Article Source: State House News Service

Author: Matt Murphy

 

If Massachusetts used to run on Dunkin’, it now runs on Pfizer, and Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

The state’s long-term prognosis remains inextricably wrapped up in the ability of state and federal government, pharmacies and health care providers to administer as many shots as possible as fast as possible.

But even as vaccine supply grows and the number of Massachusetts residents fully vaccinated eclipsed 1.37 million this week, the coronavirus appears to be catching up in the arms race against the vaccine and a lot is riding on who wins out.

“Right now I’m scared,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, describing her sense of “impending doom” about the rise in cases in states like Michigan and New York and, yes, Massachusetts.

Walensky’s emotional plea for vigilance came the day before she came back to Massachusetts, where she lived and worked before joining the Biden administration, to tour the new FEMA-supported mass vaccination site at the Hynes Convention Center. The Hynes site replaced Fenway Park, where baseball returned on Friday, and FEMA’s involvement means there will be enough vaccine to administer 7,000 doses a day at the Back Bay center, up from the 1,000 shots a day the state was doing alone.

The state next week will use some of the additional FEMA supply to deploy mobile vaccination units in Chelsea, Revere, Boston, New Bedford and Fall River.

But even Baker acknowledged this week that the positive trends that led him to open up venues like Fenway for limited spectators were going in the wrong direction.

The seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases detected daily was up 29 percent on March 30 from March 8 to 1,888, schools reported their highest ever weekly caseload of 1,045, and the number of communities in the high risk category increased for the third straight week to 55. Almost half of the new cases were recorded in residents under 30, many of whom have to wait a few more weeks to become vaccine eligible.

“I think it’s fair to say that no one can let their guard down with respect to this virus,” Baker said.

The good news is that the administration is expecting a major influx of Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week – more than 100,000 doses – and does not believe the mixup at the Baltimore manufacturing facility that spoiled 15 million doses will impact that delivery.

Baker has gotten beaten up by legislative Democrats in recent weeks for his handling of the pandemic, and in particular the vaccine rollout, but Walensky was unwilling to second guess the Republican, at least to his face, and most Massachusetts residents, according to a new poll, are willing to cut him some slack.

The newest Boston Globe/Suffolk poll found that 71 percent of residents approved of the governor’s handling of the pandemic. He got lower numbers for his vaccine effort – 58 percent approved – but 67 percent said they support the job Baker is doing overall.

So as the first fundraising quarter came to a close this week, Baker, the polling suggests, remains in the catbird seat should he choose to seek a third term.

Ben Downing, so far the most prominent Democrat in the 2022 race for governor, reported raising $227,712 in the eight weeks since he entered the race on Feb. 8. This week he picked the issue of colleges withholding transcripts from students for unpaid bills to go after Baker for underfunding higher education.

Another potential gubernatorial contender in 2022 also had college students on her mind this week.  Attorney General Maura Healey hosted U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley to help call on President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt for federal student borrowers.

Biden’s chief of staff told POLITICO the president was undecided on what to do with respect to student debt, despite Biden previously saying he thought Congress, not the White House, should act. “Well that’s great,” Pressley said in response.

The next generation of student borrowers also found out this week that they won’t have to pass the MCAS exam in order to graduate in 2022 under a plan put forward by Education Commissioner Jeff Riley that would scale back the state’s standardized testing program during the pandemic. It didn’t go far enough for the Massachusetts Teachers Association and other critics who would like to see MCAS postponed completely this spring until next year.

While Biden waits for more legal guidance on his authority to address student debt, his administration – including Labor Secretary Marty Walsh – was busy rolling out and beginning to sell a more than $2 trillion infrastructure package.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said that given the clout of the Massachusetts delegation and the seats it holds on the Transportation Committee, a package that large could be a feeding frenzy for Massachusetts road, bridge and rail projects.

Any infrastructure funding would come in addition to billions of dollars on its way from the “American Rescue Plan,” which lawmakers began to pick apart this week. The House Committee on Federal Stimulus and Census Oversight held its first oversight hearing this week where Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council, said details about how state and local governments can spend the money will come by early May.

That committee will be back at it next week with Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan expected to testify.

But with the exeception of hearings like this, the process of committees reviewing the thousands of bills filed by lawmakers on Beacon Hill this year has been slow to start, with most pieces of legislation still waiting to be assigned.

In contrast, the Legislature has picked up its oversight game.

There have been stimulus oversight hearings and two explorations of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The special oversight committee probing the early pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home is seeking to extend its investigation and has invited former Veterans’ Services Secretary Francisco Urena to testify next week.

And now the Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities says it will hold an oversight hearing into a troubling report from Child Advocate Maria Mossaides that found the Department of Children and Families missed the signs of abuse and neglect that led to the Oct. death of 14-year-old David Almond in Fall River.

