Weekly round-up: As the cookie crumbles
The Bob DeLeo Redemption Tour isn't going quite according to script
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The Bob DeLeo Redemption Tour isn't going quite according to script.
The veteran House speaker entered the year looking to put the past whiffs of scandal behind him for good. He started things off by flexing his still mighty political muscle to stamp out any notion that he was a lame duck by eliminating term limits on his office.
DeLeo said he was determined to go out on his own terms, whenever that might be, and cement his legacy by leading the House into a new era at the State House that featured the return of a Republican to the corner office and a new, more liberal, president in charge of the Senate down the hall. He was, finally, the big man on the hill.
This week, however, brought reports that upended, at least temporarily, the narrative DeLeo and his advisors are hoping to write. The probation department hiring scandal that has dogged the speaker, despite prosecutors' inability to formally implicate him or any other elected officials, reared its head again.
First, the Boston Globe reported that the U.S. Attorney's office was turning up the heat on convicted former Probation Commission John O'Brien to give up top-level lawmakers by linking them to the fraudulent hiring scheme that got him and two deputies convicted.
DeLeo brushed this report aside saying he was not worried at all. Then came the next Globe article relying on a transcript of his sworn testimony to independent investigator Paul Ware in 2010 that the newspaper said was contradicted by lawmakers who testified at O'Brien's trial.
This time, DeLeo lashed out at the newspaper, which has not published the full transcript, for distorting his statements and called for an investigation into how his sealed testimony wound up on Morrissey Boulevard.
Whether this becomes a problem for DeLeo remains to be seen, as it is unknown whether there could be another shoe to drop. The statute of limitations for at least some of the charges that could be brought against DeLeo has expired, and House Democrats are loathe to even talk in public about the issue, let alone challenge the speaker's leadership.
Still, it's an unwelcome distraction for a speaker whose House is pursuing an uncertain agenda with few clear goals and not a lot of accomplishments under its belt as the first year of the two-year session nears its conclusion. Commonwealth Magazine's Bruce Mohl did the math this week, reporting that of the 104 laws approved by the Legislature this year, 57 were "strictly local," 36 created sick leave banks for state employees and 11 dealt with more substantive policy, mostly budgeting.
One of those budget bills reached Gov. Charlie Baker's desk on Wednesday after the House and Senate narrowly beat a Halloween deadline to close the books on fiscal year 2015, which ended in July. The budget bill used $328 million to pay for bills such as $203 million for MassHealth and $31 million for snow and ice removal from last winter.
The budget bill, which is under review by the governor's office, also poured $120 million into reserves, set aside $113 million to pay down debt and set Thursday, Sept. 8 as the date of the state primary election next year, resolving an inter-branch dispute over whether it was worse to hold an election on a Thursday or the day after Labor Day - lawmakers are pushing the election up to comply with a federal law aimed at ensuring access to general election ballots for members of the military serving overseas.
More so than for what was in the bill, the spending measure is getting a good deal of attention for what wasn't in it - namely $10.9 million to help UMass pay for contractual raises negotiated under the previous Patrick administration.
UMass President Marty Meehan was feeling confident after talks with House and Senate leaders that the Legislature would pick up the bill. The House recommended it, but the Senate didn't and the funding was left out of the final version. A frustrated Meehan now says he will meet with chancellors to discuss how to trim that money out of campus budgets. About $5 million in cuts could fall on the UMass-Amherst campus, which is represented by Senate President Stan Rosenberg.
As the budget bill was being rubber-stamped by the branches on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans convened in a private caucus with a "facilitator" to get a feel for where the body stands as a unit relative to charter school expansion.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg is putting the charter issue, one of the governor's top priorities, through the paces to see whether an expansion bill has any hope of passing his chamber this session, or if it would be best to let the ballot process play out instead.
Senators seem to revel in Rosenberg's style of "shared leadership," while House members continue to grumble that it sounds to them like an oxymoron. Just as House members were unwilling to discuss DeLeo and the Probation Department, skittish senators scurried after their three-hour caucus unwilling to answer, at least honestly, the most basic of questions - How did it go?
"The cookies could be better, I'm not going to lie," Sen. Michael Barrett said in response to a serious question about the sense he got from his colleagues on charter schools.
Rosenberg now says early January, rather than Thanksgiving, is his self-imposed deadline for deciding whether to pursue charter school expansion legislation this session. Sure sounds like deep divisions remain on the major issues that have divided lawmakers on charters.
Committee hearings also continued at their furious fall pace, this week's installment standing out for the number of advocates, perhaps hopelessly optimistic, who turned out en masse to urge lawmakers to press ahead with legislation that has relatively recently been rejected by voters at the polls, including a bottle bill expansion and physician assisted dying for the terminally ill.
While it may be a long-shot to see either of those bills move this session, Rep. Thomas Golden has been actively shopping a solar cap expansion proposal. Though still a week or more away from being formally introduced as a bill, Golden and House leaders are eyeing a lift of the cap on net metering to 2,400 megawatts, significantly higher than the Senate's recommended 1,600 megawatt cap.
Golden has also floated the idea of a minimum bill that would force solar energy-producing customers that generate at least as much power as they use to pay a minimum fee to the utilities to cover the expense of maintaining distribution and transmission infrastructure.
Energy Secretary Matthew Beaton said the House's draft cap might be a bit too aggressive for the administration's taste, but it's all liable to change before it gets to the governor's desk.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The probation scandal is the mole that just can't be whacked.
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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