Article Source: The Statehouse News Service
Article Author: Matt Murphy

AUG. 14, 2020…..Apologies to Pink Floyd, but experts agree kids do need some education. The nagging question is how best to provide it.

Learning is supposed to resume in a matter of weeks, but tension abounds between the state, districts, teachers’ unions, and parents about whether it’s safe to return to the classroom and whether remote learning is an acceptable substitute.

The state’s two major unions – the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers – want school buildings to remain shuttered, at least to start the year. But Gov. Charlie Baker said he “can’t imagine” why most kids wouldn’t be returning to school given the current status of the virus in Massachusetts.

After creeping up and ringing some alarm bells, the statewide positive test rate is back down around 1.5 percent, which is the lowest it’s been since widespread testing began.

Baker has preached local control throughout much of the pandemic, and rolled out a new rubric this week for people, including school administrators, to make decisions based on what’s happening in their own communities, not just across the state.

But he also made clear where he comes down on the question of remote versus in-person schooling. He’s had less to say about fall athletics, though his administration also warned this week that sports like football and basketball are inherently more risky than tennis.

The administration deployed another “stoplight” system to track each city and town’s progress in controlling COVID-19. The new color-coded maps of Massachusetts municipalities shade cities and towns “red,” “yellow,” or “green” based on the prevalence and spread of the coronavirus.

The colors correlate to average new daily cases reported over the previous two weeks, with “green” towns reporting fewer than four daily cases per 100,000 people, and “red” towns reporting more than eight new cases a day for every 100,000 people.

A fourth category – white – means a municipality has had fewer than five new cases reported in total over the past two weeks.

“If you’re in a green or a white community, I can’t imagine a good reason not to go back, whether it’s full-time or some sort of a hybrid, because for all intents and purposes you meet all the benchmarks that are being used across the country and across New England to make decisions about whether it’s safe to go back to school,” Baker said.

The governor said that unlike remote learning in the spring, the start of a new school year means students starting new grades with teachers they don’t know, and vice versa. Learning to read, he has said, is not a virtual exercise.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education formalized the governor’s position when it told the 305 green and yellow communities that the state expected them to prioritize in-person learning, though there’s no consequence for disobedience.

For 46 other communities, that is not their situation.

In these higher-risk communities, the state has put together an inter-agency task force to offer assistance with testing, contact tracing and enforcement of public and private gathering size limits.

The state said it will also help, if asked, with public awareness campaigns to remind people to stay focused.

“We’re making progress and have made progress in our fight, but we’re seeing the effects of too many people letting their guard down and simply relaxing, get in the way of some of our continued move forward,” Baker said.

Eleven municipalities have been put in the most at-risk “red” category, including Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Revere, Fall River, Granby, Holyoke, Hull, Lawrence, Saugus and Salem. Those cities and towns, Education Commissioner Jeff Riley said, should begin the year with remote instruction.

Solving the school conundrum is not easy, but there was no controversy over what should happen with the Democratic National Convention next week, which was supposed to take place in Milwaukee before the pandemic.

The DNC will be fully remote. Not even Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will be there in person.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren scored a Wednesday night speaking role at the virtual DNC, but it was not the time slot many of her supporters may have been hoping to see. Biden this week announced California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, making the daughter of Indian and Jamaican parents the first Black woman to run on a major party presidential ticket. She will give her acceptance speech on Wednesday night.

In picking Harris, Biden passed over Warren who was on the list of women the former vice president vetted for the job. But given the pressure on Biden to pick a woman of color, the outcome was not unexpected.

“I don’t worry about where she ends up or her influence on what happens during a Biden presidency. She’s already proven they work together well, and she’ll be a number one player wherever she is,” said Gus Bickford, chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

Some have Warren ticketed for the Treasury if Biden can topple President Donald Trump in November, while others think she could be more powerful in the Senate, especially if Democrats can regain control of that body.

Regardless, there were probably more than a few eager Democrats who had to put their ambitions on ice, at least for now, as they wait to see whether a Senate seat opens up before 2024.

