Recap and analysis of the week in state government
Order the turkey. Figure out who’s bringing what sides. Settle on a plan for spending billions of dollars, decide if Fall River and New Bedford should be seated at the same table, and whip up a health care bill or two.
It’s crunch time for Beacon Hill’s pre-Thanksgiving checklist. With under a week to go until the Legislature’s holiday recess starts next Thursday, questions are still swirling over what will get neatly wrapped up and what will turn into a pumpkin (pie) at midnight, left to linger until lawmakers return to formal sessions in January.
Back in September, when House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka sketched out their fall agendas, each indicated that bills allocating some of the state’s American Rescue Plan Act money would be a major feature.
Spilka also pointed to the decennial redistricting process, election reform (which the Senate tackled in October but hasn’t seemed to be much of a conversation topic in the House) and mental health legislation. Mariano suggested he had something in mind around community hospitals.
Nothing motivates like a deadline, and this week was marked by progress on most of those fronts.
The final puzzle pieces for redistricting inched along their path, with a Tuesday hearing on the proposed new maps for congressional and Governor’s Council districts. South Coast officials aired their arguments for and against the proposal that would give a newly reunified Fall River entirely to Congressman Jake Auchincloss while leaving New Bedford in Congressman William Keating’s district.
While Reps. Carole Fiola and Patricia Haddad are among those who like the idea of a district featuring Fall River as its largest city and of having two members of Congress represent the region, Sen. Michael Rodrigues, Sen. Mark Montigny and Rep. Alan Silvia are on the side that would rather see Fall River join New Bedford in Keating’s 9th District.
Rep. Mike Moran, the Redistricting Committee’s House Chair, suggested that he likes the maps just how he and co-chair Sen. Will Brownsberger drew them. He countered arguments in favor of unlinking Fall River from wealthier 4th District communities like Brookline and Newton by pointing out that a move would just put the city in a district with different affluent towns.
“When you look at the sheer geography and the numbers, and you look at the 10th-largest city in the commonwealth, which is Fall River, it became a natural place for us to look to unify a big city down in the South Coast region,” Moran said.
After the House took its turn in late October, the Senate this week unanimously passed its own roughly $3.8 billion package spending ARPA money and surplus state tax revenues.
The two bills have similar bottom lines and invest in common areas like in health care, housing, economic development and environment, so it’s mostly the details — how much to spend where — that lawmakers will need to work out over a roughly 60-hour span next week if they want to meet their goal of getting a final bill to Gov. Charlie Baker before the break.
Also on the Senate side, Spilka rolled out a revamped version of a mental health bill that cleared her branch unanimously early last year, just before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. Gone from the bill are measures that became law in the interim — a behavioral telehealth pilot, for example — and in their place are some new measures like insurance coverage for the mental health equivalent of an annual physical exam.
The previous iteration of the bill cleared the Senate unanimously, a likely sign of a smooth passage when the new one hits the floor next Wednesday.
Smooth through that chamber, at least. Mariano and Spilka each have their own priorities when it comes to health care, and so far neither has publicly indicated plans for taking up the other’s bill.
Mariano did give voice to the idea, though, that he might be willing to trade action on Spilka’s mental health bill for movement on the sports betting bill the House passed in July. Spilka, when she’s asked about sports betting, often describes it as something being talked about among senators and worked on in committee, but not as a bullet point on the Senate’s to-do list.
“I have seen things traded, so there’s always an opportunity for discussion, and whether it be those two things for each other or something else for something else, listen, it goes on and certainly I’m happy to talk about any of this stuff with her,” Mariano said in a radio interview.
The speaker now also has his own health care bill on the move. The community hospital-based bill he’s been talking about emerged from the Health Care Financing Committee Friday, and Mariano is eyeing a vote sometime next week.
A response to market consolidation and to Mariano’s concerns that the expansion of large health systems threatens to siphon privately insured patients away from community hospitals, the bill proposes another layer of state review for systems pursuing new clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and satellite facilities.
In one of the most noteworthy provisions of the bill, an application to expand into an independent community hospital’s service area would need to include a letter of support from that community hospital.
All the talk about health care comes as the COVID-19 pandemic and opioid epidemic each continue their marches through Massachusetts.
New state data released this week tallied 21 more opioid overdose deaths in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2020, for a total of 1,613 deaths so far in 2021. Lawmakers heard testimony around the role of correctional facilities in substance use treatment, one of the issues at play as city and state officials seek to respond to the addiction and homelessness crisis at Boston’s intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
An ACLU lawsuit over the city’s removal of people from the Mass. and Cass encampments is now before the Suffolk Superior Court, where Supreme Judicial Court Justice Frank Gaziano sent it so that a judge there could develop a “factual record” to resolve some of the “complex legal questions” at issue.
Days away from taking her oath of office, Boston Mayor-elect Michelle Wu tapped former state Public Health Commissioner Dr. Monica Bharel for a Cabinet post overseeing the city’s Mass. and Cass efforts.
Bharel, who was chief medical officer for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program before she joined the Baker administration in 2015, stepped down as commissioner in June after leading the Department of Public Health through the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A year ago about this time, Bharel and Baker were regularly going before cameras, appealing to people to keep their Thanksgiving festivities small, in-house and properly ventilated to minimize COVID-19 transmission risks.
This year, many people are planning a return to more normal Turkey Day traditions. But even with vaccinations widespread in Massachusetts and newly available as both booster doses and shots for kids as young as 5, daily case counts appear to be on the uptick again after coming down a bit from a September peak.
The numbers are elevated going into the fall and winter holidays, though they fall below where they were at this point last year. The DPH on Wednesday reported 1,745 new cases of COVID-19, 527 hospitalizations, and a positivity rate of 2.15 percent. The Nov. 10, 2020 report included 2,047 new cases, 618 COVID-19 hospitalizations, and a 2.63 percent positivity rate.
The DPH paused its COVID reporting for the Veterans Day holiday Thursday, which state and federal leaders observed throughout the week with pledges to honor the sacrifices of service members and to continue supporting them and their families.
The UMass Chan Medical School and VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System cut the ribbon on a new community-based clinic for Worcester-area veterans, senators added extra veterans-related measures into their ARPA bill, and Baker thanked veterans at a Faneuil Hall ceremony.
Missing from the week’s schedule of events, though? Progress for legislation that would reform oversight and governance at the state’s two soldiers’ homes, in the wake of last year’s deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the Holyoke home.
The death of at least 76 veterans prompted a series of investigations and criminal charges against a pair of former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home officials, but not, so far, the passage of a new law aimed at addressing the failures behind the tragedy.
A Friday hearing on a soldiers’ home bill crafted by Rep. Linda Dean Campbell and Sen. Mike Rush was canceled and so far has yet to reappear on the Legislature’s calendar. Mariano, though, said he still has hope a bill can move before the recess.
That’s another item for the checklist, and midnight Wednesday’s only going to get closer from here.
