The state’s highest court yesterday rejected Milton’s challenge to the MBTA Communities Act. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that towns and cities that benefit from state-funded public transit must comply with the 2021 law, which requires local officials to pass new zoning rules to facilitate construction of multifamily projects near transit hubs.
While the decision sent the requirements and penalties for noncompliance back to the state for review due to flaws in the process by which they’d been created, the court made clear that the law stands and that Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has the power to enforce it. Gov. Maura Healey announced in a press release that the state could have new “emergency” regulations in place as soon as Friday.
As the decision upheld the law, it will not impede Needham’s Jan. 14 special election on the possible repeal of Town Meeting’s approval of the zoning plan created to meet the law’s requirements.
Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick issued a statement affirming the election remains on schedule. The town is monitoring how the state’s response to the ruling will affect Needham and its compliance status going forward.
“We conclude that the act is constitutional and that the Attorney General has the power to enforce it,” the SJC’s decision reads.
But in its decision, the SJC also ruled state housing officials erred in how they went about “promulgating the guidelines” for communities to comply with the new law, rendering them “ineffective.”
The SJC wrote that the law’s “guidelines are legally ineffective and must be repromulgated . . . before they may be enforced.”
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