Beacon Hill Update via Mass Access May 17, 2022
May 17, 2022MassAccess Update on Beacon Hill
David Gauthier
Tuesday, May 17, 2022:
• As of Monday night, DPH reported a total of 1,674,693 cases of COVID-19.
• The state reported 10,789 new confirmed cases and 9 new death.
• The state now has 19,267 deaths from the virus.
• With formal sessions winding down for the year, the House on Monday agreed to give committees more time to decide on bills dealing with plastic bags, recycling, unemployment overpayments, the unemployment insurance trust fund, and collective bargaining rights and labor standards for drivers at app-based ride companies.
• Driver employment status and benefits are the subjects of one of the questions on track to go before voters in November.
• The House also advanced local bills and moved a pair of Gov. Charlie Baker’s past vetoes – dealing with a behavioral health trust fund and Department of Early Education and Care contracts – along in a process that could lead up to override votes.
• The House also advanced local bills and moved a pair of Gov. Charlie Baker’s past vetoes – dealing with a behavioral health trust fund and Department of Early Education and Care contracts – along in a process that could lead up to override votes.
• Another informal session is planned for Tuesday, followed by formal sessions Wednesday and Thursday, though it is not yet clear what else representatives plan to take up this week.
• Energy storage technology is the key to an electrical grid that swaps fossil fuels out for renewables like wind and solar without sacrificing reliability and the government should throw its weight into supporting storage technology innovation at a greater pace and scale to ease the transition to a carbon-free economy, a new study from the MIT Energy Initiative said.
• That’s where energy storage comes in. During sunny and/or windy days, the power that is generated but not used could be stored to keep the lights on when the sun isn’t shining and the wind is still.
• Gov. Charlie Baker has been pushing for lawmakers who are likely to soon begin negotiating a compromise energy and climate bill to put significant money towards an energy innovation fund that could do for the industry what Massachusetts has done for the life sciences industry.
• Baker has proposed using $750 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to create an investment fund at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to advance clean energy research and technologies.
• Neither the House nor the Senate has proposed any similar level of funding as Baker.
• A bid led by top government, business, higher education, and life sciences officials to bring a federal biomedical research agency to Massachusetts is launching Monday with a meeting at the UMass Club in Boston.
• Gov. Charlie Baker, Congressman Richard Neal, University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan, and Massachusetts Biotechnology Council CEO Joe Boncore are leading the effort to bring the new Advanced Research Projects Agency, created by the Biden administration and funded with $1 billion in March legislation, to Massachusetts.
• The agency is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and does not have a headquarters though several states are expected to vie for the opportunity to host it.
• Boncore, a former state senator from Winthrop, said Massachusetts has “the highest density of biopharma research and development in the country, supported by world-class talent, universities, hospitals, and other research institutions” and that locating the agency here would lead the federal government tap into that ecosystem.
• A new coalition announced Monday has its eye on reimagining the state’s health care and health policy landscape to better focus on equity, and its members hope to put forward a slate of proposals for moving toward that goal as soon as this fall.
• The Health Equity Compact, officially launched with a Monday afternoon event at the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, describes its 40 founders as a group of “Black and Latinx leaders from across Massachusetts,” representing nonprofit, business, and health care organizations.
• The members say they were motivated to act by the health disparities illuminated during the COVID-19 pandemic and by acts of racial injustice over the past few years.
• One of their proposals for addressing social determinants of health will be pushing for the creation of “health empowerment zones” to coordinate local, state, federal, and nonprofit public health efforts in marginalized communities.
• Specific policies the task force highlighted included the creation of a Cabinet-level equity leader, investments in community health center “rate adequacy,” extensions to MassHealth’s postpartum care coverage, universally free school meals, and the adoption of standard and consistent demographic data collection practices.
• The $9.75 billion infrastructure bond bill that cleared the Transportation Committee does not include any language creating a new rail authority to oversee a passenger train extension to western Massachusetts,
• Lawmakers on the panel packed $47 million in additional spending on top of the bottom line in the bill Gov. Charlie Baker filed (H 4561), calling for increased investments in regional transit authorities and $25 million in grants aimed at reducing roadway congestion by promoting carpooling and running shuttles.
• Neither the text of the redraft nor a bullet-point summary a committee aide produced make any reference to East-West Rail or launching a new authority.
• Lawmakers could tack on language creating the authority during the bill’s journey through the House and Senate.
• The legislation that cleared its first committee hurdle mostly aligns with the measure Baker proposed in March to maximize the impact of a new federal infrastructure law.
• Everett, Lynn, and Roxbury are among the areas where MBTA bus service would increase significantly under a new plan rolled out Monday, but funding and staffing uncertainty pose obstacles to the effort to reimagine a core pillar of the agency’s operations.
• Officials unveiled a draft new map for the constellation of bus routes in Boston and dozens of surrounding cities and towns.
• The proposal would boost bus service across the board by 25 percent over a five-year period, including a 70 percent increase in the amount of MBTA bus travel on weekends, aimed at areas where the existing, somewhat archaic bus routes do not currently meet evolving demands on the system.
• About 27 percent of current weekday bus service is “frequent,” defined as a bus running every 15 minutes or sooner, under the current schedule. The new draft plan would push that rate up to 50 percent.
• T officials project their plan would newly give 275,000 more Bay Staters access to bus trips every 15 minutes or less, running all day, seven days a week, adding to the 1.5 million residents who have access to high-frequency transit or bus today.
• Four days after the T announced it would again extend the shutdown of Blue Line subway service between Maverick and Bowdoin because a “construction tool cart derailed.
• A project to replace 1,800 feet of Blue Line track, upgrade lighting, repair signals and perform other maintenance work was originally supposed to wrap up on May 8, but a series of incidents have pushed the end date to Tuesday, May 17.
• MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said each of the three derailments involved a “tool cart” and that two of them occurred as the construction vehicle was traveling over a section of rail under construction.
• Gov. Charlie Baker will play host later this week to a handful of his colleagues as a bipartisan group of governors huddle in Boston to talk about strategies to bolster K-12 computer science education.
• A morning session is scheduled for 9:15 a.m. and will feature panel discussions on computing careers with representatives from Amazon and Google and on student programs with teachers from Girls Who Code, the NGA said.
• The organization said the chair’s initiative aims to “boost U.S. economic growth, competitiveness and security through state-based computer science education policies.”
• A Pioneer Institute study released in May 2020 found that 85 percent of public high schools and 44 percent of elementary schools in Massachusetts offered computer science classes and that less than a third of course offerings were aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for Digital Literacy and Computer Science.
• The report said that state lawmakers “need to recognize that the quality and quantity of computer science courses throughout K–12 will increase if they earmark training funds for teachers in state budgets.”