The competition for the state’s other Senate seat heated up, with U.S. Sen. Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III squaring off in their second-to-last debate before the Sept. 1 primary.

Polling has shown the race to be tight, and after refusing to sign a pledge to keep outside money out of their race, Markey is now hammering Kennedy over the support he is receiving from a new super PAC that may, or may not, be funded in part by Kennedy’s father, who himself was a congressman.

Markey has also benefited from super PAC spending, which Kennedy’s team is all too willing to point out.

Things may be getting uglier in the Senate race, but not as ugly as they got this week out west where UMass College Democrats accused Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who is gay, of inappropriately contacting students through social media channels. Morse denies taking advantage of his position as a UMass lecturer to meet men, but says he won’t apologize for using dating apps in his personal life.

Some LGBTQ lawmakers like Sen. Julian Cyr have come to Morse’s defense, suggesting a double standard in the face of unsubstantiated claims. Some reports have even suggested it may have been an orchestrated attempt to hurt Morse’s campaign against U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who has denied any involvement.

The truth may be a bit blurred, but it’s clear it’s crunch time for a lot of campaigns as early voting is underway.

Dave Cavell, the one-time speechwriter in the Obama White House who advised Attorney General Maura Healey before leaving her office to run for Congress, saw his time running out.

Cavell suspended his campaign in the Fourth Congressional District, and endorsed Jesse Mermell. In doing so, Cavell not only talked up Mermell’s progressive credentials, but said he it was a strategic move to avoid further splintering the vote in what’s now an eight-person field in a way that could make it easier for Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss to win.

Auchincloss has become the crowded field’s favorite punching bag after the Boston Globe’s editorial board endorsed his campaign, despite some controversial comments he’s made in the past on social media.

For instance, his rivals view his free-speech comparison between the Confederate Flag and Black Lives Matter banners as disqualifying. He has since called those comments a mistake.

Cavell, however, was only the tip of the iceberg, because after he exited the race his former, and much better known, boss Healey also endorsed Mermell.

The attention on the campaign trail this week is what August is usually like in an even-numbered year, even though this is no usual year and the Legislature extended its session beyond the traditional July 31 recess date.

Legislative leaders suggested they would call lawmakers back into session this month if and when any of the conference committees negotiating policing, climate change, telehealth, economic development and transportation spending bills reached a deal.

So far, that hasn’t happened.

Also this past week:

• • The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Vacationland voters should not be able to decide the fate of a transmission line needed to bring Canadian hydropower from Quebec to Massachusetts.

 

• • Rep. Shawn Dooley, a Norfolk Republican, used Facebook as a platform to rail against “King Charles” and what he sees as the governor’s trampling of the Constitution through executive orders aimed at controlling COVID-19, namely the conditions placed on travelers visiting from places like Rhode Island.

 

• Supreme Judicial Court Justice Barbara Lenk decided to postpone her planned retirement from August to December when she actually bumps up against the mandatory retirement age of 70, giving Baker more time to seek out qualified, and diverse, applicants for his sixth nomination to the top court.

STORY OF THE WEEK: To Zoom or not to Zoom, that is the superintendent’s question.

SONG OF THE WEEK: No matter how students return this fall, they can always be true to their school

 

Article Source: The Statehouse News Service
Article Author: Matt Murphy

AUG. 7, 2020…..As the summer heated up and infection rates went down, Massachusetts got footloose before it was COVID free. And now the state could be on the verge of paying for it.

Gov. Charlie Baker, in his most scolding tone yet, rolled back outdoor gathering size limits from 100 people to 50, and said he was giving state and local police the authority to enforce those limits on public and private property. Indoors limits will remain at 25.

“Hugs, handshakes, high-fives, dancing, who knows?” Baker said about what’s been going on at these backyard parties and events that the governor blames for an uptick in COVID-19 cases and a rise in the state’s positive test rate to 2.1 percent.

The virus might not be out of the barn yet, but it’s getting close to the door. And Baker said people have no one to blame but themselves for getting lax about the distancing and mask-wearing precautions they took seriously for months in order to be able to leave their homes this summer.

