State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Black Smoke
White smoke was rising from the Sistine Chapel as Speaker Bob DeLeo stood outside his office prepared to take questions about the formation of his new gun control task force. DeLeo had spent much of his morning meeting with deputies Rep. William Straus and Rep. Brian Dempsey to discuss the still elusive “magic number” for new tax and/or fee revenue that could satisfy the needs of the state’s seemingly insatiable transportation system without breaking the banks of the residents who use it. But for a moment, the Speaker’s interest was piqued by what was going on in Rome where 115 cardinals of the Catholic Church had just selected a new pope. The Boston press corps had spent weeks salivating at the possibility that the city’s own Cardinal Sean O’Malley might be the next pontiff. DeLeo’s money was riding elsewhere. “I picked the gentleman, the cardinal from Spain,” he said. Office pool? “Not in my office, let me put it that way,” DeLeo quickly explained. In this case, the speaker was out of luck. New Pope Francis calls Argentina home. 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. As DeLeo tried to handicap the papal conclave, members of his House were busy trying to guess the over-under on new tax revenues. The Winthrop Democrat may soon ask his flock to support a sizeable tax increase, how large and from what source still to be determined. Business groups like the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation testified before Straus’s Transportation Committee that $ 800 million would be a good number, well shy of the governor’s $ 1.9 billion request, but if dedicated to transportation, a reachable goal that comes close to the $ 1 billion Gov. Deval Patrick earmarked for transportation. Asked whether that would be acceptable, Patrick said he was not ready to begin negotiating, at least not through the media: “You keep asking me to bargain against myself. I’ve put the number down that I think is the right number and I’ve expected all along that there’s going to be a negotiation in that.” Until then, the Speaker’s fireplace is still burning black. While Patrick headlined a rally Tuesday in Gardner Auditorium of hundreds of union members, seniors and community organizers in support of his tax plan for transportation and education investments, a group of about 20 members of the House Progressive Caucus, led by Medford Rep. Carl Sciortino, met with DeLeo on the third floor. The caucus asked DeLeo to support $ 2 billion in new revenue beginning this year. The source, they told him, should […]