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CLT UPDATE
Monday, February 1, 2021
A Bad Week For Baker
Jump directly
to CLT's Commentary on the News
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Most Relevant News Excerpts
(Full news reports follow Commentary)
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Eyeing the state's
post-pandemic future, Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday
proposed a $45.6 billion state budget for the fiscal year
that starts July 1 that he said would make key investments
and support the ongoing public health response to COVID-19,
but would actually cut total state spending.
The proposed
fiscal year 2022 budget does not include any tax increases
on residents and would trim state spending by about $300
million or 0.7 percent while state tax revenue is expected
to rise 3.5 percent over the current budget year....
The budget bill is
built on a base of $30.12 billion in state revenue (roughly
3.5 percent growth over fiscal 2021), supplemented by an
estimated $12.47 billion in federal revenue (down from
$13.77 billion estimated for the current budget year),
revenue generated by state departments and agencies, fees
and other sources....
"With the
exception of savings due to MassHealth utilization and
savings from the elimination of a number of line-items, the
Governor's budget proposes modest budget growth . . . the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation wrote in its analysis of
the governor's proposal. "House 1 focuses on level funding
many programs and increasing spending where necessary to
protect and maintain existing services as opposed to a focus
on new initiatives." ...
Baker's seventh
budget would rely on up to $1.6 billion in one-time revenues
drawn from the state's rainy day fund, the administration
said. The current year's budget, a $45.9 billion plan signed
in December, leans heavily on one-time revenues, including
more than $2.76 billion in federal COVID-19 funding and a
draw of $1.7 billion from the state's rainy day fund.
"Replacing that
revenue is among the biggest challenge budget writers face
in balancing the FY2022 budget," Mass. Taxpayers Foundation
said as it also flagged that Baker is using $64 million in
one-time revenues from further delaying a charitable
contribution tax deduction and proposes to raise an
additional $75 million in one-time revenues by hiking an
existing assessment on hospitals.
The administration
said fiscal year 2021 began in July with a stabilization
fund balance of $3.501 billion. It expects a net reduction
of $978 million from the fund over the course of fiscal 2021
-- a $1.7 billion draw partially offset by the addition of
$120 million from excess capital gains taxes statutorily
required to go to the rainy day fund and a recent tax
collection upgrade that nets $602 million for the current
budget. That would put the rainy day fund at a balance of
$2.523 billion to start fiscal 2022, the administration
said.
After accounting
for about $182 million in projected excess capital gains tax
revenue, the proposed withdrawal of $1.6 billion in fiscal
2022 would leave the state's piggy bank with a balance of
$1.105 billion as of July 1, 2022....
In June 2017, S&P
Global Ratings lowered its credit rating for Massachusetts
bonds to AA from AA+, largely due to the state diverting
money from its stabilization fund while the economy was
growing. In fiscal 2022, the administration is proposing to
draw from the stabilization fund even as state tax revenues
are projected to grow by 3.5 percent....
Now that Baker has
kickstarted the budget process with his filing, attention
turns to the Legislature. The House will likely refer the
governor's bill to its Ways and Means Committee, which will
redraft it to reflect House priorities. The House usually
debates its budget in April and the Senate, which will also
draw up a budget plan of its own, generally debates the
budget in May. Fiscal year 2022 begins on July 1....
Halfway into
fiscal year 2021, state government had collected $372
million more in taxes from people and businesses than it did
during the same six pre-pandemic months of fiscal year 2020.
The mid-January update from the Department of Revenue showed
that tax collections about halfway through the month were up
$313 million or 25.5 percent over the same period of January
2020.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Baker Proposes Spending Cut in Pandemic Recovery Budget
FY 2022 Budget Uses $1.6 Bil From Rainy Day Fund
In a move that
reeks of hypocrisy and strong-arm tactics, state lawmakers
led by new House Speaker Ronald Mariano are making a power
play to crack down on advocacy and watchdog groups who they
fear are getting too much access on Beacon Hill.
What Mariano is
actually doing is launching an investigation into groups
like liberal Act on Mass and Raise Up Massachusetts and
conservative watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance — all of
which he calls “unregistered, or vaguely affiliated”
coalitions — that have had the audacity to pester the House
to shine more light on its shady voting process.
So under the guise
of rules reform, the House is trying to change the rules to
make it more difficult for these groups to operate and lobby
lawmakers....
“Over the past few
sessions I have heard from many of my colleagues about a
significant increase and shift in how unregistered, or
vaguely-affiliated, advocates and coalitions engage with
House members and staff,” he wrote. “Presently, the
parameters for how to work with these opaque coalitions are
ill-defined and can create a lack of clarity. Therefore, I
am asking the Rules Committee to develop a set of best
practices for engaging with these groups. Members and staff
should be readily aware of who they are meeting with, which
external groups comprise a coalition, and how those groups
are funded.”
That last phrase
seems like a dig at MassFiscal, which refuses to disclose
its donors.
Paul Craney of
MassFiscal said he views the Mariano email as a “warning
shot” at the organization, which is trying to keep
legislators accountable to the public.
“This is not
trying to clarify the rules or bring about more
transparency,” Craney said. “This is about trying to stifle
the general public’s ability to enact with their lawmakers.”
When Mariano took
over recently from former Speaker Robert DeLeo, some were
hopeful that there would be real rules reform. But it looks
like Mariano may be even more controlling than DeLeo — if
that’s possible.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Strong-arming state lawmakers launch hypocritical crackdown
on advocacy groups
By Joe Battenfeld
We’ve all seen
those movies where the hero is about to lose, or the good
guys are about to fail, and then, right on cue, exactly what
they need shows up, changing everything, and saves the day.
We accept it in movies because they’re fiction, a
distraction from life. But this sort of miracle happens in
life sometimes too, though not nearly as often. Then,
sometimes, when it happens in real life, you notice how it
isn’t a miracle, it was the plan all along. Such is the case
with the amazing timing of the reopening of liberal cities
and states after the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Now that Biden has
moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, COVID-19 restrictions
in states with the most stringent lockdowns are being
lifted. After record expansion and an unprecedented boom
Democrats assured the public was impossible under Donald
Trump’s policies, the economy has been driven to the brink
of collapse over the last 10 months. With senile Biden in
control, and only after a couple of days in office, people
are being freed to dine in restaurants and open their shops
again. It’s a miracle! Or is it? ...
In fact, there
isn’t really a Democrat-run state in the country where the
Chicken Little who’d put a kink in their economic hose that
isn’t now pulling back on restrictions. The only thing that
has changed is the President. Weird how that worked out,
isn’t it?
Everything is
about to change – reporting, counting, even what constitutes
a positive COVID test.
Strange how all of
these changes started coming about after something – the
January 20th inauguration – that had nothing whatsoever to
do with virus happened....
People will still
die, but now the attitude will be “we must get back to life”
for the good of the country. The hose is being un-kinked,
and all glory for it will be showered on the man for whom it
was kinked in the first place: Joe Biden. It’s a
miracle…right on cue.
Townhall
Monday, January 25, 2021
It's a Miracle, Right on Cue
By Derek Hunter
Gov. Charlie Baker
is once again revealing himself as an out of touch
bureaucrat more at home with a color-coded chart than with
real people....
Baker similarly
revamped the COVID-19 business restrictions last week when
faced with criticism from the restaurant industry. Even
though Massachusetts is still getting thousands of new cases
of the virus each day — and new, more contagious strains of
the virus are popping up around the world — Baker is
allowing restaurants to open later for in-person and
take-out dining.
The Boston Herald
Monday, January 25, 2021
Charlie Baker reveals himself again as an out of touch
bureaucrat
By Joe Battenfeld
Gov. Charlie Baker
declared war on Massachusetts small businesses for cynical
political purposes.
Baker last week
reversed 10 months of punitive executive orders that
destroyed the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of
Bay State business owners and the employees and families who
depend upon them.
His 9:30 p.m.
curfew for restaurants ended Monday. We can now stay open
until normally licensed hours. And in two weeks, nearly a
year of capacity restrictions come to a sudden end.
The few business
owners who survived Charlie Baker’s War are thrilled.
But the timing of
his announcement should anger all Bay State residents. Baker
chose to ease restrictions just 24 hours after Joe Biden
became president.
Politics is
politics. But party politics don’t matter when you’re trying
to feed your family. I care more about the health and
welfare of my family and my community. And the reality is
that Baker savaged the health and welfare of our families
and our communities for political purposes....
Yet Massachusetts
still ranks third in highest COVID-19 mortality rate in
America. Georgia and Florida have zero shutdowns and no mask
mandates. Those states have roughly half the COVID-19
mortality rates of Massachusetts.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Something stinks with timing of curfews being lifted in
Massachusetts
By Mike Fucci
A pro-Trump
faction of the Massachusetts Republican Party is calling for
a censure of Gov. Charlie Baker for backing a second
impeachment of the former president — a historic prosecution
that took another step Monday night.
In the Capitol,
U.S. House Democrats walked a charge of “incitement of
insurrection” against former President Donald Trump over to
the U.S. Senate just after 7 p.m. The impeachment trial is
set to start the week of Feb. 8.
But Republican
support for a historic second impeachment trial is slipping
fast.
“I think the trial
is stupid. I think it’s counterproductive. We already have a
flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking a bunch of
gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire,” said Republican
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
In Massachusetts,
the unrest over the impeachment could spill out at upcoming
party meetings, but for now some want Baker called out for
siding with Democrats who want Trump prevented from running
in 2024.
“We need to unite
our Republican Party and a major reason we’re divided is
Charlie Baker,” said Adam Lange, a Cape Cod Republican
backing Trump and pushing the censure of the governor.
“The message we’re
sending is we are united as Republicans behind Donald
Trump,” Lange added....
Geoff Diehl, a
onetime Trump campaign co-chair in the Bay State and Senate
candidate, said Baker should “retract his stance” on the
second impeachment.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Members of MassGOP seek censure against Charlie Baker
for support of Trump impeachment
In a new
fundraising email from the Massachusetts Republican Party,
Geoff Diehl, a potential Republican candidate for governor,
took a swipe at one of the restrictions Gov. Charlie Baker
has left in place to guard against COVID-19 transmission.
"The state-wide
curfew that's been in place since November was just lifted,
but many businesses like restaurants are still only allowed
to operate at a 25% capacity!" wrote Diehl, a member of the
Republican State Committee and the party's finance committee
chairman. "It is untenable that the government gets to tell
small businesses how to run their shops, and even gets to
tell citizens if they are allowed to do business there or
not. We need to put the power back where it belongs — with
the people, not with the politicians."...
