To conclude the owner of a building on Massport land has to pay Boston taxes, court first had to figure out if the legislature overrode a Bill Weld veto in 1993

The Supreme Judicial Court this week ruled a company that owns an office building and freight warehouse on five acres of Massport land off McClellan Highway in East Boston has to pay Boston property taxes -  mainly because in 1993, the state Senate only sort of voted to override a Bill Weld veto of a measure that would have exempted the building, but not really.

In a case that has been winding through the legal system since 2020, an LLC owned by Millennium Partners - better known for its downtown office, condo and hotel towers - had been trying to get abatements on property taxes assessed by Boston on a five-acre parcel it leases  from Massport at 480 McClellan Highway.

Massport has leased the land out since shortly after it acquired it in 1990 with the goal of having a freight-forwarding warehouse built there to serve Logan Airport. For some reason, Boston only decided to try to tax the private leaseholder in 2017 - 12 years after Millennium paid $7 million for the building and lease on the land to a previous leaseholder.

In 2020, Millennium sought abatements on the taxes, arguing it's exempt from property taxes because in 1993, the state legislature passed a bill changing the definition of private use of Massport land that could be taxed to bar taxes on leased land "used for air transportation purposes", then overrode Gov. Weld's veto of the measure.

Only, the state's highest court concluded, the legislature did not, in fact, override Weld's veto. The House passed the override by the required two-thirds majority and the Senate did as well. But then, the court wrote, after looking at legislative records, a senator - Robert Travaglini - used his right to call for a reconsideration of that vote and then the legislative session ended before the Senate could take another vote.

Millennium argued this meant the override stood because of the initial vote, but the court said, nope. Senate rules allow for a reconsideration that effectively nullifies the initial vote and there's nothing unconstitutional about that because the state constitution doesn't specify just how houses of the legislature should conduct their veto considerations - or the fact that the reconsideration in this case never actually happened, so the override ultimately was never passed, the court concluded.

And this meant the older definition of leased land, under which private companies using formerly taxable land acquired by Massport could be subject to tax for a "business purpose," rather than a "public purpose, could be taxed.

Even aside from the Weld veto/non-veto issue, Millennium argued  it was exempt because it was so using the land for a "public purpose" - in this case supporting Logan Airport by running a facility for airport freight forwarding, which Massport said was critical for the airport's operations.

But the state's highest court said that doesn't mean the city can't also tax property that is also put to "business purpose" not directly related to keeping the airport running, in this case, leasing office space. 

In their brief, the city's attorneys argued:

There is no evidence that the Property was used as a “cargo facility.” In fact, the subleases provided to the Assessors in discovery indicate that the subtenants used the Property for office purposes, and not cargo or warehouse purposes.

At a current assessed value of $28.4 million, Millennium has to pay $744,652.64 in property taxes and the community-preservation fee this year, according to assessors' records.

The court's decision starts with some bemusement that the justices had to peer through legislative records from 1993, or as they put it , "more than a score and ten years ago," in a case involving  a "Lazarus-like awakening" of a seemingly dead provision. The court then defined both phrases in footnotes:

1. Referring to twenty years as a "score" is presumed to derive "from the practice, in counting sheep or large herds of cattle, of counting orally from 1 to 20, and making a 'score' . . . or notch on a stick, before proceeding to count the next twenty." Oxford English Dictionary Online

2. Lazarus is a biblical character who is said to have been raised from the dead, according to the Gospel of John. The Holy
Bible, John 11:1-44 (King James Version).

Case docket - includes briefs in the case and oral arguments.