Beacon Hill Update: Tuesday, February 9th, 2021

“Tuesday, February 9, 2021:

• As of Monday night, DPH reported a total of 517,806 cases of COVID-19.
• The state reported 1,276 new confirmed cases.
• The state has now confirmed a total of 14,753 deaths from the virus.
• The rolling average COVID-19 positive test rate dropped below 3 percent Sunday for the first time since November, continuing an encouraging trend even as Massachusetts is poised to surpass 15,000 deaths from the virus.
• State public health officials reported a seven-day average positivity rate of 2.96 percent in Sunday’s daily report, down from the 3.16 percent on Friday and several percentage points below the winter peak of 8.67 percent on New Year’s Day.
• As Democrats in Washington, D.C. began rolling out the various components of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal Monday, U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal was in Boston to promote the package alongside Governor Baker.
• Congress is in the early stages of advancing Biden’s massive relief package, which is expected to include billions of dollars for virus testing, vaccinations, stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, and could send as much as $350 billion in federal aid to state and local governments.
• Neal, a Springfield Democrat who is playing a key role in the development of Biden’s plan and will help shepherd it through Congress, said his committee will work from Wednesday morning through Friday to write the legislation to enact $941 billion worth of the president’s proposals.
• The full package, a blueprint of which will become publicly available at 6 p.m. Monday, Neal said, will include direct payments of up to $1,400 for individuals to “make good on our promise of $2,000 checks” that began with $600 payments last year, provide between $300 and $400 in weekly unemployment insurance supplements, make $130 billion available to help schools reopen, and would establish an enhanced child tax credit that would provide eligible families with $3,600 per child younger than 6 and $3,000 per child up to age 17, split into monthly payments over a year.
• Since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold almost a year ago, Massachusetts and its residents have received $52.3 billion from the federal government in the form of loans, direct aid to residents, unemployment assistance and funding for other federal programs, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which has tracked federal distributions to states.
• That total includes $5.24 billion in economic impact payments, $14.31 billion through the Paycheck Protection Program, $2.67 billion from the Coronavirus Relief Fund, $1.4 billion through FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, $3.54 billion in emergency injury disaster loans, $3.344 billion in provider relief funds, and a combined $15.075 billion in unemployment compensation, assistance and funding.
• Governor Baker, who has long talked about how helpful more federal money would be, last month filed a state budget that would pull $1.6 billion from the state’s cash reserves, but the governor has said he could limit that rainy day fund withdrawal if additional federal dollars come in.
• The goal, Neal said, is to pass Biden’s package by the second or third week of March to have it in place by the time unemployment benefits would expire for millions of Americans in mid-March.
• The House on Monday adopted a change to temporary Joint Rules put in place at the start of the 2021-2022 session.
• The House and Senate agreed to an amendment correcting the appearance of “third Wednesday in January,” which was stated twice in Joint Rule 12, to align with this session’s Feb. 19 bill filing deadline.
• The original order adopted during a Jan. 6 session only changed the first time the phrase appeared.
• Extending hours at the state’s vaccine call center, mobile vaccination sites, and other steps aimed at improving the COVID-19 vaccination rollout are among the Massachusetts House’s priority areas for future federal funding, Speaker Ron Mariano said in an email to representatives Monday afternoon.
• The Quincy Democrat on Monday said decisions are being made now regarding how the FEMA money will be spent and laid out the House’s initial priorities for spending those and future federal dollars.
• He listed goals that he said were based on what representatives hear from their constituents and communities: mobile vaccination sites, vaccine site transportation, accommodations for people with disabilities in booking and receiving the shots, an improved and simplified website, regional access to vaccine sites, a specific focus on equity issues, and assistance for local boards of health.
• Multiple members of Boston’s delegation in the Legislature said Monday they think the path is clear for a petition to call off a special election for mayor that would be triggered if Mayor Marty Walsh resigns to become U.S. labor secretary before March 5.
• Walsh signed the bill last Friday after the City Council unanimously approved the change to the city’s rules, sending the matter up Beacon Hill from City Hall to the State House where the Legislature and Governor Baker must also sign off.
• The Boston delegation met over Zoom on Monday to discuss the issue, and several lawmakers reported that Rep. Chynah Tyler is expected to file the home rule petition in the House in the coming days.
• The House meets next on Thursday in an informal session.
• The Senate on Monday referred Governor Baker’s recommended amendments (S 13) to a sweeping climate change policy bill (S 9) to the Temporary Third Reading Committee, chaired by Sen. Sal DiDomenico.
• Senators also made a technical edit to the temporary Joint Rules to correct an inconsistency that arose when the bill-filing deadline was extended last month.
• A formal session is planned for Thursday, when the Senate will debate rules for the coming session.
• Amendments to the proposed Senate Rules, Joint Rules, and Emergency Rules were due Monday afternoon.
• It’s unclear if the climate bill amendments will emerge on Thursday, but legislative leaders have put a rush on the bill early this session after Governor Baker vetoed the same bill last session.
• MBTA officials are tentatively aiming to launch a vaccination site for the transit agency’s employees in mid-February, and they have already started encouraging workers to sign up before they gain eligibility.
• The T will use a former Lowes building near its Quincy Adams station, which will eventually become a bus facility, to administer vaccines to employees once the Baker administration advances its rollout plan.
• General Manager Steve Poftak told the agency’s board Monday that the facility will have a target capacity of 200 doses per day before potentially scaling up.
