The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • A8

The Boston Globe WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2017 A8 The Region Ads sent to women near clinics blocked Efforts to expand parental leave stall for union workers Planned Parenthood applauded JIM DAVISGLOBE STAFFFILE 2014 Attorney General Maura Healey's action. ABORTION ADS Continued from Page Al es at cellphone users inside a certain geographic area. Those ads specifically targeted young women at or near reproductive health clinics, Healey said. "We can reach every Planned Parenthood in the US," Copley Advertising chief executive John F. Flynn said in a presentation posted on his Twitter account in 2016.

"Copley Advertising can drill down to age and gender." The ads could even follow women after they left the clinic, showing up on their cellphones for as long as a month, Flynn said. One campaign was aimed at women 18 to 24 years old who had been near 140 abortion clinics in five cities, Flynn wrote in his presentation. The campaign delivered 2.4 million ad "impressions" and 10,000 "clicks," he said. Copley hasn't run such ads in Massachusetts, but Healey said the practice essentially used confidential medical information to target people without their consent and had to be headed off. "We wanted to be clear with this company.

You've engaged in this practice in other places. We don't want to see it here in Massachusetts," she said. Copley Advertising, a one-person firm founded in 2015, said in a statement that it hadn't broken any laws and believed the campaign was protected by the First Amendment. "We made an agreement with the A.G.'s office so we can devote our time and resources to working for our clients," the company said on its website. "Their right to free speech should not be marginalized because government officials do not agree with the message of their advertisement." The two organizations that Healey said were behind the an-tiabortion ads, Bethany Christian Services of Michigan and RealOptions of California, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Location-specific mobile ads are commonly used by retailers to send coupons and other offers to customers when they are near one of their stores. According to the settlement with Healey, Copley Advertising used GPS coordinates and other location data generated by smartphones to identify people convention sponsored by the Family Research Council, a conservative political group. His presentation for that conference, distributed through Fly-nn's Twitter account, described the ability to reach women who might be considering abortions. Planned Parenthood, one of the organizations specifically mentioned as a target location in Copley's ads, cheered Healey's action. "Every person deserves access to high-quality, confidential care in a space that is safe, nonjudgmental, and free from harassment," said Jennifer Childs-Roshak, chief executive of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

Sellars said the Massachusetts settlement touched on some of the same privacy questions raised by a new measure, signed into law this week by President Trump, that allows Internet service providers to sell the browsing habits of their customers to advertisers. Most consumers don't know that an advertiser might be able to target them based on their visits to a doctor's office, he said. But data brokers can collect a very detailed picture of a person's behavior. "By nature of using the Internet and using technology, we are shedding off a lot of information about ourselves. And there are companies that systematically slurp up that information wherever they can find it to build dossiers to target people," he said.

utes to obtain the settlement with Copley was also unusual because of the highly political context around abortion services. "It should give people pause to see the use of consumer protection laws to regulate what's clearly political speech," he said. But Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts praised Healey for protecting the privacy of consumers seeking medical care from marketing efforts that exploit information about their personal behavior. "That kind of thing might not bother people when it's used in ways that seem mundane and harmless," Crockford said. "It is predatory, in my opinion, to target those women." The fact that Copley's campaigns were about abortion and the details of the messages were not the issue, Healey said.

She invoked a broadly written section of state law that protects consumers against unfair or deceptive trade practices by businesses, arguing in the settlement the ad program developed by Copley "intrudes upon a consumer's private health or medical affairs" and uses that information "without his or her knowledge or consent." "They weren't sending them ads for free gasoline or discounts at Macy's," Healey added. "They were sending them messages that related directly to their health and medical status which, by definition, meant that they were improperly accessing somebody's private medical health data in a way that we feel is exploitive." Flynn was listed as a speaker at a January 2016 antiabortion who entered an area around a health care facility. Healey's office did not specify where Copley obtained the data, but that kind of information is broadly available to advertisers, said Andy Sellars, director of Boston University's Technology Cyberlaw Clinic. "Users, when they download smartphone apps, will often allow those apps to get their location information. They could get that information and then sell it," Sellars said.

"So it could be that Copley is partnering with apps that do this." In addition, data brokers that specialize in compiling information from apps and other sources can repackage the information and sell it to advertising providers, Sellars said. But he and other legal experts who specialize in privacy issues were divided on the tactic used by Healey, saying the courts have not settled the free-speech and privacy questions raised by the settlement. They also called it a revealing glimpse at the kind of data companies can collect about people based on their use of the Internet, smartphones, and common apps, such as social media, coupon, or mapping services. David Greene, civil liberties director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the campaign targeting women in reproductive health clinics was "quite crass behavior." But, he added, advertisers might win a court case on the issue. "They have a First Amendment right, I think, to communicate with people," Greene said.

