State House News Service Weekly Roundup: March Madness
The calendar says it’s spring, but Mother Nature remains unconvinced. House Speaker Robert DeLeo can sympathize. Nearly three full months into the year, and the Speaker seems no closer to making up his mind on taxes than he was in 2012 when he announced the transportation fix would be the first order of the business for the new Legislature. It still might be. House and Senate committees are still dormant, for the most part, and leaders are fixated on responding to Gov. Deval Patrick’s package of tax reforms. It’s usually at this point that Senate President Therese Murray tends to get antsy, and orders her Ways and Means chairman to advance something, anything, that senators can vote up or down – okay, up. That’s not the case, yet. “The committees still need time to have their hearings,” Murray said this week. So what about Sen. Stephen Brewer down on the second floor? He must be cooking up something right? Sex offender registry reform? “He’s cooking up the budget,” Murray said. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England By most accounts, DeLeo has become a tortured leader. Monday morning meetings with his leadership team have turned into two-and-a-half hour long fence dancing sessions. Even simple questions like what committee is working on the transportation financing bill can’t be answered directly. DeLeo, by those around him, is said to be deeply conflicted, not just on how much revenue he can ask taxpayers to shoulder and from where it should come, but also what those votes will mean for his membership come election time next year. It’s impossible to separate the politics, a fact not missed by Charlie Baker slowly reinserting himself into the public sphere, or Bill Weld. DeLeo is equally unsure whether he wants to tackle the issue with a separate bill before the budget, in the budget, or in multiple steps, and is said to be increasingly peeved by Gov. Patrick’s rhetoric encouraging supporters to “get in the grill” of lawmakers who lack the “political courage” to vote for new revenue. Witness his radio interview Wednesday night when friend and host Dan Rea asked DeLeo from where he might pull new revenue considering he’s not enamored with the governor’s one-point hike in the income tax. DeLeo said he was entertaining Patrick’s proposed sales tax on candy and soda, but then kind of quickly shot it down, saying he was worried about government becoming Big Brother. Smart money in the building has been on the gas tax as the House vehicle of choice to […]