Less than a week after signing the annual state budget, Governor Maura Healey is already back with a supplemental budget request for $100 million in school funding. Healey says local districts are facing a lot of strain. NEPM's Carrie Healy asked the State House News Service's Colin Young about this and other happenings on Beacon Hill.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Does this move signal the governor was unhappy with the budget that lawmakers settled on, or is this a political move to curry favor with the teacher voting bloc? After all, she is seeking reelection.
Colin Young, SHNS: This one strikes me much more as the latter.
The governor signed the new annual budget without making a single change. She didn't cut $1, she didn't change one single sentence in it and she said it was a good budget that didn't need to be changed. And so then following it up with this new $100 million ask, it struck me as an opportunity to have another press conference and to talk about her support for public education.
But if she really wanted to get this money into classrooms sooner, the faster way to do that would have been to try to amend the budget that lawmakers had just sent her.
So, I think this one is a bit more about messaging than actually how she felt about the budget.
So how likely are lawmakers to actually pass this before they take a break?
I think very unlikely. It wasn't that well received by lawmakers. They just, in their budget, set out a new commission to study the school funding formula and by supplementing schools with the new $100 million before that commission even gets going, I think lawmakers are afraid that it would really up the expectations of cities and towns, and they might not be comfortable with that.
Let's talk about the minor leagues, specifically the Worcester Red Sox. Lawmakers in the House are moving to exempt players on that team from the state's minimum wage and hourly record keeping laws. They tucked this into an economic development bill. The Senate says they will take up their own economic development measure later this week. So how would a minimum wage and record keeping exemption work? And what's the argument for giving the Worcester team this carve out when other minor leaguers like the Springfield Thunderbirds still have to follow standard state wage laws?
So, the way this is intended to work is sort of a paperwork mechanism.
As I understand it, the minor leaguers signed a collective bargaining agreement for the first time ever in 2023 and that sets the terms for their wages and record keeping and all of that. Some of it may conflict with state law. So, MLB has been going around the country working with states to secure these exemptions that basically say if a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) already establishes an appropriate minimum wage for players, then that can sit outside of the state law.
What I'm not totally clear on is exactly why the Worcester Red Sox need this exemption, but the Springfield Thunderbirds don't.
It may have something to do with the specific collective bargaining agreement that minor league baseball players signed. There was a deputy commissioner of the MLB out there talking about how this really helps with that CBA, but it is a sort of unique carve out just for minor league baseball players. No other minor league athletes and no other athletes at all, for that matter.
And finally, Massachusetts has some quirky laws, like being one of the only states where it's illegal for businesses to charge you extra for using a credit card. Since merchants have had to swallow those swipe fees themselves, I've noticed that some local spots have started offering cash discounts to get around that. That strikes me as a pretty clever loophole. There is a special legislative commission intently studying this topic that'll meet this week. What should we know about their work?
This is a really fascinating commission. I'm not certain they're actually trying to produce legislation as much as they are trying to get all of the sides of the industry involved here on the same page.
So they've been hearing from and meeting with small business owners, larger business owners, banks, credit unions, payment processors. And they've really gotten into the weeds on all of the issues on why the processors and the banks think that these swipe fees are necessary, and why business owners say they're so onerous. And rather than actually writing a bill. I think this commission is trying to get those sides to agree to a compromise, sort of like lawmakers trying to get the industry to do their job for them. It would make it a lot easier if they could have something to vote on that has already has some support in the industry.
