Are you holding your cell phone up to your ear right now — while driving? That's a bad idea, but in Massachusetts, it's still not against the law.
Massachusetts legislators have been hammering out a distracted driving bill. The House had its version, and the Senate had its version. They've tried to iron out those differences in a conference committee, but it's been really tricky.
And then last week, it looked like we had a deal — until we didn't. Katie Lannan, a reporter with the State House News Service, talked through what happened.
Katie Lannan, State House News Service: It's a hard one to answer, because this conference committee, like all conference committees, conducts its negotiations in private.
On Wednesday night last week, we heard that a deal might be imminent, but it turned out there were what seemed to be some wording issues in the language of the bill itself that couldn't get the two sides to agree. They agree “in principle” — that was the phrase that kept coming up. There's an agreement “in principle” to the terms of the bill.
One of the things we've heard from one of the senators on the conference committee is that they want to get the wording exactly right.
The texting ban that the state passed in 2010 became a problem for law enforcement to enforce. You know — you could say, “I'm not texting, I'm dialing a phone number.” They want to avoid the scenario this time around.
Sam Hudzik, NEPR: The earliest that could be taken up is this fall?
Yeah. We're not really sure on the timeline there, either. The legislature takes a recess in August. But if they were able to produce a deal, it's still possible they could get it through this week.
They don't need a recorded vote on it with all 200 members of the legislature. The conference committee is going to continue trying to reach an agreement. It is something to watch for as the fall — as much as I hate to say it — gets closer.
One thing that did get done was the state budget. Governor Baker surprised some folks. He usually picks through earmarks, and uses the veto pen a bunch, but not so this year. Were lawmakers shocked at how little Baker changed?
I think so. And traditionally — in the governor's first term, he issued lots and lots of vetoes, and lawmakers would quickly override them, and restore that spending. In his first few years, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars cut. Last year, it was a small number of vetoes, less than $50 million.
We're talking in terms of a $43 billion budget this year. So that's the only way you can get those numbers to sound small. And this year, he found the budget to be balanced.
Budget negotiators upgraded the revenue projections for next year by a full $600 million. There was plenty of money to go around, but people were surprised.
I think House Speaker Robert DeLeo believes that the governors certainly aren't afraid traditionally of using their veto pen. The speaker has led his branch for 10 years and was chair of the House budget-writing committee before that. He said he couldn't remember seeing a zero-veto budget in the past. Baker did veto some policy language, but it left all the money in.
Fallout continues from problems at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, including a huge backlog of out-of-state violations mailed to Massachusetts that just sat unprocessed by the RMV. After a legislative hearing last week, Baker took pains to point out that this is a problem going back well before he took office — 20 years, I think he said. Are you expecting more fallout from this?
I think the smart move is to expect more fallout, definitely. We've had Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollock say that she does believe there will be a time when people who didn't fulfill their responsibilities will be held accountable. She told that to lawmakers at last week's hearing.
But she's kind of keeping her eye on the ongoing, outside audit that is expected to wrap up later this month, perhaps as early as next week. We’ll be watching for that as well.
There have been calls for some of the officials involved to resign, notably from state Senator Eric Lesser of Longmeadow, who's on the committee. He's called for Thomas Bowes from the Merit Rating Board to resign. I think that's one of the areas people are going to have their eye on, the personnel at the RMV.
And then whether lawmakers decide to hold additional hearings or take action from kind of the policymaking side is still an open question as well.
