JAY KAUFMAN, THE former state rep from Lexington, remembers a conversation he had with House Speaker Robert DeLeo the last time the Legislature considered raising taxes to pay for transportation. It was 2013, the morning before the House vote on a bill that would raise the gas tax 3 cents, index that tax to inflation (later rescinded by voters), jack up tobacco taxes, and impose a tax (later jettisoned by lawmakers) on some computer software services. Kaufman, who was the chair of the Revenue Co...
Oct 28, 2019•32 min
Richard Parr, the research director of the MassINC Polling Group, said he was surprised at the strong support in a statewide, online poll for regional rail and a number of other ambitious transportation initiatives, including an underground rail link connecting North and South Stations. The most popular initiative was transitioning the commuter rail fleet from diesel to electric power. The poll also found support for a number of initiatives to fund regional rail, including a surtax on millionair...
Oct 24, 2019•44 min
SUFFOLK COUNTY Sheriff Steve Tompkins insists his decision to sever ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement had nothing to do with protests, and everything to do whether the people in his jail’s cells are destined to remain in the state. “I was hired to do local, not federal work. The ICE population is transient — they’re not staying here,” Tompkins said on CommonWealth’s Codcast. “But the ladies we’re going to service, they either live in my county or the Commonwealth. They’re staying her...
Oct 21, 2019•30 min
Congresswoman Katherine Clark supports the idea of opening facilities where people can use illegal drugs under medical supervision to prevent overdose fatalities and refer people to treatment for drug addiction when they are ready. “These sites, in particular, if it is saving some lives, if it is allowing us to have the intervention to stop this cycle before a person does lose their life to an overdose, that’s a piece of this puzzle that we have to be open to and figure out,” said Clark. In a wi...
Oct 14, 2019•28 min
Seven months ago the MBTA’s oversight board indicated it was going to weigh in on whether the Legislature should explore new transportation funding initiatives, but since then there’s been nothing. Joe Aiello, the chair of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, said the timing was not right back then. But soon it will be, he says, pointing out that there have been some new developments on the revenue front. Aiello also says the board is likely to lay out options for the Legislature rather than...
Oct 07, 2019•35 min
KATE WALSH says she favors Medicaid for all, not Medicare for all. It’s not a political slogan you hear much these days, but Walsh, the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, has a unique perspective since so many of her hospital’s patients are on Medicaid. “I actually think Medicaid is the most important insurance plan in the country,” she said, noting that it covers roughly 79 million mostly poor and elderly Americans and provides them with coverage for long-term care, medicine, behaviora...
Sep 30, 2019•33 min
When the year started, with Beacon Hill poised to make another go at a bill revamping the state’s education funding formula, some advocates were focused on boosting funding for schools, while others were insisting that new money come with new ways of holding districts accountable for how it’s spent and for closing the yawning achievement gaps that characterize the state’s K-12 landscape. The fact that leading voices from both camps are applauding the legislation that was rolled out last week und...
Sep 23, 2019•24 min
Rick Lord has a unique perspective on health care in Massachusetts. He serves on the state’s Health Policy Commission. He stepped down in May after more than 28 years as head of the business group Associated Industries of Massachusetts. And previously he served as the budget director of the House Ways and Means Committee on Beacon Hill. Lord talked health care on this week’s Health and Consequences segment of the CommonWealth Codcast with John McDonough of Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Heal...
Sep 16, 2019•31 min
The band of right-wing provocateurs who staged a "straight pride" parade in Boston 10 days ago were hoping to stir the pot. But they likely never imagined that the tempest they'd cause would be a judicial showdown among local officials that exposes tensions set off by last year's election of a reform-minded district attorney. Things got unruly in the streets as the straight pride marchers were met by hundreds of counter-demonstrators, but there wasn't exactly order in the court either when the c...
Sep 09, 2019•27 min
The service disruptions caused by the MBTA’s more aggressive maintenance schedule could provide a catalyst for better bus service, according to some of the chief proponents of bus rapid transit. More common in other countries than the United States, bus rapid transit, or BRT, is a strategy that uses buses so they mimic the conveniences of a rail line. That should include a dedicated right-of-way in the center of roads to avoid turning traffic; bus stations with seating, shelter, platform-level b...
