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Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
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“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
46 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
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CLT UPDATE
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Latest Scheme to Kill Proposition 2˝
Jump directly
to CLT's Commentary on the News
Most Relevant News Excerpts
(Full news reports follow
Commentary)
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Longmeadow Town
Meeting voters rejected a move by the town Selectboard and
the Finance Committee to begin the process of exempting the
town from Proposition 2˝ tax limitations. A request for
funds to cover initial engineering costs for a Longmeadow
Street rebuild was also voted down.
Tuesday’s outdoor
meeting on the grounds of Longmeadow High School Tuesday
evening allowed generous social distancing for the 277
registered voters who attended.
Article 14 asked
voters to allow the town to begin home rule legislation that
could eventually exempt town government from the 2.5 percent
tax cap mandated by Proposition 2˝.
The Chair of the
Select Board, Thomas Lachiusa said home rule legislation
would begin a process to allow the town to permanently
exempt itself from having to adhere to the 2.5 percent cap
on yearly property taxes.
“This is something
both the Select Board and the Finance Committee have been
looking at for a long time as a solution to protect the town
from a drastic property value decreases,” he said. If that
were to happen we would see a lot of cuts to education,
programs and services we have all come to expect. It would
be a progressive loss of services as each year we would have
to make more and more cuts."
Lachuisa said the
vote Tuesday would have allowed the town to approach the
state legislature for home rule legislation. Once the state
government approves, the town would have two more votes,
Town Meeting and the second a town-wide ballot initiative,
to either pass the measure or reject it.
The Springfield
Republican
Friday, June 26, 2020
Longmeadow Town Meeting rejects Prop. 2˝ cut and Route 5
rebuild
The pandemic
tables have turned, in many ways, with the coronavirus now
boiling over in southern and western states like Florida and
Texas, while in the Northeast the pot lid is only slightly
rattling.
But Bay Staters
just venturing out into the wild are doing so with great
trepidation, many still uncomfortable with the idea of
eating out or riding the T. Forget about getting on a plane.
New polling from
Suffolk University for WGBH News, the State House News
Service, The Boston Globe and MassLive found that more than
66 percent of residents are living with more than normal
levels of fear and anxiety. And perhaps that's to be
expected.
Not only are they
living through the worst pandemic in over a century, but
society is also struggling to come to terms with generations
of racism and the inequities that built into every system,
from housing to law enforcement.
Racism, in fact,
ranked among the biggest problems residents see facing the
state today, which helped to explain the sweeping support
found in the Suffolk/WGBH/SHNS poll for broad reforms to
policing....
Despite the fact
that 81 percent of residents still think Baker is doing a
good job handling the pandemic, there wasn't enough support
to sugarcoat a 174-page report that painted a hideous
portrait of the leadership at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home.
Mark Pearlstein, a
former federal prosecutor tapped by Baker to conduct an
independent investigation into the deaths of at least 76
veterans from COVID-19 at the home, found that a series of
"utterly baffling" decisions led to the creation of
conditions that allowed the virus to wreak havoc.
The Pearlstein
report focused on the decisions that were made that allowed
COVID-19 to flourish inside the walls of the veterans' home,
but it also laid out warning signs that Superintendent
Bennett Walsh may have been underqualified to run the
facility before the start of the pandemic....
Over 2,000
teachers in 47 school districts have also been informed that
they will be without a job in the fall, according to the
Massachusetts Teachers Association, which is the state's
largest teachers' union.
The layoff and
non-renewal notices signal the high level of uncertainty
under which local officials are operating as the Legislature
has yet to finalize a budget for the upcoming fiscal year,
and the Baker administration is currently level-funding
local aid to cities and towns in the short-term.
Schools did get a
bit more clarity about what the fall might look like,
though....
The governor said
it could be at least another month before the state is ready
to commit to Chapter 70 aid for the next school year. Baker
signed a $5.25 billion interim budget on Friday that will
keep government operating through at least July as budget
writers in the House, Senate and administration struggle to
peer into the future.
"We don't have a
good sort of vision into tax revenue for the next fiscal
year yet, and it's going to take a little while to get
there," Baker said.
House Ways and
Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said the target the House
set for his committee in May to release a fiscal 2021 budget
proposal by July 1 is no longer feasible, and not likely to
be met by next Wednesday.
Guessing exactly
what the Legislature will be able to accomplish by July 31
could be a fun parlor game.
House Speaker
Robert DeLeo has said policing reform is on that list, but
he has not yet surfaced a proposal to respond to the
legislation filed by Baker to create a police licensing
system that would give the state new power to hold cops to
standards of law enforcement and professionalism, including
bans on the use of forceful tactics like chokeholds.
The governor got
an earful on a visit this week to Mattapan from a woman
upset that Baker's bill proposed to pay police up to $5,000
to get the additional training they need to be sensitive to
racial biases. He was there to announce the selection of a
minority-owned firm to redevelop the last parcel on the
former Boston State Hospital campus....
The Senate passed
health care legislation Thursday to enshrine some of the
pandemic protocols that have led to massive growth in the
use of telemedicine, and to put an end to surprise billing
and expand the scope of practices for some medical
professionals.
The topic of
health care, however, was a sensitive one given the
accusation made by some House lawmakers -- namely House
Majority Leader Ron Mariano and Rep. Dan Cullinane -- that
the Senate has been a bad partner in trying to negotiate a
path forward with limited time until the end of the session.
With the House
seeking to extend the life of some health care bills, the
Senate responded to the criticism by rejecting their
extension request, initiating a parliamentary feud that
doesn't bode well for much of anything getting accomplished
in the health care space over the next month.
"At some point,
because we were being asked to extend and extend, how many
times does someone say no before you stop asking them out?"
Sen. Cindy Friedman said about the House.
Given the bad
blood, it was a small win that the House and Senate were
able to agree to a "compromise" over local road repair
funding and the future of the MBTA's oversight board....
Both branches
earlier this year had passed legislation to bump Chapter 90
funding to $300 million for the year, delighting cities and
towns after years of lobbying for more money.
But with the
pandemic crushing state finances and the Senate apparently
unwilling to take up the House's transportation tax bill,
the compromise was to punt.
State House News
Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Weekly Roundup - Fear and Loathing in Massachusetts
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
Just as the
Legislature heads into crunch time on Beacon Hill, tensions
appear to be rising between the House and Senate over how
bills should emerge from a key committee.
Under the
Legislature’s rules, all bills dealing with health care are
supposed to be reviewed and voted on by the Joint Committee
on Health Care Financing before moving on to votes in the
two branches. But the two chairs of that committee – Sen.
Cindy Friedman of Arlington and Rep. Dan Cullinane of
Dorchester – are barely on speaking terms these days.
Cullinane says
Friedman has refused to work with him to schedule votes on
all but a few bills since he took over as acting chair of
the committee early this year. He said he is leaving the
Legislature at the end of this session and has no political
agenda other than moving forward good public policy.
“Plain and simple,
the Senate chair refuses to negotiate, refuses to engage in
any meaningful conversation,” he said. “The Senate did not
walk away from the negotiating table, they never showed up.”
...
On Thursday, the
Senate passed a major health care bill backed by Friedman
and Senate President Karen Spilka. The bill did not go
through the joint committee, but instead originated in the
Senate Ways and Means Committee, which Cullinane says is a
violation of the Legislature’s rules. He said the Senate has
bypassed the joint committee and passed other health care
measures in recent months....
On the Senate
floor Thursday, Friedman also urged the rejection of a House
measure that would have extended until the end of the year
the reporting date for the more than 300 bills remaining in
the Health Care Financing Committee. Cullinane said he filed
the extension because he didn’t want to see the bills die,
but Friedman indicated on the Senate floor that she didn’t
care....
Cullinane says
Friedman’s approach subverts the whole point of the
committee, which is to have members and staff with an
expertise in health care review all health care
legislation....
To an outsider, it
all sounds like much ado about nothing. After all, a Senate
bill can’t become law unless the House goes along, so it’s
not as if the two branches will never have to negotiate. But
the Senate’s attempt to bypass a key legislative committee
and gain more control of its legislation is stirring anger
in the House, anger that is likely to surface somewhere down
the road.
CommonWealth
Magazine
Friday, June 26, 2020
Tensions rising between House and Senate
Governors from
both major parties over the years have turned to midyear
budget cuts when it's become apparent that tax revenues are
not going to keep pace with spending. These 9C cuts are
named for the section of state finance law that authorizes
governors to take unilateral budget-fixing actions.
But since March,
in the face of the precedent-setting evaporation of tax
receipts brought on by forced business closures, the Baker
administration has not revised revenue expectations -- which
could have triggered 9C cuts -- or announced other specific
budget-balancing plans.
State laws require
the state Administration and Finance Secretary, in this case
Michael Heffernan, to notify the governor in writing
whenever he believes budgeted revenues will be insufficient
to meet expenditures.
Within five days
of that notification, the secretary must inform the governor
and legislative budget officials of the amount of the
probable deficiency of revenue and the governor is then
required, no more than 15 days after that notification, to
reduce spending and outline his or her reasons or submit to
the Legislature specific proposals to raise additional
revenues by an amount equal to such deficiency.
The law governing
actions in the face of a "deficiency of revenue" also
references the option to pull money from state reserves to
backfill funding gaps.
Tax collections
through May are running $1.73 billion or 6.5 percent less
than the same fiscal year-to-date period in 2019, and $2.25
billion or 8.3 percent behind the year-to-date benchmark, an
unprecedented decline and one that economic experts believe
will not quickly reverse itself.
Asked why the
Baker administration has not adjusted its revenue benchmarks
downward, Heffernan spokesman Patrick Marvin did not say.
State House News
Service
Monday, June 22, 2020
Facing $2.25B Shortfall,
Baker Admin Hasn’t Updated Revenue Expectations
Gov. Charlie Baker
on Friday morning signed an interim budget to keep state
government running when the new fiscal year begins on July 1
since the Legislature has not yet developed a fiscal 2021
spending plan.
The governor filed
the $5.25 billion interim budget a week ago and said Friday
that the amount is sufficient to fund government operations
through July and "will make it possible for the treasurer to
deliver local aid payments to cities and towns."
House and Senate
leaders have not laid out a timeline yet for completion of a
budget for the full fiscal year.
State House News
Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Baker Signs Budget to Fund Government in July
The state's 6.25
percent sales tax will be waived on many purchases the
weekend of Saturday, Aug. 29 and Sunday, Aug. 30, the Baker
administration announced Tuesday. This summer's sales tax
holiday weekend will take place as retailers regain their
footing after weeks of government-forced shutdowns, and Gov.
Charlie Baker said he hopes people will take advantage of
the tax savings to support local businesses....
The annual tax
holiday, made a permanent fixture as part of a 2018 "grand
bargain" law addressing multiple topics, allows shoppers to
avoid paying the tax on most retail items -- excluding food
and drink at restaurants -- that cost less than $2,500. The
state agrees to give up tens of millions of dollars in taxes
in a bid to spur buying and consumer savings.
State House News
Service
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
State Sets Aug. 29-30 as Sales Tax Holiday Weekend
There is no
question that the pandemic has significantly altered agendas
and priorities in the Legislature, and with the time to
tackle big issues running out leaders are being pressed from
multiple directions to address bills dealing with climate
change.
Climate
legislation had figured to be a focus of the legislative
session's home stretch since the House and Senate had each
passed major climate-related bills before most business was
put on hold. Now, with five weeks to go in the session and
other hefty matters still incomplete, one key lawmaker is
trying to rally colleagues to finish the job before the July
31 end of formal sessions....
Towards the end of
January, it seemed almost certain that the governor would be
signing some kind of climate bill this summer. On the same
day that month, Gov. Charlie Baker, House Speaker Robert
DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka all declared their
support for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a policy that
climate change activists have been pushing for years. Both
branches have passed climate-related bills, but the shared
goal still hasn't been formalized.
The House last
July unanimously approved a roughly $1.3 billion bill -- the
so-called GreenWorks bill -- centered around grants to help
communities adapt to climate change impacts, and at the end
of January the Senate overwhelmingly passed a suite of
climate bills that called for net-zero carbon emissions by
2050, and set deadlines for the state to impose
carbon-pricing mechanisms for transportation, commercial
buildings and homes....
In a letter this
week to House leaders, a coalition of some of the most
powerful business and trade groups in the state made clear
that they do not want the House to follow the Senate's
radical and dramatic lead.
"Representing
twenty of the Commonwealth's largest business, employer,
housing, labor and trade associations we recognized [in
January], as now, the importance of advancing our climate
leadership and the urgent need for bold action," the Mass.
Coalition for Sustainable Energy wrote to DeLeo and House
Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Aaron Michlewitz. "However,
after reviewing in depth S2500, An Act Setting
Next-Generation Climate Policy -- and in light of the many
consequences of the ongoing pandemic -- we believe the bill
would have negative environmental consequences for the
Commonwealth while seriously exacerbating our housing costs
and affordability challenges at a moment when our economy
already faces a sharp downturn in productivity."
The coalition,
which includes the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Mass.
Business Roundtable, and Associated Industries of
Massachusetts, has recently grown to now include the Home
Builders and Remodelers Association of Massachusetts, NAIOP
Massachusetts, and Plumbers & Gasfitters Local 12 Boston.
"Ultimately, we
believe this bill would harm consumers and businesses and
undermine our smart growth objectives at a time our economy
can least afford even the smallest step backwards without
making the meaningful emissions reductions we need to
reverse the effects of climate change," the coalition wrote.
The group
disagrees with the Senate's decision to leave critical
specifics of carbon pricing up to the executive branch,
claims the Senate bill makes unrealistic assumptions about
the future costs and availability of clean energy
technologies, and disapproves of the Senate leaving
business, employer and labor groups off of a Climate Policy
Commission proposed in a Senate bill.