That’s not to say the Legislature has been completely dormant, and House and Senate leaders may want to act quickly on Baker’s proposed amendments to a COVID-19 sick leave program that the governor returned at the same time he signed a tax relief bill for businesses and those who were unemployed over the past year. The new law offers tax breaks on unemployment benefits and limits rate increases on employers for unemployment insurance, but Baker recommended a few modifications to the sick leave program before he’s ready to sign off on that too.

“Providing paid sick leave is crucial to protecting our workforce and preventing the further spread of COVID-19. The House and the Senate will continue to prioritize this issue and will work together to review the amendments and return the bill back to the Governor’s desk,” two spokespeople for Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka said in a statement.

While it’s not a legislative oversight committee, the new Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission will have oversight of police officers around the state, and the law enforcement community learned this week who will sit in those nine seats.

Former Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle was tapped by Baker to chair the commission, and Baker and Healey filled in the remaining seats in accordance with the landmark reform law passed in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

Incidentally, the commission took shape the same week that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went on trial for Floyd’s murder.

You want to grow your local business and treat your employees and customers right. But sometimes it’s hard to keep your mind focused on what you know you should be doing. We understand how easy it is to fall into doubt, worry, or even mental paralysis, especially when everything around you feels wrong somehow.

But we believe in you and in your business. That’s why we’ve put together this list of tips to help you keep your mindset in the right place and stay focused on the things that matter most right now. Take a look.

1. Give Yourself a Break

If your mental intake is focused on doom, gloom, and uncertainty, your mindset isn’t going to be a healthy one. Instead, give yourself permission to step away from current news, and open your mind to healthier input. That might be anything from funny YouTube videos to a chapter of a novel you’ve been meaning to read for years. You’ll return to your tasks with a healthier mindset and renewed energy.

2. Focus on Helping Others

Thinking about others and what they need is a sure-fire way to get your mindset right. Whether it’s overtipping your food delivery person with a kind note, checking in with the cleaning staff at your business to make sure they’re okay, or driving by a child’s house to wave them a happy birthday, you’ll feel stronger when you express generosity and thoughtfulness to others.

3. Take Good Care of Your Body

It’s easy to think of your mind as something separate from your body, but times of crisis make it clear how very interconnected they are. Stop every hour to spend 30 seconds breathing deeply. Even if you can’t go to the gym, take a walk or do some light exercises at home. While a little comfort food is understandable, don’t neglect the veggies and fruits that give you the vitamins and nutrients you need to stay healthy. And allow yourself to go to bed a bit earlier or sleep in a bit later to help boost your immune system as well as your mindset.

4. Write Things Down

Some people use lists to stay in control of their world — and it’s also a good way to keep your mind focused. More broadly, it can also be helpful to write down how you’re feeling in a time when everything feels a bit off. Write down the best and worst-case scenarios to keep your mind from spinning in circles, or start a journal to chronicle what you’re going through. Often the act of writing something down on paper (or on a screen) can help you purge the associated feelings and get your mind back in gear.

When you adjust your mindset by focusing outward rather than on what seems wrong, you improve not only your own sense of focus but also your relationships with those around you. Bypassing the negative messages that sometimes seem to assault your mind to focus on the positive instead can help you face whatever comes next with hope and determination.

Article Source: State House News Service

Author: Matt Murphy

 

The Democratic sharks are circling, sensing vulnerability in a Republican governor with few teammates to protect his flank. But even if Gov. Charlie Baker looks like easy prey to some in a state like Massachusetts, Democrats on Beacon Hill are unpracticed hunters.

“We know he’s a RINO anyway,” joked Sen. Nick Collins during his resurrection of the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day breakfast last Sunday, alluding to the fact that Baker is actually more popular with Democratic voters than Republicans.

Collins brought back the breakfast after a one-year COVID-19 hiatus at a time when his own political ambitions for City Hall, still shrouded in mystery, were ripe for roasting. And while it may have been even less clear if the attempts at jokes landed in the virtual realm, the live-streamed, green-themed breakfast jump-started a week during which good-natured ribbing would quickly give way to intentional and, at times, pointed jabs.

The Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management held its second oversight hearing on Tuesday with a clear objective — challenge Baker’s decision not to rely more on local boards of health for vaccination distribution.

Even as Massachusetts has climbed the state rankings for shots administered, the choice to administer many of those shots at mass vaccination sites instead of through local clinics and municipal public health infrastructure is the hill some in the legislature have chosen to plant their flag.

Democrats accused him of throwing out the playbook right before the big game, and spending millions on private-run facilities when that money could have been used to scale up locally-run clinics.

Baker stood his ground, suggesting he is acting off the same script being used by the BIden administration and pointing out how privately operated mass vaccination sites aren’t even the largest distributors of vaccines in Massachusetts. Hospitals are.