“The biggest issue we have is people who are familiar with people being familiar with them, in big groups,” Baker said.

That’s not the only problem though. The governor said he’s not ready, as some have suggested he should be, to step back a phase in the reopening schedule. But he said bars “masquerading” as restaurants by selling potato chips and pretzels in order to open need to stop what they’re doing.

The state getting serious about enforcement is all so Massachusetts can avoid a repeat of this spring and becoming the next kid in the New England neighborhood to not get invited to the pool party. That distinction went this week to Rhode Island, where Gov. Gina Raimondo is battling her state’s own resurgence because of too much partying.

The Ocean State found itself added to the quarantine lists of not just Massachusetts, but also states like New York and New Jersey who want Rhode Islanders to quarantine if they leave their waterfront enclave.

This precursor to a fall resurgence couldn’t come at a worse time as schools are finalizing their plans to bring students back to classrooms and campuses around the state, or not. Business confidence also slipped in July, according to Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and enhanced unemployment benefits from the federal government have expired, eliminating a safety net as the recovery appears to be slowing.

UMass Amherst reversed its plans to welcome students back to campus this month even if all their classes were going to be taught online, and some districts like Somerville are ignoring the administration’s pleas to at least give in-person learning a chance.

The Legislature has employed a hydrid model of in-person and remote participation during the pandemic, but in what was supposed to be the first full week of a five-month recess there wasn’t much of either going on.

Last week, the House and Senate made sure to give their negotiators every second available before the faux midnight deadline to strike a deal on police reform, transportation spending, telehealth or economic development. They did this knowing they had already extended the session, giving themselves ample more time.

Seven days later and the Legislature is in the same place it was last Friday night – waiting.

“We will let the conferees do their magic and hopefully get something done and pass it,” Senate President Karen Spilka said at the start of the week. “If it’s done next week, two weeks, that’s when we will come back to do it.”

Instead of shrinking, the number of conference committees actually grew with a fifth piece of legislation dealing with climate change moving into talks between the branches.

Sen. Michael Barrett and Rep. Thomas Golden, the co-chair of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, are leading those talks, with support from Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem, Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, House Minority Leader Brad Jones and Sen. Patrick O’Connor.

It’s the same group that negotiated a significant renewable energy bill two years ago, minus Sen. Marc Pacheco, who still chairs the Senate’s Global Warming Committee, but has fallen out of the new leadership hierarchy and was replaced by Creem.

Instead, Pacheco was relegated last week to cheering the House on from the sidelines of Twitter as that branch worked through and passed its version of the net-zero emissions bill that is now in final negotiations.

The administration this week also did its part for global warming by rolling out a new clean peak standard that aims to encourage a reliance on renewable power sources to meet energy demand during peak hours, instead of falling back on dirtier fossil fuels like oil.

Even though negotiations this week didn’t yield any deals, those talks have to be going better than the discussions between Congressional Democrats and the White House over a new COVID-19 relief package.

For starters, they’re still going on, which can no longer be assured in Washington. But Democrats and Republicans can’t get on the same page for an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits or the $500 billion in unrestricted relief money governors are requesting.

The House passed a total package of $3 trillion already, while Republican leaders would reportedly like to get that down to $1 trillion. With the state budget’s outlook riding in part on relief funds, the impasse makes Beacon Hill look somewhat prescient in pushing off its budgeting decisions for longer than just August.

Baker finally put his signature on a three-month, $16.5 billion interim budget that leaders say will carry state government through October, but the governor rejected an Oct. 31 sunset on the authorization, and said the Legislature’s attempts to impose minimum spending thresholds stepped on his toes at a time when he needed flexibility to manage through a pandemic and fiscal crisis.

The bill sought to restrict Baker from spending less on any line item than either the fiscal 2020 budget or what the governor proposed in January in his House 2 budget.

Leaders, however, have been silent since Baker sent that proposal back with an amendment in which he pledged to report to them if he finds ways to accomplish the same goals while spending less.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Testing the limits of reopening

SONG OF THE WEEK: We were given a little rope, but did we do too much?

