Recap and analysis of the past week in Massachusetts state government
Attorney General Maura Healey doesn’t seem to be about reliving the past.
Not when it comes to pot. Not when it comes to gambling. And certainly not when it comes to her 2014 campaign for attorney general.
That was the year the new-on-the-political scene prosecutor defied the odds to beat an insider with a well-known last name in her first statewide race for public office. In that campaign, Healey backed a ballot question that would have repealed the state’s casino legalization law.
Eight years later Healey is seeking a new office and another gambling issue is in the headlines.
“Sports betting, it is the way now,” Healey said this week, an acknowledgment that the whistle on this match has already blown in other states. It may not have been a ringing endorsement of gambling on athletics, but it sounded an awful lot like the answer she gave earlier this month when asked if she regretted opposing the legalization of marijuana.
No regrets. Just reality.
“I just want to make sure that everybody is able to share in the benefits and the gains of that industry,” she said about marijuana. “And I think we still have more work to do when it comes to the social justice issues that were in fact driving a lot of proponents of that law.”
Incidentally, Senate leaders this week signaled their intent to take up marijuana industry equity next week. But more on that another time.
Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, Healey’s rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, told the News Service last week she was “open” to sports betting, but stressed that “specifics will matter.” That’s been Senate President Karen Spilka’s mantra as well, insisting on Monday that despite majority support in her chamber for legislation she is seeking “consensus” on the details before calling for a vote.
Chang-Diaz also spent this week trying to remind Healey about her 2014 campaign challenge to primary opponent Warren Tolman that they debate once a month until the September primary. That didn’t happen, and it doesn’t appear Chang-Diaz will get her wish for three pre-convention debates either.
The shoe is on the other foot this year with Healey not seeking, or needing, the exposure that would come from multiple debates, while that’s exactly what Chang-Diaz wants. Healey said she would agree to two televised debates between the June 4 convention and the Sept. 6 primary, prompting Chang-Diaz to call her arrogant.
The mood in the Legislature this week was more collegial.
The House and Senate found common ground on a $1.67 billion spending bill that includes money for COVID-19 relief, and extends popular pandemic accommodations like to-go cocktails and outdoor dining as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu tried to put out the kitchen fire she started in the North End by proposing to charge restaurants a $7,500 impact fee for al fresco dining.
Lawmakers also agreed on a strategy to divest pension funds from Russian companies sanctioned by the United States or incorporated in that country, and both branches extended their remote voting protocols, allowing at least for the remainder of this session legislators to call in their votes.
Home offices are the workplaces of the future, after all, right?
A special legislative commission co-chaired by Sen. Eric Lesser and Rep. Josh Cutler released their report on the “Future of Work” this week, and while it may not have contained any shocking findings, it did reinforce the way everyone has understood the impact of the pandemic.
Hybrid and remote working models, the report found, are here to stay with ramifications for commercial real estate and downtowns and requiring a renewed commitment to workforce training and ensuring supports like child care and elder care are affordable and accessible to families.
Hybrid participation is how the Legislature continues to operate these days, but House Democrats were positively giddy about another step toward normalcy when they caucused together in-person for the first time in two years.
Multiple rounds of applause were heard outside the private meeting before lawmakers made their way to the House chamber to pass a $350 million road and infrastructure maintenance bill that included $200 million for Chapter 90 and $150 million spread across multiple other programs.
Rep. William Straus, the co-chair of the Transportation Committee, said the House wasn’t quite ready to reform the formula for Chapter 90 to more equitably distribute aid to rural communities with many roads and few people, but he said it’s still a possibility in the coming months.
Rep. Thomas Golden will likely be on the receiving, rather than the giving, end of Chapter 90 by that time as Golden was offered the position of Lowell city manager on Wednesday and is expected to soon depart Beacon Hill.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s longtime chief of staff Kristen Lepore is also leaving the State House, but for where she wasn’t ready to say. Lepore is just Baker’s second chief of staff in more than seven years, and has held down the job since the summer of 2017 when she moved over from being secretary of administration and finance.
When she departs on April 15, Baker’s senior advisor and steady sounding board Tim Buckley will take over to steer the ship for the remaining nine months. Among Buckley’s tasks will be to try to get the governor’s pre-trial detention bill through the Legislature on the administration’s third attempt.
Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito were in Worcester this week to again hear from survivors of abuse about the fear they experienced knowing their abusers were free on bail during the duration of a case, or would face no criminal repercussions when they cut off their court-ordered GPS tracking device.
The amplification of these survivor stories has been the strategy Baker and his team have been using to build public pressure on Democrats to consider his bill, which sits before the Judiciary Committee and faces a deadline of April 15 for the panel to make a recommendation.
The Legislature and the Committee on Financial Services has longer than that – probably until around early July – to make a call on whether to intervene and try to pass a bill that would negate the need for app-based transportation companies like Uber and Lyft to take their employment case to the voters in November.
These tech companies are seeking legal permission to classify their drivers as independent contractors in exchange for some wage and benefit guarantees, while opponents believe drivers should be treated as full-time employees.
If the committee’s hearing on this issue this week showed anything, it’s that the two sides are far apart and digging in deeper.