On that last
point, the coalition was backed up Thursday by Jay Ash, the
former Baker administration economic development secretary
who now leads the the Massachusetts Competitive
Partnership....
Though there had
been talk months ago about the House and Senate agreeing to
hold formal sessions after the traditional July 31 end date
stipulated in the joint rules, that possibility seems to
have lost favor and lawmakers have repeatedly discussed July
31 as the hard deadline for major legislation.
With the clock
running down, the Legislature must still put a permanent
budget in place for the fiscal year that starts July 1 (a
process that typically takes months on Beacon Hill),
momentum is building around an economic development bill
that could respond to the financial pain the pandemic has
inflicted, and other major initiatives around transportation
revenue and health care remain under active consideration.
State House News
Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Lawmakers Feeling Push and Pull on Climate Bills
Branches on Different Courses as Session Winds Down
Ten states had
unemployment rates in May above 15 percent. They are all
states with Democratic governors, with the exception of Deep
Blue Massachusetts with its liberal Republican governor
Charlie Baker....
This is not a
coronavirus recession. It is a blue state lockdown
recession. Democrats say they have shut down their economies
for health reasons, but these are also the states that
generally have had the highest death rates and the highest
nursing home fatalities. So the blue states have not only
failed to keep their citizens safe, they’ve ruined their
economies as well.
Committee to
Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #56
Monday, June 22, 2020
The Blue State Depression
We’re number four!
Gov. Charlie Baker
must be so proud – as of last month, only three of the 50
states had a higher unemployment rate than the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts’ 16.3%, according to the federal Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
I’ll bet you
hadn’t heard that until right now, had you? Odd how almost
all of Charlie Parker’s amen chorus in the Boston media gave
these appalling statistics a good leaving-alone for the
better part of a week.
I first read about
the Massachusetts Misery in the Wall Street Journal last
weekend, in an editorial pointing to the dire consequences
of assorted governors’ catastrophic overreactions to the
recent panic.
Headline:
“Lockdown States and the Jobless/Job gains are much greater
in states that reopened faster.”
Lockdown state?
That’s Maskachusetts, right.
But as you would
expect, the Boston media shrugged, as if to say, Nothing to
see here.
Move along, folks,
and pay no attention to all those boarded-up storefronts and
looted buildings in Downtown Crossing and Back Bay, not to
mention the thousands of shuttered mom-and-pop businesses on
every main street and state highway in Massachusetts.
But look on the
bright side, Governor – not only does the Mask State have
the most disastrously high unemployment rate in the country
among those run by “Republicans,” you’re the only GOP
governor, RINO or otherwise, who’s in the top 10 for
wrecking his state’s economy....
But there’s more
work yet for Charlie Parker et al. to do in finally
finishing off the MA economy once and for all. And so his
energy secretary, Climate Katie Theoharides, said last week
that she and her boss remain totally committed to doubling
the state’s gasoline tax next year – it’s an “investment,”
you see.
The hacks call it
the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) but it’s really
just a TAX.
The TCI will be
Baker’s next move to demolish what remains of the Dreaded
Private Sector, in order to enrich even further the bloated
hackerama, which, by the way, has suffered almost no
layoffs, and none whatsoever in the most worthless
payroll-patriot-infested agencies like UMass, Massport and
the courts....
C’mon Tall Deval,
we all know you can do an even worse job. Just concentrate
on those key industries – “indices,” as you called them
Tuesday. And you can encourage more rioting and looting –
excuse me, “large gatherings.”
Maskachusetts – we
can do better. We can get the unemployment rate up to 20%!
Well done, Tall
Deval.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Thanks Charlie Baker, jobless rate a national disgrace
By Howie Carr
A $1.1 billion
budget bill is on its way to the Senate after the House
passed the legislation Wednesday and added on an additional
$17.5 million in COVID-19 spending.
Passage of the
legislation comes as Gov. Charlie Baker has poked lawmakers
to quickly get it to his desk so that the state can take
advantage of federal reimbursements for costs related to the
respiratory virus. The House approved the bill on a 158-0
vote....
Rep. Tricia
Farley-Bouvier filed an unsuccessful amendment that would
have directed the commissioner of revenue to send stimulus
checks to state residents who file taxes using an Individual
Taxpayer Identification Number. People who have an ITIN are
disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits and
stimulus checks from the CARES Act. There was no direct vote
on the amendment, and it was dispensed with in a larger
amendment.
The Pittsfield
Democrat's amendment would have sent qualified ITIN
taxpayers $1,200 if filing individually or $2,400 if filing
jointly, with an additional $500 for each dependent. Farley-Bouvier
said if a U.S. citizen files their taxes with someone who is
an ITIN holder, they and their children will become
ineligible for unemployment benefits and stimulus checks.
"It's cruel and
it's stupid," she told the News Service after the session
ended. "The issue of how we treat immigrants justly and
fairly and how their wellbeing is connected to the rest of
the commonwealth's being is a conversation that needs to
keep happening." ...
Michlewitz said it
was important for the House to pass the bill Wednesday to
secure Massachusetts' place in line for federal
reimbursement of COVID-related costs.
"As the federal
government is inundated with reimbursement requests, it is
vital that we maximize our options and take advantage of the
FEMA funds while we can. That is why it is so critical that
we pass this today and get it closer to the governor's desk,
so that we do not fall far behind other states in the race
for federal reimbursement," Michlewitz said.
Last week, the
governor prodded lawmakers to act on the supplemental budget
bill he filed in May, saying that "the clock's ticking" and
his administration cannot seek money from available federal
pools to cover COVID-related expenses until the Legislature
finalizes the bill....
Separately
Wednesday, Michlewitz told the News Service that the House
Ways and Means Committee will not have a full-year budget
proposal ready by July 1, the deadline given to the
committee in a set of emergency rules adopted by the House
in May.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House Passes $1.1 Bil Budget to Cover COVID-19 Costs
State in "Race" to Net Federal Reimbursements
Already behind
schedule in May, the House adopted emergency rules to govern
its operations during the pandemic, including a new target
date for Democratic leaders to produce an annual state
budget.
But with that new
July 1 deadline approaching, House Ways and Means Chairman
Aaron Michlewitz told the News Service Wednesday that his
committee does not expect to present a full-year spending
plan by next week.
The House will
have to "move off" that date as it continues to try to
anticipate how the economy will react to the slow reopening
of businesses and the threat of a second wave of the
coronavirus in the fall, Michlewitz said. There is also the
possibility that Congress will come up with additional
federal relief that could dramatically change the state's
fortunes, although the outcome of those talks remains
uncertain.
The rules package
adopted in May called for the Ways and Means Committee to
produce a fiscal 2021 budget bill by the time the new fiscal
year begins on July 1. Leaders are now looking into whether
that rule must be changed, or whether the House's passage of
a $5.25 billion interim budget filed by Gov. Charlie Baker
to keep government funded through July can be interpreted to
satisfy the requirement....
"We don't have a
good sort of vision into tax revenue for the next fiscal
year yet, and it's going to take a little while to get
there," [Gov.] Baker said. "The folks in the Legislature are
moving a one-twelfth budget, which we filed several days ago
to ensure that payments continue into July, but they and we
both recognize that we're not going to know exactly where we
are on the budget until we get a little more information."
Baker said he was
"optimistic" that Congress would come through with
additional aid for states, and described his administration
as "very engaged" with the state's Congressional delegation
and "others" on that front....
Despite collapsing
state tax revenues, the Baker administration opted against a
formal downward revision of fiscal 2020 tax collections,
which could have triggered the need for immediate spending
cuts or other budget-balancing plans. A revision to the
fiscal 2021 revenue estimate is expected, though, once an
annual budget bill starts to advance in the Legislature.
Baker in January
filed a $44.6 billion fiscal 2021 budget, which remains
under review in the House.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House Budget Appears Unlikely by July 1 Deadline
Heffernan Sees "One or More" Interim Budgets
House and Senate
leaders reached an agreement Thursday to keep the MBTA's
Fiscal and Management Control Board in place for another
year and to scrap a planned increase in road and bridge
maintenance funding, effectively sealing the fate of the
annual reimbursement program.
After weeks of
disagreement between the two branches, the Senate adopted
what one top lawmaker called a "compromise" that will direct
$200 million toward the Chapter 90 program next fiscal year
and will extend the about-to-expire board tasked with
overseeing and managing the T until June 30, 2021.
Settling on a $200
million allocation toward road repairs represents a retreat
from the $300 million that both the House and Senate had
already approved in earlier legislation, reducing the
funding level to where it has remained almost every single
year for the past decade....
House leaders
appeared to be prodding the Senate to join them in passing a
major tax package, and it's unclear whether the Senate's
retreat on Chapter 90 funding means that branch has given up
on tax-raising initiatives to fund transportation this year.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House, Senate Agree on Road Funding, MBTA Board
Chapter 90 Cut to $200 Mill, FMCB Extended One Year
COVID-19 continues
to run its invisible thread through the public health,
economic and racial justice crises that are raging across
the United States as summer gets underway. Three months into
the pandemic, case counts are exploding in big states like
California, Florida and Texas, threatening progress in
others, like Massachusetts, and influencing the constant
public, fiscal, and monetary policy responses to the
evolving situation.
Mask-wearing has
proven effective in slowing the spread of the deadly virus,
but many Americans have chosen not to cover up or practice
social distancing and the virus is leaping from one infected
person to the next at an alarming rate. Concerns over a
second wave in the fall have taken a backseat to the more
immediate responses to the outbreaks across the country that
are occurring right now.
In Massachusetts,
state officials are monitoring the situation nationally, and
reactions to it from Washington, while trying to focus on
their own agenda with five weeks left for formal legislative
sessions this year. The Senate plans next Thursday to pass
its own versions of a $1.1 billion, House-approved, COVID-19
spending bill and a long-term capital bill to invest in
technology upgrades that have become even more critical in
pandemic times when people are working together, but on
computers.
Here are some of
the issues to watch in the week ahead:
-- COVID - PHASE
3: Pressure will surely begin to mount on Gov. Baker next
week to announce whether Phase 3 of the state's economic
reopening plan will get underway on Monday, July 6. That's
the earliest possible date for the third phase, which will
include the return of gyms, sporting events, casinos,
museums, and movie theaters, but Baker has said that his
decisions will be driven by data and not arbitrary dates....
-- THE BUDGET:
Massachusetts begins fiscal 2021 on Wednesday with a $5.25
billion interim budget in place, a COVID-19 spending bill up
for consideration in the Senate on Thursday, and Gov.
Charlie Baker's $44.6 billion fiscal 2021 budget beginning
its sixth month under review in the House Ways and Means
Committee.
Before deciding on
how to proceed, Baker and legislative leaders are waiting to
see how tax collections perform in the wake of the decision
to push the annual tax-filing deadline forward from April 15
to July 15.
They are also
waiting to see when and whether Congress will pass another
major stimulus bill providing additional support to
individuals, businesses, and state and local governments
struggling due to the pandemic's impacts....
-- TRANSPORTATION
POLICY/FUNDING: At the start of 2020, transportation funding
and policy appeared to represent the largest and most
important topic that the Legislature would address this
year. The pandemic quickly changed that and heading down the
stretch toward July 31 it seems possible that lawmakers are
poised to just punt some of the once-critical issues into
2021.
The House in March
approved an $18 billion transportation bond bill and a $500
million tax and fee package designed, in part, to improve
MBTA, regional transit and other transportation services.
The Senate hasn't taken up either of those bills, although
Senate President Spilka has expressed interest in passing a
bond bill....
House leaders have
prodded the Senate to pass a transportation finance bill,
saying a $300 million local road and bridge repair agenda
could be supported with more revenues. This week, however,
in a response that might indicate where senators stand on
new taxes right now, the Senate opted to cut the Chapter 90
program authorization back to $200 million.
State House News
Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Advances - Week of June 28, 2020
Massachusetts is
one of the most heavily Democratic states in the country.
What can Republicans do about it?
Not much, at the
moment. But some state Republican officials see a
longer-term strategy.
Before the GOP can
make meaningful inroads in state and federal offices, they
say, the party may need to make more meaningful inroads
closer to home.
“Running for local
office is the most effective activism a Republican can do,”
said Jim Lyons, chairman of the Massachusetts Republican
Party, in an email message to New Boston Post. “By running,
and winning, you create a team at the local level that can
fight against ill-conceived overrides, stifling zoning laws,
and useless plastic bag bans, just to name a few issues. And
it always helps for statewide candidates to have that
Republican selectman as a local contact, and eventually,
that Republican selectman could become a governor or a
United States senator, as has happened in the past.”
The party has
attracted a number of first-time candidates for relatively
high office in recent years, most of whom have lost. But
there is another way. As Lyons notes, prominent
Massachusetts Republicans got their start in local politics.
The New Boston
Post
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Want To Grow the Massachusetts Republican Party?
Run For Local Office, Politicians Say |
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Another CLT Proposition 2˝
founding father left us this week. K. Heinz
Muehlmann passed away from cancer on June 17 at the age
of 81. While Warren T. Brookes, then a Boston
Herald business columnist who chronicled California's
Proposition 13, which revolutionized property taxes
eventually nationwide, advocated for a similar law in
Massachusetts, it was Boston economist Dr. K. Heinz
Muehlmann who crunched the numbers and created the
structure for property tax relief in Massachusetts.
It became CLT's Proposition 2˝
and was adopted by a vast majority of voters on the 1980
ballot — and Massachusetts became the second state to
adopt property tax limitations.
Proposition 2˝
will mark 40 years as CLT's property tax law of the land in November.
Heinz was born and
educated in Austria — an actual "Austrian
School" economist who followed in the footsteps of the great Ludwig
von Mises, Frederich von Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. As noted in
his obituary (full obit below):
Heinz’ signature public
accomplishment was creating the economics behind Massachusetts
Proposition 2˝, which limits property tax assessments and automobile
excise tax levies. The late Barbara Anderson, Executive
Director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, shepherded Proposition 2˝
to a ballot victory. They became life-long friends.