Article Source: The Statehouse News Service
Article Author: Matt Murphy

JULY 31, 2020…..On Beacon Hill, rules are made to be broken, and deadlines set to be missed.

But even by the Legislature’s loose standards, the decision this week to suspend a 25-year-old edict that otherwise would have required the House and Senate to finish their business by Friday at midnight was notable.

Facing backlash in 1995 for voting themselves a raise and passing a capital gains tax cut during a lame-duck session the year before, the Legislature adopted a rule requiring it to wrap up formal legislative business by July 31 in election years.

And the bright line has been relatively sacrosanct ever since.

But in this year of COVID-19, all bets are off — including, maybe, bets on professional sports. But we’ll get to that later.

The House vote on Wednesday to scrap Joint Rule 12A and allow the Legislature to continue meeting for the rest of the year in formal sessions took a lot of the air out of the normally pressure packed final week of session, when frantic sometimes only begins to describe the feeling in the halls.

Nevertheless, both the House and Senate seemed to proceed at pace, determined to still get done as much of what they had pushed off to the last minute as possible. Though it wasn’t in the order that the Senate eventually adopted Thursday night, Senate President Karen Spilka hinted that she may seek to follow more informal guidelines for what is in order for post-July 31 sessions: a fiscal 2021 budget, conference committee reports, and any unforeseen emergency legislation tied to the pandemic.

The extension of the session was actually one of the top priorities of a group of Black staffers at the State House who wrote to Democratic leadership requesting more workplace support for employees of color in the Legislature, better recruitment, and the prioritization of racial justice impacts of bills under consideration.

The letter and organizers of the effort spoke to how Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) staffers have felt marginalized on Beacon Hill and subjected to racism in the workplace, and Spilka and DeLeo’s office both said they would meet with the group of about three dozen.

So what does it mean to extend the session?

Well, for starters, it means that there won’t be a repeat of two years ago when talks between the House and Senate over health care legislation collapsed at the eleventh hour on July 31. That could still happen, for any bill, but not until January.

It also means the Legislature has seized back a modicum of power from Gov. Charlie Baker and opened the door to the possibility of back-and-forth with the administration. A veto from the governor would no longer doom a bill because the Legislature couldn’t vote to override. And similarly, if Baker had ideas to amend, for example, the policing bill, there is now time to work through those issues.

But it also means no issue is truly dead for the year, including possible tax hikes that could surface before the election, or even after the Nov. 3 election during a lame-duck session.

Months after Spilka said she was “not certain now is the time to be talking about taxes,” Sen. Adam Hinds acknowledged this week that the Senate is indeed talking about taxes.

“We have reengaged the Senate revenue working group with a new mandate to consider the current reality and to think through a plan to meet potential challenges, depending on federal action and where we stand with the economic recovery and where the pandemic is,” Hinds said.

Don’t think that didn’t go unnoticed by House leaders, who chafed at the way Spilka dismissed this time as not right to consider the new taxes and fees to invest in transportation after House lawmakers took that vote in an election year, but before the pandemic hit.

But speaking of that elusive budget and what will be needed to balance it, Democratic leaders bought themselves some time by essentially seeing Gov. Charlie Baker’s $5.15 billion interim budget for August, and raising him enough cash to cover September and October as well.

Rather than going month-to-month, the Legislature passed a $16.5 billion interim budget that will cover government payroll and services through Oct. 31.

The move, which Baker said he would sign before appropriations run out on Saturday, gives budget officials flexibility to wait to see if Congress comes to the rescue of drowning states with a relief package that could dent or eliminate a looming budget problem expected to be in the billions of dollars.

Even though they can’t predict the pace of the economic recovery, or its slide backward, Baker and the Legislature also announced an agreement this week to level fund local government and school aid in fiscal 2021 (plus $107 million for inflation and other factors).

That agreement will allow cities and towns to better plan their own spending as they think about reopening schools in the fall.

