It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk

Coincidentally (or not) both local dailies have salary surveys of the Boston mayoral candidates today, with – wait for it – mostly different numbers.

Start with the Boston Herald:

BIG BUCKS BACKING BIDS

Herald review shows top earners in mayor’s race

Dorchester health care executive Bill Walczak is the wealthiest among the top tier of mayoral candidates, reporting a staggering $450,000 salary, while state Rep. Martin J. Walsh and City Councilor Michael P. Ross each reported earning more than $200,000, and two others hauled in a quarter-million dollars with their spouses, a Herald review of candidates’ tax returns found.

Walczak, co-founder of the Codman Square Health Center, and his Boston schoolteacher wife, Linda, reported earning a combined $526,000 in 2011, according to a tax return supplied by the Walczak campaign.

Like that “staggering”? That’s the Herald all over.

The feisty local tabloid also listed the incomes of former state representative Charlotte Golar Richie, Boston School Committeeman  John Barros, Boston City Councilors Felix Arroyo, Rob Consalvo, and John Connolly, and Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the story looked like this:

Income of Boston mayoral hopefuls varies

Many looking to succeed Menino now earn more than city’s median income

There are no Mitt Romneys in the bunch, no nine-digit personal fortunes, no eye-popping investments. But roughly half of the candidates hoping to succeed Thomas M. Menino as mayor of Boston earn more than double the city’s annual median household income of almost $52,000.

Four of the aspirants would face pay cuts if they move into the fifth-floor office that belongs to the mayor, a job that pays $175,000 a year.

As campaigns clash this summer over affordable housing and the plight of the middle class, tax returns can provide a glimpse of each candidate’s socioeconomic status. The Globe requested 2012 state and federal tax returns for all 15 people running for mayor and found that income varied from roughly $59,000 to $700,000. One candidate gave almost $19,000 to charity; another donated a few hundred dollars, the returns showed.

The stately local broadsheet also included this helpful chart.

Notice not just the different numbers, but the Globe’s inclusion of Robert Cappucci, “a former School Committee member and retired Boston police officer who collects a pension,” and its listing of tax rates and charitable donations – both quite telling.

Notice also who failed to provide tax returns, most conspicuously Councilor Charles Yancey.

Follow-up, anyone?