Baker continues to
draw criticism from the left and right as he exercises his
pandemic management initiatives through a series of
executive orders.
State House News
Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Diehl: Small Biz Dictates From Government “Untenable”
Rep. Brad Jones of
North Reading and Sen. Bruce Tarr of Gloucester were
re-elected as minority leaders at the start of this session.
Tarr, who heads a three-man caucus in the 40-seat Senate,
has tapped Sens. Ryan Fattman of Sutton and Patrick O'Connor
of Weymouth each as assistant minority leaders.
Jones kept his
team mostly intact from last session, reappointing Rep. Brad
Hill of Ipswich as first assistant minority leader and Reps.
Susan Williams Gifford of Wareham and Paul Frost of Auburn
as third assistant leaders.
State House News
Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Holden Republican Ferguson Joins House GOP Leadership
Sweeping climate
policy legislation is back on Gov. Charlie Baker's desk two
weeks after he rejected a previous iteration of the same
bill.
After Baker vetoed
the bill following the end of last session, the House and
Senate worked quickly to refile and pass the same language.
The timing of
their votes last term -- taken the second-to-last day of the
session -- did not leave the Legislature enough time to
override Baker's veto, despite having enough support behind
the bill to do so. In the new session lawmakers will have an
opportunity to respond to any amendments or a veto from the
governor.
"We are on the
cusp of a sustainability revolution," Sen. Marc Pacheco
proclaimed during Thursday's session as he urged colleagues
to build on the bill and engage in more ambitious proposals
in the new session.
Among other
measures, the bill would lock the state into its goal of
achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, set interim
emission reduction targets, establish appliance energy
efficiency standards, authorize additional purchases of
offshore wind power and codify protections for environmental
justice communities.
Rep. Thomas Golden
and Sen. Michael Barrett refiled the bill (S 9) this
session. The two Democrats led the five months of
negotiations that produced final legislation last term....
"[Restaurateurs]
wanted to make sure that ovens and warmers and refrigerators
could run to the end of their useful lives before these
newly efficient appliances provided in the bill have to be
purchased, and we were able to reassure Sen. Collins and his
constituents that current equipment will not have to be
retired early, and that they can rest assured that their
already difficult situation will not in any way be
compounded by the appliance efficiency language in this
bill," Barrett said....
"This bill would
allow Massachusetts to cement its place as a national leader
on climate protection, environmental justice, and clean
energy job growth," Peter Rothstein, president of the
Northeast Clean Energy Council, said. "We urge the Governor
to engage with the Legislature quickly and constructively so
that we can all begin the work of implementing the climate
solutions made possible by the bill."
If Baker ends up
vetoing the bill again, both branches appear poised to
surpass the two-thirds threshold required for an override.
The House passed the bill on a 144-14 vote. While the Senate
on Thursday took voice votes, where individual senators'
positions are not recorded, it passed last session's bill
38-2 and there are only two new senators -- Gomez and Sen.
John Cronin -- who did not cast votes last cycle.
The House's 144-14
vote on Thursday compares to its 145-9 total last session
but still represents support from more than 90 percent of
the 159 current representatives.
Among the new
representatives who were not in House for the last vote, all
15 Democrats voted for the bill. The two new Republican
lawmakers, Reps. Kelly Pease and Steven Xiarhos, voted
against it.
Three House
Republicans who had backed the bill last session voted in
opposition this time -- Reps. David DeCoste, Norman Orrall
and David Vieira.
State House News
Service
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Take Two: Lawmakers Again Send Climate Bill to Baker
Governor Now Expected to Return it With Amendments
Gov. Charlie Baker
apparently didn’t read the memo:
Self-pity is not
good box office.
After a year of
slobbering wet kisses from the lapdog Boston media, it
finally dawns on the crack gumshoes all at once that the man
Joe Biden calls Charlie Parker is an absolute catastrophe.
And his reaction
was so predictable.
It’s the media’s
fault!
“Social media,” he
whined Tuesday night, “too many politicians and too many
talking heads thrive on takedowns and judgments.”
This, from the
same fraud who just spent four years pointing the finger at
Trump for everything.
“It’s become the
source of so much anger and hatred in this world that I
often wish I could just shut it all off for a month and just
see what happens.”
Does Charlie
Parker understand how many of his subjects, er constituents,
feel exactly the same way about his smug, sanctimonious
daily doses of panic porn? ...
Recall, for a
year, how Baker’s administration breathlessly promoted this
hysteria — every afternoon, new apocalyptic headlines:
“7,850 new cases, 3 dead in MA.”
Most sentient
people figured out the grift after about a month. Yes, the
virus was deadly — to the very, very old and the very
infirm. Period. But you can fool some of the people all of
the time — low-info voters, to be specific....
Charlie had
bleeped the bed. Again. The elderly — the true believers in
the Cult of the Mask — couldn’t get appointments for their
vaccines. They couldn’t get on the website.
It was a total
disaster. Even WGBH put the knock on him — and when a pablum-puking
liberal loses Ch. 2, he’s lost Maskachusetts.
Charlie’s rolling
roll-out rolled out about as efficiently as all the rest of
his other state agencies — the Registry of Motor Vehicles,
the MBTA, the State Police, Massport, etc....
Harry S. Truman
had a famous sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here.”
Charlie Parker’s motto is: “The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here.”
He did it again
Tuesday night, in a stroll down memory lane: “Last February
our economy was humming but COVID hammered it.”
No, Charlie, it
was your utterly incompetent overreaction that destroyed the
economy. The virus was a problem, but your bust-out
stewardship of the state turned it into a full-blown
disaster.
By the way, did
you notice the state unemployment rate is back up to 7.4
percent this month? Probably not, it doesn’t fit in with the
Charlie Parker Hero Governor theme on local news.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Vaccine mess shades of RMV, state police OT scam and more
By Howie Carr
Sweet dreams are
not made of weeks like these. In fact, for a technocrat like
Gov. Charlie Baker, they can be the stuff of nightmares.
The logistics of
trying to vaccinate at least 4 million people as fast as
humanly possible is no easy feat. Layer on top of that the
fact that there's not nearly enough vaccine to go around,
and it's a recipe for restless nights.
But political
leaders often deal with things out of their control by
managing expectations. And this week, that's where things
started to break down.
That and the fact
that the government told residents 75 and older to try to
navigate an online registration site with not enough
appointments to go around and no call-center where seniors
and their families could get their questions answered. Let's
just say people were frustrated....
By Thursday, Baker
admitted that the state should have had a call center set up
to help senior citizens and anyone without a computer
navigate the system. The state is working to have that
operational by next week.
But there are
still no plans for a one-stop vaccine registration site,
like other states have deployed. Sen. Eric Lesser filed a
bill to force the administration to set up such a website,
and it's been co-sponsored by more than 57 Democrats and
Republicans so far in the House and Senate.
Attorney General
Maura Healey, who many are looking at as a possible
gubernatorial candidate in two years, said people should be
able to go online, sign up once and get notified when an
appointment to be vaccinated is available.
"You can't have
seniors waking up at midnight to see what's been refreshed
on some of these systems," Healey said during an interview
on WGBH's "Boston Public Radio."
Baker can't afford
many more weeks like this one....
Recently, Baker
had said "when I really want to get depressed" he would go
back and read his speech from last year, before COVID-19
checked in to the Marriott Long Wharf. We're not sure why
the governor has moments when he really feels like getting
depressed, but that's a discussion for another day.
The bottom line is
he likely didn't have the same problem with this year's
speech. Because he didn't promise or set out to do much of
anything over the next year, at least nothing specific or
written down on paper.
The speech was
largely an exercise in trying to lift up a weary state,
almost like a timeout pep talk designed to give the players
on the field that boost of adrenaline they need to finish
the game. Actor Jason Sudeikis featured far more prominently
than anyone could have ever guessed. And the most tangible
policy goal he laid out was the need to rethink "the future
of work."
"Know this – we
will beat this virus. And life will begin to return to
normal," Baker assured.
One of the goals
he laid out in last year's State of the Commonwealth was to
go carbon neutral by 2050. He'll get a second chance to sign
a bill that would require just that, though it's unlikely to
be that simple.
The House and
Senate, as promised by Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate
President Karen Spilka, sent the same climate and emissions
reduction bill that Baker vetoed a couple weeks ago back to
his desk Thursday.
Despite Baker
laying out his objections in a lengthy veto letter, the
Legislature incorporated none of those changes. Energy and
Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides
described it as a "rather one-sided conversation" with the
Legislature.
Baker has been
accused by Democrats of creating a false choice between the
economy and the environment, while Theoharides said, " ...
I'm not sure the Legislature has any cost estimates for what
their bill would cost or the benefits that would provide."
...
The early showdown
between the Legislature and governor in the new session is
unusual in that the House and Senate haven't even set up a
full committee structure yet. And Mariano efficiently punted
what could have been a contentious rules debate for the new
speaker until the summer by asking House lawmakers to extend
the existing emergency pandemic rules.
The extra time,
Mariano said, will give the Rules Committee time to study
new transparency measures, and also look at best practices
for dealing with what the speaker described as
"unregistered, or vaguely-affiliated, advocates and
coalitions."
The unusual
request of the Rules Committee was interpreted on Beacon
Hill as a shot across the bow of rules reform advocates like
Act on Mass and amorphous groups like Raise Up Massachusetts
and MassFiscal, which have been growing in influence on both
sides of the ideological spectrum.
State House News
Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Weekly Roundup - Hit Refresh
Massachusetts
lurches into the massive second phase of its mass COVID-19
vaccination campaign with a lot of work to do to iron out a
range of problems and catch up with the vaccination rates
other states are achieving.
The focus on the
rocky rollout has taken center stage early in the new year,
especially with the Legislature embracing its traditionally
slow start to the new session. More than three weeks into
the session, most Democrats still don't know which
committees they'll sit on or what their roles might be in
the House and Senate super-majorities.
Gov. Charlie
Baker's $45.6 billion fiscal 2022 budget awaits legislative
review, but the governor in his State of the State address
this week did not lay out an ambitious agenda. The only real
action so far in the Legislature in 2021 is directly
connected to the unfinished business of last session.
Baker, while under
fire to get the state on a more smoothly operating
vaccination track, also has back on his desk a carbon
emissions reduction and climate change response bill and is
expected to return it to the Legislature with amendments
that he hopes will make the omnibus bill more palatable for
housing construction, more responsive to the immediate need
to adapt to climate change impacts, and more affordable to
execute over the bill's multi-decade implementation phase.