Barbara referred to Heinz as her “favorite local Austrian-born
economist” tutor, who supported small government, protection of
private property, and individualism in general.
CLT
presented Heinz — a CLT member since 1979 — with its
most prestigious "Warren T. Brookes Award" at
CLT's 2008 Awards Brunch. Unfortunately
Barbara presented it to Heinz in absentia — as he
was in Austria visiting his family at the time of our
event. (Barbara and I delivered it to him when he
returned home.)
CLICK
IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Barbara Anderson, "director
emeritus,"
presents the 2008 Warren T. Brookes Award to the absent Heinz Muehlmann,
a longtime CLT member and true "Austrian Economist." (Dec. 14, 2008)
Barbara and I spent many evenings over the years as
guests of Heinz and his wife Brigitte for their
Christmas holiday dinners with us at their Waltham home;
they were excellent cooks and hosts. In turn, they
were our guests for a few summer cookouts in Barbara's
and my yard in Marblehead. I took Heinz out
sailing aboard "Chip Ahoy" on one of those occasions
upon discovering he was an accomplished sailor.
Farewell Heinz my
friend. May you have fair winds and following seas in your new
voyage.
Another stealth
assault on Proposition
2˝ arose last week, another
devious scheme that was fortunately defeated at town meeting by
residents of Longmeadow. They knew what was coming for them if it
ever passed. The Springfield Republican reported on Friday
("Longmeadow Town Meeting rejects Prop. 2˝ cut"):
Longmeadow Town Meeting voters rejected a move by
the town Selectboard and the Finance Committee to
begin the process of exempting the town from
Proposition 2˝ tax limitations. A request for
funds to cover initial engineering costs for a
Longmeadow Street rebuild was also voted down.
Tuesday’s outdoor meeting on the grounds of
Longmeadow High School Tuesday evening allowed
generous social distancing for the 277 registered
voters who attended.
Article 14 asked voters to allow the town to begin
home rule legislation that could eventually exempt
town government from the 2.5 percent tax cap
mandated by Proposition 2˝.
The Chair of the Select Board, Thomas Lachiusa said
home rule legislation would begin a process to allow
the town to permanently exempt itself from having to
adhere to the 2.5 percent cap on yearly property
taxes.
“This is something both the Select Board and the
Finance Committee have been looking at for a long
time as a solution to protect the town from a
drastic property value decreases,” he said. If that
were to happen we would see a lot of cuts to
education, programs and services we have all come to
expect. It would be a progressive loss of services
as each year we would have to make more and more
cuts."
Lachuisa said the vote Tuesday would have allowed
the town to approach the state legislature for home
rule legislation. Once the state government
approves, the town would have two more votes, Town
Meeting and the second a town-wide ballot
initiative, to either pass the measure or reject it.
A home rule petition,
if passed by voters at town meeting, would be sent to the Legislature
for permission to proceed. If adopted, it would apply only to that
municipality requesting it, in effect repealing Proposition 2˝ in that
town. But it wouldn't be long before elected officials in the
other 350 cities and towns demanded their own Prop. 2˝ "exemption,"
before Prop. 2˝ died a painful
death of a thousand cuts.
Caution: It
failed in Longmeadow among the 277 registered voters who attended town
meeting. The Takers have revealed their latest strategy. Expect the
teachers and public employee unions and their More Is Never Enough
(MINE) ilk to grab onto this
scheme and pack town meetings across the state in the future.
The State House
News Service reported on Friday ("Baker Signs Budget to Fund
Government in July"):
Gov.
Charlie Baker on Friday morning signed an interim budget to keep
state government running when the new fiscal year begins on July 1
since the Legislature has not yet developed a fiscal 2021 spending
plan.
The
governor filed the $5.25 billion interim budget a week ago and said
Friday that the amount is sufficient to fund government operations
through July and "will make it possible for the treasurer to deliver
local aid payments to cities and towns."
House
and Senate leaders have not laid out a timeline yet for completion
of a budget for the full fiscal year.
I still don't get
it. In the last CLT Update (June 21: "Another
Beacon Hill Helter-Skelter Week") in my commentary I
wrote:
Stop
and think about this. A $5.25 billion "interim spending bill" to
get the state through July, one month. Carried through the fiscal
year that would create a $63 billion FY2021 budget for the coming 12
months. That exceeds even the $44.6 billion Baker proposed in
January, which itself was $1.3 billion more than
last year's $43.3 budget.
On Wednesday the
State House News Service reported ("House Passes $1.1 Bil
Budget to Cover COVID-19 Costs; State in 'Race' to Net
Federal Reimbursements"):
A
$1.1 billion budget bill is on its way to the Senate after the House
passed the legislation Wednesday and added on an additional $17.5
million in COVID-19 spending.
Passage of the legislation comes as Gov. Charlie Baker has poked
lawmakers to quickly get it to his desk so that the state can take
advantage of federal reimbursements for costs related to the
respiratory virus. The House approved the bill on a 158-0 vote.
On Monday the
State House News Service reported ("Facing $2.25B Shortfall,
Baker Admin Hasn’t Updated Revenue Expectations"):
Governors from both major parties over the years have turned to
midyear budget cuts when it's become apparent that tax revenues are
not going to keep pace with spending. These 9C cuts are named for
the section of state finance law that authorizes governors to take
unilateral budget-fixing actions.
But
since March, in the face of the precedent-setting evaporation of tax
receipts brought on by forced business closures, the Baker
administration has not revised revenue expectations -- which could
have triggered 9C cuts -- or announced other specific
budget-balancing plans.
State
laws require the state Administration and Finance Secretary, in this
case Michael Heffernan, to notify the governor in writing whenever
he believes budgeted revenues will be insufficient to meet
expenditures.
Gov. Baker seems intent on spending more
and dodging required spending cuts due to the extreme revenue shortfall.
It appears that he's whistling past the graveyard, hoping the economic
depression he created isn't really happening, or will just go away
without consequences — or that the federal
government will ride to his rescue and bail out Massachusetts and the
other tax-and-spend progressive states.
On Beacon Hill they're winging it day by
day, changing rules on the fly. The News Service reported on
Wednesday ("House Budget Appears Unlikely by July 1 Deadline; Heffernan
Sees 'One or More' Interim Budgets:"):
Already behind schedule
in May, the House adopted emergency rules to govern its operations
during the pandemic, including a new target date for Democratic
leaders to produce an annual state budget.
But with that new July
1 deadline approaching, House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron
Michlewitz told the News Service Wednesday that his committee does
not expect to present a full-year spending plan by next week.
The House will have to
"move off" that date as it continues to try to anticipate how the
economy will react to the slow reopening of businesses and the
threat of a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall, Michlewitz
said. There is also the possibility that Congress will come up with
additional federal relief that could dramatically change the state's
fortunes, although the outcome of those talks remains uncertain.
The rules package
adopted in May called for the Ways and Means Committee to produce a
fiscal 2021 budget bill by the time the new fiscal year begins on
July 1. Leaders are now looking into whether that rule must be
changed, or whether the House's passage of a $5.25 billion interim
budget filed by Gov. Charlie Baker to keep government funded through
July can be interpreted to satisfy the requirement.
In another report on Wednesday ("House,
Senate Agree on Road Funding, MBTA Board; Chapter 90 Cut to $200 Mill,
FMCB Extended One Year") the News Service added:
House and Senate
leaders reached an agreement Thursday to keep the MBTA's Fiscal and
Management Control Board in place for another year and to scrap a
planned increase in road and bridge maintenance funding, effectively
sealing the fate of the annual reimbursement program....
Settling on a $200
million allocation toward road repairs represents a retreat from the
$300 million that both the House and Senate had already approved in
earlier legislation, reducing the funding level to where it has
remained almost every single year for the past decade....
House leaders appeared
to be prodding the Senate to join them in passing a major tax
package, and it's unclear whether the Senate's retreat on Chapter 90
funding means that branch has given up on tax-raising initiatives to
fund transportation this year.
On Friday CommonWealth Magazine took a deep
look into the ongoing rivalry and acrimony between the House and the
Senate in pushing each chamber's policy preferences, and why it's so
difficult to get anything accomplished. In "Tensions rising
between House and Senate" it reports:
Just as the Legislature
heads into crunch time on Beacon Hill, tensions appear to be rising
between the House and Senate over how bills should emerge from a key
committee.
Under the Legislature’s
rules, all bills dealing with health care are supposed to be
reviewed and voted on by the Joint Committee on Health Care
Financing before moving on to votes in the two branches. But the two
chairs of that committee – Sen. Cindy Friedman of Arlington and Rep.
Dan Cullinane of Dorchester – are barely on speaking terms these
days.
Cullinane says Friedman
has refused to work with him to schedule votes on all but a few
bills since he took over as acting chair of the committee early this
year. He said he is leaving the Legislature at the end of this
session and has no political agenda other than moving forward good
public policy.
“Plain and simple, the
Senate chair refuses to negotiate, refuses to engage in any
meaningful conversation,” he said. “The Senate did not walk away
from the negotiating table, they never showed up.” ...
On Thursday, the Senate
passed a major health care bill backed by Friedman and Senate
President Karen Spilka. The bill did not go through the joint
committee, but instead originated in the Senate Ways and Means
Committee, which Cullinane says is a violation of the Legislature’s
rules. He said the Senate has bypassed the joint committee and
passed other health care measures in recent months....
On the Senate floor
Thursday, Friedman also urged the rejection of a House measure that
would have extended until the end of the year the reporting date for
the more than 300 bills remaining in the Health Care Financing
Committee. Cullinane said he filed the extension because he didn’t
want to see the bills die, but Friedman indicated on the Senate
floor that she didn’t care....
Cullinane says
Friedman’s approach subverts the whole point of the committee, which
is to have members and staff with an expertise in health care review
all health care legislation....
To an outsider, it all
sounds like much ado about nothing. After all, a Senate bill can’t
become law unless the House goes along, so it’s not as if the two
branches will never have to negotiate. But the Senate’s attempt to
bypass a key legislative committee and gain more control of its
legislation is stirring anger in the House, anger that is likely to
surface somewhere down the road.
It's often considered beneficial for
taxpayers when the Legislature can't agree on legislating; for example,
the
Senate so far declining to take up and pass the House's $500 million
gas-and-diesel tax hike. Apparently that's just the tip of an
iceberg — the rancor appears to be rooted
much deeper.
Some good news, sort of. The date of
the annual sales tax holiday weekend has been announced: "The
state's 6.25 percent sales tax will be waived on many purchases the
weekend of Saturday, Aug. 29 and Sunday, Aug. 30, the Baker
administration announced Tuesday," State House News Service reported.
"The annual tax holiday, made a permanent fixture as part of a 2018
'grand bargain' law."
You may recall that this was part of the
Legislature's and Governor's agreement two years ago to eliminate a
couple of threatening ballot questions heading for the 2018 ballot.
The State House News Service at the time
reported:
"The Mass.
Retailers Association dropped its proposal for a sales tax increase,
but accepted an increase in the minimum wage, in return for which it
won an end to the state law requiring workers be paid
time-and-a-half for Sunday and holiday hours. The minimum wage
increase from $11 to $15 an hour will occur in five years, not four,
as the Raise Up ballot question proposes, and tipped workers won't
see their minimum rise as much as in the question. There will be a
permanent annual sales tax holiday on state lawbooks (again, if the
governor signs the compromise). Raise Up and the unions won their
long-sought paid leave program, covering sick time, family care,
maternity and paternity, and bereavement absences from the
workplace."
Instead of the sales tax being reduced from 6.25% to 5%
as the popular ballot question proposed (CLT members
helped get some of the signatures for it), the Retailers
Association got a permanent sales tax holiday weekend.
In my
CLT commentary back then I wrote:
The probable rollback
of the sales tax was eliminated from the ballot, but the statutory
sales tax holiday weekend every August it also sought was created
(until the Legislature next decides "the state can't afford it," I
presume).
So the good news is that
two years later the Legislature and Governor haven't
eliminated the sales tax holiday weekend yet. I'm
quite impressed and somewhat surprised.
The New Boston Post reported last Sunday
("Want To Grow the Massachusetts Republican Party? Run For Local
Office, Politicians Say"):
Massachusetts is one of the most heavily Democratic
states in the country. What can Republicans do about
it?
Not much, at the moment. But some state Republican
officials see a longer-term strategy.
Before the GOP can make meaningful inroads in state
and federal offices, they say, the party may need to
make more meaningful inroads closer to home.
“Running for local office is the most effective
activism a Republican can do,” said Jim Lyons,
chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, in
an email message to New Boston Post. “By running,
and winning, you create a team at the local level
that can fight against ill-conceived overrides,
stifling zoning laws, and useless plastic bag bans,
just to name a few issues. And it always helps for
statewide candidates to have that Republican
selectman as a local contact, and eventually, that
Republican selectman could become a governor or a
United States senator, as has happened in the past.”
The party has attracted a number of first-time
candidates for relatively high office in recent
years, most of whom have lost. But there is another
way. As Lyons notes, prominent Massachusetts
Republicans got their start in local politics. . . .
With Democrats crushing
Republicans in the Legislature by 137-31
in the House and 36-4 in
the Senate at last count, doing anything new is
better than doing what the GOP has done for much too
long in Massachusetts. As candidate Trump famously
chided, "What have you got to lose?"
|
 |
 |
|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
|
K. Heinz Muehlmann
September 28, 1938 - June 17, 2020
Obituary
 Wareham
— Karl Heinz Muehlmann, 81, of
Waltham, passed away at his summer home in Wareham on
Wednesday June 17, 2020.
During his career, Dr. Heinz Muehlmann was an economic
advisor to Massachusetts Governors Frank Sargent, Ed King,
Bill Weld, and Paul Cellucci. In addition, he was the Chief
Economist for Jobs for Massachusetts, Inc., and Associated
Industries of Massachusetts.