Sep 02, 2019•32 min
When two aides to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh were convicted earlier this month on federal charges of conspiring to extort organizers of the Boston Calling music festival in 2014, US Attorney Andrew Lelling touted it as another victory for efforts to root out corruption in government. But a lot of people don’t see it that way. The case has generated a tremendous amount of blowback from advocates, labor leaders, legal experts, and, last week, most members of the Boston City Council, who say the US a...
Aug 26, 2019•19 min
Cara Solomon and George Powell think personal stories – gathering them and reading them – are the way to bridge differences and build a stronger sense of community in Boston. Solomon is the founder and Powell is one of the most successful story ambassadors at Everyday Boston, a nonprofit organization that is attempting to knit together Boston one person’s story at a time. Solomon and Powell are about as different as can be. Solomon is white and a former newspaper reporter for the Hartford Couran...
Aug 19, 2019•25 min
How do you balance public safety and neighborhood quality of life concerns with support for the most marginalized people in a community? Those issues exploded into public view with the recent arrests of homeless people and drug users as part of “Operation Clean Sweep,” a set of Boston police actions centered on the streets near Newmarket Square where the city’s South End, Roxbury, and Dorchester neighborhoods converge. But the issues are nothing new to state Rep. Liz Miranda and her constituents...
Aug 12, 2019•30 min
Most of the focus so far in the scandal at the Registry of Motor Vehicles has been on finding out what went wrong. Now attention is starting to shift to why. On the Codcast, Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow and Paul Levy, one of the state’s most experienced managers, discussed why an agency would ignore all the warning signs and allow notices about Massachusetts driver violations in other states to pile up unattended. The situation only came to light when a Massachusetts driver who should have had...
Aug 05, 2019•22 min
Alex Morse, the 30-year-old mayor of Holyoke, may look like he’s on a fool’s errand by challenging Rep. Richard Neal in next year’s Democratic primary. After all, just seven months ago Neal’s three decades of toil in the DC vineyards landed him in one of the most powerful positions in the House, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. But Morse says the veteran Springfield pol is out of step with the urgency of the times, and he questions whether Neal’s new clout will deliver tangi...
Jul 29, 2019•29 min
It's humane. It’s a violation of international law. It’s not the way things have worked since the mid-1960s. These were the arguments of immigration advocates following last week’s announcement by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice that rules for claiming asylum in the US would be changing. Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University Law School, and Susan Church, a partner at the immigration law firm Demissie ...
Jul 22, 2019•28 min
It isn't surprising that Amy Rosenthal, the executive director of Health Care for All, wants to rein in the cost of prescription drugs. She's been quite clear that breakthrough drugs don't have much of an impact if people can't afford them. But her talk of shared responsibility on the Health or Consequences Codcast with Paul Hattis and John McDonough took the debate in a new direction. She said she has made the rounds with all of the players in the Massachusetts health care system and discovered...
Jul 15, 2019•21 min
The CommonWealth Codcast hosted Center for Immigration Studies' Jessica Vaughan and immigration attorney Matt Cameron to break down the history behind courthouse arrests in Massachusetts, and what a recent decision barring most ICE agents from courthouses could mean. Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies for the D.C.-based Center for Immigration studies, a nonpartisan research institute that examines economic, security, and social impact of immigration. Cameron is the managing partner of Cam...
Jul 08, 2019•31 min
In a wide-ranging discussion about the Bay State's transportation problems, former congressman Mike Capuano and Kendall Square Association CEO C.A. Webb made their case for new revenue and bold new investments in transit, while Steve Baddour, a lobbyist who previously served as Senate chair of the Transportation Committee, highlighted the plight of car commuters. In the most recent episode of the Codcast, those three, who have played a vocal role in transportation policy over the years, batted a...
Jul 01, 2019•29 min
The Stop & Shop strike earlier this year cost the company about $100 million and resulted in a contract the workers could agree to, but whether the power on display at Bay State grocery stores was an aberration or a sign of resurgent force in private sector labor is an open question. For decades, private sector labor has been on a decline around the United States, but the Stop & Shop strike gained big buy-in from the public and politicians. Jeff Bollen, who is president of the United Foo...
