Monday, July 13, 2015
| Subscribe now for free! |
By George Donnelly (@geodonnelly) with Sara Brown
|
What's happening today...
Gov. Baker is scheduled to visit Natick (the Soldier Systems Center) and Mansfield (Family Fun Night -- expect a few selfies out of this one)... Treasurer Deb Goldberg will address Boston College law students from the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy... Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Ronald Walker II will speak to the Massachusetts High Technology Council this morning... House and Senate hold informal sessions.
...And what's ahead this week
The FY 2016 budget is in Charlie Baker's hands, and given that he has almost entirely what he wants, look for minor tweaks before he signs it, which likely will come before the deadline of this Saturday. The political action moves on to pending legislation, particularly the MBTA reform bill, where major battles still remain to be fought...
The deadline is quickly approaching to have ballot language submitted to the Attorney General for approval, so look for the various campaigns to make news soon with polished ballot proposals. (Hint: There soon will be a big one to create a graduated income tax...)
Why Charlie Baker should travel
One of the most interesting and relatively unnoticed stories of the past week was David Scharfenberg's look at former Gov. Deval Patrick's travel track record, a story that concludes the results are "mixed." The reporting comes in the aftermath of a short-lived kerfuffle over the transparency of Patrick's travel accounts, originally generated by the Herald a few weeks back, which ultimately raised the issue of the validity of the time and money to go abroad. The bottom line is this: Travel by governors is generally good policy but bad politics. On the policy front, Massachusetts, largely on the strength of its universities and intellectual capital, is a magnet for international students and business. Our tech relationship with Israel alone is remarkable. The growth of direct international flights to Logan even more remarkable. And it's simply bad policy not to cultivate a global advantage and lobby for even more overseas investment. But the optics of gubernatorial travel make for potentially embarrassing politics because of fears the trips will be dismissed as frivolous junkets. Baker has vowed not to travel his first year, understandable enough given all the issues at home. But a governor's job should be to engage business near and far because it ultimately translates into local jobs.
The governor likes to study stuff -- and here's a worthy topic to explore. He should have a consulting firm do a return-on-investment analysis on state spending for international trade travel. As Scharfenberg's story points out, it's not always easy to draw direct connections from visits to future economic activity, but I'd be willing to bet the return on investment would be at least 20x. Here's Scharfenberg's story, in case you missed it: http://bit.ly/1M0LLDL
Globe's Vennochi calls out legislator for remark about A&F secretary
In a column that will no doubt generate plenty of water cooler discussion today, the Globe's Joan Vennochi suggested in a column yesterday that state Rep. Paul Heroux made a sexist remark following a meeting with Administration and Finance Secretary Kristen Lepore earlier this month. Lepore had left early, cutting short the hearing, and Heroux was peeved, and in his remarks afterwards, peevish. It was all covered in great detail in this State House News Service story: http://bit.ly/1TvLfj8 "Perhaps there was something in her personal life that threw this off, I don't know," Heroux said. This remark catalyzed the column, and Vennochi extrapolated from there, looping in, much less convincingly, Sen. Marc Pacheco into the theme. You be the judge.
Baker brings in the dough
Gov. Charlie Baker is a fund-raising machine. During his first six months in office, he has raised $940,000 for his campaign account, according to Steve LeBlanc of the Associated Press' review of state campaign finance reports. That's about three times as much as his predecessor raised after his first six months in office. About 300 of the donors are attorneys and 200 of them are CEOs. In total, Baker has around 2,500 donations.
RMV vulnerable to fraud
The Registry of Motor Vehicles is vulnerable to illegal immigrants looking for fake state licenses, among other a host of other issues. An internal audit found the RMV suffers from service glitches and isn't "equipped to convert out-of-state licenses" which leaves them vulnerable to fraud according to a report by the Boston Herald's Hillary Chabot. Gov. Charlie Baker recently decided to dump Deloitte Consulting, the company charged with keeping RMV's software up-to-date. The state has paid Deloitte $17 million for their services since 2013. The audit also found that some low ranking RMV clerks have the ability to waive fees and "uncovered shoddy record-keeping when it comes to hearing officers and reinstating suspended licenses,"according to the Herald.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment