Mayor Dan Mylott

Why does it seem like Mayor Dan Mylott sort of has his back to the wall? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

There's certainly been a bit of Mylott backlash over the budget situation, which has been aired here in both posts and comments. Some corners of the blog community (like burgerhell) are really amping up the juice.

Perhaps more importantly, the political community is hanging Mylott out to dry a little bit. Sen. Robert Antonioni's recent comments on the city's budget situation have been more "sorry" than "we're working with the mayor on it," and Rep. Emile Goguen has been downright critical of the mayor.

If you didn't know any better, you'd think Mylott was on the hot seat. But this is a guy who ran essentially unopposed last year, and won re-election going away. Has the atmosphere around Mylott changed in just two months? We find that a little difficult to believe.

Honestly at this point, we're not sure what to make of Mylott. He may just been hitting a rocky patch, but it's a weirdly timed rocky patch. If this was last year, you'd think he was ripe for the picking last fall, but obviously that didn't happen.

We liked a lot of what he had to say in his inauguration speech. We favor a balance budget. We're big fans of Route 12 expansion (we can hear that neighborhood clicking off us right now), and we'd love to see a Fitchburg Connector off Route 2, but know that's a big challenge.

Mylott seems to understand downtown needs to grow, and needs to take a step (or three) up in status. It won't be easy, especially with easy in-and-out of the area still years away. But he seems focused on it, which we like.

He talks about mounting a "political battle" over state aid to Beacon Hill this year. Depending on who you ask, that's tough-but-winnable, a losing cause, or an absolute no-go. We'd like to think tough-but-winnable, but hope the city has a backup plan (that's not an override) if the state doesn't come through.