Should the State Minimum Wage Be Increased?
A packed hearing on Beacon Hill Tuesday dealt with the issue of possibly raising the mimimum wage for commonwealth workers, according to an Associated Press report posted on WBUR.com. While those in favor of the wage increase believe it to be about fairness and economic justice, the AP reported business groups said raising the minimum wage would make the state less competitive. Prior to Tuesday, SEIU Local 509 Director of Communications Jason Stephany said in a statement the minimum wage in the state has been at $ 8 an hour since January 2008. “Many jobs at large retail and restaurant chains pay so little that even full-time workers must rely on public assistance for the most basic necessities,” according to the statement. The Senate version of the bill is sponsored by Democrat Marc Pacheco of Taunton and would increase the minimum wage to $ 11 an hour by 2015, followed by an increase based on inflation with the Comsumer Price Index starting in 2016. Do you think the state should increase the minimum wage? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. SOUTH END PATCH: Facebook | Twitter | E-mail Updates South End Patch
State Welfare Names New Head Official After Critical Reports
The state welfare agency has officially named its new commissioner in the wake of a scandal in which payments to dead people were rendered. The Boston Herald reports Stacey Monahan has been named the new commissioner of the Department of Transitional Assistance. She had been an interim commissioner since Daniel Curley resigned in February after an Inspector General report cited broad overpayments. The February report said fraudulent welfare payments have cost taxpayers $ 25 million per year. Auditor Suzanne Bump released a report in May which says the agency has paid benefits to 1,164 people who received benefits after they had died, according to WCVB.com. Monahan has served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and is the former chief of staff for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. SOUTH END PATCH: Facebook | Twitter | E-mail Updates South End Patch
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: When You’ve Had a Bad Day
It could have been a turning point in the race, the moment when the lights flicked on and the much-anticipated contest finally lived up to expectations for a U.S Senate race. Would Congressman Edward Markey would finally slam the door on Gabriel Gomez and dash the GOP’s dream of Scott Brown redux? Could Gomez shine, narrow the polls and entice national Republican donors to start paying attention? Instead, all anyone wanted to talk about Thursday morning was the thrilling Bruins double overtime victory in Game 3 of the NHL Eastern Conference finals. Tuukka Rask as a write-in? At long last, Markey and Gomez shared the same debate stage. In fact, they were so close to each other in the WBZ studios they practically shared a podium. It was all Markey could do not graze Gomez as he repeatedly threw his hands up in disbelief. “Look it,” he would say over and over, refuting one charge after another lobbed his way. 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. Neither Gomez nor Markey came across as a particularly skilled debater, but Gomez came prepared to try to knock Markey off his game and get under the veteran Congressman’s skin. It didn’t really work. The two spent an hour trading familiar campaign barbs. Gomez highlighted Markey’s resume as someone who has served in a deeply unpopular Congress since the days of Gerald Ford, reprising one-liners when he called him a “poster boy” for term limits and debuting new themes when he accused Markey of “putting party and politics before the people.” For Markey, he wanted voters to come away thinking of the new-to-politics Republican as a cookie-cutter candidate with the same “stale” Republican ideas that Massachusetts voters have repeatedly rejected. Those positions included Gomez’s opposition to an assault weapons ban, support for cutting back on Social Security benefits and a willingness to support a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The openings that Gomez did give Markey, the Malden Democrat largely let slide. Two new polls from New England College and UMass Amherst, both conducted before the debate, showed Markey leading Gomez comfortably by 12 and 11 points, respectively. In the plus column for Gomez, the Republican was leading Markey by 17 points among independent voters in the UMass Amherst survey. Voters, however, trusted Markey over Gomez 47-32 to handle the economy, and Gomez’s supposed strength on national security with his background as a Navy SEAL did not resonate. Voters gave the edge to Markey on national security 41-33. Next week’s visit by […]
State Police to Crack Down on Texting While Driving
Texting while driving has been illegal in Massachusetts since 2010, but police around the country have said the law is difficult to enforce. Forty percent of Massachusetts drivers say they still text while driving despite a nearly three-year-old law banning such activity and preventing any cell phone use for drivers under 18 years old, according to a poll conducted by Plymouth Rock Assurance. With the help of a federal grant, Massachusetts State Police will begin a statewide crackdown on the illegal and dangerous practice in June. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has awarded the state a $ 275,000 federal grant to increase enforcement of the Safe Driving Law, which bans the sending, typing or reading of electronic messages to or from handheld devices while operating a motor vehicle and a complete ban on the use of all handheld electronic devices by junior operators while behind the wheel, according to a state police press statement Tuesday. The law was enacted in Massachusetts on Sept. 30, 2010. The program, called “Text With One Hand, Ticket In The Other,” will make use of a “high visibility enforcement” model which uses informational road signs, command posts other tools which make the enforcement obvious to the public, according to the NHTSA website. This specialized enforcement will take place in two to four week intervals over the next two years, according to the police statement. The first installment will occur from June 10-29 on state roadways in Andover, Dracut, Dunstable, Lawrence, Lowell, Methuen, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Tewksbury, Tyngsboro and Wilmington. A recent National Safety Council study has shown that nationwide, 24 percent of all crashes are related to the use of handheld electronic devices while driving, the statement says. As many as 3,000 deaths per year are caused by distracted driving, according to Boston Medical Center. SOUTH END PATCH: Facebook | Twitter | E-mail Updates South End Patch
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Death With Benefits
The specter of deceased citizens collecting welfare benefits haunted the marbled halls of the State House this week as Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray tied up the loose ends dangling on his six-and-a-half years with the Patrick administration and Attorney General Martha Coakley sued the Obama administration for allegedly putting fishermen on death row. Other than that, the arrival of steamy days in Boston ushered in a post-Memorial Day and budget week lull at the State House with the governor out of town, politicos watching two special elections and committees plodding forward with bill hearings while lawmakers wait for word from on high about their next big votes. Congressman Ed Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez also continued sniping from a distance in the lead-up to next week’s first debate, with First Lady Michelle Obama and song lady Carole King both in Massachusetts to campaign for Markey. 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 Auditor Suzanne Bump released a blockbuster audit of the Department of Transitional Assistance alleging $ 15 million in questionable spending on welfare benefits, including 1,164 cases totaling $ 2.4 million in benefits flowing to enrollees after they were reported deceased or to recipients using a dead person’s Social Security number. If Auditor Suzanne Bump was seeking to make a name for herself as a nonpartisan watchdog of the public purse, she hit the jackpot with this one. The report played perfectly into the hands of Republicans and conservative Democrats eager to jump on any morsel of evidence that welfare benefits are being abused. What Bump might not have been expecting, however, was the tone of the pushback from Gov. Deval Patrick and his administration who had little positive to say about his former labor secretary’s work. And it’s not the first time the accuracy of Bump’s auditing has been questioned. Patrick told the Herald he found it “infuriating” that Bump’s office had only released the details on 178 cases reviewed in the audit, of which his team found that only 17 were problematic. The spin required walking a fine line: Yes, one case of fraud is too many, but a 99.9 percent success rate ain’t bad either. Asked whether the Democrat was doing a good job in her role as auditor, Patrick said, “I think it’s too soon to say.” Bump has been auditor for two and a half years. Unlike other audits, this one isn’t likely to fade soon and will feed into the debate when Senate President Therese Murray files her comprehensive welfare […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Exit 10A
The rush from Beacon Hill to the westbound turnpike this week had as much to do with two of Worcester’s political sons beating feet from the capitol as with the impending Memorial Day weekend. As Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray attempted as graceful an exit as possible from politics, fellow Worcester Democrat Rep. John Fresolo made his hasty escape under an ethics cloud feeling “marginalized” by his peers and pressured to resign, which he did. If not for those two storylines, the focus may have been on the Senate’s breakneck budget debate concluding Thursday night as senators wiped their hands clean of 725 amendments and passed a $ 34 billion fiscal 2014 budget without the need for Senate President Therese Murray to threaten a Friday or Saturday workday. But on this week in late May, Tim Murray one of his wishes, for better or worse, as the gaze of the Boston political media was affixed firmly for once on central Massachusetts. 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 Murray leaves the administration after next week to take over as president and CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, a job closer to home and his family that will pay at least $ 75,000 more than he was earning as a sidekick to Patrick. He’ll finish his service with one last sniff of power as acting governor when Patrick travels to Chicago on Friday to headline the Organizing for Action Illinois State Founders Summit. Murray said he was not actively looking to leave before his term expires. But his decision was not a total shocker since Murray already pulled the plug on his political career in January when he decided not to run for governor, the job many that he would pursue after running in lockstep with Patrick for so many years. For the most part, the arranged marriage between Murray and Gov. Deval Patrick turned out to be a happy and prosperous one. Since 2006, Murray has rarely, if ever, contradicted Patrick on policy or politics, and he was a foot soldier in the 2010 reelection campaign while maintaining good ties with municipal leaders who mostly like and trust the former mayor. However, the Worcester Democrat’s star started to dim in the winter of 2011 after a poorly explained pre-dawn car crash on a Sterling highway and subsequent questions about his ties to corrupt former Chelsea Housing Authority Director Michael McLaughlin. All Murray wanted to do on Wednesday was take a bow, talk about his work […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Three’s Company