Early in his career, while teaching Economics at Bentley
University, Heinz consulted for the Department of Commerce
and Development. With assistance from Robert Kenney and Rena
Kottcamp, Heinz prepared an analysis of the Massachusetts
economy, which became known as “The Muehlmann Report on
Economic Strategy.”
Heinz’ signature public accomplishment was creating the
economics behind Massachusetts Proposition 2˝, which limits
property tax assessments and automobile excise tax levies.
The late Barbara Anderson, Executive Director of Citizens
for Limited Taxation, shepherded Proposition 2˝ to a ballot
victory. They became life-long friends. Barbara referred to
Heinz as her “favorite local Austrian-born economist” tutor,
who supported small government, protection of private
property, and individualism in general.
Economics was Heinz’ second career. When he arrived in the
U.S., he brought with him a nurtured childhood from his home
town Zell am See, a solid education from Salzburg, a degree
from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and a
growth mindset and self-discipline. Heinz was also a
state-certified ski instructor, who had perfected his
signature “Follow me” pedagogy. For his students, this was
easier said than done, because Heinz negotiated any triple
black diamond slope gracefully in blue jeans, his favorite
ski pants.
Heinz’ first role in the U.S. was to coach the Northern
Michigan University ski team, where he also earned a Master
of Arts from the School of Graduate Studies, learned about
the regional economy as well as Midwestern values and life.
Heinz continued teaching skiing professionally in New
England, in the Sugarloaf and Stratton mountain resorts. He
abandoned his professional ski instructor career at age 33
and turned to what Richard Cunningham called “an economic
mountain top called Jobs.”
Besides skiing, Heinz was a lifelong competitive athlete,
who enjoyed playing tennis, sailing, fishing (especially
striped bass and bluefish), and lobstering. He liked flying
gliders in the Alps in earlier years. Heinz also became an
ice hockey referee, which led to a role at the 1964 Olympic
Games in Innsbruck. His trophies included the first place in
the Vienna Academic Championship slalom competition, mixed
doubles at Sippican Tennis Club and Mount Auburn Club,
arguably with the help of his infamous drop shot, as well as
Senior races at Bourne Cove Yacht Club.
Heinz’ favorite role was, however, being the father of his
three children Sonja, Martha, and Carl. A family man, he
loved teaching them sports, taking them out water skiing and
fishing on Buzzards Bay, going on ski trips and vacations
with them, and passing on to them what he knew. One of
Carl’s favorite memories is a day, which they started in
Wareham catching lobsters in Buzzard’s Bay before driving to
Killington, Vermont, for a day of skiing, and returning to
Wareham in the evening. In recent years, Heinz awaited his
grandchildren with his boat and fishing rods ready for
adventure when they visited Wareham in the summer.
Heinz welcomed opportunities to be creative, whether as an
economist or in the kitchen, initially cooking and baking
for his family, and later also for friends. A signature
three-course meal would start with his Manhattan Clam
Chowder, followed by a main course of Wiener Schnitzel from
turkey tenderloins with parsley fingerling potatoes and
cranberry sauce. Heinz’ popular Linzer Torte made from
scratch with walnuts and red currant jelly, often prepared
on Sunday afternoons during football season, would be served
for dessert. His last invention was the Linzer Cupcake, a
small Linzer Torte designed to serve one person.
A son of the late Hermann and Martha (Vorderegger) Muehlmann,
Heinz will be missed greatly by many. He is survived by
Brigitte Wudernitz Muehlmann, his second wife and soul mate,
whom he met in Boston after his first marriage had ended in
divorce, his children Sonja Fay Muehlmann and her husband
Philip Chu of Monrovia, CA, Martha Muehlmann of Mautern,
Austria, and Carl Eliot Muehlmann and his wife Amalia
Daskalakis of New York, NY, his grandchildren Amelia Mary
Chu, Collis Eliot Chu, Maya Juliana Muehlmann and Livio
Nikola Muehlmann, brothers Hermann and Hansjoerg Muehlmann,
loving nieces and nephews, cousins, and loyal friends near
and far.
Heinz was able to spend his final days at home and die in
his wife’s arms as he had wished, thanks to the
compassionate and open-minded continuous care provided by
Community Nurse Home Care of Fairhaven. Gifts to the agency
in Heinz’ memory would be appreciated. URL:
https://www.communitynurse.com/donate/
Funeral services in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, and in
Zell am See, Austria, will be private. A celebration of
Heinz’ life will be held at Sippican Tennis Club at a later
date to be announced. Heinz’ memoir “Slalom Racer” is in
progress. To leave a message of condolence for the family,
please visit
www.warehamvillagefuneralhome.com.
Dear Brigitte and family,
It
was so sad to hear the bad news of Heinz' passing.
Heinz was so incredibly helpful in getting our
Proposition 2˝ drafted and passed into Massachusetts law
forty years ago. Barbara Anderson and I loved the
time we spent together with Heinz and Brigitte for the
excellent holiday dinners at their home, the occasional
cookouts at our place in Marblehead, and the sail aboard
my Catalina 22 in Salem Sound.
Heinz was a master of so many talents and skills.
He will be sorely missed.
Chip Ford
Executive Director
Citizens for Limited Taxation
Full News Reports Follow
(excerpted above)
The
Springfield
Republican
Friday, June 26, 2020
Longmeadow Town Meeting rejects Prop. 2˝ cut and Route 5
rebuild
By Dave Canton
Longmeadow Town Meeting voters rejected a move by the town
Selectboard and the Finance Committee to begin the process
of exempting the town from Proposition 2˝ tax limitations. A
request for funds to cover initial engineering costs for a
Longmeadow Street rebuild was also voted down.
Tuesday’s outdoor meeting on the grounds of Longmeadow High
School Tuesday evening allowed generous social distancing
for the 277 registered voters who attended.
Article 14 asked voters to allow the town to begin home rule
legislation that could eventually exempt town government
from the 2.5 percent tax cap mandated by Proposition 2˝.
The Chair of the Select Board, Thomas Lachiusa said home
rule legislation would begin a process to allow the town to
permanently exempt itself from having to adhere to the 2.5
percent cap on yearly property taxes.
“This is something both the Select Board and the Finance
Committee have been looking at for a long time as a solution
to protect the town from a drastic property value
decreases,” he said. If that were to happen we would see a
lot of cuts to education, programs and services we have all
come to expect. It would be a progressive loss of services
as each year we would have to make more and more cuts."
Lachuisa said the vote Tuesday would have allowed the town
to approach the state legislature for home rule legislation.
Once the state government approves, the town would have two
more votes, Town Meeting and the second a town-wide ballot
initiative, to either pass the measure or reject it.
Lachuisa pointed out that Longmeadow is pretty much limited
to residential property taxes for its operations. The town
does not have an industrial or commercial base to buffer
town residents.
“We are all optimistic that Springfield does well, that the
casino attracts a lot of attention to the city, Because
Longmeadow property values rise and far as Springfield
does,” he said. “But we need a plan beyond that.”
Town Meeting also rejected a proposed allocation of
$100,000, part of a $400,000 preliminary engineering package
on the reconstruction of Route 5, Longmeadow Street.
Selectman Marc Strange said the funding would include the
initial survey and engineering needed before the state would
consider funding the actual work.
“It’s needed he said. “The road is heavily used, and I don’t
see how you can not do it. It’s not a good time to ask but
it is necessary.”
The work would include bringing the roadway up to Department
of Transportation standards, improving drainage and
repaving.
Green Willow Drive resident John Friedson was concerned that
the Route 5 reconstruction was a step too far for many older
residents.
‘We have seniors here on fixed incomes. Those of us who
would like to keep our houses are getting increasingly
concerned about the town’s appetite for spending, the
appetite for debt, for increasing taxes at every possible
stage and not casting a strong, judicious eye on what the
requests are for expenditures in a time of economic collapse
and pandemic,” he said. “This particular case, Route 5 is
not perfect, and yeah, we’d like to get state money. But,
the last I noticed from my checkbook I pay state taxes, too.
This is not the year, this is not the time for spending on
things that are unnecessary, in my opinion.”
State House
News Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Weekly Roundup - Fear and Loathing in Massachusetts
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
By Matt Murphy
The pandemic tables have turned, in many ways, with the
coronavirus now boiling over in southern and western states
like Florida and Texas, while in the Northeast the pot lid
is only slightly rattling.
But Bay Staters just venturing out into the wild are doing
so with great trepidation, many still uncomfortable with the
idea of eating out or riding the T. Forget about getting on
a plane.
New polling from Suffolk University for WGBH News, the State
House News Service, The Boston Globe and MassLive found that
more than 66 percent of residents are living with more than
normal levels of fear and anxiety. And perhaps that's to be
expected.
Not only are they living through the worst pandemic in over
a century, but society is also struggling to come to terms
with generations of racism and the inequities that built
into every system, from housing to law enforcement.
Racism, in fact, ranked among the biggest problems residents
see facing the state today, which helped to explain the
sweeping support found in the Suffolk/WGBH/SHNS poll for
broad reforms to policing.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo also got behind the idea of
making Juneteenth (June 19) a state holiday to mark the day
that the last slaves were freed in Texas. The amendment
filed by Rep. Bud Williams of Springfield was tacked onto a
$1.1 billion COVID-19 spending bill.
Facing up to a past of racism collided this week with the
need to confront a more recent history of injustice.
Despite the fact that 81 percent of residents still think
Baker is doing a good job handling the pandemic, there
wasn't enough support to sugarcoat a 174-page report that
painted a hideous portrait of the leadership at the Holyoke
Soldiers' Home.
Mark Pearlstein, a former federal prosecutor tapped by Baker
to conduct an independent investigation into the deaths of
at least 76 veterans from COVID-19 at the home, found that a
series of "utterly baffling" decisions led to the creation
of conditions that allowed the virus to wreak havoc.
The Pearlstein report focused on the decisions that were
made that allowed COVID-19 to flourish inside the walls of
the veterans' home, but it also laid out warning signs that
Superintendent Bennett Walsh may have been underqualified to
run the facility before the start of the pandemic.
Pearlstein raised questions about what qualifications
officials saw in Walsh to back up his hiring as
superintendent of a long-term care facility, and laid out in
detail his failings as a manager and the administration's
lack of vision into the Soldiers' Home that might have
prompted them to intervene.
"Veterans who deserve the best from state government got
exactly the opposite, and there's no excuse or plausible
explanation for that," Baker said.
The fallout from the report claimed the job of Veterans'
Affairs Secretary Francisco Urena, who was asked to resign
in light of Pearlstein's conclusions. He was replaced on an
acting basis by Cheryl Poppe, the superintendent of the
Chelsea Soldiers' Home. And Baker said he would move to
terminate Walsh, who has been on administrative leave.
Over 2,000 teachers in 47 school districts have also been
informed that they will be without a job in the fall,
according to the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which
is the state's largest teachers' union.
The layoff and non-renewal notices signal the high level of
uncertainty under which local officials are operating as the
Legislature has yet to finalize a budget for the upcoming
fiscal year, and the Baker administration is currently
level-funding local aid to cities and towns in the
short-term.
Schools did get a bit more clarity about what the fall might
look like, though.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education put out
new guidance this week for schools to contemplate as they
think about reopening in the fall, including a continuation
of remote learning, staggered in-person learning schedules
for students, or a full return with mandatory mask-wearing
and desks at least three feet, but preferably six, apart.
Lunches would be eaten in the classroom, but temperature
checks would not be required.
The guidelines for reopening gave school administrators a
lot to think about, and the Baker administration dangled a
little more than $200 million in federal relief funding that
would help districts buy the supplies they need to safely
reopen.
The governor said it could be at least another month before
the state is ready to commit to Chapter 70 aid for the next
school year. Baker signed a $5.25 billion interim budget on
Friday that will keep government operating through at least
July as budget writers in the House, Senate and
administration struggle to peer into the future.
"We don't have a good sort of vision into tax revenue for
the next fiscal year yet, and it's going to take a little
while to get there," Baker said.
House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said the
target the House set for his committee in May to release a
fiscal 2021 budget proposal by July 1 is no longer feasible,
and not likely to be met by next Wednesday.
Guessing exactly what the Legislature will be able to
accomplish by July 31 could be a fun parlor game.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has said policing reform is on
that list, but he has not yet surfaced a proposal to respond
to the legislation filed by Baker to create a police
licensing system that would give the state new power to hold
cops to standards of law enforcement and professionalism,
including bans on the use of forceful tactics like
chokeholds.
The governor got an earful on a visit this week to Mattapan
from a woman upset that Baker's bill proposed to pay police
up to $5,000 to get the additional training they need to be
sensitive to racial biases. He was there to announce the
selection of a minority-owned firm to redevelop the last
parcel on the former Boston State Hospital campus.
Rep. Russell Holmes, who has made no secret of his own
issues with the DeLeo, came to Baker's defense, crediting
him with at least putting a plan on paper.
Baker also put a plan on paper to implement the
recommendations of the Pearlstein report for improved
oversight of the state's two Soldiers' Homes. But DeLeo
signaled he's in no rush to put that bill on the floor,
signaling his own intent to ask House lawmakers next week to
support their own investigation through a Special
Legislative Oversight Committee.
Rep. Linda Dean Campbell, a veteran, recommended the
oversight committee to DeLeo, and envisions the probe to
last into next year, and to focus both on what happened in
Holyoke, as well as how the state can broadly improve care
for veterans.
The Senate has not yet signed on to the oversight committee
concept, and comity was something in short supply between
the branches to start the week.
The Senate passed health care legislation Thursday to
enshrine some of the pandemic protocols that have led to
massive growth in the use of telemedicine, and to put an end
to surprise billing and expand the scope of practices for
some medical professionals.
