Beacon Hill Update: Tuesday, July 20th, 2021

Tuesday, July 20, 2021:

• As of Monday night DPH reported a total of 666,518 cases of COVID-19.
• The state reported 717 new confirmed cases and 4 new deaths.
• The state now has 17,659 deaths from the virus.
• House lawmakers accepted a compromise supplemental budget Monday morning that extends voting by mail provisions ahead of several upcoming municipal elections and creates a new MBTA governing body.
• Under the bill, pandemic-era no-excuse voting by mail and expanded in-person early voting provisions would be revived and expire on Dec. 15, allowing residents in cities and towns with summer and fall local elections to take advantage of the measures.
• A six-member panel came to an agreement on the bill at the end of last week, and it could reach Governor Baker’s desk this week if the Senate, which did not take up the compromise legislation Monday before adjourning until Wednesday, also gives approval.
• The House also dealt with local matters in Easthampton, Longmeadow, Boylston, Clinton, Cambridge, Needham, Maynard, and Lancaster.
• The branch is back in session on Wednesday at 11 a.m.
• The Senate passed a bill dealing with liquor licenses in Westford during a short Monday sitting and made plans to gavel into a full formal session Wednesday, when a legislative compromise to revive lapsed mail-in voting and expanded early voting authorization may surface for a vote.
• Senators will meet without a calendar Wednesday, and Sen. Nick Collins of South Boston said they “hope” to take up the fiscal 2021 supplemental budget agreement, pending House action.
• That bill (H 3973), which would keep pandemic-era voting reforms in place into December while also creating a new MBTA board of directors, was accepted in the House later Monday morning.
• The Massachusetts House is preparing for a debate Thursday on legislation that would legalize sports betting in the state, a vote that would then shift attention to a Senate where leaders appear more willing to tackle sports wagering than they were was last session.
• House Speaker Ronald Mariano’s office sent an updated schedule to representatives on Monday telling them to be prepared at Thursday’s formal session to debate a revised version of Rep Dan Cahill’s bill (H 506) to legalize sports betting.
• Cahill’s bill was redrafted in the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies and reported out favorably by the committee over the weekend.
• The bill (H 3974) could be further changed by the House Ways and Means Committee before it hits the floor Thursday.
• Governor Baker has decided how to spend nearly all of the $200 million of federal money the Legislature gave him sole discretion over, proposing to invest $186 million on a slate of health care and workforce development priorities.
• The governor said Monday that he will put $50 million towards financially distressed hospitals, pay for 10 percent rate enhancements for some in the health care workforce through the end of the year with $55 million, invest $31 million in inpatient psychiatric acute facilities and use up to $50 million to train workers in the advanced manufacturing, health care, information technology and construction fields.
• When the Legislature shifted most of Massachusetts’ $5.3 billion American Rescue Plan Act award from the federal government into a segregated account it controls, it left the Baker administration $200 million of the ARPA sum to allocate.
• With the Legislature expected this week to extend voting-by-mail through mid-December, a more comprehensive election reform bill filed by Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem advanced out of committee Monday and Democratic leaders are eyeing action in the Senate as soon as the fall.
• Creem, a Newton Democrat, filed legislation (S 459) this session that would not only make mail-in voting a permanent option for all voters in Massachusetts before every election, but also legalize same-day voter registration, expand early in-person voting, and improve access to voting for eligible incarcerated residents.
• The bill, known as the VOTES Act, has been co-sponsored by more than half of the House and the Senate.
• Electricity providers will need to cut half a million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and gas providers will need to trim more than 340,000 tons between 2022 and 2024 to comply with the first specific targets placed on utilities under the state’s new climate policy law.
• In a letter to Mass Save program administrators, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides outlined a statewide goal of cutting 504,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from electric companies and 341,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from gas companies in the three-year period from 2022 to 2024.
• The law Governor Baker signed in March, which commits the state to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, requires the secretary to set targets every three years for Mass Save Energy Efficiency Plans.
• As part of their bills, Massachusetts utility customers pay into a fund that Mass Save will use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by steps such as electrifying buildings and reducing incentives for fossil fuel heating.
• The Baker administration is preparing to submit a proposal to the federal government for a new five-year Medicaid waiver that would continue assessments on acute hospitals worth $1.5 billion to help pay for investments in health equity, behavioral health, primary care and pediatrics.
• The administration last week released a strategy document outlining how it will approach its proposal to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service for what is known as an 1115 waiver, which allows states to tailor their Medicaid programs to achieve desired outcomes.
• The new waiver request, according to the administration, will seek to continue to restructure MassHealth and use accountable care organizations to reward value-based care.
• It will also seek approval for investments in behavioral health and pediatric care, promote health equity and seek to streamline the delivery of care without jeopardizing the state’s near universal coverage.
• Employers in Massachusetts will face additional assessments equal to 10.5 percent of their unemployment insurance rates as part of an accounting fix the state deployed to soften the pandemic’s impacts, the Baker administration announced last week.
• The unemployment system stabilization law Governor Baker signed in May unwound massive spikes in the bills that businesses pay to fund joblessness benefits while imposing a new COVID-related charge, but until recently, employers did not know how much the additional assessments would cost.
• In a letter to businesses dated Thursday, the Department of Unemployment Assistance announced the quarterly “COVID-19 Recovery Assessment” will be equal to 10.5 percent of each employer’s existing UI rate. The Boston Business Journal first reported about the letter on Friday.
• Massachusetts health plans experienced a 98 percent increase in combined net income between 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association.
• The MHA’s Semi-Annual Health Plan Performance Report found that many plans in 2020 “had the best financial results and the largest profit margins in many years because of reduced utilization and payments resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, even after accounting for required and some voluntary COVID-related premium refunds.”
• The association’s report analyzes health insurers’ financial positions by examining measures including membership, premium rates, expense trends and profitability, and the 2019-2020 edition covers a time period when COVID-19 rocked the state’s health care system, including a pause on elective procedures.
• Total health plan reserves climbed to a record high of $5.6 billion in 2020, the report said, representing a 12.4 increase compared to 2019 and a 46 percent increase since 2015.
• Members of a new commission tasked with revisiting the state’s seal and motto appeared to be in early agreement on at least one point at their first meeting Monday, they’ll need more time for their work than their October deadline.
• It gave the 19-member commission until Oct. 1, 2021 to submit recommendations for a new or revised seal and motto.

by David Gauthier

Madeleine Clement

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