Sellars said Healey's use of state consumer protection stat- Green Line extension College Avenue MEDFORD ees who worked for the city for at least a year. Walsh signed the policy a month later, saying it would save the city money by attracting and retaining top talent. In speeches, he has hailed the policy as a major milestone for a big-city mayor. "It is my hope that others will follow our lead," the mayor said then. San Francisco and New York state also offer the parental leave benefit.

City Council President Michelle Wu, a new mother at the time, was the lead sponsor of Boston's measure. Councilors Tito Jackson and Timothy McCarthy were cosponsors. The benefit gives employees full pay for the first two weeks of their leave; 75 percent the next two weeks; and 50 percent the last two weeks. All employees can bank sick leave, vacation time, and personal time for their maternity leave. Federal laws allow up 12 weeks of unpaid leave for eligible parents.

The mayor gave the benefit to the city workers he has authority over. Changes to union contracts affecting the vast majority of municipal employees must be negotiated, and the mayor was mindful of the collective bargaining process, administration officials say. Megan Costello, who leads the mayor's Office of Women's Advancement, said Walsh took the "first step" in 2015 to make paid parental leave available for exempt employees. They include Cabinet chiefs, department heads, and administrative assistants, who lack many of the protections afforded to union workers. "If Mayor Walsh could wave a wand tomorrow and give paid parental leave to everybody in the world he would," Costello said.

"This is about values. He took this step because we knew we need paid parental leave at every level." Wu, who pushed last year to ensure council staff also got the benefit, stressed that the goal in 2015 was to do everything within the city's legal power and jurisdiction to offer the benefit to some city workers. "I absolutely wish we could have done all city employees, all employees in Boston, nonpublic employees as well," Wu said last week. "But unfortunately the way our municipal powers are, that was the biggest step that we could take initially." A serious effort is underway in the state House and Senate to make paid family medical leave available to every worker in the state. But in the meantime, Beagan, the public health commission nurse, must wait.

The Mattapan resident, 37, said that after her union's contract with the city expired in September she talked with leaders in 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East about bargaining for the paid leave. With her due date in sight and as contract talks continued, the union advocated to get the leave extended to Beagan, who has worked for the commission for more than two years. Union officials insisted they were not attempting to circumvent the negotiations but trying to ensure that one of their members was covered. Most of the 31 nurses in the union also signed a petition supporting Beagan's request. Both the petition and her requests were denied by the commission, which cited the ongoing contract talks, union officials said.

The commission's lawyer said the petition was a violation of the collective bargaining laws, those officials added. Beagan said she felt no one was working hard enough to push the benefit for everyone. "I was surprised," Beagan said of the rejection. "I work for public health, which has proven benefits for families. This is something that the public health department should be supporting.

Management has this benefit. This is something that should go to everybody." Beagan had her baby, Harry, on April 1 She is not getting paid parental leave. PARENTAL LEAVE Continued from Page Al political stage, has resurfaced at City Hall, with the Walsh administration negotiating workers contracts that expired last year and some union leaders demanding that this much-heralded benefit be given to their membership. And, the leaders argue, the leave should be granted to them as a basic right, rather than a perk they must barter for. "This is something that should be extended to every-body," said Rand Wilson spokesman for Service Employees International Union local 888, which has 2,000 members who work for the city.

"We are not going to give something up for a benefit that should be provided to everybody." Lily Beagan, a nurse in the Boston Public Health Commission, was seeking a resolution as she and her husband prepared to have their first child. Ed Beagan, a lawyer, works for Attorney General Maura Healey, who two years ago gave her staff six weeks of paid parental leave, Lily Beagan said. But Lily Beagan said she had been trying in vain to get the health commission, a quasi-city agency, to extend to her the same six weeks paid leave benefit the city gave to the nonunion employees. Currently, she has to make do with short-term disability, which she paid into well in advance of her pregnancy and gives her five weeks of partial pay. She has no sick or vacation time left, having used those up caring for her sick father who died last year and recovering from morning sickness.

She had hoped that after having her son, she would not have to worry about her finances as they bonded and that the city and her union would have resolved their contract negotiations. "My baby isn't going to wait," Beagan, a member of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, said two weeks before giving birth. "Union employees have been waiting for two years. No one seems to be focusing on this. We want to get things moving.