The topic of health care, however, was a sensitive one given
the accusation made by some House lawmakers -- namely House
Majority Leader Ron Mariano and Rep. Dan Cullinane -- that
the Senate has been a bad partner in trying to negotiate a
path forward with limited time until the end of the session.
With the House seeking to extend the life of some health
care bills, the Senate responded to the criticism by
rejecting their extension request, initiating a
parliamentary feud that doesn't bode well for much of
anything getting accomplished in the health care space over
the next month.
"At some point, because we were being asked to extend and
extend, how many times does someone say no before you stop
asking them out?" Sen. Cindy Friedman said about the House.
Given the bad blood, it was a small win that the House and
Senate were able to agree to a "compromise" over local road
repair funding and the future of the MBTA's oversight board.
Rather than remake the temporary Fiscal and Management
Control Board into something more permanent, Democratic
leaders agreed to simply extend its authorization for
another year. And on the issue of Chapter 90 funding, it's
also the status quo moving forward.
Both branches earlier this year had passed legislation to
bump Chapter 90 funding to $300 million for the year,
delighting cities and towns after years of lobbying for more
money.
But with the pandemic crushing state finances and the Senate
apparently unwilling to take up the House's transportation
tax bill, the compromise was to punt.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Report finds they served their country,
but in the end their state didn't do them a service.
CommonWealth
Magazine
Friday, June 26, 2020
Tensions rising between House and Senate
By Bruce Mohl - Editor
Just as the Legislature heads into crunch time on Beacon
Hill, tensions appear to be rising between the House and
Senate over how bills should emerge from a key committee.
Under the Legislature’s rules, all bills dealing with health
care are supposed to be reviewed and voted on by the Joint
Committee on Health Care Financing before moving on to votes
in the two branches. But the two chairs of that committee –
Sen. Cindy Friedman of Arlington and Rep. Dan Cullinane of
Dorchester – are barely on speaking terms these days.
Cullinane says Friedman has refused to work with him to
schedule votes on all but a few bills since he took over as
acting chair of the committee early this year. He said he is
leaving the Legislature at the end of this session and has
no political agenda other than moving forward good public
policy.
“Plain and simple, the Senate chair refuses to negotiate,
refuses to engage in any meaningful conversation,” he said.
“The Senate did not walk away from the negotiating table,
they never showed up.”
A similar dustup occurred in 2015, when then-Senate
President Stan Rosenberg complained that too many of the
Senate’s bills ended up stalled in joint House-Senate
committees which tend to be dominated by members of the
larger House. The tension became so high that the Senate
voted 39-0 to develop plans to pull members out of the joint
committees and establish its own panels, an approach that
came to be known as the “nuclear option.” House Speaker
Robert DeLeo at the time was dismissive of the Senate’s push
for change, calling it an “impolitic and manufactured
reaction to a non-existent problem.”
Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, some minor changes in
joint rules were approved, and the two branches went back to
doing business. But a new battle over the same issue seems
to be emerging again with the Health Care Financing
Committee.
On Thursday, the Senate passed a major health care bill
backed by Friedman and Senate President Karen Spilka. The
bill did not go through the joint committee, but instead
originated in the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which
Cullinane says is a violation of the Legislature’s rules. He
said the Senate has bypassed the joint committee and passed
other health care measures in recent months.
“Such unusual action by the Senate would be concerning at
any time. But in a time when our Commonwealth must navigate
the dual challenges of the worst global pandemic in over a
century and a historic recession, the Senate’s choice to
bypass the expertise of the members of the Joint Committee
on Health Care Financing is an unconscionable political
decision that has disenfranchised both the House and Senate
members appointed to the joint committee and their
constituents,” Cullinane said in a letter filed with the
House clerk prior to the Senate’s vote.
On the Senate floor Thursday, Friedman also urged the
rejection of a House measure that would have extended until
the end of the year the reporting date for the more than 300
bills remaining in the Health Care Financing Committee.
Cullinane said he filed the extension because he didn’t want
to see the bills die, but Friedman indicated on the Senate
floor that she didn’t care.
According to a transcript of the floor debate compiled by
the State House News Service, Friedman said the bills in the
committee fall into three buckets – House bills, Senate
bills, and bills filed in both branches that deal with the
same issues. Friedman said negotiations had broken down in
the committee over the bills dealing with overlapping issues
so she wanted the committee to release the Senate bills to
the Senate. She said the House members could do whatever
they wanted with the House bills.
Cullinane says Friedman’s approach subverts the whole point
of the committee, which is to have members and staff with an
expertise in health care review all health care legislation.
The Senate voted to reject the extension sought by Cullinane,
which meant all bills in the committee were released with
adverse reports, meaning they would normally be dead. The
Senate then began passing measures to resuscitate the Senate
bills it wanted to consider.
“I have heard that there have been accusations that the
Senate is being obstructionist, that there has been no
outreach, and that we won't negotiate,” Friedman said,
according to State House News. “I am not sure how you
reconcile five Senate proposals since January as being
obstructionist. But here we are. It's June 25. Our formals
will end soon. Our health care system is upside down. Our
residents depend on us to provide care. We can't wait, they
can't wait. And so it's time to move the bills along.”
To an outsider, it all sounds like much ado about nothing.
After all, a Senate bill can’t become law unless the House
goes along, so it’s not as if the two branches will never
have to negotiate. But the Senate’s attempt to bypass a key
legislative committee and gain more control of its
legislation is stirring anger in the House, anger that is
likely to surface somewhere down the road.
State House
News Service
Monday, June 22, 2020
Facing $2.25B Shortfall,
Baker Admin Hasn’t Updated Revenue Expectations
By Michael P. Norton
Governors from both major parties over the years have turned
to midyear budget cuts when it's become apparent that tax
revenues are not going to keep pace with spending. These 9C
cuts are named for the section of state finance law that
authorizes governors to take unilateral budget-fixing
actions.
But since March, in the face of the precedent-setting
evaporation of tax receipts brought on by forced business
closures, the Baker administration has not revised revenue
expectations -- which could have triggered 9C cuts -- or
announced other specific budget-balancing plans.
State laws require the state Administration and Finance
Secretary, in this case Michael Heffernan, to notify the
governor in writing whenever he believes budgeted revenues
will be insufficient to meet expenditures.
Within five days of that notification, the secretary must
inform the governor and legislative budget officials of the
amount of the probable deficiency of revenue and the
governor is then required, no more than 15 days after that
notification, to reduce spending and outline his or her
reasons or submit to the Legislature specific proposals to
raise additional revenues by an amount equal to such
deficiency.
The law governing actions in the face of a "deficiency of
revenue" also references the option to pull money from state
reserves to backfill funding gaps.
Tax collections through May are running $1.73 billion or 6.5
percent less than the same fiscal year-to-date period in
2019, and $2.25 billion or 8.3 percent behind the
year-to-date benchmark, an unprecedented decline and one
that economic experts believe will not quickly reverse
itself.
Asked why the Baker administration has not adjusted its
revenue benchmarks downward, Heffernan spokesman Patrick
Marvin did not say.
"The Administration is continuing to work with the
Massachusetts Legislature and municipal officials to
carefully monitor revenue collections and the impact of
COVID-19 on the Commonwealth's budget," Marvin wrote in an
emailed statement.
There are a number of major variables that state officials
are monitoring, including revenue impacts associated with
moving the tax-filing deadline to July 15 from April 15, the
roles that government agencies and workers are playing in
responding to the pandemic and its impacts, and the
continuing debate in Washington over pandemic aid to the
states. A special state law approved during the pandemic
also empowers the state treasurer to borrow money for fiscal
2020 purposes as long as the funds are repaid by the end of
fiscal 2021, on June 30, 2021.
State House
News Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Baker Signs Budget to Fund Government in July
By Colin A. Young
Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday morning signed an interim
budget to keep state government running when the new fiscal
year begins on July 1 since the Legislature has not yet
developed a fiscal 2021 spending plan.
The governor filed the $5.25 billion interim budget a week
ago and said Friday that the amount is sufficient to fund
government operations through July and "will make it
possible for the treasurer to deliver local aid payments to
cities and towns."
House and Senate leaders have not laid out a timeline yet
for completion of a budget for the full fiscal year. With
just a few days until the new budget year begins, the Baker
administration this week told municipalities that upcoming
monthly local aid payments will largely be based on fiscal
year 2020 estimates. The planned implementation of a new
school funding law in the new fiscal year is on hold, at
least for the time being.
"We obviously look forward to working with our colleagues in
the Legislature during the month of July, as some of the
issues associated with fiscal '20 get a little clearer and
fiscal '21 get a little clearer, to finalize what I would
call a budget for the go-forward on the rest of the year,"
Baker said Friday after announcing he had signed the stopgap
budget. "But I want to thank the Legislature for acting
quickly on this one and providing some security and
certainty to people with respect to how the new year will
start here for the commonwealth and for the commonwealth's
cities and towns."
State House
News Service
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
State Sets Aug. 29-30 as Sales Tax Holiday Weekend
By Colin A. Young
The state's 6.25 percent sales tax will be waived on many
purchases the weekend of Saturday, Aug. 29 and Sunday, Aug.
30, the Baker administration announced Tuesday. This
summer's sales tax holiday weekend will take place as
retailers regain their footing after weeks of
government-forced shutdowns, and Gov. Charlie Baker said he
hopes people will take advantage of the tax savings to
support local businesses.
"The annual sales tax holiday is an opportunity for us to
support small businesses and consumers, and this year, it's
a great way to support our economy that's been impacted by
COVID-19," the governor said. "This pandemic has created
enormous challenges for the Commonwealth's small businesses,
and the sales tax-free weekend is one way that we can
encourage more economic activity to help Main Street
businesses and local economies."
The annual tax holiday, made a permanent fixture as part of
a 2018 "grand bargain" law addressing multiple topics,
allows shoppers to avoid paying the tax on most retail items
-- excluding food and drink at restaurants -- that cost less
than $2,500. The state agrees to give up tens of millions of
dollars in taxes in a bid to spur buying and consumer
savings.
The 2018 law that made the tax holiday an annual occurrence
calls for the Legislature by June 15 to choose a weekend in
August to designate as the holiday. If legislators miss that
deadline or do not act, the Department of Revenue has until
July 1 to announce dates for the holiday, as it did Tuesday.
Massachusetts has long offered the tax holiday during a
summer weekend as a way to boost local businesses, though it
did not have one in place in 2016 or 2017.
State House
News Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Lawmakers Feeling Push and Pull on Climate Bills
Branches on Different Courses as Session Winds Down
Colin A. Young
There is no question that the pandemic has significantly
altered agendas and priorities in the Legislature, and with
the time to tackle big issues running out leaders are being
pressed from multiple directions to address bills dealing
with climate change.
Climate legislation had figured to be a focus of the
legislative session's home stretch since the House and
Senate had each passed major climate-related bills before
most business was put on hold. Now, with five weeks to go in
the session and other hefty matters still incomplete, one
key lawmaker is trying to rally colleagues to finish the job
before the July 31 end of formal sessions.
"We are in a position to achieve significant progress on
climate before the end of session -- including raising our
requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to at
least Net Zero by 2050 or sooner -- by working together and
acting with urgency," a statement that Sen. Marc Pacheco is
asking other lawmakers to sign onto says.
Meanwhile, business groups are leading a parallel effort
urging the House to reject many of the ideas that the Senate
has embraced.
Towards the end of January, it seemed almost certain that
the governor would be signing some kind of climate bill this
summer. On the same day that month, Gov. Charlie Baker,
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka
all declared their support for net-zero carbon emissions by
2050, a policy that climate change activists have been
pushing for years. Both branches have passed climate-related
bills, but the shared goal still hasn't been formalized.
The House last July unanimously approved a roughly $1.3
billion bill -- the so-called GreenWorks bill -- centered
around grants to help communities adapt to climate change
impacts, and at the end of January the Senate overwhelmingly
passed a suite of climate bills that called for net-zero
carbon emissions by 2050, and set deadlines for the state to
impose carbon-pricing mechanisms for transportation,
commercial buildings and homes.
"People wanted to get radical, they wanted to get dramatic,
and I think we gave them the bill they were looking for,"
Sen. Michael Barrett, the Senate chair of the
Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee, said
after the January session.
In a letter this week to House leaders, a coalition of some
of the most powerful business and trade groups in the state
made clear that they do not want the House to follow the
Senate's radical and dramatic lead.
"Representing twenty of the Commonwealth's largest business,
employer, housing, labor and trade associations we
recognized [in January], as now, the importance of advancing
our climate leadership and the urgent need for bold action,"
the Mass. Coalition for Sustainable Energy wrote to DeLeo
and House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Aaron Michlewitz.
"However, after reviewing in depth S2500, An Act Setting
Next-Generation Climate Policy -- and in light of the many
consequences of the ongoing pandemic -- we believe the bill
would have negative environmental consequences for the
Commonwealth while seriously exacerbating our housing costs
and affordability challenges at a moment when our economy
already faces a sharp downturn in productivity."
The coalition, which includes the Greater Boston Chamber of
Commerce, Mass. Business Roundtable, and Associated
Industries of Massachusetts, has recently grown to now
include the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of
Massachusetts, NAIOP Massachusetts, and Plumbers &
Gasfitters Local 12 Boston.
"Ultimately, we believe this bill would harm consumers and
businesses and undermine our smart growth objectives at a
time our economy can least afford even the smallest step
backwards without making the meaningful emissions reductions
we need to reverse the effects of climate change," the
coalition wrote.
The group disagrees with the Senate's decision to leave
critical specifics of carbon pricing up to the executive
branch, claims the Senate bill makes unrealistic assumptions
about the future costs and availability of clean energy
technologies, and disapproves of the Senate leaving
business, employer and labor groups off of a Climate Policy
Commission proposed in a Senate bill.
On that last point, the coalition was backed up Thursday by
Jay Ash, the former Baker administration economic
development secretary who now leads the the Massachusetts
Competitive Partnership.
