For the last dozen years, Robert DeLeo has been one of the most powerful people in Massachusetts. That could be ending.
DeLeo, the speaker of the Massachusetts House, filed a document Friday with the House clerk saying he was in job negotiations with Northeastern University.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Matt, if DeLeo strikes a deal with his alma mater and leaves the House, how big is this?
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: It seems almost a foregone conclusion at this point that that is what we are moving towards. But this is a very big deal.
For the past 12 years, Bob DeLeo has been running the House. He has controlled the agenda on Beacon Hill to a large extent, and his imprint has been left on basically every budget and piece of legislation passed on Beacon Hill for more than a decade.
So this is finally the time that he has chosen to possibly step aside. It's a pretty big deal for the future of the legislature.
Let's look at who could replace him: Ron Mariano, DeLeo's No. 2, a Democrat from Quincy. Mariana said he has the votes to become speaker. But then there's Russell Holmes, of Mattapan, a former leader of the Black and Latino Caucus, announcing that he's challenging Mariano. So lots of movement before there's actually a vacancy. But would the House operate much differently under a new speaker than it has under DeLeo?
Potentially, yes. But you're right — it does appear that Majority Leader Ron Mariano does have the votes. People around him say he has the votes. In a statement released last Friday, he acknowledged as much.
Even if you talk to Representative Holmes, who has been reaching out to his colleagues, he also believes that he has an uphill battle. If he were to try and overcome Mariano, he is hoping that he can at least spark a conversation about what a change in leadership means for the House, and what the body should look like.
But if you if you look at someone like Mariano, who has been Bob DeLeo's top deputy for many years now, — those two work very closely, both on political issues and legislation — it is presumed that they would operate in fairly similar ways with potentially similar agendas. We're not sure what a Ron Mariano agenda would look like at this point, but you could probably expect not a groundswell of change under a Speaker Mariano.
That would be vastly different under a Speaker Holmes. But, like I said, even he says that that's probably a long shot at this point.
Of course, all of this jockeying in the House comes as there's still some very serious work that needs to get finished before the legislative session ends. What items are at the top of the list?
There is a lot of work left, and it's unclear that this is really the timetable that Speaker DeLeo hoped for this announcement, because it really does kind of upend the end of this session.
But you're still looking at major bills that are on the table, including an economic development bill, a major long-term transportation financing bill, climate change legislation, a health care reform bill that Leader Marianois actually negotiating on behalf of the House.
And you saw the statement that Mariano put out on Friday, saying that he would actually stand for speaker and believes he has the support of the body, should Speaker DeLeo a step down in the coming days. He urged people to focus on making sure that they overturn and reject the governor's amendments dealing with abortion expansion, as well as a major police reform bill that the governor returned with amendments that the House and Senate are now working to process and get back to the governor before January 6th.
So, Leader Mariano urging his colleagues — before they turn to the political choice of who the next speaker will be — to finish the work in front of them.
Christmas is now just a few days away, and Governor Baker has urged Massachusetts residents to stay home to avoid a further increase in COVID-19 cases like the state saw after Thanksgiving. This comes against a backdrop of photo ops of vaccine distribution, but the state has not received as many doses as officials had expected. What's going on?
It has been frustrating for lawmakers, I think, for the [Baker] administration. They weren't exactly sure why the second round of Pfizer vaccines were reduced by about 17,000 to Massachusetts.
We did hear over the weekend that the head of distribution for President Trump's Coronavirus Task Force, taking responsibility, saying that it was a communication problem on his end — overestimated how fast they could clear these doses for distribution, even though Pfizer said that they have more vaccine ready to ship in warehouses.
So, long term, we've heard the governor say that he believes Massachusetts will eventually get the full allotment that they have been expecting. Moderna also expecting to begin shipping their vaccine. But this initial round, fewer doses for these frontline health care workers and others than were expected to be here before the holidays.
