Beacon Hill Update via Mass Access May 20, 2022
May 20, 2022David Gauthier
MassAccess
May 20
Friday, May 20, 2022:
• As of Thursday night, DPH reported a total of 1,687,023 cases of COVID-19.
• The state reported 4,957 new confirmed cases and 14 new death.
• The state now has 19,315 deaths from the virus.
• The House unanimously approved a roughly $5 billion borrowing bill (H 4790) that would fund improvements to government infrastructure while also ordering a five-year pause on any prison or jail construction in Massachusetts.
• The correctional facility construction moratorium, which the House Ways and Means Committee added into Gov. Charlie Baker’s version of the so-called general government bond bill, could stall the Baker administration’s consideration of a new women’s prison in Norfolk.
• No representatives spoke in favor of or opposition to the moratorium, and only a single lawmaker spoke on the bill at all to introduce it, before the House dispensed with hundreds of amendments via a single mega-amendment that added more than $125 million to the bill’s bottom line.
• Most of the borrowing in the bill would go toward maintenance and modernization projects in state buildings, many of which are decades old, and the legislation would also fund work to address cybersecurity needs and food security infrastructure grants.
• The House will return in an informal session on Monday. Representatives next week may take up a newly reached conference committee accord on legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses.
• The Massachusetts Senate on Tuesday launches debate on its $49.7 billion fiscal 2023 budget and senators are eager to make major changes to the bill authored by Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues.
• According to a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation analysis, the 1,178 budget amendments filed this year have a total fiscal impact of $3.5 billion, with 60 percent of amendments earmarking funds for local projects and totaling $280 million.
• Senate Democrats, who hold 37 of the branch’s 40 seats, are also determined to load the spending bill (S 4) with policy proposals, which are reflected in 260 amendments. Most of those will also likely fizzle out.
• Budget deliberations start on Tuesday and senators usually motor through amendments to finish well before Memorial Day weekend.
• After a string of construction derailments extended work on the line’s western end, the MBTA will kick off an 18-day shutdown of Blue Line train service on the line’s easternmost stops on Sunday, officials announced Wednesday.
• Crews will aim to repair and reopen a pedestrian bridge at Suffolk Downs during the upcoming diversion, and their work will happen under significant time pressure: on June 10, two days after the Blue Line shutdown is set to end, the Department of Transportation plans to kick off phase one of a major Sumner Tunnel project that will involve shuttering the tunnel for a total of 36 weekends.
• The transit agency planned to perform the Suffolk Downs work during a Wonderland-to-Orient Heights shutdown from May 12 to May 29, but pushed back the start date after another diversion on the Blue Line’s other end ran more than a week longer than expected.
• MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said this week that the first project, which took trains between Maverick and Bowdoin offline, experienced three separate construction tool cart derailments.
• In a look back at hospital finances in Massachusetts, state officials in a new report found that overall acute hospital profitability in fiscal 2021 was 6 percent, but operating margins were slim at community hospitals and the numbers were colored by $405 million in onetime COVID-19 relief funds logged as operating revenue.
• The Center For Health Information and Analysis said aggregate operating revenue for hospitals increased by $2.8 billion, or 9 percent, while aggregate expenses increased 8 percent, or $2.5 billion, in fiscal 2021.
• The House last year passed a bill creating new procedures to guard against the expansion of larger providers into new territories where they can pull more privately insured patients that command higher rates away from community hospitals, leaving those local providers with a greater share of patients on Medicare and Medicaid.
• CHIA said an updated fiscal 2021 report will be released when data from hospitals with a Dec. 31 fiscal year end date becomes available.
• The potential involvement of a super PAC in the Democratic primary for attorney general could raise ethical questions and present legal conflicts of interest for Democrat Andrea Campbell should she win the office with the help of outside spending, one of her Democratic rivals and several experts said just weeks before the party convention.
• Democrat Quentin Palfrey, who once led the health care division in the Attorney General’s office and served as general counsel in the U.S. Commerce Department, has for weeks been raising concerns about the potential involvement of a super PAC in the race.
• Palfrey now suggests that the source of donations to the super PAC created to support Campbell’s campaign for mayor of Boston last year could jeopardize her ability to completely do the job of attorney general, opening a new front in the campaign finance controversy.
• Palfrey has asked his opponents to sign a “People’s Pledge” that would discourage super PACs from spending in the race, and require candidates to donate to charity if an expenditure gets made. Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with campaigns, though often take their cues from a candidate’s public comments.
• Whether to allow betting on college sports is shaping up as the primary point of contention as the House and Senate begin negotiating a compromise sports betting package, but a fresh analysis of the two bills and their state revenue impacts found that the Senate bill could bring in much more money for the state even without collegiate betting.
• The gambling industry news site PlayMA.com on Wednesday published its analysis of the competing approaches to sports betting in Massachusetts and found that the House bill would bring in $31.875 million in state taxes while the Senate’s bill could bring in $111.56 million for the state.
• The analysis could give the six conferees more to consider as they begin working towards a single bill.
• Other states have started to look more closely at how they treat promotional play credits over the last year. Bloomberg’s Daily Tax Report said in July that sports betting companies in Colorado deducted 62 percent of their revenue from the taxable base through that state’s promotional play exclusion.