"The absence of business, employer & labor reps on the
Climate Commission proposed by Bill S2500 is a missed
opportunity. If S2500 is to be successful, then we must be
at the table, too! Many of us have been active & continue to
lead on the possibilities," Ash tweeted Thursday.
On Thursday night, Pacheco began circulating a "dear
colleague" letter asking senators and representatives to
sign onto a statement by Wednesday affirming their
commitment to getting a meaningful climate bill -- not
necessarily exactly what the Senate passed -- done by the
end of next month.
"The unprecedented effects of COVID-19 have made our
commitment to the passage of climate legislation all the
more critical. Our ability to address daunting financial
obstacles and ensure equitable public health in
disenfranchised communities depends on the passage of bold
climate action policy," Pacheco wrote in the statement.
"Yet, we continue to fail to protect our public health from
greenhouse gas emissions and fail to seize upon major
economic opportunities that could be achieved if we act
now."
The statement adds, "The sustainability revolution is at our
doorstep. Independence from fossil fuel addiction is within
our grasp. All we need is to demonstrate the political will
to act."
The committee Pacheco chairs, the Senate Committee on Global
Warming and Climate Change, will hold a virtual hearing on
Wednesday to "provide an opportunity for climate experts and
public officials to testify publicly about the need for bold
climate action," the chairman said.
Though there had been talk months ago about the House and
Senate agreeing to hold formal sessions after the
traditional July 31 end date stipulated in the joint rules,
that possibility seems to have lost favor and lawmakers have
repeatedly discussed July 31 as the hard deadline for major
legislation.
With the clock running down, the Legislature must still put
a permanent budget in place for the fiscal year that starts
July 1 (a process that typically takes months on Beacon
Hill), momentum is building around an economic development
bill that could respond to the financial pain the pandemic
has inflicted, and other major initiatives around
transportation revenue and health care remain under active
consideration.
Committee to
Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #56
Monday, June 22, 2020
The Blue State Depression
The new Department of Labor employment data confirms that
when it comes to the economy, America is on two divergent
paths. Blue states are losing jobs at record pace and red
states are gaining them.
Ten states had unemployment rates in May above 15 percent.
They are all states with Democratic governors, with the
exception of Deep Blue Massachusetts with its liberal
Republican governor Charlie Baker.
Ranked from highest to lowest they are Nevada 25.3%, Hawaii
(22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island
(16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois
(15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), Washington (15.1%).
The six states with the lowest unemployment rates are all
red states – most of which never shutdown at all. These are
Nebraska (5.2%), Utah (8.5 %), Wyoming (8.8%), Arizona
(8.9%), Idaho (8.9%), MT (9.0%) , and North Dakota (9.1%).
This is not a coronavirus recession. It is a blue state
lockdown recession. Democrats say they have shut down their
economies for health reasons, but these are also the states
that generally have had the highest death rates and the
highest nursing home fatalities. So the blue states have not
only failed to keep their citizens safe, they’ve ruined
their economies as well. Democrats are promising to make
America look more like New Jersey, Washington, and
California. God forbid.
The Boston
Herald
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Thanks Charlie Baker, jobless rate a national disgrace
By Howie Carr
We’re number four!
Gov. Charlie Baker must be so proud – as of last month, only
three of the 50 states had a higher unemployment rate than
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ 16.3%, according to the
federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I’ll bet you hadn’t heard that until right now, had you? Odd
how almost all of Charlie Parker’s amen chorus in the Boston
media gave these appalling statistics a good leaving-alone
for the better part of a week.
I first read about the Massachusetts Misery in the Wall
Street Journal last weekend, in an editorial pointing to the
dire consequences of assorted governors’ catastrophic
overreactions to the recent panic.
Headline: “Lockdown States and the Jobless/Job gains are
much greater in states that reopened faster.”
Lockdown state? That’s Maskachusetts, right.
But as you would expect, the Boston media shrugged, as if to
say, Nothing to see here.
Move along, folks, and pay no attention to all those
boarded-up storefronts and looted buildings in Downtown
Crossing and Back Bay, not to mention the thousands of
shuttered mom-and-pop businesses on every main street and
state highway in Massachusetts.
But look on the bright side, Governor – not only does the
Mask State have the most disastrously high unemployment rate
in the country among those run by “Republicans,” you’re the
only GOP governor, RINO or otherwise, who’s in the top 10
for wrecking his state’s economy.
Well done, Tall Deval.
At his droning press conferences, Parker always like to talk
about the “data,” so let’s look at some of it.
The two top states for unemployment last month are not
surprising – tourist-dependent Nevada (25.3%) and Hawaii
(22.6%). Then comes Michigan, controlled by the unhinged
Democrat Gretchen Whitmer (21.2%), perhaps the nation’s most
prominent Karen.
The Fourth Reich of Massachusetts is tied for fourth with
California and Rhode Island.
(Among the other New England states, Maine unbelievably has
the 10th lowest unemployment rate at 9.3%, just ahead of
Connecticut at 9.4, while Vermont is 31st at 12.7 percent
and New Hampshire came in at 39th with a jobless rate of
14.5%.
Massachusetts has a higher unemployment rate than even New
York (14.5%), whose governor has more nursing-home blood on
his hands than even Tall Deval. Even higher than New Jersey
(15.2%), which is run by Tall Deval’s old Needham High and
Harvard College buddy Phil Murphy, who may if possible be
even more sanctimonious than Charlie himself.
These numbers are truly embarrassing, which is why you won’t
be reading them in the Globe. The bow-tied bum kissers are
on Team Lockdown too.
But wait, there’s more “data” out there. For instance,
according to the state’s own stats, also released Friday,
while the unemployment rate for the rest of the nation was
finally plummeting in May, it rose in MA by one-tenth of a
percentage point, from 16.2%.
Here’s another number from the May job report for MA: in the
“Leisure & Hospitality” sector, over the last 12 months the
state has shed 225,200 jobs – 59.9% of the workforce, gone,
unemployed, adios.
But there’s more work yet for Charlie Parker et al. to do in
finally finishing off the MA economy once and for all. And
so his energy secretary, Climate Katie Theoharides, said
last week that she and her boss remain totally committed to
doubling the state’s gasoline tax next year – it’s an
“investment,” you see.
The hacks call it the Transportation Climate Initiative
(TCI) but it’s really just a TAX.
The TCI will be Baker’s next move to demolish what remains
of the Dreaded Private Sector, in order to enrich even
further the bloated hackerama, which, by the way, has
suffered almost no layoffs, and none whatsoever in the most
worthless payroll-patriot-infested agencies like UMass,
Massport and the courts.
Meanwhile, MA is number four in joblessness – quite an
accomplishment for Baker, absolutely decimating what had
been a fairly decent economy in a matter of weeks, in order
to deal with an epidemic centered on nursing homes heavily-misregulated
by this same governor who tried to cover up his incompetence
and corruption by putting a million people out of work.
Latest MA death statistics as of Tuesday: 7,617 deaths, of
which 4,956 have occurred in those state-regulated nursing
homes. Only 123 people under the age of 50 have died, and
the average age of the decedents remains 81.
For this, Charlie Parker murdered the state’s economy.
And yet for all his reckless depredations, we still only
have the nation’s fourth highest unemployment rate.
C’mon Tall Deval, we all know you can do an even worse job.
Just concentrate on those key industries – “indices,” as you
called them Tuesday. And you can encourage more rioting and
looting – excuse me, “large gatherings.”
Maskachusetts – we can do better. We can get the
unemployment rate up to 20%!
State House
News Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House Passes $1.1 Bil Budget to Cover COVID-19 Costs
State in "Race" to Net Federal Reimbursements
By Colin A. Young and Chris Van Buskirk
A $1.1 billion budget bill is on its way to the Senate after
the House passed the legislation Wednesday and added on an
additional $17.5 million in COVID-19 spending.
Passage of the legislation comes as Gov. Charlie Baker has
poked lawmakers to quickly get it to his desk so that the
state can take advantage of federal reimbursements for costs
related to the respiratory virus. The House approved the
bill on a 158-0 vote.
Before the vote, Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Aaron
Michlewitz laid out for representatives what the $1.1
billion COVID-19 spending bill entails.
"Today we are taking one step closer and helping relieve the
financial burden that COVID-19 has inflicted while also
helping some prepare for the coming months, as the virus
continues to inflict pain and with a vaccine still a ways
away from being a reality," he said.
The chairman said the bill includes $350 million for
personal protective equipment, $139 million in increased
rates and add-ons for human service providers, $93 million
for human service provider incentive pay, $85 million for
field hospitals and shelters, $44 million for contact
tracing efforts, and more funding for child care providers,
food security programs, emergency housing, and "a dedicated
fund to address statewide efforts on racial disparities in
COVID health care access."
"Collectively, these pieces represent a broad range of items
that will help a wide variety of people and organizations
that have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19
outbreak," Michlewitz said.
Rep. Christine Barber, who participated in the session by
phone Wednesday, thanked the speaker and Ways and Means
chairman for dedicating money in the bill to the Health Care
for All helpline, which helps people enroll for health care.
She said the helpline fields more than 20,000 calls each
year, half of which are in Spanish or Portuguese.
"As you can imagine, since COVID-19 calls to the helpline
have increased exponentially as thousands of people are in
need of health care for the first time," Barber said. "I
know many of us have relied on the helpline to aid our
constituents, and the funding in this bill helps to increase
the capacity to help people who lost their job and their
employer-sponsored coverage and need help finding insurance
coverage for the first time. They're helping people who have
never had coverage but because of the crisis are now trying
to enroll."
Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier filed an unsuccessful amendment
that would have directed the commissioner of revenue to send
stimulus checks to state residents who file taxes using an
Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. People who have
an ITIN are disqualified from receiving unemployment
benefits and stimulus checks from the CARES Act. There was
no direct vote on the amendment, and it was dispensed with
in a larger amendment.
The Pittsfield Democrat's amendment would have sent
qualified ITIN taxpayers $1,200 if filing individually or
$2,400 if filing jointly, with an additional $500 for each
dependent. Farley-Bouvier said if a U.S. citizen files their
taxes with someone who is an ITIN holder, they and their
children will become ineligible for unemployment benefits
and stimulus checks.
"It's cruel and it's stupid," she told the News Service
after the session ended. "The issue of how we treat
immigrants justly and fairly and how their wellbeing is
connected to the rest of the commonwealth's being is a
conversation that needs to keep happening."
Michlewitz said it was important for the House to pass the
bill Wednesday to secure Massachusetts' place in line for
federal reimbursement of COVID-related costs.
"As the federal government is inundated with reimbursement
requests, it is vital that we maximize our options and take
advantage of the FEMA funds while we can. That is why it is
so critical that we pass this today and get it closer to the
governor's desk, so that we do not fall far behind other
states in the race for federal reimbursement," Michlewitz
said.
Last week, the governor prodded lawmakers to act on the
supplemental budget bill he filed in May, saying that "the
clock's ticking" and his administration cannot seek money
from available federal pools to cover COVID-related expenses
until the Legislature finalizes the bill.
The federal funding will also help Massachusetts deal with
the budgetary abyss it faces for fiscal 2021, which will
start July 1 with a temporary budget in place while
lawmakers try to figure out how to budget for the next year
now that a recession has washed over the state.
"Our continued struggle with the Commonwealth fiscal
outlook, creating so much uncertainty, makes it even more
important to use these federal funds in a timely manner so
our most vulnerable population can take advantage of it,"
Michlewitz said Wednesday.
Separately Wednesday, Michlewitz told the News Service that
the House Ways and Means Committee will not have a full-year
budget proposal ready by July 1, the deadline given to the
committee in a set of emergency rules adopted by the House
in May.
State House
News Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House Budget Appears Unlikely by July 1 Deadline
Heffernan Sees "One or More" Interim Budgets
By Matt Murphy and Michael P. Norton
Already behind schedule in May, the House adopted emergency
rules to govern its operations during the pandemic,
including a new target date for Democratic leaders to
produce an annual state budget.
But with that new July 1 deadline approaching, House Ways
and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz told the News Service
Wednesday that his committee does not expect to present a
full-year spending plan by next week.
The House will have to "move off" that date as it continues
to try to anticipate how the economy will react to the slow
reopening of businesses and the threat of a second wave of
the coronavirus in the fall, Michlewitz said. There is also
the possibility that Congress will come up with additional
federal relief that could dramatically change the state's
fortunes, although the outcome of those talks remains
uncertain.
The rules package adopted in May called for the Ways and
Means Committee to produce a fiscal 2021 budget bill by the
time the new fiscal year begins on July 1. Leaders are now
looking into whether that rule must be changed, or whether
the House's passage of a $5.25 billion interim budget filed
by Gov. Charlie Baker to keep government funded through July
can be interpreted to satisfy the requirement.
Emergency rule 15 states, " ... the committee on Ways and
Means shall report the General Appropriation Bill by July 1,
2020."
Baker on Tuesday reinforced the uncertainty with which state
budget officials are operating. He specifically brought up
the fact that the state delayed the April 15 income tax
filing deadline until July 15.
"The problem with that is we don't know what actually is
going to get paid for those tax payments that were due in
April until people file in July, so that's a big open open
question about what the close of fiscal '20 looks like and
the open of fiscal '21 looks like," Baker said.
Baker also said the pandemic's nature and its impact on the
economy makes traditional forecasting difficult.
"We don't have a good sort of vision into tax revenue for
the next fiscal year yet, and it's going to take a little
while to get there," Baker said. "The folks in the
Legislature are moving a one-twelfth budget, which we filed
several days ago to ensure that payments continue into July,
but they and we both recognize that we're not going to know
exactly where we are on the budget until we get a little
more information."
Baker said he was "optimistic" that Congress would come
through with additional aid for states, and described his
administration as "very engaged" with the state's
Congressional delegation and "others" on that front.
