Recap and analysis of the week in state government
The House doesn’t always win, at least on Beacon Hill.
But convincing the Senate to act this year on sports betting suddenly seems plausible. More plausible, in fact, than persuading top Democrats to start spending federal relief money quickly, which Gov. Charlie Baker has found to be a task taller than him.
And as for comprehensive voting reform, Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem and Elections Laws Committee Co-Chair Sen. Barry Finegold said they’re hopeful for action after the summer break, now that a temporary fix is in.
The Legislature this week took steps, some bigger than others, to push all three issues down the field as the fall agenda on Beacon Hill came into sharper focus — assuming it all doesn’t get upended again by COVID-19.
Baker started his week in Colorado, jetting west to take part in another few days of meetings hosted by the Republican Governors Association. But that didn’t stop him from beaming in from a darkened hotel room to try to convince seemingly inconvincible Democrats in the Legislature that the portion of American Rescue Plan Act funds he has proposed to spend — $2.9 billion of the remaining $4.8 billion — can’t wait.
Baker said the money he has proposed for housing, for instance, will take time to yield results.
“We have to start making the investments I proposed now, not months from now,” the governor said, batting leadoff Tuesday in what promises to be the first of many hearings on how to spend ARPA dollars.
Democratic leaders gave Baker the audience he was due, but appear locked in on a timeline that includes hearings that will stretch into the fall, showing little sense of urgency to commit billions of dollars in once-in-a-generation funding that they envision spending over multiple years.
In fact, some lawmakers were as concerned with how Baker decided to spend the $200 million they gave him control over as they were with how he wants to spend the billions he doesn’t directly control.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues questioned Baker about his plan released Monday to put $186 million into distressed hospitals, human service worker wages, inpatient psychiatric care and workforce development. Rodrigues said those uses were “clearly” not authorized by the Legislature, which envisioned the pot of money they handed Baker to be a “break glass in case of emergency” fund to deal with COVID-19.
And some on Beacon Hill are starting to reach for their hammers.
With the Delta variant of COVID-19 spreading rapidly among the unvaccinated and breaking through the immune defenses of some vaccinated, a group of 12 lawmakers urged a new mask mandate in schools for this fall when unvaccinated children 12 and under will be left unprotected.
The average number of daily new cases over the prior seven days climbed above 200 to start the week after bottoming out at 64 on June 25, a more than three-fold increase. Boston Mayor Kim Janey said Boston students will be masked when they return in September, but Baker said that as of now his administration has no plans to revisit its statewide mask guidance for the fall.
The rise of COVID is threatening to spoil some of the summer fun people had long been counting on, but there are ways to enjoy yourself that don’t involve leaving your home, or seeing other people.
At least the overwhelming majority of House lawmakers think so.
For the second time in as many years, the House voted Thursday to legalize betting on professional and college sports. The margin was 156-3.
Sure, sports betting is legal in border states and supporters say it will generate as much as $60 million in revenue for Massachusetts if the state joins New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and 26 other states in allowing it within its borders. But there’s another reason to move forward, the bill’s sponsor said.
“Most important, it’s just fun. People are allowed to have fun,” Rep. Dan Cahill said.
The Cahill bill, as passed, would allow betting on college athletics, but not on the performances of individual college athletes. One could bet on Boston College to beat Clemson (if you dare), but not on BC’s quarterback to throw for four touchdowns.
Sen. Eric Lesser’s bill, which came out of committee last weekend and went to the Senate, would not authorize betting on college sports, and House Speaker Ron Mariano said Thursday in a Bloomberg radio interview that a college sports betting ban would be a dealbreaker for him.
But the details can be worked out. At the very least, Lesser said he believes the Senate could be ready to debate and vote on the issue this year, which means a sports betting law by fall is at least conceivable.
While Baker was off in Aspen making nice with his fellow Republican governors, GOP-on-GOP crime continued back at home with Republican candidate for governor Geoff Diehl taking aim at the governor’s plan for federal relief funds and MassGOP Chairman Jim Lyons escalating his feud with House Republicans.
Diehl called out Baker for not recommending some of the money be used to pay down the $7 billion debt for pandemic-related unemployment insurance that small businesses will be paying off for the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, Lyons targeted House Minority Leader Brad Jones for allowing the House to approve a short-term extension of voting by mail without so much as a roll call vote.
Lyons has already called out his fellow party men and women for “waving the white flag” to so-called “woke cancel culture,” but this week he accused Jones of laying down on the job, even though any member of the 30-person House GOP caucus could have tried to force the recorded vote that Lyons desired.
“Rather than make the Democrats come in and actually have to vote on this legislation, Representative Jones, as he has done time and time again, stood by and did nothing,” Lyons said Wednesday. “The GOP has to stand up and be an effective opposition party.”
The House on Wednesday took a final vote on a supplemental spending bill that extended mail-in voting authority through Dec. 15. The voice vote took place during an informal session, when just one objection could have forced Democrats to wait until members were assembled — in-person or virtually – for a roll call.
Jones did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. And that temporary extension of mail-in voting landed on Baker’s desk as part of a $261.6 million supplemental spending bill that would also create a new MBTA oversight board to replace the one that dissolved on July 1.
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Election Laws on Monday reported out Creem’s legislation known as the VOTES Act, which would not only make voting-by-mail permanent, but legalize same-day voter registration and other reforms to the electoral process.
It was not said whether the advancement of the VOTES Act in the Senate was part of a side deal that led to the House and Senate compromising on the four-month vote-by-mail extension, but Creem and Finegold both said they are now hopeful the issue will get its due this fall.
“It’s certainly a statement to say we’re not just doing this temporarily but our intentions are to actually really debate this,” Creem said.
STORY OF THE WEEK: House bets on “fun,” and puts sports wagering pressure on Senate.
SONG OF THE WEEK: For the chance that years of ramblin’ will finally lead to some gamblin‘.
