Time running out on state proposals
Time always operates in a strange way inside the halls of the Massachusetts State House, and the oddity only ramps up as the session’s end approaches. Just look at the contrast of the past week.
In the span of about four days, top House Democrats lamented the landmark U. S. Supreme Court decision striking down the national right to an abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade and rolled out, deliberated and approved a lengthy response, sending to the Senate a bill that if completed would rank among the Legislature’s most significant accomplishments in the 2021-2022 session.
And when the branches gaveled out Thursday for a four- day weekend, they also stifled any lingering chance of getting a finalized state budget to Gov. Charlie Baker before fiscal 2023 started Friday, once again missing a July 1 deadline that’s the same every year and comes after five months of budget hearings and deliberations.
Legislative leaders have rarely met a deadline they could not circumvent, postpone or ignore. The approaching July 31 end of formal business for the two-year session is different, though, and success or failure for most top proposals will hinge on what happens by that date.
Most of the measures in the House’s Dobbs v. Jackson-prompted bill, including new legal protections for providers and patients of reproductive and gender-affirming care in Massachusetts, had not been top of mind since the start of the 2021-2022 session.
The final vote — 136-17, with more Republicans in favor than opposed — was not close, but the proceedings themselves were some of the most vocal in recent
memory. More than 30 representatives, most of them women, spoke about the bill or the baker’s dozen amendments filed.
Underscoring the stakes at play in the matter, Reps. Carol Doherty, D-taunton, Mindy Domb, D-amherst, Meghan Kilcoyne, D-northboro, and Vanna Howard, D-lowell, each delivered their first- ever floor speeches, back to back to back to back.
“Last week’s Supreme Court decision tries to turn back the clock, but we won’t go back,” Domb told her colleagues. “Our constituents are angry and worried for themselves, their children, their neighbors and our country. They understand what’s at stake. Make no mistake: eliminating abortion care and access is the beginning of efforts to deny all of us the ability to make our most personal and private decisions — whether to access and use birth control, who and how we choose to love and to marry, the right to seek and obtain health care that serves our and our children’s authentic selves without fear of criminal prosecution.”
Eyes turn now to the Senate, which approved similar legal protections and emergency contraception access measures via a bud
get amendment. It’s not clear when the chamber would take up the standalone House-approved bill, but it seems likely senators will want another chance to champion the proposal and stamp their mark.
In the meantime, Senate Democrats had their sights set on other priorities, which have not yet surfaced for votes in the House but could do so at any time in July or languish until the final bang of the gavel that will send the Legislature into a lower-stakes, informal-only mode until January.
The Senate on Thursday approved an HIV prevention medication access bill, sought to strike archaic language and sodomy bans from state law, and secured passage of two criminal justice reform bills that Republicans had delayed for a week using parliamentary tactics at their disposal.
And in the middle of that process, a trio of top Democrats broke off to paint a broad-strokes outline of an early education and care bill they will bring to the Senate floor next week.
The proposal would make more families eligible for taxpayer-funded child care aid, create new loan forgiveness and scholarship programs for early education workers, call for a new state- designed “career ladder” with compensation tiers, and make permanent grants for providers who offer access to subsidized families.
There’s a chance, though, that the Senate’s upcoming vote will be not much more than an exercise in laying a foundation for action next year or the year after that. The bill was outlined without any cost estimate, or timeline, and was received with some apprehension in the House.
House Speaker Ronald Mariano has already suggested bringing forward an early education and care package in the 2023-2024 session based on the feedback of business leaders. His top education deputy, Rep. Alice Peisch, D-wellesley, cautioned this week about a “very challenging timeline” for her chamber to receive the amended Senate bill, approve a counterproposal, and get a final version on the books by the end of July.
The list of bills in play as Beacon Hill enters the home stretch seems to grow faster than it shrinks. Reforms to rein in the health insurer practice known as “step therapy” landed in that group this week with House approval of a bill; the Senate has not tackled the topic this session, but did so in 2020 and will likely be inclined to return to the issue now.
Many of Baker’s top legislative goals for his final year in office are still bottled up, including a previously stalled measure to change how courts detain potentially dangerous suspects and a tax relief package that Democrats continue to keep under wraps behind the committee curtain. The outgoing Republican indicated he might add to that pile, too, offering a vague-but- eye- catching hint that he could propose “something between now and the end of the year” to support the MBTA’S operating budget, which is set to careen off a fiscal cliff in the face of sagging fare revenues and expiring federal assistance.
Massachusetts stepped into another spending cycle Friday as the calendar flipped to July 1 and fiscal year 2023 began. As has become the norm, though, fiscal new year celebrations will be muted for budget wonks because lawmakers again failed to produce an on-time annual spending plan.
An interim budget to which lawmakers and Baker agreed will keep government operations funded through the end of July, relieving any pressure HouseSenate negotiators might have felt to find common ground before Friday.
The governor has been content to let Democrats take their time, opting against using the bully pulpit to exert pressure and criticize them for failing to meet deadlines.
Massachusetts stands among limited company: Pennsylvania and Michigan are the only other states that have yet to finalize fiscal 2023 budgets, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. The latter, whose fiscal year does not start until Oct. 1, appears close with an agreement announced between legislative leaders and the governor.
“I mean I don’t, you know, I think that people are talking,” said Sen. Cindy Friedman, D-arlington, one of three senators tasked with negotiating a final budget alongside three representatives, when asked Wednesday if a deal might emerge by the end of the week.
Lurking inside State House offices amid the rush to the finish line is a growing sense of dissatisfaction among the people who make the whole operation tick: the legislative staffers.
Three months after Senate aides asked Senate President Karen Spilka to voluntarily recognize their union, legislative aides and organized labor leaders convened outside the State House to ramp up the pressure.
They came prepared with lists in hand naming each of the 13 senators and eight representatives who have announced support for the union, a tally that indicates the vast majority of sitting lawmakers have remained silent about a situation they may need to address with legislative action.
“It’s infuriating to see so many of them sitting on the sidelines, knowing who the hell runs their office,” said IBEW Second District International Vice President Michael Monahan. “And for them to just sit there and be neutral on it, it’s gross, to be quite honest with you.”
LOOSE ENDS: Seven Massachusetts police officers will not be recertified, and more than 2,000 others remain in limbo following extensions in the first round of recertifications required under a 2020 reform law … The Baker administration committed to slashing statewide greenhouse gas emissions 33% below 1990 levels by 2025 and 50% by 2030 with new targets … Boston Public Schools gained a new superintendent ( Mary Skipper) and avoided receivership after striking a deal with state education officials on a three-year improvement plan … Lawmakers negotiating a compromise mental health access bill kicked off their talks as another conference committee entered the fray to finalize a $5 billion general government bond bill and prison construction moratorium. SONG OF THE WEEK » Time, that bedeviling force, keeps on slipping into the future no matter how much more of it legislators wish they had.