Baker, however, was among the elected officials from Boston to Cape Cod warning that if Bay Staters don’t turn the music down and stop partying so hard this summer, there may not be a reopening of schools or any other businesses this fall. COVID-19 case numbers and the positive test rate have started to tick up ever so slightly, but enough to sound alarm bells.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo came right out and said it, as she tightened her state’s gathering size limits: “We’re partying too much,” she said.

Baker wasn’t as direct, but the sentiment was there as he said large parties causing potential “clusters” of infections were forcing his administration to think about its guidance for indoor and outdoor gatherings.

“The bigger issue is honestly the behavior generally at those, which is not socially distant, no masks and in some respects a lack of respect for how this virus works and how it moves from person to person,” Baker said Thursday.

A day later, the administration enlisted the help of Wally the Green Monster to help launch a #MaskUpMA social media campaign to warn against growing complacency. If Wally could also learn how to throw a curveball for strike, that might also help save the summer.

So if Spilka can be taken at her word that she’s not planning to slip, say, an immigration bill onto the fall agenda, what might get done this session?

In addition to a budget, Democrats and Gov. Baker all want to see a police licensing bill with limits on the use of force signed into law.

Negotiations are also underway, or soon to be underway, over a telemedicine bill, a climate action bill to set a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 and an economic development bill that may or may not legalize sports betting.

Both the House and Senate padded the job stimulus bill with Gov. Baker’s “Housing Choices” zoning reform, but only the House included an expansion of gambling in Massachusetts to seek revenues from bets on professional and college sports.

The bill would put Massachusetts in the company of 22 other states with sports betting, but the House version likely would make the state the first to include a sweetener for team owners by giving a small percentage of the profits to the owner of the venue in Massachusetts where a game or match gets played.

The Senate left sports betting out of its jobs bill, and Senate leaders, including Economic Development Committee Co-Chair Sen. Eric Lesser, had plenty to say about wanting to take up sports betting, perhaps as a standalone bill, and the need to thoroughly study the issue.

But it all sounded a lot like, “Not going to happen this year, sorry.”

The other bills in conference, and which Baker had said repeatedly he’d like to sign before the year is over, include long-term borrowing bills with billions of dollars for transportation and information technology, including support funding for remote learning.

If all this wasn’t enough, Baker took a timeout during his press conference in Andover on the campus of Pfizer, where a potential COVID-19 vaccine is being developed, to warn against planting mysterious seeds that have been arriving in the mail from foreign countries.

“Locusts? What’s next?” Baker muttered.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Keeping the party going on Beacon Hill.

SONG OF THE WEEK: Even if you think you can’t stop partying, Gov. Baker says you should try. Or at least wear a mask.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chamber and its economic development arm, the North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation (NCMDC), have launched an Economic Recovery Fund to provide loans to eligible small businesses that have been negatively impacted. The idea for this new fund came from several financial institutions in the region that approached the Chamber with this concept of a recovery fund supported by financial institutions and other prominent businesses in the region.

Berkshire Bank, Fidelity Bank and Digital Federal Credit Union were the founding sponsors of this fund and have each contributed $100,000 to help capitalize the recovery effort. In addition, the NCMDC contributed $100,000 of its own money to the new fund. Workers’ Credit Union and bankHometown have also signed on to support the initiative with contributions of $10,000 and $5,000 respectively.

In addition, the NCMDC also secured a $500,000 loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration to bolster its micro-lending program and expand its lending efforts to support small businesses in the region. The loan must be repaid over a ten-year period. Grant dollars received from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were also used to help support the SBA’s requirement for matching funds for a Loan Loss Reserve.

“Access to capital is a major issue for many small businesses, who are struggling to survive amid the unprecedented economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 public health crisis,” said Roy M. Nascimento, President & CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce. “This infusion of much needed capital will help shore up our lending capacity and allow us to continue to support small businesses who need financing but are unable to secure it through traditional means.”

For more information or to inquire about a loan, please contact Sandie Cataldo, Economic Development Manager at 978.353.7600 or email scataldo@northcentralmass.com. Businesses or organizations interested in supporting the new Economic Recovery Fund should contact Roy Nascimento, President & CEO at rnascimento@northcentralmass.com

This article is from the latest Chamber Report