NOTES BETWEEN PRINTED EDITIONS

Weekly Roundup – Remote Control
Recap and analysis of the week in state government

Sam Doran Oct 18, 2024

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, OCT. 18, 2024…..Like squirrels in a leaf pile, lawmakers are rustling on Beacon Hill, hidden as they may be.

Events like this week’s celebration of the fishing industry (replete with taste-testing) draw some pols to the capitol building. The corridors have otherwise been mostly vacant, but that hasn’t stopped top Democrats from looking to prove wrong the naysayers who said they’d never get done with, oh, for example, a major climate bill.

Rep. Jeff Roy and Sen. Mike Barrett said Thursday they were finally on the same page and readying a compromise on “comprehensive climate and clean energy siting and permitting.” The legislation has been built up as key to meeting carbon reduction goals.

Critics, whether they be an editorial board, frustrated advocates, or radio show talkers, have spent much of the two-year term focusing on internal disagreements, and there have been and continue to be many of those.

Roy and Barrett couldn’t agree on how their energy committee would function. Each vented to the press earlier this session, with Roy saying the committee had been held “hostage” by the Senate, and Barrett claiming “fraudulent” use of his name on a committee notice.

This week, they were “proud to announce” they had worked through their differences. If they can do it, what’s to stop anyone else?

Speaker Ron Mariano and President Karen Spilka heard criticism when a host of priorities failed to advance on the morning of Aug. 1 as the branches transitioned into informal sessions. The climate bill is the biggest of several agreements to come since then, and hallway gossipers were active on Thursday suggesting a $2 billion-plus economic development bond bill might not be far behind.

Also this week, the House advanced a final $730 million bill to close the books on fiscal 2024, which ended in June. It’s largely a mandatory bill-paying exercise, but includes some other sections, like enshrining into state law a local chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library which would (“subject to appropriation”) send monthly books to registered kids through age 5.

Maybe it’s only a bad time if you’re a home-rule petition from Boston or Brookline. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is still trying to force her property tax bill through the Senate (apparently in its un-amendable form, rather than having City Hall ship an amendable version to the State House, which would quell some complaints) and the Brookline News reported this week on local frustration there over a 10 percent success rate with its petitions getting signed into law this term.

Hyperbolics might suggest the Legislature is sweeping up sheafs of unfinished legislation in the same way Vineyard Wind crews this week started scooping up shattered pieces of fiberglass and foam from the ocean floor. But the only drop-deadline is the state Constitution’s pronouncement that the term ends on the first Tuesday in January. The summer deadline that legislators picked in the 1990s and mostly enforced since then has lost some meaning.

Under Mariano and Spilka, Aug. 1 is no longer an obituary-writing day for all bills. The shift in their approach even led House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz to tell the Globe last week that maybe it’s time to “reevaluate” the rules. “It seems that it’s been a never-ending session for the last six years, in some respects,” Michlewitz told the Globe.

In the long run, if they do finish what they set out to do, and stack up a clean energy law with a booster shot for economic development, and add hospital oversight and prescription drug pricing reforms, which have also been locked in conference talks since July … will anyone down the line remember what month it was accomplished?

There’s plenty of legislating this autumn, and if you’re casting a ballot, then you’re doing some of it yourself.

As officials get more vocal about their stances on ballot questions, Gov. Maura Healey this week more actively inserted herself into the debate over Question 2 — whether the MCAS test will remain in place as a statewide standard for high school graduation.

Healey spoke at a press conference Wednesday, joined by Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Campbell, in opposition to the Mass. Teachers Association-backed initiative. The AG, who revealed her position this week after playing a role in certifying the question for the ballot, said she was concerned the proposal would offer no replacement threshold to receive a diploma.

“This would result in over 300 different and unequal standards for high school graduation across the commonwealth and potentially lead to haphazard assessments of student readiness for college and careers, and even wider inequities in student achievement and, of course, opportunities,” Campbell said.

Healey also came out against Question 5, which phases out the subminimum tipped worker wage. In arguments that echoed the traditional knock on raising the minimum wage, the governor said the ballot question could raise operating costs so significantly that restaurants might close and eliminate the very jobs that Question 5 aims to boost.

Once upon a time, the state’s supreme executive magistrate “hustled” as a server, she said. (As a high schooler at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H., Healey worked at Greenhouse, Muffie’s, Whale’s Tale, and Purple Urchin, her office told the News Service. During and after her time at Harvard College, she was a server at Hampton Beach Casino and Purple Urchin.)

Like a lot of Bay Staters, Healey said she’s still pondering some of the questions. She said she hasn’t made up her mind on Question 3 (unionization of ride network drivers) or Question 4 (legalization of psychedelic substances).

Count Treasurer Deb Goldberg among those voting No on 4. She would have some authority over psychedelics regulators, if the question passes and goes into effect as written. In a scrum this week, Goldberg laughed and wouldn’t say why she was voting that way.

Drugs like psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) would be regulated by a commission similar to the Cannabis Control Commission. In the same press avail this week, Goldberg swept aside questions about how things are going over at the upended CCC.

“We have no way of really knowing what goes on over there, so I have absolutely no idea,” said the treasurer, who has appointing authority over a few of the CCC’s members and picks the chair.

Healey wouldn’t say this week how she’ll vote on Question 1, which aims to let Auditor Diana DiZoglio audit the Legislature. One can guess how most members of the 200 Club are voting.

Ballot questions are one way to force action on issues the Legislature isn’t keen to touch. It leads to some substantive choices on the ballot for Bay State voters, even if there’s little to no choice for who represents them in most local House and Senate districts. The website Ballotpedia has once again ranked Massachusetts dead last in its “competitiveness index” for legislative seats.

A new UMass Amherst poll asked 700 people to describe the General Court in a single word.

Answers ranged from a positive “Good” (what’s that, a 3-stars-out-of-5 restaurant review?) to a shrug of a “Fine” (reminds us of the headline on an old Kevin Cullen column: “Whoever Wins Will Be Fine”) to an insulting “Dumb.” (Also “Corrupt,” “Useless,” and “Lazy.”)

Some respondents also said the Legislature was “Stuck.”

Well, they’re allegedly un-stuck when it comes to energy siting. Maybe the lawmakers will prove the pundits wrong on a few more bills before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s.

SONG OF THE WEEK: Time to make up your mind about Questions One, Two, Three, Four, Five ..