Setti Warren: A Worse Mayor than David Cohen

Now that Setti Warren has concluded his “service” as Mayor of Newton, MA to focus on his sacrificial lamb gubernatorial campaign, it is time for us to take an honest evaluation of his record of governance while serving as Newton’s Mayor.

Setti Warren was the worst mayor Newton ever had, worse than his predecessor David Cohen was. At least David Cohen viewed serving as Mayor of Newton as a destination job whereas Setti Warren has been angling for his next political job within less than two years of his first inauguration in 2010. While Mayor Warren may have inherited a rickety financial foundation consisting of $1 Billion in debt and other obligations from David Cohen, his eight years serving as Mayor of Newton have made it worse. Annual spending by Newton increased by $108 Million (37.5%) during Mayor Warren’s tenure, which primarily underwrote increased compensation spending for unions and bureaucrats.

Warren also oversaw an increase in Newton’s bonded debt by $101 Million (46%), its net underfunded pension liability by $118 Million (57%) and its net underfunded retiree healthcare liability by $107 Million (20%), according to the Newton Comptroller’s Website. Newton now owes more than $1.3 Billion, or ~$40,000 per household. Yes, Setti Warren piled on another $326 Million in net interest-bearing obligations onto Newton’s balance during his tenure as Newton Mayor. Yes, Setti Warren made Newton’s bad financial balance sheet worse while serving as Newton’s Mayor. At least when David Cohen served as Newton’s mayor, he did not try to sell Newton taxpayers into thinking he saved us money as he raised taxes, spending and debt like Setti Warren has.

As Newton’s Mayor, Setti Warren imposed more burdensome taxes, more wasteful government spending, more imprudent government borrowing, draconian bans on plastic grocery bags and leaf blowers. Warren also made Newton into a Sanctuary City for illegal aliens and enthusiastically sought to turn Newton into a Monopoly board to sell Newton residents on 40B projects for politically connected crony capitalist developers like Scott Oran, Bob Engler and Robert Korff.

I hope that somebody close to Setti stages an intervention with him to let him know directly that he will lose to Governor Charlie Baker and Baker’s $7.1 Million campaign war chest should the Democrats nominate him as their gubernatorial nominee. If the ultra-left-wing Bernie Sanders supporting State Senator Jamie Eldridge prefers Jay Gonzalez to Setti, I do not see how Setti will get the 54% of unenrolled/independent voters in MA to vote for him given that he has not differentiated himself from Gonzalez or even Baker on the issues. The recent campaign finance filings showing that Setti Warren only has $32,726 in his campaign account and that half of what he raised has gone to overhead expenses for his political operatives reinforce my conclusion that Setti will either lose badly to Baker next November or potentially lose to Gonzalez in the September primary.

The good news for Newton’s beleaguered taxpayers is that Setti Warren will no longer be serving as Mayor of Newton. Unfortunately, his successor Ruthanne Fuller had enthusiastically rubber-stamped Mayor Warren’s agenda of more taxes, borrowing and spending when she served on the City Council. We at the Newton Taxpayers Association were encouraged that Ruthanne Fuller met with us in October, demonstrated knowledge of Newton fiscal issues and appointed one of our board members to her transition team. However, we were disappointed that she failed to articulate any specific plans to change the negative fiscal direction at our meeting, nor could give us any justification for voting to rubber stamp Mayor Warren’s agenda when she served as a city councilor.

Now that Ruthanne Fuller began serving as Newton’s Mayor, we hope she is willing to be a more aggressive financial watchdog as mayor relative to her tenure as city councilor given her increased responsibilities to Newton’s taxpayers as she will be serving as Newton’s strong mayor and will have the responsibility of hiring department heads and preparing the budget. The four financial reforms we would like to see Ruthanne Fuller achieve in his first year serving as Newton’s Mayor include the following:

1. Ensuring the timely publication of the 2017 Newton Comprehensive Audited Financial Report
2. New Labor Contracts that limit cash pay raises to 1% total (instead of the 2%-6% Newton currently pays) and caps employer funded health insurance contributions to 50% for new employees
3. Use her ex-oficio membership on the Newton School Committee to push for full-reimbursement of out-of-district students, which would bring in $9.3 Million annually to offset future infrastructure project costs
4. Enhance its future Pension Plan Actuarial Valuation Reports to include how the net liability would change if the compensation growth rate used in the model changed by 1%.