Schedule

Tuesday April 5 

• Joint Committee on Public Service-Miscellaneous-9:00am-Written Testimony Only-https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4253
• Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government-Home Rule Petitions-1:00pm-Virtual Hearing-https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4254

Monday April 11 

• Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing-Gov. Baker’s HealthCare Bill-12:00pm-Virtual Hearing-https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/4257

Business

Boston ‘Looking Into’ More Help for Restaurants Mayor as Restrictions Cause Blowback

Boston Herald – Michelle Wu said that the citywide changes to the outdoor dining rules that have some restaurants across the city in a stew are the result of turning “two years of experiments” into a long-term program and that the city’s “looking into” what resources to provide.

“I know that people have made different purchases and investments based on previous years and based on these two years of experiments,” Wu said when asked about the criticism from restaurants around Boston. “As we’re starting to really look ahead to codifying what a fully sustainable, safe and healthy program looks like, there have been some changes in neighborhoods across the city.”

Though the ongoing battle between North End restaurateurs over the fee that applies to anyone doing outdoor dining in the old Italian neighborhood has received weeks of headlines, frustration has simmered in other corners of the city over new guidelines around topics including barriers as restaurants get ready to start putting out the patios.

Ginger Brown of JP Centre/South Main Streets wrote in a letter published in the JP Gazette that “Only the privileged, wealthy, and experienced could navigate this system on a yearly basis. Small business owners do not have the time, money, or resources to apply.”

Brown said that there are too many hoops to jump through, and that in particular there are now more stringent requirements for what barriers have around street seating. That means, she wrote, that “previous barriers that do not meet these requirements are now a lost investment.”

Cape Cod Businesses Struggle to Find Workers ahead of Summer Season

WBUR – Taylor Hayes needs workers right now.

One his restaurants, Clancy’s in Dennis Port, was open year-round before the pandemic. Now, it’s only open seasonally because they don’t have enough staff. His other restaurant, the Flying Bridge in Falmouth, only has enough workers to stay open four days a week, for lunch and dinner.

He says he needs to hire 70 to 90 people to get both restaurants up and running again year-round.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll get half,” said Hayes, who is also vice president of the management company Cape Cod Restaurants.

Hayes is not alone. Businesses all along Cape Cod are seeing a shortage of workers, particularly seasonal workers who help the region in the busy summer months. Restaurants, hotels and other businesses typically depend on teenagers, college students, and international workers visiting on J-1 and H-2B visa programs to pad Barnstable County’s workforce, which typically increases by roughly 20,000 seasonal jobs in the summer.

But factors like the pandemic, housing stock and costs, and even international affairs are impacting this year’s availability of workers.

Health Care

Health-Care Committee Kicking Scores Of Decisions Down The Road

State House News – Lawmakers on the Health-Care Financing Committee are proposing to give themselves about two months more to decide how to act on 176 bills, including proposals around single-payer health care, out-of-network billing, generic medications, emergency insulin access and a slew of other issues.

Wednesday marked the deadline for the committee, chaired by Rep. John Lawn and Sen. Cindy Friedman, to report on most of its bills.

The House on Thursday adopted an extension order (H 4639), which now moves to the Senate, setting June 1 as the new deadline for 110 House bills and 66 Senate bills.

Extension orders keep legislation alive longer into the session, giving supporters and opponents more time to make their case. They also leave less time for the House and Senate to potentially debate, pass and reach agreement on a bill before the July 31 end of formal lawmaking sessions for the term, the de facto deadline for action on major bills.

The Health-Care Financing Committee’s June 1 extension would leave about eight and a half weeks for the Legislature to take up any bills it advances, which would add to what’s usually a lengthy end-of-session to-do list.

Jobs In Health Care Remain Below Pre-Pandemic Levels

State House News – The number of workers in the health-care industry, traditionally one of the state’s most stable, has not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels two years after COVID-19 upended the employment landscape. One career center official cautioned Thursday that job-seekers are “steering away” from the field.

As businesses warn of labor shortages and Beacon Hill leaders eye hiring incentives, the constellation of MassHire Career Centers across the state want the Legislature to inject additional funding to help them close lingering gaps in the state’s employment landscape.

One particularly worrisome area of focus for MassHire North Shore Workforce Board Executive Director Mary Sarris is health care, which she called a “life and death industry.”

