Members of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission are soldiering on, following the firing of Shannon O'Brien as chair.
O'Brien denies allegations of making racially insensitive remarks and mistreating staff, and plans to appeal her termination.
Bruce Stebbins, a former Springfield city official, has been named the acting chair of the body — which now says it needs nearly $3 million more this year just to meet mandates and provide the same level of services.
State House News Service reporter Chris Lisinski explains that, in light of the recent messy leadership situation at the commission, lawmakers might not rush through the budget request.
Chris Lisinksi, SHNS: This question is one that I don't think we know the answer to. Three million dollars is a drop in the bucket for Beacon Hill. That's not a lot of money that they would bat an eye at awarding.
But, given how much upheaval has hit the Cannabis Control Commission, I wouldn't really be surprised to see lawmakers want to slow-roll this request and see how the next few months go under the interim leadership of Bruce Stebbins.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Well, state lawmakers ticked another item off their to-do list late last week with the passage of a supplemental budget bill the governor filed back in March. What some of the spending in there?
Yeah, this bill covers a few different things. This bill has some funding for public workers who earned pay raises through new collective bargaining agreements, some of which are already in place and just had not been funded yet. There's money for long-term care services, and an effort to use some remaining ARPA dollars that have to get appropriated pretty soon, or else go all the way back to Washington, D.C.
That March supplemental budget is not to be confused with a new so-called closeout budget of more than $700 million filed by Governor Maura Healey last week. That budget is meant to close out the books on the last fiscal year, but Healey also included some policy proposals related to clean energy. That move angered some lawmakers. What's going on here?
That's right. So, remember this summer we were talking about clean energy and siting reform. So, this language that both the House and Senate approved, trying to make it easier for clean energy infrastructure projects to get off the ground and get going. But the House and Senate disagreed on other parts of the bill. They haven't done anything. They haven't found a way forward.
And Healey's basically trying an end-run around that disagreement and put just the siting and permitting language into this closeout spending bill. This really frustrated the lead Senate negotiator, Mike Barrett, who said that he thinks that Healey is effectively taking sides with the House, who had a narrower vision for reforms and dooming some of the ratepayer protections and natural gas regulations that his chamber wanted to include in the final package.
So, more to be seen there in coming weeks and months.
Yes, absolutely. It is a live issue by every measure.
You reported on some updated bad news from the Massachusetts unemployment system. Chris, that's the agency that pays out jobless benefits to unemployed workers. So, businesses continue to pay into that system as they have been, but it's not enough, apparently. What's the short version of that situation?
Basically, the benefits for people who are out of work continue to increase faster than what businesses are paying into the system to cover those benefits. That has long been the case, and it's now forecast to continue to get worse in the next five years, especially as we think about the risks of a recession or Massachusetts owing the federal government any money for $2.5 billion that were mistakenly paid in jobless benefits using federal aid instead of state dollars.