In a joint letter to Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means
Chairman Michael Rodrigues, Treasurer Deb Goldberg and
Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan on
June 8 said the state received $2.46 billion in funding from
the federal CARES Act to pay for the state's emergency
COVID-19 expenditures.
The state's top finance officials noted that to manage cash
flows the state had entered into a line of credit with
commercial banks for up to $1.75 billion and highlighted a
new state law authorizing the Treasury to borrow in
anticipation of revenues, if necessary, with the funds
needing to be paid back by June 30, 2021.
"The Commonwealth currently anticipates that it will have
sufficient liquidity to meet ordinary treasury and cash flow
needs for FY20 and FY21 through the existing liquidity and
credit facilities and access to the capital markets,"
Heffernan and Goldberg wrote.
Treasury officials also say the state is eligible to borrow
up to $7.86 billion under the Federal Reserve's Municipal
Liquidity Facility program to help states with cash flow
needs due to the later tax filing deadline.
State Treasury officials told the News Service Wednesday
that they will be able to make the final monthly fiscal 2020
local aid payment to cities and towns next week without
needing to resort to short-term borrowing.
During an investor call this month, Heffernan said he
expected "one or more" interim budgets to be approved to
keep state spending flowing while a fiscal 2021 budget is
developed and approved by the Legislature. The first interim
budget could be enacted in the Senate on Thursday and sent
to Baker's desk.
Despite collapsing state tax revenues, the Baker
administration opted against a formal downward revision of
fiscal 2020 tax collections, which could have triggered the
need for immediate spending cuts or other budget-balancing
plans. A revision to the fiscal 2021 revenue estimate is
expected, though, once an annual budget bill starts to
advance in the Legislature.
Baker in January filed a $44.6 billion fiscal 2021 budget,
which remains under review in the House.
State House
News Service
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
House, Senate Agree on Road Funding, MBTA Board
Chapter 90 Cut to $200 Mill, FMCB Extended One Year
By Chris Lisinski
House and Senate leaders reached an agreement Thursday to
keep the MBTA's Fiscal and Management Control Board in place
for another year and to scrap a planned increase in road and
bridge maintenance funding, effectively sealing the fate of
the annual reimbursement program.
After weeks of disagreement between the two branches, the
Senate adopted what one top lawmaker called a "compromise"
that will direct $200 million toward the Chapter 90 program
next fiscal year and will extend the about-to-expire board
tasked with overseeing and managing the T until June 30,
2021.
Settling on a $200 million allocation toward road repairs
represents a retreat from the $300 million that both the
House and Senate had already approved in earlier
legislation, reducing the funding level to where it has
remained almost every single year for the past decade.
During a Thursday session where the Senate agreed to the
compromise bill (H 4803), Transportation Committee Co-chair
Sen. Joseph Boncore said he was "dismayed" to bring forward
the lower amount of funding but felt it was important to
reach a compromise quickly because of the "urgency of this
matter."
Cities and towns each year seek clearance on the funding by
spring and this year talks spilled into summer.
"While I commit to my colleagues in this chamber to continue
to work to ensure we're spending appropriate amounts of
money -- and amounts of money we can spend without raising
revenue -- as I stated before, I think we can't delay any
longer," Boncore said on the Senate floor. "We've asked
municipalities to put off contracts for too long. This is
far later than we've ever done a Chapter 90 bond
authorization since I've been the chairman."
Gov. Charlie Baker originally proposed funding the Chapter
90 program at $200 million next year. In March, the House
bumped the amount up to $300 million as part of its version
of Baker's multi-year $18 billion transportation bond bill.
The Senate did not act on the matter until June, when it
also approved $300 million in a separate bill.
However, House leaders began to cast doubt over the state's
ability to afford the additional bonding amid a
pandemic-fueled recession without a package of tax and fee
hikes they approved -- hikes that the Senate has left
untouched for months.
"We increased Chapter 90 at that point in time, but we had a
way to pay for it," Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, chair of the
House Ways and Means Committee, said earlier this month. "We
had mechanisms to pay for it. We're in the midst of dealing
with potentially $6 to $8 billion dollars in a shortfall of
revenue for (fiscal year) 2021, so it's a little perplexing
to figure out how we're going to be doing that and raising
Chapter 90 without using the revenue sources that have been
put out there by the House."
House leaders appeared to be prodding the Senate to join
them in passing a major tax package, and it's unclear
whether the Senate's retreat on Chapter 90 funding means
that branch has given up on tax-raising initiatives to fund
transportation this year.
Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said his caucus supports
$300 million for the program and said the House had already
approved hundreds of millions of dollars more in other bond
authorizations, such as a more than $1 billion climate
resiliency program, that have not been scaled back amid the
current economic climate.
"The members of this chamber unanimously endorsed the
proposal that was brought forth by (Boncore) with regard to
$300 million for this appropriation, and we did so with an
understanding of the urgency that he referred to but also
the importance of that funding to provide a stimulus for our
economy at a time when it is urgently needed," he said.
The compromise reached Thursday also stabilizes uncertainty
surrounding the future of MBTA oversight, at least for
another year.
The FMCB, which since its formation in 2015 has conducted
dozens of public meetings every year to discuss and approve
T budgets and projects, will expire on June 30 under current
state law.
Without legislative agreement to extend or replace the
board, control would revert to the Department of
Transportation Board of Directors on July 1.
Lawmakers at first took different positions on how to handle
the board. As part of its March tax bill, the House approved
extending the FMCB another three to five years and adding
seats for the city of Boston and another municipality in the
T's service area.
A Senate bill approved this month would have created a
brand-new, seven-seat MBTA Board of Directors with the state
transportation secretary and someone appointed by the MBTA
Advisory Board watchdog group serving as members.
"We will have to continue to work on that," Boncore said. "I
am committed to seeing through and working out a compromise
between the House and Senate over the next year because that
extension will expire on June 30, 2021."
The new bill does not add any seats to the FMCB, but keeps
it in place one additional year. It will still need to earn
Gov. Charlie Baker's approval before the board is extended,
and Baker previously recommended a seven-member new board
similar to the Senate's original proposal.
State House
News Service
Friday, June 26, 2020
Advances - Week of June 28, 2020
COVID-19 continues to run its invisible thread through the
public health, economic and racial justice crises that are
raging across the United States as summer gets underway.
Three months into the pandemic, case counts are exploding in
big states like California, Florida and Texas, threatening
progress in others, like Massachusetts, and influencing the
constant public, fiscal, and monetary policy responses to
the evolving situation.
Mask-wearing has proven effective in slowing the spread of
the deadly virus, but many Americans have chosen not to
cover up or practice social distancing and the virus is
leaping from one infected person to the next at an alarming
rate. Concerns over a second wave in the fall have taken a
backseat to the more immediate responses to the outbreaks
across the country that are occurring right now.
In Massachusetts, state officials are monitoring the
situation nationally, and reactions to it from Washington,
while trying to focus on their own agenda with five weeks
left for formal legislative sessions this year. The Senate
plans next Thursday to pass its own versions of a $1.1
billion, House-approved, COVID-19 spending bill and a
long-term capital bill to invest in technology upgrades that
have become even more critical in pandemic times when people
are working together, but on computers.
Here are some of the issues to watch in the week ahead:
-- COVID - PHASE 3: Pressure will surely begin to mount on
Gov. Baker next week to announce whether Phase 3 of the
state's economic reopening plan will get underway on Monday,
July 6. That's the earliest possible date for the third
phase, which will include the return of gyms, sporting
events, casinos, museums, and movie theaters, but Baker has
said that his decisions will be driven by data and not
arbitrary dates.
"We do need to recognize and understand that this is still
very much with us and for anybody who thinks this is over, I
would just ask them to take a look at the data coming out of
a lot of the states in the south and the southwest, which
had a very positive set of statistics week over week after
week after week in the months of April and May and now
they're really starting to struggle," the governor said
Friday. "I think we all need to understand that vigilance
and caution with regard to this is -- and serious focus on
the data and on the things that stop the spread -- is where
we really need to play."
Though he has said decisions about additional reopening will
take into consideration things like the positive test rate,
number of patients hospitalized, the state's testing
capacity and more, the governor said he is particularly
interested in seeing two week's worth of public health data
from days when indoor restaurant dining has been allowed.
Indoor dining resumed June 22.
But the governor also acknowledged that, so far, the state's
phased reopening process has not led to concerning spikes in
cases. "As we continue to gradually reopen Massachusetts,
our public health data continues to trend in the right
direction," he said. -- Colin A. Young
-- THE BUDGET: Massachusetts begins fiscal 2021 on Wednesday
with a $5.25 billion interim budget in place, a COVID-19
spending bill up for consideration in the Senate on
Thursday, and Gov. Charlie Baker's $44.6 billion fiscal 2021
budget beginning its sixth month under review in the House
Ways and Means Committee.
Before deciding on how to proceed, Baker and legislative
leaders are waiting to see how tax collections perform in
the wake of the decision to push the annual tax-filing
deadline forward from April 15 to July 15.
They are also waiting to see when and whether Congress will
pass another major stimulus bill providing additional
support to individuals, businesses, and state and local
governments struggling due to the pandemic's impacts.
The House, which usually holds its annual budget
deliberations in April, set a July 1 deadline for its Ways
and Means Committee to recommend a post-pandemic fiscal 2021
budget, but committee chairman Rep. Aaron Michlewitz told
the News Service this week that his panel's General
Appropriations Act recommendation won't be ready by that
deadline.
For the moment, state government appears set up to get
through July on its interim budget. After that, it's not
clear whether the House and Senate will be able to quickly
agree on a fiscal 2021 budget before the end of next month
or whether they will need to suspend their rules to
facilitate consideration of the budget, and perhaps other
matters, sometime after July 31. - Michael P. Norton
-- LOCAL ROAD FUNDING/MBTA BOARD COMPROMISE: The House and
Senate each need to take one more vote to finalize a
compromise they struck during the week over local road and
bridge maintenance funding and MBTA oversight. Under the
compromise, annual funding for the Chapter 90 reimbursement
program would remain at $200 million -- not increase to $300
million as each branch initially supported before the House
walked back its position amid concerns over revenue -- and
the T's Fiscal and Management Control Board that expires
June 30 would remain in place one year longer.
The potential resolution comes at the 11th hour for both
issues: cities and towns typically expect an annual
authorization for Chapter 90 in the spring so they can seek
bidders and plan out construction seasons, and financial
control and oversight of the T will revert to the Department
of Transportation Board of Directors starting Wednesday
without a legislative solution in place.
MassDOT's board may still wind up in control for some time,
given that Gov. Charlie Baker will have 10 days to review
whatever hits his desk and that he has not yet indicated if
he supports a one-year stopgap extension of the existing
board. Transportation officials scheduled the next MassDOT
board meeting for July 27, creating a weeks-long cushion
before an extension of the FMCB would need to take effect. -
Chris Lisinski
-- POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY REFORMS: Enacting reforms to hold
police accountable for their behavior is a goal of some that
is consuming much of the political oxygen on Beacon Hill as
massive demonstrations against police violence and systemic
racism continue to take place across the state.
Several policy points have emerged as leading ideas to
tackle the issue and the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus
is behind most of them, pushing their 10-point plan to
address racial justice. Gov. Charlie Baker last week
presented a bill (H 4794) that would start an effort to
prevent police violence and improve transparency by
implementing a licensing system that would allow the state
to decertify officers who commit certain acts of misconduct.
The bill, which remains in committee, would create a Police
Officer Standards and Accreditation Committee charged with
certifying all officers.
In the Legislature, Rep. Liz Miranda (D-Roxbury) and Sen.
Cynthia Creem (D-Newton) filed a bill (HD 5128/SD 2968) that
would prohibit the use of excessive force by police and
require law enforcement agencies to report officer-involved
injuries or deaths. House Speaker Robert DeLeo also pledged
to get legislation to Baker's desk by July 31 banning the
use of chokeholds and creating an independent office to
enforce policing standards and conduct. DeLeo tapped
Judiciary Committee Chair Claire Cronin of Easton to work on
a bill.
Senate President Karen Spilka put Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz in
charge of an advisory group on racial justice to review
policy responses that could be taken up this session. As the
calendar turns to July, the Public Safety and Homeland
Security Committee is working on a date for a public hearing
on Baker's bill and perhaps others. - Chris Van Buskirk
-- UMASS FALL PLANS: The University of Massachusetts Boston
has announced that it will stay remote for the fall
semester, and UMass Lowell plans to return to on-campus
instruction, with more details to be announced on July 1, a
spokeswoman said. The two other undergraduate UMass campuses
are almost ready to announce their fall plans.
At the flagship campus in Amherst, Chancellor Kumble
Subbaswamy "will determine a final plan by June 30," and
UMass Dartmouth officials say they'll announce their plans
early in the week. UMass and other public higher education
institutions are expecting to face multiple years of
financial challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, along with
the educational and public health implications of
repopulating their campuses with students who will be coming
from all directions. They'll have to weigh budgetary
matters, including the revenues associated with room and
board and the costs of whatever new precautions are needed
to bring students back safely. - Katie Lannan
-- FOUR BALLOT QUESTIONS: With the Legislature showing
little interest in passing alternative proposals, four
campaigns hoping to put proposed laws before voters in
November face the final step on the path to the ballot.
Campaigns already had to submit at least 13,347 valid
signatures from Massachusetts voters to local election
officials for certification, and now they must file the
certified signatures with Secretary of State William
Galvin's office by Wednesday.
Supporters of two of the initiatives, one implementing
ranked-choice voting in the state and the other expanding
access to automobile telematic data, touted their submission
of more than the required amount of signatures to local
offices. A campaign pushing for increased funding for
nursing homes submitted just under 20,000 signatures for
certification and is hoping to qualify for the ballot. The
campaign behind a question that would allow more food stores
to sell beer and wine has been quiet about their chances of
clearing the required threshold. - Chris Lisinski and
Michael P. Norton
-- SOLDIERS' HOME REFORMS: Gov. Baker added another item to
the late-session legislative agenda this week, filing a bill
that, among other oversight reforms, would require new state
inspections at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home and change how its
superintendent is appointed.