“It is an industry that job-seekers right now tend to be steering away from for a variety of reasons,” Sarris said during a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Massachusetts Workforce Association. “We are not seeing the interest in the health care industry that we have seen in the past, so we know through our one-stop, we need to help people become comfortable again working in the health care industry.”

The situation presents itself as the industry deals with numerous challenges, including new costs forced on facilities due to the pandemic, worker burnout, competition for workers from other sectors, the effects of industry consolidation, and a growing segment of the state population who are elderly and in need of more care.

Boston Digital Health Company Offers Long COVID Treatment Alternative

Boston Herald – Karyn Bishof, once a Florida-based firefighter paramedic, was puzzled when her hands started shaking weeks after her bout with COVID-19.

In March 2020, she contracted COVID in the earliest days of the pandemic. Now, two years later, Bishof’s long COVID manifests in a puzzling array of symptoms, including both high and low blood pressure, high and low temperatures, constipation and diarrhea, brain fog, short-term memory loss, chronic coughing, rashes, dizziness and a pins and needles sensation, to name just a handful of her symptoms.

She has since had to quit her job and set up a GoFundMe to support herself and her teenage son.

“I hate going to doctors because we don’t check the boxes, right?” said Bishof, who founded the COVID-19 Long Hauler Advocacy Project. “When you go to doctors, (they ask) ‘How often do you experience this and what is your level of pain?’ Well, it depends on what day you ask me and what time of the day you ask me.”

Recognizing the variety of symptoms afflicting long COVID patients, the Cambridge-based corporate benefit wellness company Goodpath has designed what its founders say is the only long COVID solution on the market that’s not offered in a hospital setting.

The company offers integrative care programs for health conditions that greatly affect one’s quality of life, but “traditionally are very hard to manage in the existing health care system,” said Akl Fahed, co-founder and chief medical officer at Goodpath and a cardiologist and scientist at MGH and Harvard Medical School.

With conditions like back pain, sleep issues and now long COVID, he said, “the condition is not going to kill them, but it affects their mental well-being, their energy, their relationships — it’s truly an issue of quality of life. And we’ve built essentially an integrative health platform that allows us to manage those conditions that affect quality of life.”

Lepore is Joining the Team of one of the State’s Largest Health-Care Systems

State House News – Effective May 2, Baker Administration official and former AIM executive Kristen Lepore will join Beth Israel Lahey Health in a newly established position: executive vice president and chief administrative officer.

Lepore will oversee human resources, information technology, marketing and communications.

She previously served in Baker’s administration as secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance. Before that she was vice president of government affairs at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a trade group representing businesses.

She was policy director on Baker’s unsuccessful 2010 gubernatorial campaign and was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as the New England regional representative for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Beth Israel Lahey Health is fundamentally changing the health care landscape in Massachusetts, and it is an honor to be joining an organization that shares my longstanding commitment to serving individuals and communities,” Lepore said in a statement Monday morning.

“I look forward to working with talented teams across Beth Israel Lahey Health to develop solutions that galvanize our people, tools and technology to make it easier for patients to access world-class care close to home.”

Mass General Brigham withdraws plans for suburban surgical centers

Boston Globe – Mass General Brigham on Friday withdrew a controversial proposal to build three outpatient surgical centers in suburbs outside Boston, a plan that had drawn opposition from competitors, insurers, and community organizations.

The move came after staff at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health declined to endorse the planned expansions in Woburn, Westborough, and Westwood, according to Mass General Brigham. However, the department staff did give its support to two other big MGB projects: the $1.9 billion expansion at Mass. General Hospital in Boston, which would include two new towers, and a $150.1 million renovation and expansion of Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Massachusetts Senate Passes Law Banning Discrimination Against Natural Hair

Boston Herald – The state Senate followed the lead of the House, unanimously passing the CROWN Act, banning discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles often worn by Black women.

“Today I sit here, stand here, as the only African American senator we have, but I believe as the first African American senator with beautiful, long, flowing natural dreadlocks,” said newly elected state Sen. Lydia Edwards of Boston.

“This is natural hair,” she continued in her first speech as a senator, as she took her hair out of its bun, letting it cascade down her shoulders. “It took me so long as a part of my life to ever say that my hair is long, that it is beautiful, and that it is natural.”