The governor said local disaster plans weren’t developed to deliver a vaccine of limited quantity with very specific cold-storage requirements and a short shelf life. And he and Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said that while some local health agencies, like the ones invited to testify, may have been equipped to administer COVID-19 shots, hundreds of other boards of health were not and made that clear when they didn’t raise their hands to help vaccinate their own first responders or the 75+ population.

The defense didn’t sit well with Baker’s critics on the committee: “What we’re getting from you is, ‘You’re all wrong, we’re doing great, please, we don’t want to hear it anymore.’ And I find that hard to take,” said an exasperated Sen. Cindy Friedman.

For much of the hour, lawmakers monologued and Baker scribbled notes off screen. Some shots landed and others missed the mark, like when Baker had to explain that he didn’t control how many doses go to retail pharmacies.

And at the end of a long day, it was unclear if any progress had been made: “The stark differences between the testimony received demands that we dig deeper and understand better why decades of public investment in emergency preparedness have been shelved in favor of another approach, hastily constructed during a global pandemic,” Driscoll and Comerford said in a post-hearing statement.

While the theme of the hearing was to dunk on mass vaccination sites, the idea of a federally supported site, and the thousands of extra does that come with it, was one that seemed to hold some interest for Democrats.

Rep. William Driscoll appeared very curious to know when exactly the state had applied for one of these FEMA run sites, which was announced in February when the delegation sent a letter of support to the Biden administration.

On Friday, the White House and Baker announced that the newest state-run mass vaccination site at the Hynes Convention Center would be supported with an additional 6,000 doses a day from the federal government, raising the daily capacity of the site to 7,000.

The FEMA sponsorship of the Hynes was one of several good-news announcements about supply this week that also brought word of 40,000 additional doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The J&J increase prompted Baker to launch a locally-supported vaccination program to reach homebound residents.

Everyone agrees the faster the vaccine arrives and gets put into arms, the sooner the state can emerge from the year-long pandemic. That’s why Baker’s hiring of McKinsey & Co. to write a report about the “future-of-work” has generated so much interest.

But Attorney General Maura Healey’s interest in the report this week had nothing to do with her curiosity to learn what the global consulting firm recommends. Healey, who is being watched like a hawk for hints at her political future, went after Baker for hiring McKinsey after her office and others around the country reached a settlement with the firm last month for $573 million over its role in helping Purdue Pharma “turbocharge” opioid sales to turn a profit.

The “future-of-work” contract is one of many the firm holds with the state, and Healey called it “outrageous” that Massachusetts would continue to give them business. One of her opening salvos in the 2022 gubernatorial campaign? Maybe. But even a visit by the attorney general to a picket line in Worcester these days is cause for speculation.

Before Boston voters even get to 2022, they will have to choose a new mayor in the fall and it won’t be Marty Walsh … Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.

Wheeling his suitcase through Logan Airport and clutching a cup of Doughboy Donuts coffee, Walsh left Boston for Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the morning after the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination to lead the Labor Department. He officially resigned as mayor at 9 p.m. on March 22, handing the reins of the city over to Kim Janey, the former City Council president who became the first woman and Black resident of Boston to be able to call themselves mayor.

Whether Janey will seek extend her historic elevation as mayor beyond the next eight months remains to be seen, but given the current field it would appear the long-running hold on the office by Irish and Italian men will soon be broken.

Janey takes over a city where the school department was granted a waiver by Education Commissioner Jeff Riley to delay its return to in-person learning for K-8 students until April 26. Boston was one of at least 60 districts given a reprieve from the April 5 deadline to bring elementary students back to the classroom.

House Speaker Ron Mariano told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that the waiver process was important because ultimately it should be the local districts deciding when it’s safe to return to school.

The speaker has largely sided with the teachers’ unions in their dispute with Baker over classroom safety. But overall, Mariano said the governor has worked “very effectively” with the Legislature through the pandemic, and used his executive powers “extremely well” apart from some well documented “hiccups” with the vaccine rollout.

Baker even put his name this week on a game-changing climate bill that will put Massachusetts on the path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 after working with lawmakers to make small but important adjustments.

The new climate law also directs another massive 2,400-megawatt procurement of offshore wind power. And that was actually what Mariano wanted to talk to the GBCC about.

The speaker announced that the forthcoming House budget proposal would direct $10 million through the Clean Energy Center to train workers for careers in offshore wind, and he promised to pursue a “large-scale” bonding effort to secure the South Coast’s position as the regional hub of the offshore wind industry.

Mariano also said he wasn’t in any rush to return to debate over raising taxes to pay for transportation, at least not until the pandemic aftershocks subside and leaders can take stock of the MBTA and its new needs.

Besides, he said, there’s $1 billion coming to Massachusetts from the “American Rescue Plan” for public transit and $4.5 billion more in direct aid for state government that changes the calculations.