Jun 24, 2019•28 min
Add Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell to the list of officials talking about creating a dedicated bus lane along busy Blue Hill Avenue. In a wide-ranging interview on the CommonWealth Codcast with three members of TransitMatters – Josh Fairchild, Jim Aloisi, and Jarred Johnson – Campbell said transportation is one of the top issues in her district, which covers parts of Mattapan, Dorchester, Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain. “More and more people are paying attention to transit and tran...
Jun 17, 2019•43 min
The Center for Health Information and Analysis produces reams of data for both Massachusetts policymakers and the public, providing a window into state health care expenditures and offering tools to compare prices between different providers. Ray Campbell, the executive director of CHIA, walked through some of the available online data tools during a recent conversation with Paul Hattis and John McDonough for their “Health or Consequences” Codcast. “No other state has an organization quite like ...
Jun 10, 2019•28 min
With spring comes the annual ritual of MCAS testing in Massachusetts schools. It’s how we gauge the performance of individual students as well as schools and districts. The assessment of basic skills in math, English, and, more recently, science offers a snapshot of academic achievement levels, and it is the central measure used in the state’s accountability system that aims to hold schools responsible for outcomes. And, argues Jack Schneider, it fundamentally gets everything wrong. The UMass Lo...
Jun 03, 2019•34 min
In the world of transit advocacy, there are those who push for sweeping changes such as regional rail, connecting the Red and Blue subway lines, or doing away with transit fares. And then there are people like Richard Prone, who advocates for smaller, nitty gritty initiatives that nevertheless play an influential role in the broader debate. Prone spent most of his working life as a train engineer and now, in retirement, serves as the Duxbury representative on the MBTA Advisory Board. He is a rel...
May 28, 2019•27 min
Greater Boston’s booming housing market may be lucrative to real estate speculators, but the constricted supply of housing isn’t helping those who make long-term investments in their homes, according to a Boston city councilor and housing advocates. Councilor Lydia Edwards, who chairs the Housing and Community Development Committee and represents East Boston, Charlestown, and the North End, said that if housing production (including affordable housing production) rises to a rate that better meet...
May 20, 2019•31 min
Boston’s version of Vision Zero, an idea that originated in Sweden more than two decades ago, sets as its target zero fatalities or serious injuries by 2030 among people who walk, bicycle, or drive. A recent policy report from the Vision Zero Coalition indicates the number of fatalities has been declining in Boston, falling from 21 in 2016 to 10 in 2018, with the number of pedestrian fatalities dropping from 14 to 7 over that time period. But the number of crashes that required response by emerg...
May 13, 2019•29 min
The co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing may be new to their posts, but both seem to grasp the urgency of tackling big issues facing the state’s health care sector and both sound optimistic about solutions to some thorny problems emerging in the current session on Beacon Hill. That’s the takeaway from a conversation with Sen. Cindy Friedman and Rep. Jennifer Benson convened by Paul Hattis and John McDonough as part of their “Health or Consequences” interviews o...
May 06, 2019•36 min
Gov. Charlie Baker finds himself increasingly isolated on Beacon Hill with his opposition to new revenues for transportation. House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka are both open to raising additional revenues for transportation and the two chairs of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, in an interview on the CommonWealth Codcast, said new money is desperately needed. Rep. William Straus of Mattapoisett said his first priority this session is developing a revenue pac...
Apr 29, 2019•35 min
Winds of change are starting to blow through Boston’s business community. One clear signal came earlier this month, when close to 20 business organizations said they would heed an appeal from House Speaker Robert DeLeo to help develop a transportation policy that likely will call for additional revenues. "It's time for a united voice from the business community that can be a powerful driver of progress," said Jim Rooney, the CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. On the issue of climate ...
Apr 22, 2019•27 min
Much has changed in the national discourse since a pro-war rabble two centuries ago tore down a Baltimore newspaper building, besieged the paper’s editor, and later broke into the city jail to attack him yet again. But while legal and conventional structures have been erected to protect a robust free press, the baying mob hasn’t exactly gone away, according to Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, and Rep. Josh Cutler of Duxbury, author of the new boo...
Apr 15, 2019•25 min
