MILTON’S RESPONSE to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s lawsuit over compliance with a state rezoning law suggests the town is prepared to fight on a number of legal fronts.
Over the last month, town officials have talked about challenging the state’s designation of Milton as a rapid transit community under the MBTA Communities Act, while crafting new zoning to bring the town into compliance with whatever designation is ultimately upheld by the courts.
But in its response to the attorney general’s complaint – a response that was filed with the Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday — the municipality argues that it should not have to take any further action because the law’s guidelines were not promulgated properly and, even if that issue was rectified, the Legislature didn’t grant the attorney general the power to enforce the law.
The law’s only compliance mechanism, Milton goes on to argue, is the denial of state grants to a municipality, which the state has already set in motion with Milton. Even so, the town indicated it plans to ask state officials to return a $140,800 grant that had been withdrawn by the Healey administration “until, at the very least, the Supreme Judicial Court renders a decision in this matter.”
The town asserts the Legislature knew exactly what it was doing when it did not give the attorney general the power to seek injunctive relief to enforce the MBTA Communities Act and instead authorized the withholding of state grant funds.
“It selected precisely the degree of pressure it wanted to apply on municipal governments to themselves amend their bylaws,” Milton’s response says. “Respect for local government decision making, especially with respect to an issue related so closely to community character, would have been ample reason for the Legislature to tread carefully in this area.”
In a letter to town residents released Wednesday, the Milton Select Board said the lawsuit was an attempt to get answers to questions raised by residents. “We remain willing to work with the state to come up with a plan that works for Milton so that, together, we can make progress on housing in Massachusetts,” the letter states.
Milton argues in its legal response to Campbell that the town was incorrectly classified as a “rapid transit community” in the guidelines developed to carry out the MBTA Communities Act. The rapid transit designation – tied to the Mattapan Trolley Line that runs from Ashmont Station on the Red Line to Mattapan Center with three stops in Milton — meant the town was required to rezone to allow for the possibility of more than 2,400 additional housing units.
“The guidelines define a rapid transit community as ‘an MBTA community that has within its borders at least 100 acres of developable station area associated with one or more subway stations, or MBTA Silver Line bus rapid transit stations.’ There is no such subway station in or near Milton; again, the Mattapan Trolley is not a ‘subway.’ The Town of Milton therefore is entitled to a declaration that the guidelines’ designation of Milton as a ‘rapid transit community’ was arbitrary and capricious.”
On October 23, 2023, an official at the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which drafted the guidelines for the MBTA Communities Act, responded to a query from the chair of the Milton Select Board about the designation of the municipality as a rapid transit community.
“In defining the Rapid Transit Category, EOHLC primarily focused on two criteria: (a) the presence of fixed transit assets – consistent with the reference to “stations” in Section 3A; and (b) in the case of service along rail lines, whether the transit service offered is continual throughout the day, seven days a week,” the letter said.
“Applying these criteria, the definitions Section of the Compliance Guidelines clearly and unambiguously defines subway stations to include all stations on all branches of the Red Line, including the Mattapan High Speed Line, which according to the MBTA’s posted schedule for the Red Line runs every 6-7 minutes at peak hours and every 8-12 minutes at off-peak hours,” the letter added.
“The Guidelines do not – and cannot – take into consideration the quality of the service or the type of equipment used on any given line,” the letter continued. “Failing to require multi-family housing to be located in proximity to these stations would be inconsistent with the statutory language requiring housing to be sited near fixed transit assets (stations).”
In its letter to town residents, the Milton Select Board said it was hopeful that all the attention on the Mattapan Line “will help focus the MBTA’s efforts
on the sorely needed Mattapan Line Transformation Project, which would greatly improve transit access to underserved populations in Mattapan, Milton, and Dorchester.”