Baker likes the
gist of the bill and it's conceivable that he might sign it
if lawmakers are willing to compromise on his amendments.
But that's a big if, and the bill's supporters have no
reason to fear a veto of the bill since they have the votes
to override, including support from some Republicans....
January tax
collection data will offer important insight into whether
receipts might begin to slide in the second half of the
fiscal year after sustained improvement ... Proponents of
changing how local law enforcement enforces immigration law
restart their push for reform on Beacon Hill. - Michael P.
Norton
State House News
Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Advances - Week of Jan. 31, 2021
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Gov. Baker filed his 2022 state budget on
Wednesday.
State House News Service reported ("Baker Proposes Spending
Cut in Pandemic Recovery Budget
FY 2022 Budget Uses $1.6 Bil From Rainy Day Fund"):
Eyeing the state's post-pandemic
future, Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday proposed a $45.6
billion state budget for the fiscal year that starts
July 1 that he said would make key investments and
support the ongoing public health response to COVID-19,
but would actually cut total state spending.
The proposed fiscal year 2022
budget does not include any tax increases on residents
and would trim state spending by about $300 million or
0.7 percent while state tax revenue is expected to rise
3.5 percent over the current budget year....
The budget bill is built on a base
of $30.12 billion in state revenue (roughly 3.5 percent
growth over fiscal 2021), supplemented by an estimated
$12.47 billion in federal revenue (down from $13.77
billion estimated for the current budget year), revenue
generated by state departments and agencies, fees and
other sources....
Baker's seventh budget would rely
on up to $1.6 billion in one-time revenues drawn from
the state's rainy day fund, the administration said. The
current year's budget, a $45.9 billion plan signed in
December, leans heavily on one-time revenues, including
more than $2.76 billion in federal COVID-19 funding and
a draw of $1.7 billion from the state's rainy day
fund....
The administration said fiscal year
2021 began in July with a stabilization fund balance of
$3.501 billion. It expects a net reduction of $978
million from the fund over the course of fiscal 2021 --
a $1.7 billion draw partially offset by the addition of
$120 million from excess capital gains taxes statutorily
required to go to the rainy day fund and a recent tax
collection upgrade that nets $602 million for the
current budget. That would put the rainy day fund at a
balance of $2.523 billion to start fiscal 2022, the
administration said.
After accounting for about $182
million in projected excess capital gains tax revenue,
the proposed withdrawal of $1.6 billion in fiscal 2022
would leave the state's piggy bank with a balance of
$1.105 billion as of July 1, 2022....
Now that Baker has kickstarted the
budget process with his filing, attention turns to the
Legislature. The House will likely refer the governor's
bill to its Ways and Means Committee, which will redraft
it to reflect House priorities. The House usually
debates its budget in April and the Senate, which will
also draw up a budget plan of its own, generally debates
the budget in May. Fiscal year 2022 begins on July 1....
Halfway into fiscal year 2021,
state government had collected $372 million more in
taxes from people and businesses than it did during the
same six pre-pandemic months of fiscal year 2020. The
mid-January update from the Department of Revenue showed
that tax collections about halfway through the month
were up $313 million or 25.5 percent over the same
period of January 2020.
For the first time in like forever
the state budget proposed by a governor will not grow fatter. This
one proposes to spend $300 million less than the current fiscal
year's budget just passed on December 11 —
and Gov. Baker declined to raise any broad-based taxes (though he did
postpone the charitable
contribution tax deduction and proposed to raise an additional $75
million in "one-time revenues" by hiking an existing assessment on
hospitals). In the coming weeks and months (or longer) we'll see
how the next state budget will fare in the House and Senate, and whether
taxes are added to further pad additional spending.
Last week was a bad one for Gov. Charlie
Baker, one of if not maybe his worst during his six-year reign.
Let us count the ways:
•
Gov. Charlie Baker is once again revealing himself as an out of
touch bureaucrat more at home with a color-coded chart than with
real people.... Baker similarly revamped the COVID-19 business
restrictions last week when faced with criticism from the restaurant
industry. Even though Massachusetts is still getting thousands of
new cases of the virus each day — and new, more contagious strains
of the virus are popping up around the world — Baker is allowing
restaurants to open later for in-person and take-out dining.
— The Boston
Herald, Monday ("Charlie Baker reveals himself again as an out of
touch bureaucrat" by Joe Battenfeld)
• A
pro-Trump faction of the Massachusetts Republican Party is calling
for a censure of Gov. Charlie Baker for backing a second impeachment
of the former president — a historic prosecution that took another
step Monday night....
In Massachusetts, the unrest
over the impeachment could spill out at upcoming party meetings, but
for now some want Baker called out for siding with Democrats who
want Trump prevented from running in 2024.... Geoff Diehl, a
onetime Trump campaign co-chair in the Bay State and Senate
candidate, said Baker should “retract his stance” on the second
impeachment.
—
The Boston
Herald, Tuesday ("Members of MassGOP seek censure against Charlie
Baker for support of Trump impeachment")
•
Gov. Charlie
Baker declared war on Massachusetts small businesses for cynical
political purposes.... Baker last week reversed 10 months of
punitive executive orders that destroyed the lives and livelihoods
of tens of thousands of Bay State business owners and the employees
and families who depend upon them.... His 9:30 p.m. curfew for
restaurants ended Monday. We can now stay open until normally
licensed hours. And in two weeks, nearly a year of capacity
restrictions come to a sudden end.... The few business owners
who survived Charlie Baker’s War are thrilled.
—
The Boston Herald,
Tuesday ("Something stinks with timing of curfews being lifted in
Massachusetts" by Mike Fucci
•
Sweeping climate policy
legislation is back on Gov. Charlie Baker's desk two weeks after he
rejected a previous iteration of the same bill.... After Baker
vetoed the bill following the end of last session, the House and
Senate worked quickly to refile and pass the same language.
—
State House News Service, Thursday ("Take Two: Lawmakers Again Send
Climate Bill to Baker")
•
Gov. Charlie
Baker apparently didn’t read the memo... Self-pity is not good
box office.... After a year of slobbering wet kisses from the
lapdog Boston media, it finally dawns on the crack gumshoes all at
once that the man Joe Biden calls Charlie Parker is an absolute
catastrophe.
—
The Boston Herald,
Thursday ("Vaccine mess shades of RMV, state police OT scam and
more" by By Howie Carr)
•
In a new
fundraising email from the Massachusetts Republican Party, Geoff
Diehl, a potential Republican candidate for governor, took a swipe
at one of the restrictions Gov. Charlie Baker has left in place to
guard against COVID-19 transmission.... Baker continues to
draw criticism from the left and right as he exercises his pandemic
management initiatives through a series of executive orders.
— State House News
Service, Friday ("Diehl: Small Biz Dictates From Government
'Untenable'”)
• Sweet
dreams are not made of weeks like these. In fact, for a technocrat
like Gov. Charlie Baker, they can be the stuff of nightmares....
Attorney General Maura Healey, who many are looking at as a possible
gubernatorial candidate in two years...
— State House
News Service, Friday ("Weekly Roundup")
It's shaping up to be an interesting race
for governor in 2022. Gov. Baker hasn't committed to a third term
yet, though his ramped-up fund-raising operation points in that
direction. If he doesn't shoot for a record third term then Lt.
Gov. Polito is expected to chase the position. Neither of them are
a given should Geoff Diehl pull the trigger and toss in his hat.
Diehl led the "Tank the Tax" repeal of the
automatic gas tax petition drive and won (53%-47%) on the same 2014
ballot as Charlie Baker won his first term. Back then Baker was a
big supporter of the repeal — before he was
settled into his second term and became obsessed with a transportation
climate initiative (TCI) that will drive up the price of gas even more,
determined by a distant cabal of unaccountable bureaucrats. When
Geoff Diehl challenged Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her U.S. Senate seat in
2018, on the same ballot on which Charlie was running for re-election to
his second term, the Governor had to be dragged into an endorsement of
Diehl in the late minutes of the campaign of his fellow Republican.
A Republican primary between Diehl and Baker (or Polito) will be worth
the price of admission.
When Baker was challenged by a virtual
unknown in the 2018 Republican primary in the CLT Update of September
10, 2018
I wrote:
. . . One outcome that
surprised many, and didn't surprise some was the Republican primary
for governor. "The Most Popular Governor in The Nation,"
Charlie Baker, won against challenger Scott Lively, an unknown,
vastly under-funded pastor from Springfield. That Baker won
surprises few of us – but the impressive 36% vote margin won by
Lively said a whole lot about Baker's support among conservatives.
Like Baker did in the
presidential election, I did not vote for him. I had two
winners: Republicans Geoff Diehl for U.S. Senate, now running
against U.S. Senator and presumed 2020 presidential candidate
Elizabeth Warren in November, and Jay McMahon for Attorney General,
now running against gun-grabbing anti-Trump AG Maura Healey.
Charlie Baker is now
running for re-election against the Democratic Party's preferred
nominee, Jay Gonzalez – Deval Patrick's Secretary of Administration
and Finance. We taxpayers now have a choice between Democrat
Lite and Democrat Left.
As I've said before,
Charlie Baker is the best Democrat we taxpayers can hope to elect as
governor in Massachusetts. While he's not as conservative as
Democrat Edward J. King was as governor, he's definitely head and
shoulders and then some above Michael Stanley Dukakis.
Like many more than
expected, I cast my protest vote for Scott Lively. Come
November – assuming I'm still here and not already in Kentucky –
I'll hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. Then
I'll run like hell for the border!
On my final election day ever in
Massachusetts on my way out I couldn't bring myself to vote for the
"lesser of two evils" again. For the first time in my life I
blanked the candidates for governor on the ballot, voted for neither
Baker nor Gonzalez, then two weeks later fled the state forever.
Whoever wins the Republican primary next
year will take on — as appears probable at
this time — Attorney General Maura Healey.
Baker (or Polito) vs. Healey? No big difference again. Diehl
vs. Healey? Now that's a real choice election. Unfortunately
in a head-to-head election in Massachusetts between a real Republican
and a real Democrat I think we know who will walk away with the crown.
Townhall columnist Derek Hunter last Monday noted what many
of us had expected for months in his column "It's a Miracle, Right on
Cue":
We’ve all seen those movies where
the hero is about to lose, or the good guys are about to
fail, and then, right on cue, exactly what they need
shows up, changing everything, and saves the day. We
accept it in movies because they’re fiction, a
distraction from life. But this sort of miracle happens
in life sometimes too, though not nearly as often. Then,
sometimes, when it happens in real life, you notice how
it isn’t a miracle, it was the plan all along. Such is
the case with the amazing timing of the reopening of
liberal cities and states after the inauguration of Joe
Biden.
