Life gets turned on its head by virus
Closings, cancellations pile up with no end in sight
The creep toward the total cancellation of daily life as residents knew it just a few weeks ago continued unabated this week as bars, restaurants, daycare centers and elections were just a few of the things to shut down or be put on shutdown notice.
In a week that felt like both a month and one long day, the state’s response to the spread of coronavirus ratcheted up as Gov. Charlie Baker and Congress began to take steps to support the businesses and institutions crippled by the virus/ government-induced economic slowdown, and the National Guard was called into duty.
Testing for the virus also ramped up, to some degree, but the number of people screened for COVID-19 still fell way short of the number of people some scientists believe could already be infected.
The official tally as of Friday afternoon was 413 confirmed cases, up from 123 a week ago. The state also reported its first death from COVID-19 illness, a Suffolk County man in his 80s with underlying health conditions that put him at higher risk for the illness.
Baker set a goal of having as many as 3,500 samples a day tested by next week, with state lab work aided by efforts ramping up at private labs in Massachusetts. The governor toured one of the labs — Quest Diagnostics — on Thursday, the same day the first drive-through testing center in Shrewsbury opened in a CVS parking lot.
Massachusetts nurses, however, continue to warn that personal protective equipment is at a premium, and Baker told President Donald Trump in a call with governors that he had been outbid by the feds three times trying to purchase gear, despite the White House telling states not to rely on the national stockpile alone.
Meanwhile, rumors of forthcoming shelter-inplace orders could not be squashed, even after Baker repeatedly said that option is not supported at this time by the facts on the ground.
“Massachusetts is not planning any forced shelter-in-place order,” Baker said.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh made a televised speech Tuesday evening, trying to address the fears of the city, without ordering people to stay home. And Baker on Friday reiterated that he had no plans to order all people to hunker down at home, despite what some other states might be doing.
Residents in and around Boston are probably more familiar with the idea of sheltering in place than most in the country, having followed such an order during the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013.
But while it may seem to be the final card to play for leaders like Baker and Walsh, in New York and California the governors made that call.
Ordered to or not, many, many Bay Staters were staying home this week, perfecting the art of video conferencing and learning just how spotty their home internet can be.
Not the Legislature, though. Both branches met four of five days this week with small ensembles of lawmakers on hand to conduct the people’s business, collaborating to pass a bill to waive the one-week waiting period for unemployment benefits to kick in. On Monday alone, 19,884 unemployment claims were filed with the state.
According to the Council of State Governments, the Great and General Court is one of just 17 legislatures currently still meeting, and showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka have said their focus has shifted almost entirely to coronavirus response, although their plans for addressing the emergency and its ramifications are still not known.
The committees that received Baker’s bills regarding budgeting flexibility for cities and towns and the creation of a Sept. 14 holiday for the delayed running of the Boston Marathon have been soliciting feedback in writing since public hearings are no longer an option.
DeLeo has also asked all committee chairs to hold a conference call with their members to gather ideas of how the House should be responding to the COVID19 outbreak. House leadership and the House’s coronavirus task force will meet with chairs next week.
There is, however, the little matter of dealing with the state’s fiscal 2021 budget. The fiscal year starts on July 1, and the House was supposed to produce and debate its version of Gov. Charlie Baker’s $44.6 billion spending bill late next month.
That no longer seems possible.
“We’re not ready to make a determination, but it would seem highly unlikely that we would have a budget in April at this point in time,” House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz told the News Service this week.
Michlewitz has begun discussing options with Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan and Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues, including having the governor file a temporary budget to carry state government beyond the start of the new fiscal year, or reaching a pre-arranged deal that could be sold to members and obviate the need for extended floor debate.
Economists are now predicting with near certainty that a recession is on the horizon, and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said the current state budget, with just one quarter remaining, could be short as much as $500 million in revenue with tax collections expected to plummet as commerce grinds to a halt.
Baker on Monday said he and legislative leaders had agreed to create a $10 million small business loan fund for businesses with 50 or fewer employees who have had their bottom lines impacted by coronavirus.
The fund, to be managed by the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation, made up to $75,000 available to companies hurting due to coronavirus, and the MGCC is reviewing the applications it received and plans to disperse funding.
But less than three days after the fund was announced, the MGCC stopped taking applications at 12:30 p.m. Thursday as the U.S. Small Business Administration granted the state’s disaster request and opened its economic injury disaster loan program to Massachusetts businesses.
Small businesses, private non-profits and agricultural venturers of any size can apply for federal loans of up to $2 million. And Baker said that because the state fund had been “oversubscribed,” it would get an infusion of $10 million more next week from MassDevelopment.
Baker also said Friday he was accelerating payments through MassHealth for safety net providers by $200 million to keep them afloat after Congress also passed and Trump signed a relief bill that the state’s Congressional delegation said would result in $1.08 billion in new Medicaid reimbursements, which would help to cover expected growth in enrollment.
And somehow, amidst all this turmoil, the presidential election continued with Arizona, Florida and Illinois all voting, while Ohio postponed its primaries until June 2.
Previously one of the biggest stories on the political beat, presidential politics has taken a backseat to pandemic planning.
But that didn’t stop former Vice President Joe Biden from racking up three more wins in his march toward the Democratic nomination, and Trump mathematically clinched his party’s nod, prompting Massachusetts’s last remaining candidate Bill Weld to drop out of the race.
The beat will not go on for voters in Plymouth, or Taunton or Lunenburg or Westfield.
Spilka and DeLeo both announced Thursday that they were in negotiations to postpone the four special elections set for March 31 to fill two House seats and two Senate seats.
The Democratic leaders are hoping to finalize that plan by Monday when they will also take up legislation to give cities and towns flexibility to postpone municipal elections this spring, and to give voters additional absentee and mail-in voting options for those who don’t want to turn out to the polls.
Lawmakers, however, do not seem ready to address signature gathering deadlines for candidates to qualify for primary and general elections in the late summer and fall, even as Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns about sending volunteers into the field to collect signatures.
But as with everything learned and announced this week, it’s all subject to change.
STORY OF THE WEEK: … and for the foreseeable future, coronavirus.