The Codcast: Recent Episodes
CommonWealth Magazine
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Michael Leary, director of media relations for Berkshire Health Systems. They dive into what makes Berkshire County such a complicated place for health care access – with rural towns, busier cities, college students, and of course the seasonal visitors looking to peep some leaves or take in the snowy mountains. The far flung region’s geography is a challenge on its own, and that’s before factoring in the system-wide staffing crunches and looming Medicaid cuts.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Harvard professor Larry Lessig about the ill-fated attempt to restrict Super PAC contributions in Massachusetts and the successful effort in Maine that was struck down by the lower court. The Maine coalition thinks it has a shot at convincing higher courts, not to overturn Citizens United but to embrace an originalist argument to limit money in politics.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith continues health care month coverage in a conversation with 1199SEIU executive vice president Cari Medina and Anestine Bentick, lead medical assistant at South Boston Community Health. They discuss existing pressures on stretched workforces, the impacts of recent closures, and how immigration policy bleeds into the health care space.
This week on the monthly Health or Consequences episode of The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute spoke with Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, Massachusetts secretary of Health and Human Services, about looming Medicaid cuts, the primary care crisis, and how to make sure the vulnerable can still access health services.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Rich Davey, who just finished his first year as CEO of Massport. They talk about his long history of ground transportation work, plans to improve air travel, and whether Boston actually could have handled the 2024 Olympics.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith sits down with Elyse Cherry, CEO of BlueHub Capital, to discuss the recent court decision that BlueHub violated consumer protection statutes around lending. Where does the case go next, and why did lawmakers push for new rules tailored to BlueHub’s controversial lending practices?
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon editor Laura Colarusso sits down with Gateway Cities reporter Hallie Claflin to talk about her recent reporting in Holyoke – where city leaders and housing developers have struggled to restore vacant mills and blighted industrial buildings. They discuss the costly environmental hazards associated with these projects, as well as state and federal funding barriers, weak market conditions, tariffs, and more.
The Bay State is already struggling with a primary care provider crisis, and the head of the largest not-for-profit health care system in Central Massachusetts sees an increasingly grim road ahead if current trends persist. This week on the monthly Health or Consequences episode of The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute spoke with Eric Dickson, president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon executive editor Michael Jonas talks with reporter Jennifer Smith about a series of stories, parsing the sprawling Trump tax and spending bill. They discuss why it’s so hard to know if Opportunity Zones have been effective, and why affordable housing advocates are mixed on the administration’s approach to low-income renters.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith and Todd Kaplan, senior attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, set the stage for a new law changing the way broker’s fees in Massachusetts have been handled for the past decade. Starting August 1, the balance is meant to shift away from the renters and towards landlords when the property owner insists on a broker’s services.
This week on The Codcast, it’s the state angle on artificial intelligence. CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Sabrina Mansur, director of the Massachusetts Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hub. Mansur explains how she uses AI in her daily life and why keeping Massachusetts competitive means a $100 million taxpayer-funded effort to get into the AI race.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon executive editor Michael Jonas joins reporter Jennifer Smith to trace the last decade in state takeovers of local school districts. The results, as Jonas has reported, are a far cry from a silver bullet to fix struggling schools.
More than 800,000 people ride the T everyday. This week on the Codcast, reporter Gin Dumcias is joined by Phil Eng, General Manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or "the T" to talk about the state of the system and what lies down the track.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Gintautas Dumcius interviews Boston Mayor Michelle Wu about her start in politics and being both an introvert and a politician, why she’s a Democrat, the super PACs crowding into this year’s election, and her media diet.
John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute talk to Matt Veno, executive director of the Group Insurance Commission, which handles health insurance for 460,000 public employees. They talk about the quasi-independent public entity, which recently received a last-minute $240 million infusion from state coffers to cover claims for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jenn Smith talks to Doug Howgate president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF) about the Fiscal Year 2026 state budget. They break down differences between the House and Senate plans, discuss why some parts of the process always happen behind closed doors, and consider the future of the wealth surcharge split between education and transportation.
This week on the Codcast, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly Budd sits down for a wide-ranging interview with CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith. They discuss trust in the judiciary, the role of the trial courts and the SJC, and if independence feels more achievable for state courts than the federal bench.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Kenzie Bok, head of the Boston Housing Authority, to discuss the threat of President Trump’s budget on rental assistance spending.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Margaret Low, CEO of WBUR, to discuss the role of NPR in the news ecosystem, defending journalistic institutions and values while upholding rigorous standards, and the upcoming WBUR Festival.
This week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Kennealy joins Gin Dumcius of CommonWealth Beacon to discuss why he's running for governor of Massachusetts, his time as secretary of housing and economic development under Charlie Baker, his thoughts on housing and immigration policy, and more.
John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute are joined by Tiffany Joseph, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Northeastern University, to discuss her new book, 'Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Healthcare Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare.'