Now that Biden has moved into 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue, COVID-19 restrictions in states
with the most stringent lockdowns are being lifted.
After record expansion and an unprecedented boom
Democrats assured the public was impossible under Donald
Trump’s policies, the economy has been driven to the
brink of collapse over the last 10 months. With senile
Biden in control, and only after a couple of days in
office, people are being freed to dine in restaurants
and open their shops again. It’s a miracle! Or is it?
...
In fact, there isn’t really a
Democrat-run state in the country where the Chicken
Little who’d put a kink in their economic hose that
isn’t now pulling back on restrictions. The only thing
that has changed is the President. Weird how that worked
out, isn’t it?
Everything is about to change –
reporting, counting, even what constitutes a positive
COVID test.
Strange how all of these changes
started coming about after something – the January 20th
inauguration – that had nothing whatsoever to do with
virus happened....
People will still die, but now the
attitude will be “we must get back to life” for the good
of the country. The hose is being un-kinked, and all
glory for it will be showered on the man for whom it was
kinked in the first place: Joe Biden. It’s a
miracle…right on cue.
In his Boston Herald op-ed column on Tuesday Needham
restaurateur Mike Fucci wrote ("Something stinks with timing of curfews
being lifted in Massachusetts"):
Gov. Charlie Baker declared war on
Massachusetts small businesses for cynical political
purposes.
Baker last week reversed 10 months
of punitive executive orders that destroyed the lives
and livelihoods of tens of thousands of Bay State
business owners and the employees and families who
depend upon them.
His 9:30 p.m. curfew for
restaurants ended Monday. We can now stay open until
normally licensed hours. And in two weeks, nearly a year
of capacity restrictions come to a sudden end.
The few business owners who
survived Charlie Baker’s War are thrilled.
But the timing of his announcement
should anger all Bay State residents. Baker chose to
ease restrictions just 24 hours after Joe Biden became
president.
Politics is politics. But party
politics don’t matter when you’re trying to feed your
family. I care more about the health and welfare of my
family and my community. And the reality is that Baker
savaged the health and welfare of our families and our
communities for political purposes....
Yet Massachusetts still ranks third
in highest COVID-19 mortality rate in America. Georgia
and Florida have zero shutdowns and no mask mandates.
Those states have roughly half the COVID-19 mortality
rates of Massachusetts.
Gov. Baker is not at the vanguard of
lifting his more draconian lockdown edicts —
he's following the established playbook, "guidance" I suppose he'd call
it. Townhall writer Beth Baumann observed last Sunday ("COVID
Lockdowns Are Winding Down in Some Democratic-run States"):
Govs. Gretchen
Whitmer (MI) and Andrew Cuomo (NY) have said restaurants and bars
can reopen.
Michigan was one
of the most locked-down states in the nation. Whitmer went so far as
to ban Michiganders from making "unnecessary" purchases while they
shopped. Things like garden seeds were on that very list....
New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo (NY) had similar concerns, saying the state has to
reopen.
“We simply cannot
stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass,” Cuomo said. “We
will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we
must do it smartly and safely." ...
What suddenly made
these two wake up and realize that lockdowns don't work? Was it the
months of stringent rules or the fact that President Biden is now in
office? The fact that they waited until a Biden-Harris
administration tells you all you need to know. Democrats have used
the virus as a political weapon.
It's probably just a timing coincidence,
like the release of the Wuhan Chinese Virus vaccine by Pfizer a few days
after the election.
CEO of Pfizer says timing of the vaccine announcement had nothing to
do with politics
Pfizer's
encouraging news about the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine
came nearly a week after Election Day. But Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
says the timing had nothing to do with politics.
The lifting of restrictions is the same in
Kentucky under the Beshear dynasty. Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear,
son of former Democrat Gov. Steve Beshear, has lifted his foot off the
neck of the Blue Grass State's economy a bit as well, opening
restaurants to 50 percent capacity. Kentucky has had 362,890 cases
and 3,745 deaths among its population of 4,480,710
— compared to 498,145 cases and 14,577 deaths in Massachusetts
among its population of 6,912,240.
|
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
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Full News Reports Follow
(excerpted above) |
|
State House
News Service
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Baker Proposes Spending Cut in Pandemic Recovery Budget
FY 2022 Budget Uses $1.6 Bil From Rainy Day Fund
By Colin A. Young
Eyeing the state's post-pandemic future, Gov. Charlie Baker
on Wednesday proposed a $45.6 billion state budget for the
fiscal year that starts July 1 that he said would make key
investments and support the ongoing public health response
to COVID-19, but would actually cut total state spending.
The proposed fiscal year 2022 budget does not include any
tax increases on residents and would trim state spending by
about $300 million or 0.7 percent while state tax revenue is
expected to rise 3.5 percent over the current budget year.
"The budget fully funds the first year of the landmark
Student Opportunity Act, provides substantial resources to
promote economic growth and development as we work to
recover, and helps ensure that public health during a
pandemic continues to be there for us, all without raising
taxes," Baker said. "We don't believe raising taxes on the
residents of the commonwealth, especially in the midst of
all that's going on, is the right thing to do."
The budget bill is built on a base of $30.12 billion in
state revenue (roughly 3.5 percent growth over fiscal 2021),
supplemented by an estimated $12.47 billion in federal
revenue (down from $13.77 billion estimated for the current
budget year), revenue generated by state departments and
agencies, fees and other sources.
As Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito had previously announced,
the fiscal 2022 spending plan (H 1) recommends increasing
the state's $1.13 billion general local aid account by $39.5
million and seeks to fully fund the 2019 school finance
reform law that aims to steer $1.5 billion to K-12 schools
over seven years.
The proposed reduction in overall state spending is due
largely to slower-than-expected growth in MassHealth
enrollment, officials at the Executive Office of
Administration and Finance said. The administration had been
expecting MassHealth enrollment to grow by about 1.5 percent
each month during the pandemic, but it has actually come in
at just under 1 percent growth per month.
Gross MassHealth spending is budgeted to fall from $18.2
billion this year to $17.6 billion in fiscal 2022, a 3.4
percent reduction, while all non-MassHealth spending in the
governor's proposed fiscal 2022 budget is slated to increase
by 1 percent, from $27.7 billion to $28 billion, the
administration said.
"With the exception of savings due to MassHealth utilization
and savings from the elimination of a number of line-items,
the Governor's budget proposes modest budget growth, with
new spending targeted for implementation of the Student
Opportunity Act ($246.3 million in new spending), expansion
of behavioral health services, increased costs for [the
Department of Developmental Services] and [the Department of
Mental Health] ($201.8 million) and increased local aid
($39.5 million)," the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation
wrote in its analysis of the governor's proposal. "House 1
focuses on level funding many programs and increasing
spending where necessary to protect and maintain existing
services as opposed to a focus on new initiatives."
One-Time Revenues
Baker's seventh budget would rely on up to $1.6 billion in
one-time revenues drawn from the state's rainy day fund, the
administration said. The current year's budget, a $45.9
billion plan signed in December, leans heavily on one-time
revenues, including more than $2.76 billion in federal
COVID-19 funding and a draw of $1.7 billion from the state's
rainy day fund.
"Replacing that revenue is among the biggest challenge
budget writers face in balancing the FY2022 budget," Mass.
Taxpayers Foundation said as it also flagged that Baker is
using $64 million in one-time revenues from further delaying
a charitable contribution tax deduction and proposes to
raise an additional $75 million in one-time revenues by
hiking an existing assessment on hospitals.
The administration said fiscal year 2021 began in July with
a stabilization fund balance of $3.501 billion. It expects a
net reduction of $978 million from the fund over the course
of fiscal 2021 -- a $1.7 billion draw partially offset by
the addition of $120 million from excess capital gains taxes
statutorily required to go to the rainy day fund and a
recent tax collection upgrade that nets $602 million for the
current budget. That would put the rainy day fund at a
balance of $2.523 billion to start fiscal 2022, the
administration said.
After accounting for about $182 million in projected excess
capital gains tax revenue, the proposed withdrawal of $1.6
billion in fiscal 2022 would leave the state's piggy bank
with a balance of $1.105 billion as of July 1, 2022. Baker
pointed out a few times Wednesday that the stabilization
fund would end fiscal 2022 "at the same level it was at when
we took office." The fund's balance was actually more than
13 percent higher -- $1.252 billion -- at the end of fiscal
2015, about six months into Baker's first term, according to
the state's comptroller.
If the federal government makes more relief funding
available to states or if the tax collection picture
brightens further, the use of rainy day fund money in fiscal
2022 would be reduced, an administration official said.
Though the Biden administration has talked about a $1.9
trillion stimulus package, the administration official said
Baker's budget office won't count any of that potential
money towards the state budget until a bill is signed into
law.
In June 2017, S&P Global Ratings lowered its credit rating
for Massachusetts bonds to AA from AA+, largely due to the
state diverting money from its stabilization fund while the
economy was growing. In fiscal 2022, the administration is
proposing to draw from the stabilization fund even as state
tax revenues are projected to grow by 3.5 percent.
Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan said
Wednesday that he is not concerned that the rating agencies
might frown upon the state's use of its rainy day fund this
time around given how different the overall economic picture
is.
"It is still raining, COVID is still very much here, the
response is still very much here. We want to get kids back
in school, we have over 300,000 people on unemployment. This
is a time when the state is needed the most. And so we're
budgeting, as I said, from a response to recovery to make
sure that we have the right resources in the right place at
the right time," he said. Heffernan added, "I think this is
exactly what the stabilization fund is made for."
The governor's budget also incorporates legislation that
would legalize betting on pro sports in Massachusetts (and
counts on about $35 million in revenue from the activity),
doubles the budget for the Massachusetts Emergency
Management Agency to $4.1 million to allow the agency to do
more in-depth reviews of emergency management plans, boosts
Emergency Assistance Family Shelter System funding by 8
percent to $195.9 million, provides $30 million to address
recommendations from the Black Advisory Commission and the
Latino Advisory Commission, directs $357.3 million towards
efforts around substance misuse, funnels a total of $1.36
billion to the MBTA, and makes $415.3 million available for
State Police public safety and crime lab operations.
