State House News
Aug. 9, 2024..After a muddled and unavailing end to formal sessions, legislative leaders retreated from State House halls this week, while Gov. Maura Healey celebrated the few victories she had to tout, papering over the widening cracks in Massachusetts’ all-blue front.
Healey held three well-attended bill signing ceremonies, each with much fanfare before she added her John Hancock to laws meant to address the housing crisis, expand veterans benefits and mandate more wage transparency.
Lawmakers only came to a consensus on four priority bills at the end of July 32nd, and Healey seemed to go all-out to give them, and her, a separate moment in the spotlight.
Over a hundred people crammed into the community room of a retirement home in Newton on Tuesday, many of them accoutred with “Affordable Homes Act” buttons. Later that day, the walls of the (otherwise fairly empty) State House echoed with the cheers of supporters of the wage transparency bill as the governor scrawled her signature across it. And on Thursday, there was an impressive showing for the veterans’ benefits law in Lexington, where Healey declared, “we are so blessed as a nation.”
The governor quietly signed the last House-Senate compromise bill on Thursday as well — reforms meant to protect parents and children who use paths such as surrogacy and in-vitro fertilization — and is planning a ceremony for next week.
There’s an Oprah Winfrey quote embroidered on throw pillows all across America: “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
If Oprah’s to be believed, perhaps going big on celebrating victories that actually materialized will beget more legislative wins for Healey.
She certainly hopes there are more bill-signing ceremonies in the coming months. The governor wasn’t worried about the legislative pace a few months ago, but she ratcheted up her calls this week for legislators to return to Beacon Hill to complete unfinished business.
Namely, Healey wants lawmakers to finish work on an economic development bill that’s an alleged priority for everyone on Beacon Hill, and clean energy siting and permitting reform, a topic where the branches mostly agree but are bogged down by other related issues.
When prompted by a State House News Service reporter Thursday, she added her federal infrastructure funds bill to that list.
Asked what Massachusetts is missing out on by not acting on that bill, which has been estimated to have the ability to generate $17 billion in federal investments for the state, Healey responded “a lot.”
“This is why I’ve encouraged — implored — the Senate, the House, to get back in the building and finish important pieces of legislation,” she said.
When the reporter followed up to ask if she had spoken to legislative leadership about the federal infrastructure bill specifically since July 31, Healey said “we’ve talked about a number of things, and we’re going to continue to talk.”
The governor beat that drum all week, saying on Thursday that it’s “very, very important we act” and that it is “absolutely essential” to return to siting and permitting reform.
That strong urging is somewhat out of the ordinary for Healey’s 18-month tenure so far, as the governor hasn’t often stepped up to the bully pulpit to publicly pressure state lawmakers.
In retrospect it’s a fair, but probably unanswerable question to ask; would more public prodding of the Legislature by the governor have led to more legislative agreements? Top legislators seem to prefer carrots over sticks, but the hands-off approach didn’t yield too much.
Healey wouldn’t wade too far into the fray this week though. When pressed about whether she preferred the House or Senate versions of the clean energy bill, Healey responded, “I’m going to leave that to our teams to discuss and work through, but I’m confident we can get there. We need to get there, and we need to get there quickly.”
That’s the kind of distant response to specific questions that top legislators have been giving too, and it’s leading to questions about the effectiveness of one-party rule following eight years with a Republican governor.
The House-Senate divide on the climate bill is one of the starkest examples of tension between the branches. Negotiations imploded late on July 31st, or perhaps earlier, with lead negotiators in both chambers complaining to reporters about their counterparts.
But friction between Democrats is not reserved just for the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee.
Both House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have said they’d temporarily bring their members back from summer vacation mode to resolve unfinished business — though that doesn’t mean they’re willing to compromise.
In a statement, Mariano said he’s prepared to bring members back for a special session if an agreement is reached on the economic development “that fully invests in the life sciences sector.”
The jab is a reference to one of the main sticking points between the House and Senate versions of the bill. Representatives and Healey proposed funneling $500 million into the life sciences over the next decade. Also unlike the House and governor, the Senate stopped short of boosting the life sciences tax incentive cap from $30 million to $50 million per year. The Senate also approved $225 million in bonding over five years.
Therefore, one could read Mariano’s statement: We’ll come back. If you agree with us.
Spilka’s statement didn’t lay out the same ultimatum. “The Senate is ready to convene a formal session to pass a version of this bill as soon as the conferees reach an agreement,” she said.
Though she didn’t take the opportunity to push back at Mariano, the Senate president did get into a scuffle of statements with another prominent Democrat this week.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and the Senate president lobbed insults at one another through radio interviews and newspaper ink.
Boston needed state sign-off on Wu’s push to temporarily rebalance property tax rates to stop a major tax hike for residents, as well as efforts to reform the city’s planning department and distribute more liquor licenses to underserved communities.
The House took up and passed each of the proposals, but they all stalled out in the Senate.
“If this does not happen, every single resident in the city of Boston will know that their taxes are going up because the Senate did not vote through that last step,” Wu said on GBH News’s “Boston Public Radio” on Tuesday.
Asked if the Senate would take up the property tax proposal or reforms to the city’s planning department, a Spilka spokesperson fired back at Wu.
“Blaming the Senate may be politically convenient for the Mayor, but it does nothing to improve a policy proposal that has been widely questioned by fiscal watchdog agencies and could do serious damage to Boston’s economy,” the Spilka spokesperson said. “The Senate President has received no indication that there is sufficient support among Senators for this policy proposal to move forward.”
There’s no public evidence of support — or lack there of — among senators, as they never took a vote on the policy and Sen. Susan Moran’s office declined to share the votes of individual members of the Revenue Committee, which advanced the bill.
Spilka declined to speak about the bill last week, saying that she did not know enough about it.
“We haven’t debated, discussed or even seen the bill, the new complex bill. And as you know, any time you release a bill the day before session ends, it’s a very difficult expectation for us to hear it, especially when it has new proposals, major proposals that haven’t had the opportunity to be debated or voted on,” she said, in a scrum with reporters. The comment featured some of the same language that Mariano had used to zing the Senate earlier that week.
Wu later tried to turn the rhetoric down a bit, telling Jimmy Hills on “Java with Jimmy,” “They have a lot on their plate. I have so much respect for every person’s role in this. And so it’s not meant as disrespect or questioning anyone’s authority.”
SUMMER READING: Between navigating high tensions on Beacon Hill and her responsibilities as a Harris-Walz surrogate in the 2024 presidential election, what’s the guv reading these days?
We asked Healey what was on her summer reading list.
“That’s not silly, books are not silly. Books are great,” she responded.
She’s juggling a few things: Russell Banks’ (one of her favorite authors, she said) “American Spirits;” Kate Grenville’s “Restless Dolly Maunder,” and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation.”
“[The Anxious Generation] is about something I’ve paid attention to for a long time, social media and its impact on kids. I mean, I was one of the AGs who investigated social media companies a long time ago, to try to uncover and reveal what they were doing in terms of the pervasiveness and perniciousness of social media, and particularly its adverse impacts on young people,” Healey said.
“So I’m reading that book, which is kind of a downer, to be honest. But I think it’s an important read,” she added.
SONG OF THE WEEK: Healey is calling lawmakers to detach themselves from the lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer, and get back to work.
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08/09/2024