This episode of the Codcast is a recording of a live event that took place April 30 in Provincetown, Mass., co-moderated by CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith and Eve Zuckoff of CAI (the Cape and Islands NPR station). Together with a panel of conservation, planning, and community development experts, they discussed what it means to live and plan responsibly on the Cape and Islands, understanding the realities of climate change and the housing crunch as a collective crisis.The panelists were:Mark Borrelli – A coastal geologist and director of the Coastal Processes and Ecosystems Laboratory (CaPE Lab), a joint research effort between the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) and the School for the Environment within the University of Massachusetts Boston.Jay Coburn – President and CEO of the Community Development Partnership – the non-profit community development corporation serving the eight towns of lower Cape Cod.Timothy Famulare – Community Development Director for Provincetown, formerly the town's environmental planner and conservation agent.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Marty Meehan, president of the University of Massachusetts system, to discuss UMass's work in climate technology and its response to the federal government's attacks on higher education.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa of the First Hampshire district and Laura Sylvester, public policy manager at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, to discuss transportation challenges in Western Massachusetts and how they connect with other policy areas.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Kristin Uiterwyk, director of the Urban Harbors Institute at UMass Boston, and Chris Krahforst, Director of Climate Adaptation and Conservation for the town of Hull, to discuss managed retreat in Massachusetts coastal communities threatened by rising waters and shrinking sands.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Jon Santiago, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Veterans Services, to discuss how the now two-year-old office is progressing, advances at the Commonwealth's Veterans Homes, how it is responding to threats from Washington, and what work he's excited about for the future.
This week on the Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute talk to Michael Barnett, who is both a primary care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a professor of health policy at the T.H. Chan School, about the ongoing effort to unionize PCPs across the Mass General Brigham system.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith sits down with Ed Augustus, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, to discuss how federal policy changes threaten state housing goals, the Commonwealth's response, the tools it is using to meet those goals, and much more.
CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Ariel Beccia, an instructor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, to discuss the Trump administration's purges of health-related government data, how these and other data purges ripple through society, and researchers' efforts to respond.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Sarang Sekhavat, Chief of Staff at the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), to discuss threats to immigration policies such as Temporary Protected Status and sanctuary cities, and how officials in Massachusetts and nationally are responding.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith interviews US Senator Ed Markey on the fight against Trump's actions, his stance on running again, and the future of the Democratic party.
John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute sit down with Dr. Wayne Altman, Professor and Chair of Family Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, to discuss the growing primary care crisis in Massachusetts. They explore the causes behind the physician shortage, and the 'Primary Care for You' bill aimed at reforming payment models and improving access to care.
CommonWealth Beacon editor Laura Colarusso sits down with state Senator John Velis to discuss the growing issue of smart phone addiction among youth, its impact on mental health, and a new bill aimed at addressing these concerns.
CommonWealth Beacon editor Laura Colarusso is joined by fellow reporter Gin Dumcius to discuss Josh Kraft's candidacy, Mayor Wu's response, and top issues in this race.
John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute interview Lora Pellegrini, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, to discuss healthcare affordability, regulation, and legislative efforts in Massachusetts. They cover prescription drug pricing, hospital accountability, and the future of the Affordable Care Act, highlighting Massachusetts as a leader in healthcare reform.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith sits down with Noe Ortega, Commissioner for Higher Education, to discuss how Massachusetts public colleges and universities are tackling challenges to diversity, affordability, and access amid shifting national policies.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Nicole Obi, president and CEO of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, and Imari K. Paris Jeffries, executive director of Embrace Boston. They discuss how organizations dedicated to racial justice and equity are responding to the challenges of this political era.
Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith chats with Greg Reibman, president of the Charles River Regional Chamber, and Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators at the Boston Foundation. They discuss how the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling on the MBTA Communities Act impacts the state's power to mandate zoning reform in cities and towns. Listen to past Codcasts on this topic: 'Milton's dilemma in the face of housing reform' (10/13/24) , 'AG Andrea Campbell talks local power and gambling boom' (4/14/24) , 'MBTA Communities panel splits over state vs. local control' (4/7/24)
Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith sits down with Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo, Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, and Jessica Collins, executive director of the Public Health Institute of Western MA to discuss key statehouse priorities. They reflect on past achievements and look ahead to future efforts in education, climate, transportation, and housing.
John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute sit down with Amy Rosenthal, executive director of Health Care for All, to discuss the potential impacts of a second Trump term on Medicaid and Medicare in Massachusetts.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith interviews Rep. Bill Straus of the 10th Bristol district on past, present, and future transportation issues in Massachusetts.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith chats with Somerville City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen on Somerville’s zoning amendment to eliminate parking minimums for new development. 
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Bruce Schneier, fellow and lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Nathan Sanders, fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. They discuss how AI has the power to strengthen civic engagement in elections and policymaking, the importance of transparency it its use, and how it can be developed to prioritize democratic values.
