropriate ads are not run (Ed. note: Darn, there go the plans to capture some of the MBTA's liquor-ad sales by putting beer ads on school-lunch menus).

However, the city might have to leave its flagship site out of any ad solicitations. The US General Services Administration, which handles registration of .gov sites, such as cityofboston.gov, bars advertising:

A Gov Internet domain may not be used to advertise for private individuals, firms, or corporations, or imply in any manner that the government endorses or favors any specific commercial product, commodity, or service.

The prohibition does not apply to sites that are run with other domains, such as bpl.org, bostonpublicschools.org and fatsmack.org.

H/t Kate Hutchinson for digging up the ad ban.

The Boston city councilor today announced he won't be moving to Newton to run for the congressional seat being given up by Barney Frank.

In a statement, Ross explained why he felt he would make a good representative, but doesn't really say why he decided not to run, except that "the difficult decision that a run for this congressional seat is not the best decision for me at this time."

His complete statement:

(This post originally appeared at www.BostonBastard.com)

Just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Boston City Council readily presented their version of Boston race relations by making an example out of Charles Yancey, a black City Councilor who committed the egregious offense of actually trying to do his job and look out for his constituents.

The annual release of City Council Committee chairs is always a good way to get a sense of where the councilors stand in the eyes of the City Council power structure and this year was no different.

When Council President Stephen Murphy released his assignments last week, we learned that Matt O’Malley has proven himself as a willing stooge of the status quo, so of course he was handed the chair of the Government Operations Committee, which had been left available when Maureen Feeney finally decided to drop any pretense of giving a shit about her Dorchester constituents and went after a major pay raise.

Another major change was that Charles Yancey was removed from his chairmanship of the Post Audit and Oversight Committee.

Among councilors, Yancey is often criticized for not doing anything, but only because trying to improve the community in Mattapan doesn’t count among City Hall’s paler politicians.