The bill stemmed from a 2017 incident in which then-15-year-old twins Mya and Deanna Cook were asked to change their hairstyle from a braided style, which goes against the dress code of their former school, Mystic Valley Charter School in Malden. The twins attended the Senate hearing when the bill passed.

The girls, who are now juniors in college in the UMass system, were removed from their respective sports teams, and were told they couldn’t attend the prom. Meanwhile, white students whose hair was colored were not reprimanded for also breaking the dress code.

Attorney General Maura Healey ultimately intervened, sending a letter to the school’s director arguing that “MVRCS’s Hair/Make­Up policy violates state and federal law, on its face and/or as applied, by subjecting students of color, especially black students, to differential treatment and thus denying them the same advantages and privileges of public education afforded to other students.”

Judge Tosses California Law Mandating Diversity on Boards

A judge struck down a California law that requires public companies based in the state to have at least one board director from underrepresented groups, a setback to efforts to mandate board diversity.

Judge Terry Green of the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County granted a summary judgment in favor of a lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional, according to a decision issued Friday.

The law, enacted in 2020, required the boards of publicly traded companies based in the state to have at least one racially, ethnically or otherwise diverse director by 2021.

A lawsuit backed by Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation, said the law violated the equal protection clause of the state’s constitution.

The board diversity quota was the first of its kind in the U.S. and followed a similar California measure enacted in 2018 that mandated female directors on all boards of the state’s public companies. That measure is also facing legal challenges in state and federal courts.

Under the board diversity law, individuals who identify as Black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaska Native, or who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, would be considered eligible for meeting the requirement.

State and Federal Updates

State Sen. Patrick O’Connor Urges Gas-Tax Suspension

Wicked Local – State Sen. Patrick O’Connor, R- Weymouth, said Massachusetts’s 24-cent gasoline tax should be suspended until Labor Day to ease motorists’ financial pressure from rising fuel costs and overall inflation.

“Massachusetts is in a strong financial position to give tax dollars back to taxpayers,” he said. “We are in this position because of the hard work and ingenuity of the state’s taxpayers. They should get their hard-earned dollars back.”

O’Connor said the American Automobile Association reports the average price of gasoline in Massachusetts is $4.25 per gallon.

“A year ago, it was $2.76 per gallon, which included a 24-cent gas tax,” he said. “If we got rid of the gas tax, the cost would be a little over $4 a gallon.”

Gas prices in Massachusetts and across the nation have been on the rise since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24.

The gas prices in Massachusetts shot up to an average high of $4.36 a gallon on Mar. 11, but the expense is slowly ticking downward, according to AAA.

US House Votes to Declassify Marijuana

Boston Herald – Lawmakers in Washington late last week passed a bill through the House that would see marijuana declassified at the federal level.

“The criminalization of marijuana is inherently racist in its enforcement, unscientific in its foundation, and out of step with public opinion and the law in 18 states,” U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark said in a release after the bill’s passage.

Called the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE) Act, the proposed law would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, require federal courts to expunge prior marijuana convictions, open small business administration funding to pot businesses and authorize a 5% federal tax on marijuana sales.

“This antiquated federal policy holds back Black and brown communities while hampering our economy and overburdening our criminal justice system,” Clark said.

According to law enforcement studies, people of color are arrested for marijuana possession at nearly four times the rate of their white counterparts despite equal rates of use. Those same thoughts were echoed by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

“Proud to support the #MOREAct in the House today & move us closer to ending the failed war on drugs that has ravaged Black & brown communities,” she said in a tweet.

The bill passed with a 220-204 vote, mostly along party lines. Democratic Reps. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire and Henry Cuellar of Texas voted against it, while Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Brain Mast of Florida, and Todd McClintock of Texas voted in favor.

A similar bill passed the House in 2020, but the Senate refused to take up the bill.

Massachusetts Draws Billions in Federal Research Money

Eagle Tribune – Massachusetts hospitals, universities and medical and biotech firms are continuing to rope in billions of dollars in federal research money.

The state received more than $3.3 billion in federal funding from the National Institutes of Health last year — the third largest allocation among states — for biomedical research and projects. The federal research money was divided among more than 5,700 projects statewide.

So far this year, the state’s medical and biotech research facilities have received nearly $644 million in NIH funds. The amount of grant money the state has received through the agency increased by more than 37% since 2015, according to NIH data.

