After more than a year of heavy battling over the 3A housing law in Winthrop, the president of the Town Council, Jim Letterie, is ready to vote in favor of compliance, conceding the state’s demonstrated authority.

Mr Letterie, in an appearance on the WCAT program Winthrop and the World, said he remains firmly opposed to the 3A law and fears its effects on the town, but also recognizes the growing damage to the town’s budget – especially in the areas of children and education.

“You fight every fight you can, but you’re not going to win every fight,” Mr Letterie said on the program. “And in the end, you have to protect the citizens of the town and the structure of the town.”

Mr Letterie’s switch on the compliance question – the dominant issue in town politics for more than a year – follows an escalating series of actions by the state government to expand the number of state grants denied to the dwindling number of communities still resisting the 3A law.

State tactic

One of most recent cases involved the Winthrop Parents Network, a 16-year-old association that provides learning services for preschool children, that announced on May 30 that its state funding had been terminated over 3A and that it would therefore shut down this month.

The Town Council president expressed clear frustration with Governor Maura Healey for bringing such child-related funding into the 3A fight, calling the Winthrop Parents Network a valuable educational service for needy families. “To be taking that away from us is just ludicrous,” he said. “And as quote-unquote the leader of the town, I can’t sit back and let that happen.”

Less clear, however, is whether the idea of Winthrop complying with the 3A law has enough votes on the nine-member Town Council. The council has twice voted narrowly against compliance, and the council membership then shifted significantly in November to solidify that perspective: Candidates in all six open seats won their races by large margins after running as a Letterie-led alliance centered on the idea of fighting the 3A law.

Yet cracks in that coalition appeared almost immediately after the election, as the state increased the legal, political and economic pressure on the few holdout communities. The 3A law, passed nearly unanimously by the state legislature in 2021, listed a few specific grants that would be withheld from non-compliant towns. But the law gave the governor broad discretion to expand that list – and Governor Healey has done that repeatedly.

Legal processes

That tactic helped split the Winthrop Town Council. Half the council election winners in November – Patrick Costigan, Joseph Romano and Paul Reardon – joined the council’s new vice president, Suzanne Swope, and appointed council member Martin Finn in pushing an even more aggressive approach: As the majority, they voted for the town to join a citizen lawsuit led by Ms Swope’s daughter aimed at giving Winthrop an exemption from the 3A law. Mr Letterie, however, sided with fellow election winners Kurt Millar and Kim Dimes, backed by existing council member Max Tassinari, in arguing the town already was fighting the 3A matter in court and didn’t need an additional private lawsuit.

Mr Letterie spoke with WCAT on the eve of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday before a Superior Court judge in Plymouth to consider the fate of that private lawsuit and the question of whether Winthrop as a town should be allowed to join the case. Winthrop’s other legal battles with the state include a lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, aimed at forcing compliance by Winthrop and other communities that have not implemented the zoning rules required by the 3A law.

The council’s decision to join the private lawsuit also helped spark a wider schism on the panel, with some members advancing various methods for challenging Mr Letterie’s leadership and agenda-setting rights over the town’s governing board.

The 3A law generally requires cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts to add zones where multifamily housing is permissible. It affects 177 communities and Winthrop is among fewer than a dozen still refusing to comply.

Political credentials

Mr Tassinari was the only one of the council’s nine current members to declare that he favored the town complying with the 3A law, and he faced a contentious bid last year by 3A opponents seeking to remove him from office. Mr Letterie is the first of the other council members to publicly discuss switching positions.

Mr Letterie has repeatedly emphasized his credentials among Winthrop’s 3A opponents as the first Town Council member to publicly oppose the law. He long criticized the law as an unwarranted imposition on the town, even while acknowledging the state has demonstrated in court its constitutional right to set town zoning rules, and while acknowledging that Winthrop could comply with 3A without inviting new housing by rezoning parts of town that already have existing multifamily complexes.

In outlining the repercussions of opposing 3A compliance, Mr Letterie noted that the town manager had estimated that Winthrop, with a $68 million annual budget, had lost or been made ineligible for some $2.5 million in state funding. That includes at least $300,000 in school-related state funding, he said.

As a result, he said on the WCAT program, public opinion in Winthrop appears to have shifted from a point 18 months ago when he suggests a huge share of the town’s residents opposed complying with the 3A law, to a point now where he believes a slight majority likely favors complying.