The Path to July 1
Now that Baker has kickstarted the budget process with his
filing, attention turns to the Legislature. The House will
likely refer the governor's bill to its Ways and Means
Committee, which will redraft it to reflect House
priorities. The House usually debates its budget in April
and the Senate, which will also draw up a budget plan of its
own, generally debates the budget in May. Fiscal year 2022
begins on July 1.
"As the budget process proceeds, the Governor's budget
provides the legislature with much to consider. The use of
$1.6 billion from the Stabilization Fund would put a
significant dent in available reserves, while several of
House 1's revenue proposals -- including new assessments on
hospitals and pharmaceutical companies -- require more
information on the likely impact on the health care system,"
Mass. Taxpayers Foundation said. "In order to craft a
responsive and responsible FY 2022 budget, policymakers will
need to closely monitor state tax collection trends and
further federal stimulus legislation."
Halfway into fiscal year 2021, state government had
collected $372 million more in taxes from people and
businesses than it did during the same six pre-pandemic
months of fiscal year 2020. The mid-January update from the
Department of Revenue showed that tax collections about
halfway through the month were up $313 million or 25.5
percent over the same period of January 2020.
Full January revenue figures are due to be released next
week and Baker said Wednesday that the state's tax revenue
picture remains "somewhat unpredictable."
The Boston
Herald
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Strong-arming state lawmakers launch hypocritical crackdown
on advocacy groups
By Joe Battenfeld
In a move that reeks of hypocrisy and strong-arm tactics,
state lawmakers led by new House Speaker Ronald Mariano are
making a power play to crack down on advocacy and watchdog
groups who they fear are getting too much access on Beacon
Hill.
What Mariano is actually doing is launching an investigation
into groups like liberal Act on Mass and Raise Up
Massachusetts and conservative watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal
Alliance — all of which he calls “unregistered, or vaguely
affiliated” coalitions — that have had the audacity to
pester the House to shine more light on its shady voting
process.
So under the guise of rules reform, the House is trying to
change the rules to make it more difficult for these groups
to operate and lobby lawmakers.
Some lawmakers were apparently freaked out recently when Act
on Mass hosted an event with a group called Students for
Markey to pressure the House to approve real rules reform.
Did Ed Markey’s campaign really have the stones to take on
Beacon Hill lawmakers?
Uh, of course not. It was all a mistake, according to
Markey’s office.
“He (Sen. Markey) has not been, nor will be, involved in the
discussion around the rules of debate in the Massachusetts
State House,” Markey spokeswoman Giselle Barry told
Statehouse News Service.
Phew. That was a close one.
After that incident, an apparently alarmed Mariano emailed
his lackeys in the House.
“Over the past few sessions I have heard from many of my
colleagues about a significant increase and shift in how
unregistered, or vaguely-affiliated, advocates and
coalitions engage with House members and staff,” he wrote.
“Presently, the parameters for how to work with these opaque
coalitions are ill-defined and can create a lack of clarity.
Therefore, I am asking the Rules Committee to develop a set
of best practices for engaging with these groups. Members
and staff should be readily aware of who they are meeting
with, which external groups comprise a coalition, and how
those groups are funded.”
That last phrase seems like a dig at MassFiscal, which
refuses to disclose its donors.
Paul Craney of MassFiscal said he views the Mariano email as
a “warning shot” at the organization, which is trying to
keep legislators accountable to the public.
“This is not trying to clarify the rules or bring about more
transparency,” Craney said. “This is about trying to stifle
the general public’s ability to enact with their lawmakers.”
When Mariano took over recently from former Speaker Robert
DeLeo, some were hopeful that there would be real rules
reform. But it looks like Mariano may be even more
controlling than DeLeo — if that’s possible.
Townhall
Monday, January 25, 2021
It's a Miracle, Right on Cue
By Derek Hunter
We’ve all seen those movies where the hero is about to lose,
or the good guys are about to fail, and then, right on cue,
exactly what they need shows up, changing everything, and
saves the day. We accept it in movies because they’re
fiction, a distraction from life. But this sort of miracle
happens in life sometimes too, though not nearly as often.
Then, sometimes, when it happens in real life, you notice
how it isn’t a miracle, it was the plan all along. Such is
the case with the amazing timing of the reopening of liberal
cities and states after the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Now that Biden has moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,
COVID-19 restrictions in states with the most stringent
lockdowns are being lifted. After record expansion and an
unprecedented boom Democrats assured the public was
impossible under Donald Trump’s policies, the economy has
been driven to the brink of collapse over the last 10
months. With senile Biden in control, and only after a
couple of days in office, people are being freed to dine in
restaurants and open their shops again. It’s a miracle! Or
is it?
Michigan, with a governor who never let the infringement of
the rights of her citizens impact her family’s ability to
visit her vacation home or play on their boat, is in the
middle of a surge of cases. That surge was Governor Gretchen
Whitmer’s justification for locking down even harder before
the election. Suddenly, after attending Biden’s inauguration
(in violation of her ban on attending outdoor events with
more than 25 people in the state), the woman affectionately
known as “WHitler” to her subjects, is unlocking the chains
she’s wrapped around Michiganders. They can leave their
houses again, eat inside, etc. Nothing has changed, nothing
has improved – under her “woke” vaccine distribution plan,
thousands of doses have been spoiled and thrown away – but
now people can get back to work. Amazing.
In New York, where Andrew Cuomo has overseen what could be
considered a genocide against the elderly in nursing homes,
is doing the same thing. He, too, had a “woke” vaccine
distribution plan that caused the spoiling of vaccines as
well as an economic crippling of his own doing. New York
City is a ghost town that will take decades to recover, if
it ever can.
To make matters worse, Cuomo’s obvious political play will
mean even the businesses and restaurants that are able to
reopen won’t last. Why would any company pay inflated NYC
rent for office space again if they’ve survived with
everyone working remotely? Decreased foot, tourist, and
business lunch traffic for stores on the ground floor of
empty skyscrapers won’t be able to make it. But Biden is in
the White House now, offering a bailout for incompetence for
political purposes and decades of failed policies that saw
New York and other states speeding toward an iceberg, so
what do they care?
In fact, there isn’t really a Democrat-run state in the
country where the Chicken Little who’d put a kink in their
economic hose that isn’t now pulling back on restrictions.
The only thing that has changed is the President. Weird how
that worked out, isn’t it?
Everything is about to change – reporting, counting, even
what constitutes a positive COVID test.
Strange how all of these changes started coming about after
something – the January 20th inauguration – that had nothing
whatsoever to do with virus happened.
COVID is serious, people do die from it, but not nearly as
many as we feared at the start of the pandemic, and not
nearly as many as have been reported. But if you said that
indisputable fact two months ago you would’ve been banned
from social media and denounced as a heretic. What used to
get you burned at the stake will now get you on cable TV,
praised as a voice of reason and calm in uncertain times.
People will still die, but now the attitude will be “we must
get back to life” for the good of the country. The hose is
being un-kinked, and all glory for it will be showered on
the man for whom it was kinked in the first place: Joe
Biden. It’s a miracle…right on cue.
The Boston
Herald
Monday, January 25, 2021
Charlie Baker reveals himself again as an out of touch
bureaucrat
By Joe Battenfeld
Gov. Charlie Baker is once again revealing himself as an out
of touch bureaucrat more at home with a color-coded chart
than with real people.
Baker has been slow to act throughout the pandemic and only
after facing harsh criticism of his coronavirus vaccine
program did he switch gears and revise the plan on Monday.
Baker moved up the elderly to an earlier phase of the
vaccine distribution plan but older residents still won’t be
eligible for a shot until Feb. 1 at the earliest — even
though other nearby states are already offering the elderly
the vaccine.
It was clear the initial plan was crafted by bureaucrats.
That’s why a high-paid Massport administrator would have
gotten the shot before a 65-year-old grandmother from
Chelsea under the old charts. Good for Baker for finally
recognizing this was a flawed plan, but it’s a little late.
Baker similarly revamped the COVID-19 business restrictions
last week when faced with criticism from the restaurant
industry. Even though Massachusetts is still getting
thousands of new cases of the virus each day — and new, more
contagious strains of the virus are popping up around the
world — Baker is allowing restaurants to open later for
in-person and take-out dining.
Bottom line: At a time when Massachusetts really needs a
decisive leader, Baker is falling short. He’s a good, decent
guy but too often governs by PowerPoint rather than clear
decision-making.
On the eve of his State of the State Address, Baker unveiled
new charts showing that starting on Feb. 1 those aged 75 and
older can begin receiving shots. This came after
Massachusetts was heavily criticized for its slow pace in
getting the vaccine out to the elderly and general public.
Massachusetts is last among all six New England states in
its vaccine distribution.
Baker’s first reaction? Blame someone else of course, in
this case the federal government — aka the Trump
administration.
Rather than take some of the heat himself, the prickly,
easy-to-agitate Baker tried to dodge it and found instead an
easy target — Donald Trump.
The former president certainly deserves criticism but the
question is, if the feds are to blame for it all, why have
other states performed so much better in vaccine
distribution than others like Massachusetts?
It would be nice during Baker’s State of the State if we
heard some accountability for the state’s poor performance.
And next time Baker steps to the podium for a COVID-19
update, let’s hear from real people or experts rather than
usual suspects Secretary of Health and Human Services
Marylou Sudders and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.
The Boston
Herald
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Something stinks with timing of curfews being lifted in
Massachusetts
By Mike Fucci
Gov. Charlie Baker declared war on Massachusetts small
businesses for cynical political purposes.
Baker last week reversed 10 months of punitive executive
orders that destroyed the lives and livelihoods of tens of
thousands of Bay State business owners and the employees and
families who depend upon them.
His 9:30 p.m. curfew for restaurants ended Monday. We can
now stay open until normally licensed hours. And in two
weeks, nearly a year of capacity restrictions come to a
sudden end.
The few business owners who survived Charlie Baker’s War are
thrilled.
But the timing of his announcement should anger all Bay
State residents. Baker chose to ease restrictions just 24
hours after Joe Biden became president.
Politics is politics. But party politics don’t matter when
you’re trying to feed your family. I care more about the
health and welfare of my family and my community. And the
reality is that Baker savaged the health and welfare of our
families and our communities for political purposes.
The governor determined by executive fiat that one group of
Massachusetts residents should suffer human devastation —
financial ruin, broken marriages, suicidal depression — for
the perceived safety of others.
But there’s no evidence that Charlie Baker’s War on small
business saved a single life. There is plenty of evidence
that these shutdowns were a total failure, raining
destruction upon our communities. Just look at the line of
empty storefronts downtown, like bombed-out London in World
War II, or the financial and mental devastation on the
homefront.
