With Joe Biden clinching the presidency over the weekend, Massachusetts politicians are thinking about what the new administration might mean for the state — and for them.
Some politicians gathered in Boston Sunday for a press conference celebrating the Biden-Harris victory — some excited to work with the president-elect, others perhaps excited to get jobs in the administration. There was a flurry of congratulatory statements from Massachusetts Democrats, including Massachusetts U.S. Reps. Richard Neal and Jim McGovern.
Matt Murphy of the State House News Service joins us to talk about what the latest news means for Massachusetts.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: With Massachusetts being controlled, at least in large part, by Democrats, they're excited to work again with a Democratic administration.
Elizabeth Warren plans to make her pitch to Biden for why she'd be a good Treasury secretary. There's been talk about Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, going to join a potential Biden administration, and talk of others potentially getting plugs for jobs in the administration. So there's that aspect.
But I think you're also going to see — especially this week, as we get ready to watch the state legislature — the state House debate a state budget for fiscal year 2021. This is likely to give them renewed optimism about the prospects for additional federal funding for Massachusetts.
It is likely to give them hope that the Biden administration will be able to work with congressional leaders to get a coronavirus relief package done early in the new year. But he will still have to work with a Republican-controlled Senate if the numbers hold the way they are.
Speaking of the coronavirus, the governor has decided to change up how the state categorizes risk for towns. It's a move to drastically reduce the number of communities deemed at high risk. How did Baker defend that change?
Yeah, a couple of things going on here. I mean, you are starting to see the administration and the governor start to use the term "second surge" that is here. But they did adjust the metrics, mostly the number of cases per 100,000 that would get you into these color-coded categories, or these high-risk, red categories.
The governor says that the new metrics are more in line with what other states are doing around the country.
They also take into greater account the size of your community, so that just a couple of cases in a smaller population, city or town, wouldn't drive them directly into the red.
They're trying to account for the differences in community, and allow them to make decisions for themselves, rather than based on the fact that they were propelled into the red category based on perhaps a small number of surges or one cluster, located in a specific facility, in the office, skating rink, a jail, college or something like that.
At the same time, Baker is pushing for schools to get kids back into classrooms, which he says is not where the transmission is taking place. But the administration is being vague about what penalty districts could face if they ignore this guidance. Why?
That's another big part of the change as well. The administration really wants kids to go back to the classroom. They think staying home is more detrimental than being in school, where they say they don't see spread occurring.
Keeping communities out of the red helps local officials make the decision to keep kids in the classroom. And they're sticking with their plan that if you don't bring kids back, they are saying that the state may start to audit the districts.
That would mean having eyes over their shoulder the entire school year, making sure they're complying with on-time learning and other state and federal learning requirements. That is something districts don't really want to have to deal with, but they are going to still be able to make these decisions for themselves.
So we'll see if they voluntarily comply with the administration's pressure campaign to get kids back into the classrooms, or if more steps are needed.
The Massachusetts House is set to work through amendments to get the budget to the Senate by the end of this week. Lawmakers are starting with a $46 billion spending proposal, 5% higher than the governor's budget. Is this accelerated timeline realistic?
It's possible. They've set aside two days, sandwiched around the Veterans Day holiday, to try and get this done.
Speaker Robert DeLeo and Democratic leaders in the House are trying to discourage members from heavily earmarking this budget, because there aren't a lot of funds to go around, but we did see 777 earmarks filed by Friday's deadline — which is quite a bit, though not quite as much as we usually see.