Like pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together yet, the Big Three may have been separated at birth, but with each incremental step their destinies seem to grow more intertwined. No, we’re not talking about those Big Three – Gov. Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray and Speaker Robert DeLeo – though they play major character roles in this thickening plot. Instead, three bills have come to define the early months of the 2013 legislative agenda and resolutions on tax hikes, local road funding and the annual state budget continue to be elusive and dependent on one another. Patrick spent the early part of his week welcoming British Prime Minister David Cameron to Boston for a few quick meetings and a visit to the Copley memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before hopping a plane to Ireland for a rendezvous with Murray, already several days into her cross-Atlantic trade mission. If legislative leaders detect a slight accent creeping in when Patrick returns to work at the State House next week they shouldn’t be alarmed or confused. Then again, they haven’t exactly been speaking the same language lately anyway. 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 The Senate Ways and Means Committee this week released its version of the fiscal 2014 state budget, a $ 33.9 billion spending plan that bore a striking resemblance to the House blueprint that roundly rebuffed Patrick’s calls for massive new investments in transportation and early education. Unlike the House, the Senate leadership’s budget provides $ 15 million to expand access to pre-school, a step toward the governor’s preferences. The budget proposal, however, backtracked from the House and governor’s commitment to boost higher education funding to avoid tuition hikes next year at UMass and other public universities. All of that is to say, Senate leaders created ample room to maneuver for eventual conference committee negotiations with the House. Of course, the divergence from Patrick was not unexpected given how House and Senate leaders already recycled the governor’s expansive tax package that he proposed to finance the new investments, instead moving forward with a more limited, but still quite large $ 500 million tax increase on gas, tobacco and business. “I find it interesting to put it mildly that the budget includes tax revenue apparently from a bill that hasn’t passed yet. And not only hasn’t it passed, my understanding is there’s only been one conference committee meeting,” Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr lamented. Democratic leaders don’t seem to care much that $ […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Three’s Company
Like pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together yet, the Big Three may have been separated at birth, but with each incremental step their destinies seem to grow more intertwined. No, we’re not talking about those Big Three – Gov. Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray and Speaker Robert DeLeo – though they play major character roles in this thickening plot. Instead, three bills have come to define the early months of the 2013 legislative agenda and resolutions on tax hikes, local road funding and the annual state budget continue to be elusive and dependent on one another. Patrick spent the early part of his week welcoming British Prime Minister David Cameron to Boston for a few quick meetings and a visit to the Copley memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before hopping a plane to Ireland for a rendezvous with Murray, already several days into her cross-Atlantic trade mission. If legislative leaders detect a slight accent creeping in when Patrick returns to work at the State House next week they shouldn’t be alarmed or confused. Then again, they haven’t exactly been speaking the same language lately anyway. 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 The Senate Ways and Means Committee this week released its version of the fiscal 2014 state budget, a $ 33.9 billion spending plan that bore a striking resemblance to the House blueprint that roundly rebuffed Patrick’s calls for massive new investments in transportation and early education. Unlike the House, the Senate leadership’s budget provides $ 15 million to expand access to pre-school, a step toward the governor’s preferences. The budget proposal, however, backtracked from the House and governor’s commitment to boost higher education funding to avoid tuition hikes next year at UMass and other public universities. All of that is to say, Senate leaders created ample room to maneuver for eventual conference committee negotiations with the House. Of course, the divergence from Patrick was not unexpected given how House and Senate leaders already recycled the governor’s expansive tax package that he proposed to finance the new investments, instead moving forward with a more limited, but still quite large $ 500 million tax increase on gas, tobacco and business. “I find it interesting to put it mildly that the budget includes tax revenue apparently from a bill that hasn’t passed yet. And not only hasn’t it passed, my understanding is there’s only been one conference committee meeting,” Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr lamented. Democratic leaders don’t seem to care much that $ […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: A Hoop-De-Doo
