Recap and analysis of the week in state government
Believe it or not, it’s far more common to see an MBTA train derail than it is to watch a nominee for U.S. attorney sputter in the Senate Judiciary Committee. But this week brought a rare opportunity to watch both.
The T continues to be a source of headaches for riders and for Gov. Charlie Baker, who in just the past couple of weeks has had to answer for a jogger falling to his death through a closed MBTA stairwell, a elevator malfunction causing injuries at Back Bay Station and then Tuesday’s Red Line derailment, when a train scraped the platform and damaged tracks at Broadway Station without injury.
“The MBTA is safe, but it’s old,” Baker said, defending a system already hurting from ridership that has been slow to return during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At least one of those statements is undeniably true, but it remains to be seen how much of a management and political liability the transit system continues to be as Baker contemplates a third term talking about the very problems that consumed the early days of his first term in 2015.
Baker is also making few friends in organized labor after he basically shrugged his shoulders this week at the State Police Association of Massachusetts warning that dozens of troopers were choosing to quit rather than get vaccinated, and he got sued again, this time in federal court, by correction officers looking to block his vaccine mandate.
Democrats, however, mostly agree with his approach to public employee vaccination. The T is a different story.
Democratic nominee Jay Gonzalez ran against Baker in 2018, in part, by questioning his stewardship of the T and voters sent him on a shuttle bus to nowhere. Some of the governor’s potential opponents in 2022 are making the same case for more urgency and more financial resources now, but they’re not getting support from Democratic leaders on Beacon Hill.
Senate President Karen Spilka this week stomped all over the idea of raising taxes or fees to generate more money for the MBTA: “So I’m not certain that there’s a need for even more money. I have not heard that from a single person,” she said, choosing to look past what groups like TransitMatters and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation have been saying and writing for weeks.
Spilka pointed to the upcoming “millionaires’ tax” vote in 2022 and the $16 billion bond authorization signed by Baker in January as resources the T could tap. Her comments were made a day after the Baker administration announced it had settled on a $1.7 billion design for the Allston viaduct project, choosing an at-grade overhaul of the area along the Charles River that would align train, highway and pedestrian infrastructure at the same elevation and at a safe distance from the riverbank.
Spilka’s lack of interest in revisiting the pre-pandemic transportation revenue debates was even more stark than her ambivalence towards sports betting. Ahead of a weekend when Tom Brady is coming back to Foxborough and the money seems to be moving away from the home teams, Spilka said she wasn’t sure the Senate would have the “bandwidth” this fall to consider the House’s bill, passed over the summer for the second time in recent years.
Instead, the Senate over the next seven weeks hopes to tackle two spending bills, including one allocating at least a chunk of the state’s American Rescue Plan Act money. Also on the fall agenda? Redistricting maps, mental and behavioral health and voting reforms.
The voting bill was rolled out Thursday, and the Senate will debate it next Wednesday. As drafted, the legislation would make mail-in voting and expanded early voting permanent options for Massachusettts voters and allow for same-day voter registration, which is opposed by Gov. Baker. During its debate of the COVID-19 elections bill in June 2020, the House also rejected a same-day registration amendment with a 16-139 vote.
While a derailed train and a stalled gambling bill made headlines back in Boston, Republicans in Washington couldn’t quite knock Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ nomination for U.S. attorney off the tracks.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday deadlocked 11-11 on whether to recommend Rollins to the full Senate, evenly split along partisan lines. The advancement of nominees for U.S. attorney positions is usually pro forma for the Judiciary Committee, but not in Rollins’ case. According to Sen. Dick Durbin, she is just the fourth nominee since 1975 not to advance on a voice vote.
The outspoken and reform-minded Suffolk County prosecutor has ignited a fury inside Senate Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Ted Cruz, who called her a “radical” and “pro-criminal” nominee bent on destroying the justice system from within.
The Republicans have seized on Rollins’ policy of presumptively declining to prosecute 15 lower-level, non-violent crimes, like trespassing and drug possession. The approach was a source of friction for her at home in 2019 as well, when she came out with the policy, but it was also part of the reason she was able to emerge from a crowded Democratic primary to capture the office.
It’s not a hard and fast rule, but Rollins says it has been effective in stopping the churn of people with addiction and mental issues, many of them Black and brown, through the criminal justice system, which only makes it more likely they will reoffend. Rollins has never shied away from talking about the injustices she sees in the justice system, and she said Thursday she’s not about to stop.
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have gone to bat for Rollins with their colleagues, and remain confident of her confirmation, which will now require two majority votes in the full Senate, instead of one.
At the other capitol on Beacon Hill, lawmakers and advocates were hearing about and pushing for passage of everything from enhanced cash assistance to lift families out of “deep poverty” to a final ban on dog race wagering, via simulcasting, in Massachusetts.
The debate over using doctor-prescribed drugs to aid someone in dying flared up again, as did the question of whether it makes sense to give illicit drug users a safe space to get high.
The House actually supported a ban on simulcast dog races in the sports betting bill it passed over the summer, but as mentioned before, Spilka has basically put that bill on a shelf for now.