Walsh’s Dorchester successor in the House, Rep. Dan Hunt, will lead a hearing next week to dive into the pot of gold that is the latest stimulus package, and already Baker has committed $100 million to Chelsea, Everett, Randolph and Methuen where leaders have said federal funding formulas shortchanged those hard-hit cities because of their size.

House and Senate leaders have said they want to exert more control over how this newest round of stimulus gets spent, but Mariano said he agrees that those communities should be supported, and believes there may be more cities and towns deserving.

With unemployment ticking down to 7.1 percent, the House and Senate also agreed that workers unemployed over the last year are deserving of a new tax deduction on their first $10,200 in unemployment benefits.

The more expensive Senate version of the tax break was part of a bill that will limit the hit to businesses of unemployment insurance rate hikes this year and extend additional COVID-19 sick leave to Massachusetts workers.

The legislation was enacted Thursday, along with a piece of the joint rules setting up committees like the Joint Bonding Committee so that a $400 million borrowing bill to rebuild the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home can be advanced.

And while there were few objections to substance, Sen. Diana DiZoglio and Sen. John Keenan again had a few concerns with process.

“State House News knew before the members of this body knew what we were going to be doing,” said a miffed Sen. DiZoglio.

The North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce is pleased to announce that Lauren Goulet has returned to its professional staff in the position of Operations Manager. Ms. Goulet had previously served for over ten years as the Office Manager for the Chamber before leaving in 2020 for a new professional opportunity. In this new expanded role, Ms. Goulet will be responsible for day to day operations of the Chamber and its affiliate organizations, including oversite of the Chamber building, database management, grant administration, and providing support around governance and event planning.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Lauren back to our team,” said Roy Nascimento, President & CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce. “Her experience with our organization and operations will be a great benefit to our members and the region during these turbulent times.”

Ms. Goulet has deep roots in the community, growing up locally and currently residing in Westminster. She holds a B.S. in Business Management from Fitchburg State University.

Existing members or businesses interested in learning more about the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce can reach out to Lauren Goulet at 978.353.7600 ext. 222 or via email at .

The home buying process can be lengthy and at times confusing, and you’ll likely be spending a lot of time working closely with your mortgage broker. Because buying a home is one of the most significant financial decisions you’ll ever make, it’s important to make sure that you are informed every step of the way. Here are five questions that your mortgage broker wants you to ask.

Which Type of Loan Should I Get?

Hopefully you’ve spent a little bit of time researching the different types of home loans that are available, but until you know exactly what you qualify for, it’s hard to comparison shop. Your broker will evaluate things like your credit score, buying history, and the region in which you’re interested in purchasing to determine which loans products you’re eligible for.

How Do You Handle Rate Locks?

Rate locks can be a bit of a gamble, and some brokers prefer to play the odds. In some cases, you may ask the broker to lock a certain rate at a certain date, and they may tell you that the rate is locked. Some brokers may secretly delay locking the rate in hopes that rates will drop before your closing date.

If the rates take a dip, the broker can then lock the lower rate. However, if the rates rise, the broker may tell you that something was wrong with the paperwork and that it’s impossible to close your loan before the rate lock expires.

Talk to your broker about how they handle rate locks, and make sure you get a loan commitment letter from the lender to ensure that there are no unwelcome surprises down the road.

What Fees Do I Have to Pay?

The homebuying process comes with numerous hidden fees that go beyond the down payment and closing costs. For example, depending on your credit score and the current interest rates, you may have to pay one-time fees called “points” at closing. For every point you pay, your lender will decrease your interest rate by one percent. This lowers your monthly payment and can significantly reduce what you’ll pay over the life of the loan. Ask your broker if you will be required to pay any additional fees at closing.

Do I Have to Pay for Mortgage Insurance?

Generally speaking, if you are putting a down payment of less than 20 percent, you will be required to pay for mortgage insurance until your loan-to-value ratio falls below 80 percent. Mortgage insurance premiums can be rather expensive; in some places, they may cost up to $100 a month for every $100,000 borrowed. However, not all mortgages require mortgage insurance. For example, USDA and VA loans are two loans that do not require a down payment and do not require that you pay for mortgage insurance. Ask your broker whether you should expect to pay this additional cost.

What Should I Avoid Before Closing?

You’ve found your perfect home, your offer has been accepted, and your loan has been approved; nothing can cause the purchase to fall through, right? Not so fast. Any changes to your spending habits, your credit-to-debt ratio, or your employment could delay closing or even derail it entirely. Talk to your broker about how you can ensure that you are able to close on your home on time.

Throughout your home-buying process, your mortgage broker is one of your best allies. By keeping them in the loop on every decision you make and asking the right questions, you can ensure that the process goes as smoothly as possible.