Weekly roundup - Promo code: Gambling
Healey: "Just because it's gambling, doesn't make it illegal"
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Thousands are playing daily fantasy sports games each weekend, and yet public officials are struggling, really struggling, to define what exactly it is sports fans are doing with their money.
Take Attorney General Maura Healey, for example. Healey this week seemed reluctant to consider following the path of her counterpart in New York and declaring daily fantasy sports on sites like the Boston-based DraftKings an illegal form of gambling.
"I think anybody looking at this acknowledges it's a form of gambling," Healey told reporters. And yet she continued, "Just because it's gambling doesn't make it illegal. We play the stock market. There are all different ways in which gambling may happen."
A day later, Gov. Charlie Baker, who admitted to dabbling on his phone with the free games on DraftKings "just to see how it works," came up with a different interpretation: "I don't think it's gambling," he repeated twice. "It's a game of skill."
The difficulty in reaching agreement on daily fantasy sports is complicated for Healey by a number of factors.
She campaigned against casino gambling and would have happily overseen the dismantling of the nascent casino industry rather than try to police it. Now she has a new form of sports betting springing up in her backyard with her predecessor and former boss - Martha Coakley - patrolling the State House hallways on behalf of DraftKings. Seen by some as the Democrats' best hope to challenge Gov. Charlie Baker in three years, is it any wonder why attorneys general in Massachusetts have a hard time making the leap across Bowdoin Street?
Healey has already declined to investigate whether House Speaker Robert DeLeo misled the independent counsel investigating Probation Department patronage (though she has agreed to review the Supreme Judicial Court's request for a probe into the leak of the speaker's confidential testimony). And now as lawmakers have basically admitted their confusion over what to do with fantasy sports betting, the burden has fallen squarely on Healey to sort it out, putting her in a position to quickly make enemies and perhaps disappoint supporters.
Providing a fitting capstone to her week, Healey's office announced the indictment late Friday of 33 individuals connected to guess what? A sports betting ring.
While questions over how best to respond to the next generation of gambling grow by the day, Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester settled in his mind what the next generation of student assessments should look like.
Chester, with the backing of Education Secretary Jim Peyser and Baker, formalized his recommendation that the state should bypass the binary choice between MCAS and PARCC and develop a new state-specific test by 2017.
The path appears similar to one many other states have pursued, ditching the national PARCC exam in order to "control our own destiny" with a test still based "substantially" on the PARCC model for assessment college readiness.
Rather than settling a lingering question, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will be asked next week to embrace the recommendation that carries with it a whole host of new questions, including what will the test look like and how much will it cost?
The House and Senate, staring at a Nov. 18 deadline to wrap up major business for the year, had a low-key week divided byWednesday's celebration of Veterans Day. Behind the scenes, however, tense negotiations continued as the House tries to coalesce before Wednesday behind an approach to break the logjam of stalled solar projects and free a long-lingering public records reform bill from the bonds of the Ways and Means Committee.
Baker, at this point, has basically laid his cards on the table for the year, focusing now on building public and institutional support for his approaches to opioid abuse prevention and energy development.
He met with medical students and behavorial health specialists, parading their support before the media, and welcomed Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard to the State House, a sympathetic ear for his push to import Canadian hydro power to Massachusetts.
Hydro power increasingly seems like a safer play for the governor, who has also given voice to the need to expand natural gas capacity into Massachusetts. The politics of pipelines played out before a legislative committee this week where stiff opposition turned out to oppose a comparatively small project to add a 3.8-mile loop of 36-inch diameter pipe to one of Sandisfield's existing gas pipelines.
The Kinder Morgan project in Sandisfield pales in comparison to the size of the pipeline the Tennessee company wants to run from New York through parts of western Massachusetts and New Hampshire into the Merrimack Valley, but size, clearly, has no standing when it means a pipeline running through someone's backyard.
As the Senate waits to see what the House does, the upper branch welcomed a new member, Michael Brady of Brockton, to its fold.
Sen. Dan Wolf, his denials of gubernatorial aspirations notwithstanding, also succeeded in moving a bill through his committee with Senate support to raise the minimum wage for employees at so-called "Big Box" retailers and fast-food chains to $15 an hour.
The step, no matter how incremental, gave Wolf the opportunity to appear at a rally on the steps of the State House Tuesday evening, playing the role of working class hero and promising to fight for a living wage.
Wolf, however, is no dummy when it comes to the politics of the building, and he undoubtedly knows House Speaker Robert DeLeo's feeling on the matter: The Legislature raised the minimum wage last year and isn't ready to take another run at wage increases.
While the Senate may be the bill's best chance for symbolic passage, even that seems like a heavy lift at this point.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Legislature approaches winter recess with a remarkable lack of urgency
About the Author »
Matt Murphy covers major media, lobbying firms, government agencies, political junkies as well as towns Statewide. He likes to cover politics and campaigns.
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