Funding from the NIH is tied to congressional districts. Not surprisingly, the 7th Congressional District received the largest share of NIH grants in 2021, totally more than $2 billion. The district includes Boston’s teaching hospitals and Cambridge, which has a cluster of medical and biotech research firms.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital received more than $357 million from the agency last year for research and development, as well as training.

The Broad Institute, Inc., a research hub at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received more than $181 million from the agency.

Sustainability, Climate and Energy

Massachusetts Advocates Say They’re Being Ignored in Future-of-Gas Talks

Energy News Network – As Massachusetts gas companies start legally mandated investigations into their role in a clean energy future, advocates are concerned that stakeholder voices calling for aggressive decarbonization, environmental justice, and a fair transition for fossil-fuel workers are being shut out at a crucial moment in the process.

While the gas companies contend that they are committed to soliciting and incorporating stakeholder feedback, advocates say the utilities are failing to fully engage with their concerns. At the same time, the state has rejected advocates’ requests for increased oversight from regulators.

“It’s important for our perspective to be at the center of this and right now it feels like we’re much more of an audience,” said Debbie New, a participant in the Gas Leaks Allies coalition. “When questions about labor, equity, health, or safety are asked, we are told they will consider them later, rather than making them integral to the process.”

In June 2020, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey asked the state’s department of public utilities to open an investigation into the future of the natural gas industry as the state moves toward its goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The department launched the investigation in October of that year with the stated goal of developing “a regulatory and policy roadmap to guide the evolution of the gas distribution industry.”

UN Climate Report Shows World is on Track for Catastrophic Levels of Warming

The world is on track to usher in a devastating level of global warming, warns a major report from the world’s leading climate scientists.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said of the study in a statement.

To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, the analysis from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, leaders must make radical, immediate changes. That includes rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

The world has already warmed by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution, chiefly due to the burning of coal, oil, or gas. The more ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees; crossing that threshold would exacerbate hunger, conflict and drought globally, destroy at least 70% of coral reefs, and put millions at risk of being swallowed by rising seas.

The report is the third of three crucial documents from the UN body released over the past eight months. While the first two studies examined the causes and effects of the climate crisis, Monday’s report focuses on what the world can do to fight it.

UN scientists have long warned that expanding fossil fuel infrastructure will make the 1.5 degree target unattainable. But the new report, released Monday, goes even further, showing that even continuing to operate existing infrastructure until the end of their lifespans would put that target out of reach.

“We cannot keep warming below catastrophic levels without first and foremost accelerating the shift away from all fossil fuels, beginning immediately,” Nikki Reisch, climate and energy Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law, said in a statement.

Any chance of meeting the 1.5-degree target will require the world to use 95 percent less coal, 60 percent less oil, and 45 percent less gas by 2050.

The only other option, the report says, is to retrofit fossil fuel infrastructure with machines that suck carbon out of the air. But that technology has not been proven to work at scale. Though the use of some carbon capture technology will be “unavoidable,” the authors write, it should mostly be used for sectors that are more difficult to decarbonize, like the manufacturing of steel and cement.

The report says fossil fuel phaseout must be coupled with unprecedented investment in wind, solar, battery storage and other forms of clean power. Right now, the world is spending far too little on the energy transition — it has to spend three to six times more on renewable power by 2030 in order to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the scientists say.

Right now, world leaders lack plans to phase out dirty energy sources; they also intend to bring more polluting projects online. If nations follow through with current expansion plans, the authors say they are not confident that global temperature rise won’t exceed 2 degrees Celsius — a level of warming that would vastly increase deadly extreme weather, destroy 99% of coral reefs, and make life in many regions untenable.

This puts officials in an uncomfortable position: To secure a livable future, they’ll have to wind down energy projects before they’re paid for. In fact, $11.8 trillion in existing assets, or money already invested, will have to be stranded by 2050 to meet the 2 degree goal, the authors estimate, citing a 2020 report from the International Renewable Energy Agency. If nations delay climate action by ten years, another $7.7 trillion will be stranded.

Those are no small sums, but they pale in comparison to the cost of inaction.

The report does include small glimmers of hope. It notes that the rate of global greenhouse gas emissions growth has slowed — while emissions increased by more than 2 percent per year between 2000 and 2009, they increased by 1.3 percent every year on average from 2010 to 2019.