Yet Massachusetts still ranks third in highest COVID-19
mortality rate in America. Georgia and Florida have zero
shutdowns and no mask mandates. Those states have roughly
half the COVID-19 mortality rates of Massachusetts.
Remember, small-business owners are your friends and
neighbors. We sponsor the local Little League team, feed the
hungry, and donate to every school fundraiser.
We face all the challenges caused by COVID-19 as you do. We
worry about the safety of our elderly parents and our
children displaced from school; we suffer autoimmune
deficiencies and crippling anxiety. Just like you!
But we faced all these challenges with Charlie Baker’s hands
wrapped firmly around our necks, strangling the lives out of
us.
Now imagine the anger we feel driving past our empty little
storefronts while big box stores down the street are packed.
It’s like we’re victims of psychological warfare.
The commonwealth’s own data proved small businesses were
very minor, nearly non-existent sources of transmission. But
General Baker ignored his own intelligence for political
purposes.
Restaurants were in the safety business long before Baker
declared war on us. We are regulated at the local, state and
federal level. We are devoted to cleanliness and
sanitization.
We were well equipped to stay open and stay safe. Instead,
Baker chose to destroy our lives and livelihoods.
“We’re all in this together,” Baker often says. But General
Baker was not in this together. He never missed a single
paycheck.
The small-business owners of Massachusetts deserve better.
Our families deserve better. Our communities deserve better.
Your friends, neighbors and family members deserved better
than Charlie Baker’s War.
— Chef Mike Fucci is the
owner of Chef Mike’s Cucina in Needham, a former champion of
“Cutthroat Kitchen” on the Food Network and founder of the
Facebook group Bay State Restaurants United Against Charlie
Baker.
The Boston
Herald
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Members of MassGOP seek censure against Charlie Baker
for support of Trump impeachment
By Joe Dwinell
A pro-Trump faction of the Massachusetts Republican Party is
calling for a censure of Gov. Charlie Baker for backing a
second impeachment of the former president — a historic
prosecution that took another step Monday night.
In the Capitol, U.S. House Democrats walked a charge of
“incitement of insurrection” against former President Donald
Trump over to the U.S. Senate just after 7 p.m. The
impeachment trial is set to start the week of Feb. 8.
But Republican support for a historic second impeachment
trial is slipping fast.
“I think the trial is stupid. I think it’s
counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this
country and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring
it on top of the fire,” said Republican Florida Sen. Marco
Rubio.
In Massachusetts, the unrest over the impeachment could
spill out at upcoming party meetings, but for now some want
Baker called out for siding with Democrats who want Trump
prevented from running in 2024.
“We need to unite our Republican Party and a major reason
we’re divided is Charlie Baker,” said Adam Lange, a Cape Cod
Republican backing Trump and pushing the censure of the
governor.
“The message we’re sending is we are united as Republicans
behind Donald Trump,” Lange added.
Both Lange and others pushing against Baker say the Jan. 6
storming of the Capitol — that left five dead from violence
or medical conditions — was an unexpected outlier. “I don’t
understand what happened,” said Lange, who said the buses he
helped send to D.C. that day didn’t have a single “angry”
passenger.
Baker, however, has said he supports a second impeachment
after former Vice President Mike Pence did not invoke the
25th Amendment in the wake of the siege on the nation’s
Capitol.
“I said at the time that I believe that Vice President Pence
should be empowered to manage the transition to a new
administration, and I continue to believe that,” Baker said
almost two weeks ago.
He added: “I also said that there were a number of means and
mechanisms that were available to deal with that at that
point in time. Since then, several have been taken off the
table.”
Geoff Diehl, a onetime Trump campaign co-chair in the Bay
State and Senate candidate, said Baker should “retract his
stance” on the second impeachment.
State House
News Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Diehl: Small Biz Dictates From Government “Untenable”
By Michael P. Norton
In a new fundraising email from the Massachusetts Republican
Party, Geoff Diehl, a potential Republican candidate for
governor, took a swipe at one of the restrictions Gov.
Charlie Baker has left in place to guard against COVID-19
transmission.
"The state-wide curfew that's been in place since November
was just lifted, but many businesses like restaurants are
still only allowed to operate at a 25% capacity!" wrote
Diehl, a member of the Republican State Committee and the
party's finance committee chairman. "It is untenable that
the government gets to tell small businesses how to run
their shops, and even gets to tell citizens if they are
allowed to do business there or not. We need to put the
power back where it belongs — with the people, not with the
politicians."
While he lifted a business curfew this week, Baker, also a
Republican, left in place a 25 percent capacity limit that
effectively reduces the number of people allowed to
congregate inside many businesses. Baker has repeatedly
expressed gratitude toward individuals and businesses for
sacrifices they are making to reduce COVID-19 transmission,
earned favorable numbers in polls for his pandemic
management, and is awarding more than $700 million in small
business grants.
But Baker continues to draw criticism from the left and
right as he exercises his pandemic management initiatives
through a series of executive orders.
Diehl closed the MassGOP appeal by citing the anxiety small
businesses are feeling during the pandemic. "We are
advocating for every single small business in Massachusetts
to be able to safely do business, and not have to live with
constant anxiety that the government is going to close up
their shop yet again due to another arbitrary mandate," he
wrote.
The fundraising email is the latest reflection of division
within the party. A former state representative who
previously ran for state Senate and the U.S. Senate, Diehl
was closely allied with party chairman Jim Lyons when the
two served in the House. Diehl and Lyons, who this year
narrowly defeated Rep. Shawn Dooley to keep the party
chairmanship, have been vocal supporters of former President
Donald Trump, while Baker has often been critical of Trump.
State House
News Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Holden Republican Ferguson Joins House GOP Leadership
By Katie Lannan
The Legislature's two top Republicans have set their
leadership teams for the 2021-2022 term.
Rep. Brad Jones of North Reading and Sen. Bruce Tarr of
Gloucester were re-elected as minority leaders at the start
of this session. Tarr, who heads a three-man caucus in the
40-seat Senate, has tapped Sens. Ryan Fattman of Sutton and
Patrick O'Connor of Weymouth each as assistant minority
leaders.
Jones kept his team mostly intact from last session,
reappointing Rep. Brad Hill of Ipswich as first assistant
minority leader and Reps. Susan Williams Gifford of Wareham
and Paul Frost of Auburn as third assistant leaders.
Rep. Kimberly Ferguson, a Holden Republican, is joining GOP
leadership as the House's second assistant minority leader.
Former Rep. Elizabeth Poirier, who did not seek re-election,
held the post last session.
In a letter to the House clerk, Jones wrote that he had also
reappointed Rep. Todd Smola of Warren as the ranking
minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee. Jones
said he hopes "to have further committee assignments
completed soon."
Three weeks into the new session, Democrats who hold
super-majorities in both chambers are still awaiting their
leadership and committee assignments to be announced by
House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen
Spilka.
State lawmakers earn additional stipends for serving in
party leadership and as committee chairs, so the competition
for the slots comes with paycheck implications as well as
ramifications for the future of state public policies.
State House
News Service
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Take Two: Lawmakers Again Send Climate Bill to Baker
Governor Now Expected to Return it With Amendments
By Katie Lannan and Sam Doran
Sweeping climate policy legislation is back on Gov. Charlie
Baker's desk two weeks after he rejected a previous
iteration of the same bill.
After Baker vetoed the bill following the end of last
session, the House and Senate worked quickly to refile and
pass the same language.
The timing of their votes last term -- taken the
second-to-last day of the session -- did not leave the
Legislature enough time to override Baker's veto, despite
having enough support behind the bill to do so. In the new
session lawmakers will have an opportunity to respond to any
amendments or a veto from the governor.
"We are on the cusp of a sustainability revolution," Sen.
Marc Pacheco proclaimed during Thursday's session as he
urged colleagues to build on the bill and engage in more
ambitious proposals in the new session.
Among other measures, the bill would lock the state into its
goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, set
interim emission reduction targets, establish appliance
energy efficiency standards, authorize additional purchases
of offshore wind power and codify protections for
environmental justice communities.
Rep. Thomas Golden and Sen. Michael Barrett refiled the bill
(S 9) this session. The two Democrats led the five months of
negotiations that produced final legislation last term.
Barrett said Thursday that he had spoken with senators about
the bill over the past week, in part to allay specific
constituent concerns.
The Lexington Democrat said new Sen. Adam Gomez of
Springfield, who was not a member of the branch when the
bill passed Jan. 4, is "reassured" about a five-year
moratorium on biomass projects in western Massachusetts, and
Sen. Nick Collins of South Boston had brought forward a
"legitimate question" from the restaurant industry about
appliance efficiency standards.
"[Restaurateurs] wanted to make sure that ovens and warmers
and refrigerators could run to the end of their useful lives
before these newly efficient appliances provided in the bill
have to be purchased, and we were able to reassure Sen.
Collins and his constituents that current equipment will not
have to be retired early, and that they can rest assured
that their already difficult situation will not in any way
be compounded by the appliance efficiency language in this
bill," Barrett said.
Barrett said he looked forward to "hearing from the
governor" after the bill reaches his desk, and Golden
thanked House Speaker Ronald Mariano for "holding the line
and ensuring that this bill will become law."
Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, in a Jan. 19
joint statement, said the bill "rejects the false choice
between economic growth and addressing climate change" and
pledged to send it back to Baker, who cited concerns about
the bill's potential to hold down housing production in his
veto message.
Craig Gilvarg, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of
Energy and Environmental Affairs, said the Baker
administration "believes the legislature's quick work to
refile the bill is an opportunity to craft the best possible
legislation."
"The Administration looks forward to engaging in productive
discussions with lawmakers and stakeholders to ensure the
bill reflects analysis completed through the two-year 2050
Net Zero planning process, achieves climate goals in a
manner that is cost-effective and equitable, and builds upon
the Commonwealth’s longstanding, bipartisan leadership on
climate change," Gilvarg said in a statement.
Baker has said that if he had time he would have rather
returned the climate bill with recommended amendments
instead of vetoing it, so amendments are expected to flow
from the Corner Office. Another sticking point has been the
Legislature's emissions reduction target for 2030, set at 50
percent below 1990 levels.
"This bill would allow Massachusetts to cement its place as
a national leader on climate protection, environmental
justice, and clean energy job growth," Peter Rothstein,
president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, said. "We
urge the Governor to engage with the Legislature quickly and
constructively so that we can all begin the work of
implementing the climate solutions made possible by the
bill."
