Pols on Beacon Hill face packed agenda

The first year of the Legislature’s current two-year session was deeply unproductive, unless you count passing the annual budget (lawmakers’ most basic responsibility) and the House and Senate voting themselves a big pay raise. Lawmakers banned the use of bump stocks, which amp up a gun’s firepower, after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, but that measure really invited no controversy.

The truly hard stuff just didn’t get finished. And when lawmakers return this month for year two of the session, they’ll have a simmering sexual harassment scandal to distract them — and a shorter window in which to finish the rest of their business (formal sessions end July 31). The usual habit of wasting the first few weeks or months of the new year is simply not an option.

• The House and Senate need to produce a final criminal justice reform bill, for starters, after passing competing versions that address policies from arrest through sentencing through post-conviction. The Senate bill is weak, favoring the offender at every turn and largely ignoring crime victims or the broader issue of public safety. The House bill is better, but still raises concerns, for example, about the ease with which criminals could have their records expunged.

At a minimum, the House should stand its ground on the age of criminal majority, leaving it at 18. And if the two branches are indeed going to give thieves a raise, by increasing the threshold for a felony larceny conviction, better the House’s $750 than the Senate’s ludicrous $1,500. The final version of the legislation should also leave out the Senate’s effort to micromanage the legality of sexual relationships among young teens.

• While they’re putting the finishing touches on the crime bill, lawmakers also need to take up Gov. Charlie Baker’s opioid bill, a follow-up to 2016 legislation he signed into law, aimed at further addressing the rampant addiction and overdose problem currently plaguing Massachusetts.

And when they get through those big-ticket items, there are other important matters.

• For too long the House and Senate have ignored Baker’s proposal to cap the amount of sick leave that state employees can hoard and cash in when they leave state service. That needs to change.

• There is also a bill pending that would bar a sitting lawmaker who wins a local mayoral election from serving in both posts simultaneously. With Paul Heroux’s decision to quit the House the immediacy of this measure has waned, but it has come up before (William Lantigua) and it will come up again. This is not a tough vote, and it ought to pass easily.

• Lawmakers also need to keep a careful eye on the rollout of legalized marijuana. The new Cannabis Control Commission is in charge of regulating the sale and use of legal pot, but there remain legal loose ends — in particular, the need to devise a system for measuring marijuana intoxication that will eventually require legislative attention.

• And of course there’s the budget.

In other words, Massachusetts lawmakers have a very big hill to climb to prove they’re worthy of the fat pay raises they’ve been banking for a year now. It’s time to get to work.