Massachusetts’ problem is now Virginia’s. After a macabre, around-the-clock stakeout of a Worcester funeral home this week by frenzied reporters and furious protestors, the remains of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev were secreted out of central Massachusetts and buried in a small Muslim cemetery in rural Virginia. No cemetery in Massachusetts, or public official for that matter, wanted Tsarnaev’s body. And Gov. Deval Patrick just seemed relieved the tense standoff was over. “No. I have enough to do,” Patrick said, when asked if he wished he had gotten involved to end the theatrics sooner. The April 15 attacks on the finish line of the Boston Marathon threw Beacon Hill policymakers off stride, quieting the raging debate over transportation financing and overshadowing annual budget talks. Still, the people’s business continues, and picked up in intensity this week as committees heard testimony on a raft of legislation, the Department of Public Health finalized medical marijuana regulations, and Rep. Joseph Wagner finally scheduled a hearing on the Mashpee Wampanoag gaming casino agreement with the Patrick administration. 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 Boston Mayor Thomas Menino made the short trek from City Hall to the State House to ask the Education Committee to green light legislation that would increase the number of “in-district” charter schools and give the mayor and school superintendents more control to intervene in mediocre schools on the cusp of failing. Knowing full-well his time in office is short, Menino wants the ed reform bill as a parting gift from the Legislature, but said he’d be back to make his case next year as a private citizen if need be: “It’s my thing,” the mayor said, referring to education. Depending on what poll you read, Congressman Ed Markey is either in the fight of his life against upstart Republican Gabriel Gomez or comfortably on his way into the U.S. Senate. Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos had Markey up 17 points, while a WBUR poll put the race more in line with previous surveys showing a six- to eight-point spread. Markey, at least publicly, seemed to prefer the latter narrative, latching on to the idea that Gomez is nipping at his heels with fundraising appeals claiming he needs support – and money – now more than ever. As for Gomez, he had his most difficult week yet since he left the safe protective nest of his private equity firm to enter the public spotlight and run for public office. A front-page Globe story detailing how Gomez had taken advantage of tax loophole […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Enter Gomez
In case voters weren’t paying attention, and turnout suggested many weren’t, his name is Gabriel Gomez. And now only Ed Markey stands between him and the United States Senate. “My name is Gabriel Gomez, and I’m a proud Republican,” Gomez said, reciting his full name for the second time during a five-minute chat with reporters outside the new go-to, post-election Broadway T stop in South Boston Wednesday morning. The reporters already knew who he was, but part of Gomez’s strategy now is to make sure everybody else does too. The newly minted face of the Republican Party captured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday by defeating two better known names in Massachusetts Republican politics. Former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan was supposed to be the favorite, and Rep. Daniel Winslow has been active since his days with the Romney administration. But it was Gomez who easily prevailed by a margin of more than 28,000 votes over runner-up Sullivan. He also considerably outspent both his primary opponents, tapping into his own bank account for $ 600,000 to get to the general election. Now, with a seat up for grabs in the U.S. Senate, the national money should start to flow. 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 On the Democratic side, Markey rolled fairly easily to the nomination over delegation-mate U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch. After 36 years in the House and a few flirtations with trying move up, Markey stands on the cusp of filling John Kerry’s (and Mo Cowan’s) shoes. If Markey is something old and blue, Gomez is new and borrowing some pages from the Scott Brown playbook, with a twist. Both are young and photogenic with military backgrounds – Brown’s a colonel in the JAG Corps of the Army National Guard, Gomez was a Navy SEAL. Brown had political experience from his days in the state Legislature when he ran against Attorney General Martha Coakley in 2010. Gomez lost a bid for selectman in Cohasset, but has more business experience and personal wealth than Brown. And just as Brown tapped into the national Tea Party angst at the time to open a spigot of financial resources, Gomez is positioned well to take advantage of his Colombian heritage and the GOP’s post-2012 realization that the growing Hispanic voting bloc, concerned about middle class issues as well as immigration, can no longer be ignored. Massachusetts Democrats say they cleaned up last election cycle among ethnic minorities and will likely have a rebuttal to Gomez’s appeal to Hispanic voters. Public Policy Polling released […]