Lights in the Statehouse will be burning into the night Saturday and Sunday, as lawmakers press to complete the work of the 189th General Court. After Sunday, the legislature goes into its informal session. Anything that’s controversial must be completed by midnight Sunday or, as happens with a lot of proposed laws, wait until next time.
While partisan battles in Washington, D.C., keep Congress underperforming, a look back at this session shows that those who work under the dome have already been busy, even as they kick it into high gear this weekend.
Not surprisingly, given that the two-year session coincided with the arrival of a new governor and new Senate president, things have at times been rocky. Despite budget skirmishes, and a sizable gap in the past fiscal year’s balance sheet, the session that’s about to wrap saw bipartisan agreement on a slew of important measures.
Some legislative compromises, particularly regarding charter schools and solar net metering, did little to move the needle. And other worthy measures, including a proposed ban on hand-held mobile phones while driving, appear to have lost out.
One notable accomplishment came during the Constitutional Convention in May, when lawmakers backed adoption of the so-called “millionaire’s tax” – a proposed new levy on annual earnings over $1 million, with revenues of about $2 billion earmarked for public education and transportation.
But that’s not law yet. The measure needs to be OK’d at a second convention and then approved at the ballot box. The tax change has been defeated repeatedly but now has 70 percent public support, according to recent polls.
OPIOID CRISIS. With this problem claiming an estimated 100 lives a day in Massachusetts, something more needed to be done. It came in March, when a tearful Gov. Charlie Baker signed a law that sets tighter controls on the use of highly addictive opioid drugs. The law limits the supply that can be initially prescribed to seven days.
And starting this month, hospitals are required to evaluate the future health risks faced by those who show up in emergency rooms seeking treatment for overdose. In a similar spirit, the law will eventually require public schools to conduct verbal screenings of students for substance abuse. And come October, a prescription monitoring program will work to ID people who face a high potential for substance abuse; medical practitioners will need to check that program before writing new scripts for the drugs.
Even with compromises along the way to passage, the opioid law emerged as one of the strongest in the nation.
PAY EQUITY. As we noted in this space Friday, this long-sought law requires that men and women receive the equal compensation for equal work. Baker is expected to sign it into law Monday, just days after this same issue arose repeatedly in speeches at the Democratic National Convention. One of the bill’s provisions allows employees to swap information on what they earn with co-workers. As the saying goes, sunshine is a powerful disinfectant.
PUBLIC RECORDS. Not everyone goes seeking them, but every citizen in the state benefits when ordinary people and news organizations gain ready access to the inner workings of government. The new law improves on the old one in place for 43 years by reforming how and when requested records are provided and limiting how much state agencies and municipal governments can charge for the records produced. A key element of the reform allows judges to reimburse the legal expenses of citizens who were initially denied records but who won on appeal. Without that provision, the cost of challenging a denial has served as a barrier to open government.
TRANSGENDER PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS. This new law, which addressed a gap in a 2011 bill, lets people visit facilities that match their gender identities. It also protects transgender people from bias in public places, among them restaurants, malls and museums. Its passage showed Massachusetts to be a cradle of civil liberties.
Expect two “cap” issues from this session to be back, and soon, before lawmakers.
The compromise measure on solar “net metering” that Baker signed into law in April enabled large-scale solar energy projects to advance, keeping hope alive that Massachusetts can continue to diversify its energy sources. But the cap on financial reimbursements from utilities to solar energy producers will be hit again as early as next year, experts caution. The law lifted the existing cap on reimbursements by 3 percent, while also lowering the reimbursement rate by 40 percent on most new projects. Consider this can kicked down the road.
That’s about the shape of another cap as well, the one concerning creation of charter schools in the state.
The Senate passed a bill in April that would gradually lift the cap, but not on a blanket basis. The bill targeted low-performing school districts and linked any increase in the number of schools to beefed-up funding for traditional public schools. Neither side much liked that stance, pro-charter forces because it slows growth and the anti-charter side because it grants any growth at all. The issue jumps to another arena in November, when voters will have their say on whether the state should remove the cap entirely.
Before lawmakers are done Sunday night, they’ll be tackling an energy bill and legislation on ride-sharing companies, economic development, municipal reform. Lawmakers will also try to override line-item vetoes by Baker. The fate of one veto, funding for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, is being followed closely in the Valley, where people value investment in culture and see real benefits for the local economy from such spending.
Environmental activists are tuned in to the fate of the energy bill. They want clear support for renewable sources, including off-shore wind power generation — and for valid reasons. Green energy is good for the climate. It all comes down to the wire in the hours ahead.