Winthrop’s top elected official, Jim Letterie, the president of the Town Council, said he’s leading the local fight against legal compliance with the state housing law known as 3A – making taxpayers liable for legal costs and lost state revenue – because obeying the law leaves him “with a bad taste in my mouth.”

Mr Letterie, in an interview with the WCAT program Winthrop and the World, affirmed that the state law would not actually require any new housing in Winthrop, and that violating the law could subject Winthrop taxpayers to millions of dollars in lost funding and legal charges.

But Mr Letterie said he still wants Winthrop to violate the law, even after court rulings in the state’s favor, “because I’m against the overreach, I feel, of the state.”

The 3A law, also known as the MBTA Communities Act, was enacted almost unanimously by the state legislature and signed into law in 2021, requiring 177 cities and towns with MBTA service to create multifamily housing districts.

The state’s right to issue such requirements for municipalities is well-established, and Mr Letterie didn’t challenge that fundamental right. And the 3A law imposes no new housing requirements in the case of Winthrop because the town can comply by simply rezoning to multifamily status a few areas of town where housing complexes were built with special approvals inside single-family districts.

Yet Mr Letterie has taken up the cause of a group of town residents who have repeatedly jeered and interrupted his Town Council discussions of 3A, arguing that violating the law is a wise course of action while pleading with the state to revise or withdraw it.

Mr Letterie said in the WCAT interview that while he understands 3A requires no new housing in the case of Winthrop, he accepts warnings that obeying the law might somehow encourage the state to pass more such laws.

“Why the state would feel that it’s comfortable for Winthrop to add zero units to their plan? To me, it just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth,” he said. “I don’t feel in totality that’s what will end up happening down the road.”

The 3A law allows for the withdrawal of state funding to towns that do not act by this month’s compliance deadline, and opens the town to legal repercussions and costs.

The town of Milton already has spent about $300,000 in taxpayer on legal costs associated with fighting 3A, only to lose court rulings in the matter.

The town of Winthrop already has lost one state grant, for about $750,000 to help with flood mitigation – that Revere, which is in compliance with 3A, did receive – in what Mr Letterie acknowledged could be an early sign of the types of penalties that Winthrop could expect if it remains out of compliance with the 3A law.

That kind of lost money “to me and you is a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, in terms of granting, it’s not a ton of money,” the Town Council president said in the WCAT interview. But, “to answer your question point blank,” in terms of whether there will be lost grant money in Winthrop because of his 3A position, “I’m sure there will be.”

The 3A debate is part of a local, statewide and national dilemma over the fact that the nation and many regions need more housing for people and their economies, but that people often don’t welcome new development in their own individual neighborhoods.

Winthrop has about 19,000 residents, and is already adding hundreds of new housing units regardless of 3A. And one the most costly aspects of new housing is new students, as schools account for roughly half the cost of municipal budgets.

Yet Winthrop has been relatively advantaged by that measure. While its population of 19,000 has held relatively steady for decades, its school population has not, as the town’s population has become older, and smaller housing units have become more common. Winthrop’s high school this year had a graduating class of about 145 students, which is relatively high compared to recent years but still well below the levels of 250 to 300 that the town had in the early 1980s with the same overall population.

And yet while Winthrop published a master plan in 1958 that set a target population of 22,000 people, Mr Letterie said he believed the town should not go much beyond the 19,000 level. That assessment, he said, is driven by the recognition of heavy growth in the areas surrounding Winthrop, including major housing developments along Revere Beach and at Suffolk Downs.

That kind of nearby housing growth translates into more cars, which could hinder the ability of Winthrop residents to come and go, especially in emergencies, Mr Letterie said. Yet the Town Council president acknowledged that the congestion problem is due in large part to the heavy growth in car use within Winthrop, which provides relatively few options for people wanting lower-cost and faster alternatives to jammed roadways.

That choice of prioritizing individual motor vehicles over other options has left Winthrop with what Mr Letterie described as three times the number of registered motor vehicles in town as compared to the 1970s, when the town had about the same population.

Mr Letterie said the town could help reduce the risk and cost of its car-centric design by creating a new paved pathway north of Saratoga Street, at the town’s border with East Boston, that would serve as a bike lane with options for emergency vehicle use. But that possibility seems at least years away, Mr Letterie said.

Mr Letterie is running for re-election as town council president this coming November with a campaign slogan of “Keeping Winthrop Winthrop.” Asked in the WCAT interview who he believes is not keeping Winthrop Winthrop, he cited “overreach from state agencies” as his chief concern.

As a chief example, he cited the town’s beaches, describing Winthrop Beach as being “totally different from what I remember in the 70s and 80s and even 90s.” Yet he also acknowledged that state project to build barriers at Winthrop Beach, done despite local concerns in town, has made a major difference in reducing flooding that regularly occurred along the streets in the area. He also acknowledged that state efforts to build the Deer Island sewage treatment plant has produced a huge improvement for Yirrell Beach. “It became more of a family beaching area, and that was great,” he said.

Asked whether that might suggest that 3A opponents should consider the overall benefit of state-local cooperation, Mr Letterie said: “I think the state helps us in many ways.” But he still found room for complaint, including his assertion that when it came time for beach improvements in Revere, the city of Revere was treated better by the state, in terms of “the type of materials on the beach” that were used. In Winthrop, he complained, “it wasn’t the same materials as Revere Beach got.”