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Weekly round-up: Growth industries
Goodby blue laws, hello green laws
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Cha-ching!, indeed.
It was goodbye blue laws, hello green laws in Massachusetts this week as the slots in Plainville began their round-the-clock raking in of greenbacks while the state's first medical pot shops started dispensing green buds.
Wednesday, the day those new businesses opened to the general public, was also an occasion for a criminal sentence that dates back long before any existing legal code.
Following the jury's death verdict in a trial, federal Judge George O'Toole handed down the death penalty to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the murder and mayhem he caused with his deceased older brother at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
In his first public commentary on the murders since his scrawlings inside a Watertown resident's boat, Tsarnaev acknowledged responsibility, said he had heard of victims' suffering through trial testimony and said he was "sorry."
Later in the week, the Supreme Judicial Court, the same governmental body that years ago found capital punishment unconstitutional, determined parents have a right to spank their children. And on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nationwide that the state supreme court established in Massachusetts in a landmark 2003 ruling.
"Today is a momentous day in history. The Supreme Court has confirmed what we have known in Massachusetts for many years - you should be able to marry the person that you love," Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, the first openly gay leader of the Senate, said in a statement.
The death penalty might not sit well with the majority of state residents, but state voters have gone on the record supporting the state's newest industries. Bay State voters endorsed medical weed in 2012 and rejected an attempted repeal of the gambling law in 2014.
Everybody likes a winner, so gamblers flocked to a harness horseracing track near the Rhode Island border to take their money for a ride on the state's first legal slot machines.
A crowd also gathered at the state's oldest medical marijuana dispensary, which opened Wednesday in Salem.
Attorney Barry Levine told NECN's Alison King he was glad to spend $372 for an ounce of marijuana to help with his chronic nausea and predicted that consumers might soon be able to do the same just to get high for their own reasons.
"What government is going to find out is that they're going to generate so much tax money on this that it's going to be a panacea for everything that ails it," Levine said.
While the state might now welcome regulated cannabis, baggies of heroin continue their march of overdose death through the state.
Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey announced their intention on Monday to address the scourge of opioid addiction as a public health crisis. For that, state government is marshalling new treatment beds rather than prison cells to handle those afflicted.
"We are not going to arrest or incarcerate our way out of this. It is a disease," said Healey, who does plan to go after those responsible for pill mills.
Cognizant of the financial ruin that can follow a gambling addiction, the state's chief law enforcement officer is also no fan of casinos.
Healey is soon to have more targets for her education and enforcement initiatives at state gambling facilities.
New Bedford on Tuesday endorsed a plan to replace a polluted defunct power plant with a harbor-side casino.
That pits the Whaling City against the City of Champions in a contest for the lone remaining commercial casino license that will be judged by the Gaming Commission.
With two other casinos already licensed in Massachusetts, and with Rhode Island and Connecticut making noises about expanding their own established casino gambling facilities, whoever wins the southeastern Massachusetts license will hardly be the only game in town.
"Cha-ching" was former Senate President Therese Murray's onomatopoeic explanation for the Legislature's foray into gambling legalization. That was uttered and gestured in the economic doldrums of 2009 when the state was hungry for any gust of new state revenues. Readers might have noticed the sales tax also notched up that year.
Tax dollars flow into the money room, or what's known in state budgeting parlance as the House and Senate committees on Ways and Means whose chairwoman and chairman are currently leading closed-door negotiations on how fiscal 2016's $38.1 billion should be spent. The Senate hopes those discussions also include how taxes are raised.
Gov. Baker has not yet dared to poke or prod the solemn and secret business of the budget conference committee.
He's a moderate Republican and a policy omnivore.
Leave for others the all-you-can-eat buffet or the Caesar wrap, when Gov. Baker sits down at the legislative table, he often calls for the "combo platter."
A go-to metaphor for the governor, the "combo platter" signifies the variety of approaches that a 200-person two-branch legislature will collectively assemble to address the state's meatier issues.
"Look, I've said from the very beginning of this whole process that budgets are a combo platter and we'll see what happens coming out the other end," Baker said Monday, alluding, to one degree or another, to the messiness of lawmaking.
Baker signaled his combo platter expectation Monday abreast House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Stanley Rosenberg after their weekly meeting. Baker previously anticipated legislation addressing the state's high energy costs and the goal of reducing carbon output would result in a "combo platter."
Baker's a la carte asks of the Legislature - to plug a budget hole, initiate an early retirement program and replenish dollars to deficient state accounts - have returned from the legislative kitchen mostly as they appeared on Baker's menu.
With the MBTA overhaul bill, however, there may be a disagreement between Chez DeLeo and Chez Rosenberg. After all of the Democrats on the Transportation Committee moved a bill to overhaul the T without the support of any Republicans, DeLeo indicated he might spice it up.
Originally filed by Baker, the T reform bill passed by the joint committee omitted the governor's language giving the T free rein to privatize service and language providing an additional check on labor agreements with the transit agency.
Gov. Baker: Uh, waiter...
The task of seasoning the MBTA bill before it reaches the House floor has fallen to Sous Chef Brian Dempsey, who is also leading House budget negotiations with Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Karen Spilka.
Thanks to a $5.5 billion interim budget, state spending will continue through July 31 no matter how things go between Dempsey and Spilka as they approach the July 1 fiscal new year. On Wednesday DeLeo bragged about his six-year "streak" of enacting budgets byJuly 1, a streak that gives the state's chief executive 10 days in early July to decide whether to make use of the veto pen on any of it.
After emerging from his meeting with DeLeo and Rosenberg on Monday, Baker said the legislative leaders hadn't told him whether to set aside July 4.
"I asked if I should make any plans for Fourth of July. Didn't really get much of an answer on that one," he quipped.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Dishes ordered by the Legislature and Bay State voters were finally served this week.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: Lady Sovereign, "Ch Ching" and Musical Youth, "Pass the Dutchie"
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Investigative Reporter Lechelle Yates is inquiring about how many complaints were filed with the DOI regarding the Newton based Tom Harper Scotland Cruise cancellations and whether or not passengers have a case for a refund." - from a misfired email sent by an Office of Housing and Economic Development official to the press list. Meant for internal dissemination, the list documents inquiries and interviews that involve the secretariat, including WFMY News 2 in North Carolina asking about Scotland Cruise.
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