We want to get this thing done." Walsh officials said paid parental leave is still a priority for the mayor, adding that the leave is "currently a topic of negotiations with several of the unions" and that the city expects to reach "contract resolutions that benefit both the employees and the taxpayers." Union benefits are dictated through the collective bargaining process. In the past, union officials have required the city to negotiate for policy changes it was seeking most notably drug and alcohol tests for firefighters rather than simply accepting the change outside of the contract process, as some unions are asking the city to do now on parental leave. But the benefit was "not a priority" for the Boston Police Patrolmen's Agency during its contract talks with the city, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations. The union's president did not return a request for comment. Paid parental leave is part of contract talks between the Boston Teachers Union and the Boston Public Schools.

District officials said they extended the leave, which they described as "currently afforded to managerial employees," to all teachers. Richard Stutman, president of the teachers union, had a different take on the matter. He said the city's offer only applies to 10 percent of the union's nearly 7,000 members and the district's offer came with conditions that he would not specify. "It doesn't go far enough," said Stutman. "They haven't offered it to us without our conceding on a number of other issues that have nothing to do with this." The benefit is something to bargain for, particularly in a union that is 76 percent female, he said.

In April 2015, the City Council passed the ordinance giving six weeks of paid family leave to exempt, or nonunion, employ Scaled-back extension gets back on track Ball Square Curt Woodward can be reached at curt.woodwardglobe.com. Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha. brayglobe. com. sent over their report on Monday.

Some have worried that federal funding for public transit could be reduced under the Trump administration, but a recent budget blueprint from the White House appeared to support already funded projects. The Green Line extension is also one of dozens of infrastructure projects across the country that were highlighted by the Trump administration, and Baker said the extension was on a priority list for administration officials. The MBTA will be using a different contracting process to help speed up construction and avoid the cost increases that plagued the project last time. That process, called "design-build," involves hiring a group of firms that work together to design and construct the project. Earlier this year, the agency released a list of three firms that could win the project, and will seek to award the contracts in the fall.

The MBTA will be under pressure to complete the project on budget, but some activists say they will continue to push for additions. Mares, for example, thinks that the community path should be lengthened and that the state needs to find the money for a station on Route 16, past the current end of the line at College Avenue in Medford. "There are still components that need to be added," Mares said. "I do firmly believe that's what the full Green Line extension should look like, and it would be a huge missed opportunity if that didn't get completed." Nicole Dungca can be reached at nicoIe.dungcaglobe.com. Follow her on Twitter ndungca.

project 1 mile I 1 SOMERVILLE Gilman Square, CD East Somerville New ''V Lechmere station GLOBE STAFF Square, and College Avenue. In May, the state's transportation board approved the new plans, but warned the MBTA still had to generate more funding. Other sources include the Somerville, which is paying $50 million, Cambridge, which is pitching in about $25 million, and the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, which reallocated funds to the project. MBTA officials also say that they will use $64.3 million more in state money for the project, using bonds from the state's "rail enhancement program," said Andrew Brennan, the MBTA's director of energy and environment. That account is usually used to pay for other transit projects.

In January, the FTA and the MBTA held an extensive two-day meeting to review the cost estimates, and FTA officials BOSTON JT GREEN LINE Continued from Page Al economic development by giving riders a direct trip from as far away as Tufts University in Medford to downtown Boston and the rest of the MBTA system. US Representative Michael Capuano, a Democrat from Somerville, said the project will still undergo further financial analysis and congressional approval. But he said he expects plans will be finalized in the coming months. The Federal Transit Administration "does not want to say no," he said. "They want to say yes, but they have an obligation to make sure everything lines up, especially after the first go-round, where things didn't line up." Rafael Mares, a vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy organization in Boston, said Tuesday's approval was cause for celebration.

"The Green Line extension is getting the green light again," he said. "After decades of worrying about this project, people should be increasingly confident that this is coming." The foundation has lobbied for the extension for years. After the group threatened legal action to block the Big Dig highway project, the state agreed in 1990 to complete the extension as a way of offsetting the environmental impacts from increased driving. In 2005, the foundation filed a lawsuit that accused the state of reneging on its commitments. The state settled the suit the next year, agreeing to finish the project by 2014.

But the extension was still largely unfunded until Congress approved the nearly $1 billion federal grant in 2015. Magoun Square t). Union Square CAMBRIDGE BROOKLINE SOURCE: MassDot Over time, it became increasingly clear that the cost of the project would far exceed its nearly $2 billion budget. State officials blamed an overreliance on outside consultants and a construction contracting process that the state was unacquainted with, among other factors. In 2015, the MBTA and its oversight board essentially halted the project while consultants worked to downsize it.

Under the new design, enclosed stations became open-air stops, a community path to run alongside the rail line was shortened, and a vehicle maintenance facility was pared back. Even scaled back, the extension marks a major investment. It involves moving Lechmere station in Cambridge and adding new stations at Union Square, East Somerville, Gilman Square, Magoun Square, Ball Meghan E. Irons can be reached at meghan.ironsglobe.com..