If Baker ends up vetoing the bill again, both branches
appear poised to surpass the two-thirds threshold required
for an override. The House passed the bill on a 144-14 vote.
While the Senate on Thursday took voice votes, where
individual senators' positions are not recorded, it passed
last session's bill 38-2 and there are only two new senators
-- Gomez and Sen. John Cronin -- who did not cast votes last
cycle.
The House's 144-14 vote on Thursday compares to its 145-9
total last session but still represents support from more
than 90 percent of the 159 current representatives.
Among the new representatives who were not in House for the
last vote, all 15 Democrats voted for the bill. The two new
Republican lawmakers, Reps. Kelly Pease and Steven Xiarhos,
voted against it.
Three House Republicans who had backed the bill last session
voted in opposition this time -- Reps. David DeCoste, Norman
Orrall and David Vieira.
The Boston
Herald
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Vaccine mess shades of RMV, state police OT scam and more
By Howie Carr
Gov. Charlie Baker apparently didn’t read the memo:
Self-pity is not good box office.
After a year of slobbering wet kisses from the lapdog Boston
media, it finally dawns on the crack gumshoes all at once
that the man Joe Biden calls Charlie Parker is an absolute
catastrophe.
And his reaction was so predictable.
It’s the media’s fault!
“Social media,” he whined Tuesday night, “too many
politicians and too many talking heads thrive on takedowns
and judgments.”
This, from the same fraud who just spent four years pointing
the finger at Trump for everything.
“It’s become the source of so much anger and hatred in this
world that I often wish I could just shut it all off for a
month and just see what happens.”
Does Charlie Parker understand how many of his subjects, er
constituents, feel exactly the same way about his smug,
sanctimonious daily doses of panic porn?
Tall Deval’s elaborately constructed façade of lies, damn
lies and statistics has finally tumbled down around him in
the midst of his latest COVID calamity — the “rolling
roll-out,” as he termed it, of the state’s vaccination
program.
Recall, for a year, how Baker’s administration breathlessly
promoted this hysteria — every afternoon, new apocalyptic
headlines: “7,850 new cases, 3 dead in MA.”
Most sentient people figured out the grift after about a
month. Yes, the virus was deadly — to the very, very old and
the very infirm. Period. But you can fool some of the people
all of the time — low-info voters, to be specific.
In Massachusetts, these shut-ins and mitten-knitters still
rely for their information on local TV news and the Boston
Globe.
Most of these low-info voters are over the age of 80. They
credulously believed every scare story they saw on state-run
TV. But then something happened — their hero, Charlie
Parker, pompously instructed them how to get the vaccines
they needed to save their lives.
Suddenly, they started paying attention. They wanted those
shots, bad.
Guess what they discovered? Charlie had bleeped the bed.
Again. The elderly — the true believers in the Cult of the
Mask — couldn’t get appointments for their vaccines. They
couldn’t get on the website.
It was a total disaster. Even WGBH put the knock on him —
and when a pablum-puking liberal loses Ch. 2, he’s lost
Maskachusetts.
Charlie’s rolling roll-out rolled out about as efficiently
as all the rest of his other state agencies — the Registry
of Motor Vehicles, the MBTA, the State Police, Massport,
etc.
As always, Baker was caught totally flat-footed. He, if no
one, is perpetually gobsmacked by his own breathtaking
incompetence.
Just the previous night, at the State of the State address,
Charlie had, as usual, been bragging about things that just
aren’t true:
“We have always been a national leader in health care … .
The health care system in Massachusetts is the envy of the
world.”
Really? According to national statistics, in the vaccination
rollout, the envy of the world is coming in somewhere
between 38th and 40th place among the 50 states — behind
Mississippi.
In his annual address, Parker bragged that the Commonwealth
is the nation’s “second largest per capita tester,” as if
tests mean anything. Interestingly, he did not mention the
Mass. nursing-home death total (first, per capita, among the
50 states) and overall death total (third among 50, behind
only N.J. and N.Y.).
Harry S. Truman had a famous sign on his desk: “The Buck
Stops Here.” Charlie Parker’s motto is: “The Buck Doesn’t
Stop Here.”
He did it again Tuesday night, in a stroll down memory lane:
“Last February our economy was humming but COVID hammered
it.”
No, Charlie, it was your utterly incompetent overreaction
that destroyed the economy. The virus was a problem, but
your bust-out stewardship of the state turned it into a
full-blown disaster.
By the way, did you notice the state unemployment rate is
back up to 7.4 percent this month? Probably not, it doesn’t
fit in with the Charlie Parker Hero Governor theme on local
news.
Here’s how pathetic Baker has become: He no longer admits
how old he is. (He’s 64.)
Tuesday night, after the speech, he did a Zoom call the
Republican state committee, 51 of whose 78 current members
have figured out what a flim-flam man he is. (The other 27
are hacks on the state payroll.)
Charlie informed the GOP state committee that he had been
eating pasta (not nearly as big a selection of restaurants
to choose from as a year ago, obviously). He continued:
“And um I’m drinking grapefruit juice because um I’m
sixty-something years old now and when you get to a certain
age you try to you know pay attention to stuff like that.”
Self-pity is not good box office. Pretending to forget your
age is even worse.
State House News Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Weekly Roundup - Hit Refresh
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
By Matt Murphy
Sweet dreams are not made of weeks like these. In fact, for
a technocrat like Gov. Charlie Baker, they can be the stuff
of nightmares.
The logistics of trying to vaccinate at least 4 million
people as fast as humanly possible is no easy feat. Layer on
top of that the fact that there's not nearly enough vaccine
to go around, and it's a recipe for restless nights.
But political leaders often deal with things out of their
control by managing expectations. And this week, that's
where things started to break down.
That and the fact that the government told residents 75 and
older to try to navigate an online registration site with
not enough appointments to go around and no call-center
where seniors and their families could get their questions
answered. Let's just say people were frustrated.
The COVID-19 vaccination program that had been plodding
along since late December appeared to get its own shot in
the arm when Baker announced Monday that by mid-February 165
new vaccination sites would be open with the capacity - key
word being capacity - to administer 305,000 doses a week.
With the new sites coming online, including new mass
vaccination sites in Springfield, Danvers and Boston, Baker
said he would open the vaccine pool to people 75 and older
beginning Feb. 1. The expansion and beefed up website where
people could find a site close to home and sign up appeared
designed to address growing concerns that the vaccination
plan had become too confusing.
What got lost in that headline, however, was that the state
has only been receiving about 80,000 doses a week. And even
with President Joe Biden promising this week to juice the
supply chain for the next three weeks, Massachusetts will
only receive about 100,000 shots next week.
The result was that the website - www.mass.gov/COVIDVaccineMap
got flooded on Wednesday with people trying to make
appointments, and many found there were no appointments to
be had. Sure, some got through. But Sen. Julian Cyr
described it like trying to get tickets to a Beyonce concert
through TicketMaster. Translation? Good luck.
By Thursday, Baker admitted that the state should have had a
call center set up to help senior citizens and anyone
without a computer navigate the system. The state is working
to have that operational by next week.
But there are still no plans for a one-stop vaccine
registration site, like other states have deployed. Sen.
Eric Lesser filed a bill to force the administration to set
up such a website, and it's been co-sponsored by more than
57 Democrats and Republicans so far in the House and Senate.
Attorney General Maura Healey, who many are looking at as a
possible gubernatorial candidate in two years, said people
should be able to go online, sign up once and get notified
when an appointment to be vaccinated is available.
"You can't have seniors waking up at midnight to see what's
been refreshed on some of these systems," Healey said during
an interview on WGBH's "Boston Public Radio."
Baker can't afford many more weeks like this one.
The vaccination vexation largely overshadowed Baker's filing
of a $45.6 billion state budget proposal that relies on $1.6
billion in reserves and actually proposes to spend less
money than in the current fiscal year, which has been
floated with federal dollars.
He also refiled a sports betting proposal with his budget,
and is proposing to move forward with the 2019 Student
Opportunity Act by providing $246.3 million in new spending
on public schools.
And to think the week started with so much promise.
Baker was gearing to deliver his fifth (plus two inaugurals)
State of the Commonwealth address as new COVID-19 cases and
hospitalizations were declining. The White House promised
governors in a call with the National Governors Association
that more vaccines were on the way, and people were excited
that vaccine eligibility was being expanded ... except maybe
teachers who didn't like being bumped down the priority list
behind 65-year-olds.
Recently, Baker had said "when I really want to get
depressed" he would go back and read his speech from last
year, before COVID-19 checked in to the Marriott Long Wharf.
We're not sure why the governor has moments when he really
feels like getting depressed, but that's a discussion for
another day.
The bottom line is he likely didn't have the same problem
with this year's speech. Because he didn't promise or set
out to do much of anything over the next year, at least
nothing specific or written down on paper.
The speech was largely an exercise in trying to lift up a
weary state, almost like a timeout pep talk designed to give
the players on the field that boost of adrenaline they need
to finish the game. Actor Jason Sudeikis featured far more
prominently than anyone could have ever guessed. And the
most tangible policy goal he laid out was the need to
rethink "the future of work."
"Know this – we will beat this virus. And life will begin to
return to normal," Baker assured.
One of the goals he laid out in last year's State of the
Commonwealth was to go carbon neutral by 2050. He'll get a
second chance to sign a bill that would require just that,
though it's unlikely to be that simple.
The House and Senate, as promised by Speaker Ron Mariano and
Senate President Karen Spilka, sent the same climate and
emissions reduction bill that Baker vetoed a couple weeks
ago back to his desk Thursday.
Despite Baker laying out his objections in a lengthy veto
letter, the Legislature incorporated none of those changes.
Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen
Theoharides described it as a "rather one-sided
conversation" with the Legislature.
Baker has been accused by Democrats of creating a false
choice between the economy and the environment, while
Theoharides said, " ... I'm not sure the Legislature has any
cost estimates for what their bill would cost or the
benefits that would provide."
The difference between this climate bill and the
end-of-session bill that the governor vetoed is Baker has
time to return the bill with amendments. And if the
Legislature says no to those amendments and Baker vetoes the
bill again, the Legislature can and almost certainly will
override.
The early showdown between the Legislature and governor in
the new session is unusual in that the House and Senate
haven't even set up a full committee structure yet. And
Mariano efficiently punted what could have been a
contentious rules debate for the new speaker until the
summer by asking House lawmakers to extend the existing
emergency pandemic rules.