A scathing report released this week knocked the homes's
leadership for errors leading up to the death of at least 76
veterans with COVID-19. Baker said when he filed the bill
that he wanted "prompt enactment," but his bill received a
mixed response upon arrival.
He filed the bill in the Senate, where President Karen
Spilka has said lawmakers should take action. But in the
House, Speaker Robert DeLeo thinks lawmakers should
undertake their own probe before acting. When the report was
released, Baker said he'd accept and implement all of its
recommendations. Not all of them are being pursued through
legislation, though, and one in particular -- the
recommendation that future soldiers' home superintendents be
licensed nursing home administrators -- is emerging as a
potential pressure point.
The administration said it plans to post the Holyoke
superintendent's job with "a preference for hiring a
licensed nursing home administrator," but Baker isn't
seeking to enshrine the qualification as a statutory
requirement.
Attorney General Maura Healey, who's also investigating the
home, appears to be among those who disagree with that
approach. "If a license requirement is necessary to ensure a
baseline level of care at every other long-term care
facility in our state, then why would we compromise that
standard when it comes to caring for our veterans?" she said
in a statement. - Katie Lannan
-- TRANSPORTATION POLICY/FUNDING: At the start of 2020,
transportation funding and policy appeared to represent the
largest and most important topic that the Legislature would
address this year. The pandemic quickly changed that and
heading down the stretch toward July 31 it seems possible
that lawmakers are poised to just punt some of the
once-critical issues into 2021.
The House in March approved an $18 billion transportation
bond bill and a $500 million tax and fee package designed,
in part, to improve MBTA, regional transit and other
transportation services. The Senate hasn't taken up either
of those bills, although Senate President Spilka has
expressed interest in passing a bond bill.
House leaders have prodded the Senate to pass a
transportation finance bill, saying a $300 million local
road and bridge repair agenda could be supported with more
revenues. This week, however, in a response that might
indicate where senators stand on new taxes right now, the
Senate opted to cut the Chapter 90 program authorization
back to $200 million.
For the moment at least, the situation on the ground has
also changed, with fewer riders using the MBTA and traffic
volumes down as many workers continue to do their jobs from
home. - Michael P. Norton
-- HOUSE RESPONSE ON HEALTH CARE: Attention on the health
care front now turns to the House for its response to a
Senate-approved health care bill (S 2769) enshrining access
to telehealth, making scope-of-practice adjustments and
outlining an approach to out-of-network billing. However,
the legislation's fate may already be sealed as a result of
infighting among the Democrats who hold supermajorities in
both chambers.
The heads of the Health Care Financing Committee, Sen. Cindy
Friedman and Rep. Daniel Cullinane, spent the week trading
public barbs, with the House accusing the Senate of
"obstruction" by pushing its legislative priorities through
channels outside the committee, and the Senate responding by
questioning the House's commitment to achieving a resolution
on health care bills.
If the branches remain at odds and cannot find agreement by
the end of formal lawmaking business -- currently slated for
July 31 -- it will be the second straight session that
Democratic efforts to reform health care broke down.
Senators next week are following up their health care bill's
passage with a comprehensive listening session on Monday
that will shed more light on the health care landscape in
Massachusetts, where providers are reeling from the negative
fiscal consequences of pandemic response. - Chris Lisinski
-- MAIL-IN VOTING TALKS: The window is narrowing for a
legislative panel still privately negotiating an agreement
on expanding the use of vote-by-mail in Massachusetts this
election season.
Both the House and Senate bills (H 4778 / S 2764) call for
Secretary of State William Galvin to send every registered
voter an application for a mail-in ballot by July 15, though
they differ in whether that first batch of mail would
include applications for both the primary and general
election or just for the primary.
Galvin is close to finalizing the ballots for this year's
cycle, too: the State Ballot Law Commission issued decisions
Friday on eligibility challenges filed against five
candidates, and four potential ballot questions must submit
signatures to the secretary's office by Wednesday to go
before voters on Nov. 3.
Greater use of mail-in ballots will likely be a key factor
in the Sept. 1 primary election and Nov. 3 general election
as voters grapple with concerns about COVID-19 transmission,
particularly if Massachusetts experiences a second wave of
cases this fall. - Chris Lisinski
-- DROUGHT/MOSQUITOES: The recent scarcity of rain could be
helping to keep the mosquito population down but has also
driven the Greater Boston area into abnormal dryness, with
parts of northern, central and western Massachusetts
experiencing a moderate drought.
The conditions are being watched closely for impacts on
agriculture, fire dangers, and water supplies - some local
systems have begun instituting restrictions on water use. On
Wednesday, the Massachusetts Drought Management Task Force
recommended moving to a Level 2 Drought Condition, formerly
a drought warning, for the West, Connecticut River, Central
and Northeast regions.
On Beacon Hill, a Senate approved a bill designed to
modernize the state's approach to controlling mosquitoes,
and by extension the deadly viruses the insects can
transmit. It remains pending before the House. The bill is
based on legislation Gov. Charlie Baker filed in April and
would give the State Reclamation and Mosquito Control Board
new powers to fight mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile
Virus and Eastern equine encephalitis when the Department of
Public Health determines there is an elevated risk.
"Many cities and towns have not joined a mosquito control
project," Gov. Charlie Baker wrote when he submitted his
bill in April. "In these parts of the Commonwealth, there is
no entity -- state, regional or local -- that can engage in
mosquito control. While a town by town approach does allow
for maximum local input into mosquito control, unfortunately
mosquitos and viruses do not respect borders." - Michael P.
Norton
The New Boston
Post
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Want To Grow the Massachusetts Republican Party?
Run For Local Office, Politicians Say
By Tom Joyce
Massachusetts is one of the most heavily Democratic states
in the country. What can Republicans do about it?
Not much, at the moment. But some state Republican officials
see a longer-term strategy.
Before the GOP can make meaningful inroads in state and
federal offices, they say, the party may need to make more
meaningful inroads closer to home.
“Running for local office is the most effective activism a
Republican can do,” said Jim Lyons, chairman of the
Massachusetts Republican Party, in an email message to New
Boston Post. “By running, and winning, you create a team at
the local level that can fight against ill-conceived
overrides, stifling zoning laws, and useless plastic bag
bans, just to name a few issues. And it always helps for
statewide candidates to have that Republican selectman as a
local contact, and eventually, that Republican selectman
could become a governor or a United States senator, as has
happened in the past.”
The party has attracted a number of first-time candidates
for relatively high office in recent years, most of whom
have lost. But there is another way. As Lyons notes,
prominent Massachusetts Republicans got their start in local
politics.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s first elected office
was on the board of selectmen (the board that oversees
day-to-day affairs in most towns in the state) in
Swampscott. Former U.S. Senator Scott Brown started lower
than that — he was first elected to the board of assessors
(which oversees property valuations) in Wrentham, and later
won a seat on the town’s board of selectmen. He used the
selectman’s seat to win a state representative seat, later
became a state senator, and in 2011 got elected to the U.S.
Senate.
Former Governor Paul Cellucci also worked his way up. In his
early 20s he served as a member of the Hudson Charter
Commission and then got elected to the town’s board of
selectmen. From there he went from state representative to
state senator to lieutenant governor to governor.
More recently, Patrick O’Connor of Weymouth and Ryan Fattman
of Sutton, now Republican state senators, started in town
politics. O’Connor’s first elected position was on the
Weymouth town council; Fattman’s first was on the Sutton
Board of Selectmen.
For those aiming higher: President Calvin Coolidge got his
start in elected politics on the Northampton City Council.
His stops along the way included both chambers on Beacon
Hill, lieutenant governor, governor, and vice president of
the United States. (When Warren Harding died, he became
president, and then was elected in his own right.)
To be sure, that was 100 years ago, when Massachusetts was a
largely Republican state.
Today, Democrats have a supermajority in the state
legislature. (The margin is 4 to 1 in the state House of
Representatives, 9 to 1 in the state Senate.) All nine
members of the U.S. House of Representatives and both U.S.
senators are Democrats. The last Republican members of the
U.S. House from Massachusetts left Congress in 1997. And the
last time Massachusetts voted for a Republican for president
was 1984 — the year Ronald Reagan won 49 states.
Breaking through can be hard — which is why some GOP
officials say start small.
Oftentimes, town elections don’t attract many candidates. In
some cases, races either don’t have any names on the ballot
or don’t have enough names to fill all of the seats in
question.
For example, later this month, on June 30, the town of
Dennis on Cape Cod plans to hold a town election, but there
is no name on the ballot for school committee. In Westport,
only one candidate for constable will appear on the June 23
ballot despite voters being allowed to pick two. Stow’s June
27 ballot has no one running for assessor or housing
authority. Hull’s June 23 ballot has no one running to be on
the planning board or the board of trustees of the public
library. And on East Brookfield’s June 29 ballot, there are
no candidates for selectmen, board of health, planning
board, finance committee, cemetery commissioner, trustee of
shade tree & cemetery funds, or tree warden.
Similar under-filled ballots appear in annual town elections
every year.
State Representative Shawn Dooley (R-Norfolk) says he is
passionate about getting more Republicans to pursue local
office. One problem the MassGOP has faced for years, he
says, is “an inability to nurture a strong bench for higher
office.”
Dooley got his start in local politics as the town clerk in
Norfolk. Then he got elected to the school committee.
He offers a few reasons why other Republicans should think
small.
“First, as the party of small government — we should be
embracing the ability to manifest change and promote fiscal
responsibility at the level where we can make the greatest
impact — our own communities,” Dooley said in an email
message to New Boston Post.
“Second, while certainly not required, acquiring the
experience of navigating the political landscape of town
politics, understanding local needs, forging relationships,
while gaining name recognition and respect with your
constituents gives one a tremendous advantage when the
opportunity arises to run for higher political office,” he
said in early June. “We saw this play out a couple of weeks
ago in the two state senate races where we got trounced in
two districts we previously held by opponents who had local
experience while our candidates did not.”
The races Dooley referred to occurred on Tuesday, May 19.
In the Plymouth & Barnstable District, Falmouth Democratic
selectman Susan Moran beat Bourne lawyer Jay McMahon, the
Republican nominee, 55 to 45 percent. In the Second Hampden
and Hampshire District, John Velis, a Democratic state
representative from Westfield, defeated John Cain, a
Republican businessman from Southwick, 64 to 36 percent.
Since then, Republicans lost another seat in a race where
their nominee had never held elected office. On June 2,
longtime Taunton school committee member and former
Massachusetts Teachers Association president Carol Doherty,
a Democrat, defeated Taunton Republican Kelly Dooner in a
race to fill a seat in the Bristol Third District in the
Massachusetts House of Representatives. Doherty got 57
percent of the vote to Dooner’s 43 percent. The seat was
previously held by a Republican, Shaunna O’Connell, now the
mayor of Taunton.
Dooley says getting more people elected to office — at any
level — is the best way for the MassGOP to counter the
Democrats’ stranglehold on the state.
“It is critical for Republicans to have a strong presence in
this state if for no other reason than one-party rule
destroys democracy,” Dooley said in the email message.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We
need to embrace this notion of good governance and build
partnerships up and down the political spectrum. This model
takes time but it is the only tried and true formula — and
as we sit on the edge of a precipice, we must embrace this
strategy of growth before it is too late.”
Getting elected to any contested office is hard. But getting
elected locally is often easier than aiming first for Boston
or Washington.
State Senator Ryan Fattman — one of only four Republicans in
the 40-seat Massachusetts Senate — was 21 when he was
elected to the Sutton Board of Selectmen in 2006.
“I think if you look at the evolution of how parties are
built that’s how they start,” Fattman said. “When you start
in your town, you build a rapport that transcends party
politics. You may be from this party or that party but at
the local level, there’s a lot of issues that are not
party-based. It’s not a Republican issue or Democrat issue.
It’s, ‘what does the town think of building a solar field?’
“They get to know you as a person outside of this grandiose
hyperbolic political world we live in, and you can use that
when running for office,” he added.
Fattman said he has supporters in his district who are
registered Democrats — many of whom got to know him when he
was a selectman in Sutton.
In Massachusetts town elections are nonpartisan. When
candidates run for selectman, school committee, library
trustee, or another position, no R or D appears next to
their name on the ballot. So when people go to vote, they
are not voting a party ticket.
Fattman also told New Boston Post that his experience in
town politics helped prepare him for the State House.
“Without question,” he said. “I think it’s helpful about
life. You learn about human nature and what’s important to
people — and sometimes, you get surprised. It certainly
takes a skill set that allows you to be able to listen to
people’s concerns and apply them to solutions.”
In many communities, a board of selectmen like the one
Fattman sat on has a mix of Democrats and Republican.
Whatever their differences, the board members must find ways
to work together to serve their community — which is
preparation for life in the state Legislature.
State Representative David DeCoste (R-Norwell) says his time
on the Norwell Board of Selectmen put him in a position to
serve his community at the state level.
“I was better able to identify some of the needs locally,”
DeCoste said. “When I ran, I was able to speak about, for
instance, 40B abuse, and the need for higher local aid. As a
Republican, we champion local aid over earmarks.”
Chapter 40B, which DeCoste referred to, is a piece of
Massachusetts housing policy, which allows developers to
avoid most local zoning rules as long as they set aside a
portion of units in a development as below market rate. It’s
a frequent topic in towns where there’s demand for buildable
land.
DeCoste said he would like to see more people run for
office, especially from viewpoints the left-leaning state
lacks.
“I think more people who have a conservative outlook and
have worked in the private sector should bring that point of
view with them,” he said. “I also wish we’d see more former
police and veterans run. We have a whole bunch of lawyers in
the legislature, but very few veterans.”
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