But that level of success is wholly insufficient, the report warns. To keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, global emissions must plummet by 45 percent this decade. Under the current climate pledges agreed upon by the international community, emissions would increase by 14 percent.

The report comes as world leaders are scrambling to replace oil and gas from Russia amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Last week, President Biden called on domestic fossil fuel producers to increase their output, instating a “use it or lose it” policy wherein companies sitting on unused oil and gas leases will be penalized for a lack of production. Some UK officials are calling for an increase gas production within their nation’s borders as well. As Secretary-General Guterres said earlier this month, these plans would doom the planet.

“This is madness,” he said.

Plans to increase gas infrastructure are especially troubling because though the fuel has been sold as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal, the main ingredient in natural gas is methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide in the short term. Any path to limiting warming will require major, rapid cuts to methane emissions, the authors say.

The new study makes clear that not all is lost. The world can still achieve a livable future, and it has the technology and capital to do so. Even better: In many places, installing new renewable power is currently cheaper than operating existing oil, gas, or coal power, the authors say.

Despite this theoretical path forward, though, there are major political barriers to meeting climate targets. The release of the report itself, which was delayed due to disagreements between nations, show how thorny those difficulties are.

“The interaction between politics, economics and power relationships is central to explaining why broad commitments do not always translate to urgent action,” the authors write.

Employment Law and Workforce Development

Jobs, Benefits, Flexible Hours at Stake in Driver Debate

State House News – Making their pitch to an audience of somewhat skeptical lawmakers, gig economy power players fighting to make controversial changes to state labor law argued Wednesday that treating app-based drivers as employees could force them to rein in the flexible hours workers enjoy or cut jobs.

Supporters and opponents of a contentious ballot question campaign amending the classification, pay and benefits of drivers on platforms such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart made their case to lawmakers, who have only a few months to decide whether to intervene or leave it to voters – and to the courts – to decide.

The proposal would make some new benefits available to drivers while declaring in state law that they are independent contractors and not employees. All four companies currently classify their drivers as contractors, and Attorney General Maura Healey is suing Uber and Lyft over allegations that the designation is illegal.

A panel of representatives and senators probed the quartet of companies who so far have collectively supercharged the campaign with nearly $18 million, asking pointed questions about why the platforms cannot offer drivers more benefits without simultaneously defining their workers as independent contractors.

Taxation and Budget

Baker Signs $1.67 Billion Midyear Budget

State House News – Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday signed the multi-faceted $1.67 billion midyear spending bill that lawmakers sent to his desk Thursday night, approving all of the bill’s spending while sending back one veto and one amendment.

The fiscal 2022 supplemental budget allocates money toward the ongoing COVID-19 response ($700 million), rate enhancements to human service providers ($401 million), winter road repair ($100 million), rental assistance ($100 million) and more, extends pandemic-era restaurant policies for a year, and directs state officials to divest public pension funds from Russia-involved companies.

Baker vetoed one section that he said would “prevent the Department of Early Education and Care from entering into any contracts exceeding one year in length between March 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.” Baker said he was vetoing the “restriction” because it “impermissibly interferes with executive decision making, as well as the efficient delivery of essential childcare services”

The governor also sent back with an amendment a section of the bill that allocates supplemental early intervention staffing recovery payments “disproportionately in favor of large providers at the expense of smaller providers.” Baker said he supports the funding but the distribution formula the section established “can and should be improved.”

Education

Were Massachusetts Educators Properly Trained to Teach Remotely?

MassLive – Maria Garcia’s classroom turned into a tug-of-war competition for attention during the 2020-2021 school year.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the Jackson Street Elementary School kindergarten teacher to teach virtually for the majority of the school year. Garcia found herself pitted against action figures, pets, iPad apps, video games and other childhood delights, as she attempted to teach her class of over a dozen 5-year-olds over Zoom.

“It was nearly impossible to keep their attention,” said Garcia.

Garcia wasn’t the only teacher that had a hard time educating over the virtual platform.

The pandemic disrupted classrooms across the country. A McKinsey study discovered that K-12 students are currently, on average, five months behind in their expected mathematics levels and four months behind in their expected reading levels.

MCAS scores from 2019 and 2021 — the MCAS wasn’t offered in 2020 due to the pandemic — showed a decline in almost every grade level across Massachusetts.