As thousands of area federal workers worry about their jobs under a second Trump term, here’s one possible way to thwart right-wing plans to change civil service rules to give the president more leeway to hire and fire government employees: Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois. … I’ll get to the significance of that legal ruling in a minute. But first, let’s be clear: Trump’s determination to control who’s hired and fired within the federal bureaucracy may be immediately driven by a combination of control-freak and ideological factors. But when you get right down to it, it’s also a blatant patronage grab that, if successful, will extend political patronage deep into the federal workforce for years to come, long after Trump has left the scene. … As for Rutan v. Republican Party, I was a Statehouse reporter in Illinois when news of the anti-patronage ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court came down – and it hit like a thunderclap. Most everyone who thinks of patronage in Illinois thinks of Chicago, as in the “Chicago way” of dispensing the spoils of government (patronage jobs, no-bid government contracts to campaign donors etc.). But what most people don’t realize is that the suburban/downstate Republican patronage machine was just as bad, if not worse, as anything in Chicago. Patronage was so blatant in the GOP-controlled state government that SCOTUS ruled that the vast system of hiring, firing, promoting and demoting state workers based on their party affiliation and loyalties violated their constitutional First Amendment rights. The Rutan ruling allowed incoming elected officials to make top management-level changes at agencies in order to influence policy direction. But non-policy-making employees were protected. … The 5-4 Rutan ruling was controversial at the time. But as far as I know, it’s still the law of the land, although a much-ignored law of the land. It could be an important legal tool to combat the truly awful bad-government plan to cripple the federal civil-service system. … Fyi: I was co-author of a book – Illinois for Sale: Do Campaign Contributions Buy Influence? – that was based on years of reporting on Illinois government by journalists at the State Journal-Register. Among other awards, we won a George Polk Award for best political reporting in the nation for our “Cash Transactions” series on hundreds of millions of dollars in Illinois contracts going to political cronies.

Moulton: Healey ‘out of step’ with most Americans

U.S, Rep. Seth Moulton and Gov. Maura Healey are trading minor broadsides against each other over Moulton’s post-election trans-athletes comments. … I hadn’t known Healey weighed in on the matter till I read the NYT piece. Her “playing politics with people” comments can be found here. … The Washington Post is backing Moulton, btw. … Jake Auchincloss does and doesn’t have Moulton’s back, it seems.

Boxing’s new low

I didn’t think the sport of boxing could sink any lower. But it did over the weekend with the pathetic Jake Paul-Mike Tyson “fight” in Texas. … What did booing fans expect? A true fight involving a 58-year-old has-been? …  Fyi: George Foreman was 38 when he made his historic boxing comeback. 

A retail vacancy tax?

I’m not sure those pushing the idea of a local ‘vacancy tax’ on landlords with long-empty storefronts, as the Globe reports, should point to San Francisco as a city that Boston should be emulating. Bay Area voters are pretty angry these days. … Still, some landlords really do need a kick in the butt. Too many of them have given up on the neighborhoods where they own property, becoming zombie landlords in the process.

Massachusetts ‘exurbs’

Does Massachusetts have its own ‘exurbs,’ similar to what’s described in this interesting AP story ? Not exactly. But the state does have variations of exurbs – or areas just outside or in between major metro areas where people have recently flocked for affordability reasons – in central and southeast Massachusetts, based on this list of fast-growing communities in the state. … I recently drove through Lancaster for the first time – and I was pleasantly surprised by its rural beauty so close to 495. … By pure coincidence, a friend emailed me the other day on housing-related matters in general: “I am not sure how my young colleagues deal with cost of living but know that flexible work policies have enabled them to move even further out than they were doing a decade ago (Worcester, Southeastern Mass communities like Easton), i.e. out of Massachusetts.” … Hmm. Maybe everything outside Massachusetts is our equivalent of exurbs.