• Officials will prioritize employees who interact directly with customers and those whose absences would most impact the system’s operations to receive shots first.
• The Baker administration placed transit workers in Phase 2, Group 3, two steps from the current stage, alongside employees in early and K-12 education, grocery, utilities, food and agriculture, sanitation, public works and public health fields.
• Community health centers will play a key role in the state’s ongoing COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and health care providers have been urged to make sure they provide vaccines in communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
• Governor Baker brought up community health centers at a press conference in response to a question about efforts to insure equity in vaccine distribution.
• Sen. Becca Rausch, with Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, Rep. Liz Miranda and Rep. Mindy Domb, last week filed a bill that aims to improve access and address disparities in the state’s so-far rocky vaccine rollout.
• The bill (SD 6999) includes measures that would require the appointment of a COVID-19 vaccine equity and outreach director, outreach campaigns in partnership with local organizations, expanded free testing in gateway cities, the appointment of a vaccine disinformation expert to the state’s Vaccine Advisory Group, and creation of a mobile vaccination program for communities with the highest positive test rates.
• Governor Baker signaled Monday that he’s in no rush to expand the pool of vaccine-eligible residents to people 65 and older or with at least two underlying health conditions, who would all be in the next group based on the state’s updated vaccination plan.
• The administration opened the vaccine pool to people 75 and older last Monday, and Governor Baker said that the state has vaccinated roughly 200,000 of the more than 430,000 residents in that age bracket.
• A new call center for seniors who have had trouble with the website, don’t have internet or are not comfortable navigating the website also opened on Friday.
• Health care workers, first responders, nursing home residents, the homeless and those in prison are also currently eligible for the shot.
• Governor Baker said the mass vaccination sites in Boston, Danvers, Foxborough and Springfield were “batting about 100 percent” in terms of vaccine doses allocated and administered, and that there are still a few thousands appointments available for late in the week.
• Teachers, food industry workers and transit employees are all part of Phase 2 of the state’s vaccination plan, and would follow residents 65 and older and those with two or more medical conditions that put them at a higher risk from COVID-19.
• The general public is expected to have access to the vaccine beginning some time in April.
• Transit activists and community groups are growing increasingly frustrated with the service cuts underway at the MBTA as the agency continues to outpace its financial predictions, thanks in large part to federal aid.
• The T’s revised fiscal year 2021 budget forecast a $16.8 million shortfall in December, but the monthly bottom line landed $3.5 million in the black, a swing of more than $20 million in a favorable direction, following similar but smaller overperformances in both October and November.
• Between that string of news and the at least $250 million the T will get from the most recent federal stimulus package, many in the advocacy sphere argue that the MBTA, which has cited lower ridership numbers during the pandemic, has no justification to keep service cuts in place.
• T officials circled a board meeting on March 22, or perhaps earlier, as the time to consider modifying service levels. Joseph Aiello, the board’s chair, said the upcoming discussion would “take a look at the state of the world” and weigh “any modifications” in the final six weeks of the fiscal year that ends June 30.
• With ridership at less than a third of pre-pandemic levels, the T faces a hole of hundreds of millions of dollars next fiscal year.
• It closed a similar budget hole this year by reallocating money from the capital budget, trimming spending and deploying significant one-time funds granted by the federal government.
• The agency so far has pocketed about $74 million in savings that it plans to use in the next spending cycle, and by the end of the fiscal year, it hopes to have $314 million available to plug into any holes.
• The MBTA will install new fare machines at several stations this spring that can dispense the plastic Charlie Cards, replacing the commonplace existing machines that could only refill a card acquired elsewhere or print a paper ticket, MBTA Director of Fare Systems Adam Veneziano told the agency’s board.
• Democrat Ben Downing, a former state senator who went on to work in solar energy, announced Monday that he’ll run for governor in 2022.
• Downing, now an East Boston resident, was 24 when he was elected to the state Senate from Pittsfield and served there for a decade, becoming the chamber’s point person on clean power before opting not to seek a sixth term in 2016.
• Several organizations representing Black and Hispanic residents of Worcester sued the city Monday over its at-large system for electing members to the School Committee, looking force the state’s second largest city into adopting a system that will increase the likelihood of adding diversity to the committee.
• The lawsuit is similar to one brought by Lawyers for Civil Rights against the city of Lowell several years ago that led to a settlement in which the ballot for City Council and School Committee in Lowell will include district-based seats for the first time in the 2021 elections.
• The lawsuit filed in federal court Monday by Worcester Interfaith and the city’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People alleges that the at-large system for electing School Committee members violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of minority voters.
• The Worcester City Council already contains a blend of at-large and district-based seats, with five of the 11 elected members representing a district and the remaining six elected citywide.
• Despite people of color making up 44 percent of Worcester’s population, the city’s School Committee is made up of six white members, and historically been an all-white body, according to the lawsuit.
• The complaint states that the six candidates who won the majority of support in the 10 whitest precincts in the city in 2019 all won seats, while those supported by the 10 most diverse precincts could not garner enough support citywide to win even one seat.”

by David Gauthier

Jessica Harrington

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