The extra time, Mariano said, will give the Rules Committee
time to study new transparency measures, and also look at
best practices for dealing with what the speaker described
as "unregistered, or vaguely-affiliated, advocates and
coalitions."
The unusual request of the Rules Committee was interpreted
on Beacon Hill as a shot across the bow of rules reform
advocates like Act on Mass and amorphous groups like Raise
Up Massachusetts and MassFiscal, which have been growing in
influence on both sides of the ideological spectrum.
Speaking of influence, Joe Kennedy announced that he's going
to try to hang on to some in the post-Congress chapter of
his career by creating a new political action committee, the
Groundwork Project, to invest in grassroots organizing
efforts in Massachusetts and non-traditional battleground
states around the country to lay the foundation for an
expanding Democratic map.
There's not much fear that Democrats will lose a legislative
seat in Revere and Winthrop, but it won't be Marc Silvestri
filling former Speaker Robert DeLeo's seat. The Revere
Democrat filed a lawsuit in the state's top court this week
after he failed to gather the necessary 150 signatures.
Silvestri was hoping the Supreme Judicial Court would cut
down on the signatures required to qualify for the ballot,
as it did last year as the pandemic raged, but he struck out
with Justice Elspeth Cypher who promptly dismissed the case.
The Commonwealth Dispensary Association didn't even wait for
a judge to rule in its lawsuit challenging marijuana home
delivery rules in Massachusetts, dropping its lawsuit filed
just earlier this month as member retailers pulled out of
the effort.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Baker administration caught flat-footed
in effort to roll out COVID-19 vaccine.
State House
News Service
Friday, January 29, 2021
Advances - Week of Jan. 31, 2021
Massachusetts lurches into the massive second phase of its
mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign with a lot of work to do
to iron out a range of problems and catch up with the
vaccination rates other states are achieving.
The focus on the rocky rollout has taken center stage early
in the new year, especially with the Legislature embracing
its traditionally slow start to the new session. More than
three weeks into the session, most Democrats still don't
know which committees they'll sit on or what their roles
might be in the House and Senate super-majorities.
Gov. Charlie Baker's $45.6 billion fiscal 2022 budget awaits
legislative review, but the governor in his State of the
State address this week did not lay out an ambitious agenda.
The only real action so far in the Legislature in 2021 is
directly connected to the unfinished business of last
session.
Baker, while under fire to get the state on a more smoothly
operating vaccination track, also has back on his desk a
carbon emissions reduction and climate change response bill
and is expected to return it to the Legislature with
amendments that he hopes will make the omnibus bill more
palatable for housing construction, more responsive to the
immediate need to adapt to climate change impacts, and more
affordable to execute over the bill's multi-decade
implementation phase.
Baker likes the gist of the bill and it's conceivable that
he might sign it if lawmakers are willing to compromise on
his amendments. But that's a big if, and the bill's
supporters have no reason to fear a veto of the bill since
they have the votes to override, including support from some
Republicans....
January tax collection data will offer important insight
into whether receipts might begin to slide in the second
half of the fiscal year after sustained improvement ...
Proponents of changing how local law enforcement enforces
immigration law restart their push for reform on Beacon
Hill. - Michael P. Norton
-- COVID-19 SITUATION: Massachusetts is on track to surpass
half a million confirmed COVID-19 cases on or around Monday,
the one year anniversary of the Department of Public Health
announcing the first COVID-19 case in Massachusetts (and the
eighth in the country).
That same day, residents 75 or older become eligible to
receive a COVID-19 vaccine as Phase 2 of the state's
prioritization plan gets underway. Before getting the first
dose, though, many seniors will have had to contend with the
frustrating process of trying to secure themselves an
appointment. Seniors were able to register for an
appointment starting early Wednesday, but issues cropped up
immediately and lawmakers tore into the governor for
funneling seniors to the state's website to try to book
vaccine slots, arguing that many do not have reliable
internet access or the technological literacy needed to
navigate the site.
Compounding the issue is that the state's website is not a
centralized registration portal -- residents have to go to
the state website to find a vaccination site near them, then
connect with that provider to secure a vaccine dose. On
Thursday, Baker announced that his administration would
launch a call center at some point next week to try to help
book appointments for those who cannot or do not want to use
the state's website.
Monday will also see the opening of the state's third mass
vaccination site, this one at Fenway Park in Boston. The
Fenway site joins similar efforts at Gillette Stadium in
Foxborough and a site that opened Friday at the Eastfield
Mall in Springfield. A mass vaccination site at the
DoubleTree Hilton hotel in Danvers is expected to open
Wednesday and the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury will open
as a mass vaccination site sometime in the first week of
February, Baker has said.
The governor is likely to give updates on the state's
vaccination progress at a few points during the week, and he
is also expected to announce whether he will extend or lift
the restriction put in place Dec. 26 limiting most
businesses to a maximum of 25 percent capacity. That
restriction is currently slated to expire Feb. 8 but Baker
has said he thinks it is important to give businesses a few
days' notice before COVID-19 safety measures change. --
Colin A. Young
-- CLIMATE BILL AMENDMENTS: The climate policy bill that
Gov. Baker vetoed as the last legislative session expired is
now back on his desk, and the issues he pointed to in his
veto message remain in play. This time, Baker has the option
of returning the bill to the Legislature with suggested
amendments, and the administration said it "believes the
legislature's quick work to refile the bill is an
opportunity to craft the best possible legislation."
Expect the governor to send the bill back with proposals to
scrap or alter the Legislature's sector-based emissions
sublimits, set the 2030 emissions reduction target at 45
percent rather than the Legislature's 50 percent, address
concerns from the real estate development industry and
others that allowing cities and towns to adopt a net-zero
"stretch energy code" will make construction of new homes
cost prohibitive, preserve the administration's ability to
contract for clean energy through a regional effort that's
still in the early stages of development, and tweak some
definitions included in the legislation.
The 2030 target has been one of the more public points of
disagreement between the administration and Legislature, and
Baker's energy and environment secretary said this week she
isn't convinced the Legislature has the data or analysis to
back up its preference for an emissions reduction target of
50 percent below 1990 levels for 2030.
"I think when you're doing something as practical as setting
an emissions target, you shouldn't be picking something out
of thin air or based on aspirations, you should really be
picking something based on, as we did, two years of analysis
of data ... I'm not sure the Legislature has any cost
estimates for what their bill would cost or the benefits
that would provide," Energy and Environmental Affairs
Secretary Kathleen Theoharides told the News Service on
Tuesday.
Neither of the two chief sponsors of the climate bill, Sen.
Michael Barrett and Rep. Tom Golden, responded to a News
Service request this week to provide the data or analysis
that underpins their bill.
Theoharides said the difference between a target of 45
percent and one of 50 percent could be as much as $6 billion
in costs to residents and the state.
Baker is also no fan of the bill's sector-specific emission
reduction targets for the electric power, transportation,
commercial and industrial heating and cooling, residential
heating and cooling, industrial processes, and natural gas
distribution and service spheres. In his veto letter, Baker
said these sublimits "add unnecessary hurdles to achieving
emissions reductions in a cost-effective and equitable
manner by artificially requiring that emissions in a given
year must reduce in a given sector, rather than allowing the
Commonwealth to achieve emissions reductions more
holistically and efficiently." Associated Industries of
Massachusetts has also asked the Legislature to get rid of
the sector-specific sublimits.
Baker said he supports the development of "a new high
performance energy stretch code," but he pointed to concerns
from the WesternMass Economic Development Council, Mass.
Building Trades Council and others that leaving terms like
"net-zero building" undefined would lead to uncertainty and
grind construction to a halt as developers try to figure out
what new requirements their projects must meet.
The governor suggested he would rather see a new energy code
go through the Board of Building Regulation and Standards.
Baker may also send back language addressing the bill's call
for more offshore wind procurement.
The administration is part of a multi-state effort to reform
the New England region's power grid in a way that would
allow multiple states to jointly procure clean energy
resources like offshore wind or hydropower. The governor
hinted in his veto letter that he wants the Legislature to
leave him with flexibility to eventually conduct regional
clean energy procurements and to not tie the state to only
offshore wind power.
"We are open to clean energy procurement through this bill.
But we want to ensure it doesn't endanger any of the work
we're doing with the other governors across the region to
look at reforming our regional energy markets so that we can
procure clean energy through those markets ... not by
pre-determining which type of clean energy we think we
want," Theoharides told the News Service this week. The
governor has until Sunday, Feb. 7 to act on the bill. --
Colin A. Young
-- JANUARY REVENUES: January is the fourth-largest revenue
month of the year for Massachusetts, and tax collectors
usually bring in 10 percent of their annual haul during the
month.
On Wednesday, the Department of Revenue is due to release
data on January collections that will show whether the
monthly receipts live up to the administration's expectation
that they will collect $2.918 billion.
The state collected $1.539 billion from taxpayers during the
first half of January, DOR said in its mid-month report.
That's up $313 million or 25.5 percent over the same period
of pre-pandemic January 2020. Tax collections totaled $2.955
billion in January 2020.
DOR also cautioned that collections are "usually weighted
toward month-end," suggesting January collections may come
in above the administration's benchmark. Through December,
state government had collected $372 million more in fiscal
year 2021 taxes from people and businesses than it did
during the same six pre-pandemic months of fiscal year 2020.
Baker said Wednesday that the state's tax revenue picture
remains "somewhat unpredictable" and DOR does not expect
that revenue cushion to last. If monthly collections come in
at benchmark levels for the rest of the fiscal year,
Massachusetts would be looking at a drop of $519 million
from actual fiscal 2020 tax collections. The last month
Massachusetts saw a year-over-year decline in tax
collections was September. -- Colin A. Young
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021
SAFE COMMUNITIES ACT RETURNS: Lawmakers and bill supporters
hold a press conference to announce the refiling of the
so-called Safe Communities Act, which would limit local and
state law enforcement participation in federal immigration
enforcement.
The legislation drew heated testimony at a lengthy hearing
in January 2020 and earned a favorable report from the
Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee in July 2020,
and never advanced beyond that.
Speakers at the unveiling are set to include Sen. Jamie
Eldridge, Reps. Ruth Balser and Liz Miranda, Massachusetts
League of Community Health Centers CEO Michael Curry, Jane
Doe Inc. Policy Director Hema Sarang-Sieminski, and Pastor
Dieufort Fleurissaint on behalf of the Safe Communities
Coalition. The event will be livestreamed on Facebook.
(Tuesday, 1 p.m.) |
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
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