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute chat with Christina Severin, president of Community Care Cooperative (C3). They discuss the role of accountable care organizations in coordinating high quality care for MassHealth patients, the transformation of Neighborhood Health Plan, and looking ahead at healthcare challenges under a second Trump term.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith sits down with Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, to discuss how abortion advocates are gearing up for a second Trump term. They dig into Project 2025 plans to dismantle reproductive rights, the need for state action, and strategic messaging for the next four years.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith introduces CWB's new editor, Laura Colarusso. They discuss her background in journalism, motivation for public service, and the challenges and opportunities in the ever-changing field.
This week on the Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith sits down with Attorney General of Massachusetts Andrea Campbell to discuss the hurdles and opportunities that lay ahead under a second Trump term.
This week on the Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Mayor of Holyoke Joshua Garcia to reflect on the rightward trend of Latino voters in the 2024 presidential election. They discuss potential mechanisms behind the shift, and lessons learned for both political parties.
This week on the Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith and Gintautas Dumcius sit down with CWB editor Bruce Mohl, executive editor Michael Jonas, and reporter Bhaamati Borkhetaria, to discuss how the five questions on the Massachusetts ballot may impact the workforce. They also summarize arguments for and against the questions and reveal key financers of both sides.
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute sit down with Sen. Cindy Friedman of Middlesex to discuss how the state Legislature is tackling health care reform. They unpack the fragility of Massachusetts' health care following Steward hospital closures, holding insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and private equity accountable, and maintaining transparency in the legislative process.
This week on the Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's editor Bruce Mohl sits down with Phineas Baxandall, Policy Director for the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, and Pete Wilson, Senior Policy Director for Transportation for Massachusetts. They discuss the recent controversy between the Healey-Driscoll administration and state Legislature over distributing surplus revenue collected by the millionaire's tax.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith is joined by state Sen. Brendan Crighton of Lynn, along with zoning expert and consultant Amy Dain. They discuss the MBTA Communities Act in light of recent arguments before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Milton's failure to comply. This episode examines the necessity of multi-family zoning to tackle the growing housing crisis, how the bill was designed, and understanding its role in a larger economic development package.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith sits down with Katherine Antos, Undersecretary of Decarbonization and Resilience, to share how the state plans to tackle sea level rise, coastal storms, and flooding exacerbated by climate change. They discuss long vs. short-term mitigation, financing climate resiliency, and the ResilientMass Plan.
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute are joined by Dr. Abha Agrawal, CEO of Lawrence General Hospital. They discuss her vision for a community-based health system, barriers to advancing equity in Merrimack Valley health care, and the hospital 'safety net' amidst a transition to 3 hospitals.
In a special live edition of the Codcast, Gintautas Dumcius chats about the Massachusetts ballot question wars with political consultants Lynda Tocci of Dewey Square Group and Conor Yunits of Issues Management Group. They discuss what makes a successful ballot campaign, the past and present challenges of galvanizing votes, and compare pre- and post-pandemic ballot campaigns.
This week on the Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's Gintautas Dumcius interviews John Deaton, the GOP nominee running against US Senator Elizabeth Warren. They discuss his campaign, crypto currency, who he plans to caucus with if he makes it down to Washington, and who may get his vote for president in November.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith speaks with Andy Koziol, Director of West-East Rail, and Meredith Slesinger, MassDOT's Rail and Transit Division Administrator. They delve into the challenges and opportunities of expanding intercity passenger rail between Boston, New York, and western Massachusetts.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith is joined by Meredith Goldstein, love advice columnist for the Boston Globe. They discuss the meaning of relationships, gender roles, and marriage in the context of upcoming arguments before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on what happens to engagement rings after a broken engagement.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith catches up with Jessica Tang, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts and recently a DNC delegate, after her return from the convention. They discuss the place of education unions in national and state politics, the MCAS ballot measure here in Massachusetts, and what's ahead for education and health care priorities.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks to Nadine Gary and Kasyo Perrier of Go Topless about the case for changing the law to allow women to be topless anywhere a man can be. She also visits a topless equality rally on Beacon Hill.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute and John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to discuss the current state of the Steward Health Care bankruptcy, as well as what healthcare policy measures did and didn't make it through the end of the legislative session.
This week on The Codcast, Jennifer Smith of CommonWealth Beacon is joined by Kim Borman, executive editor of the Boston Women's Workforce Council, to discuss trends in gender and racial wage gaps in Boston, why they persist, and how to address them.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Massachusetts Sen. Jo Comerford to discuss higher education policy, including the free community college measure in the state budget, as well as the full range of programs that support students, and the role of higher education in economic development and public life.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl is joined by Alicia Barton, CEO of Vineyard Offshore, to discuss the Vineyard Wind 1 and 2 projects, and the challenges facing offshore wind development more broadly.
This week on The Codcast, Sen. Julian Cyr joins CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss a provision in the Mass. Senate's economic development bill that would allow cities and towns more control over whether and what kinds of drinks specials they allow, in place of the current statewide ban. In addition to the pros and cons of the provision, they discuss the broader question of the commonwealth's attractiveness to young people.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Rusty Polsgrove, an organizer with Arise for Social Justice, and by John Walkey, Director of Climate Justice and Waterfront Initiatives at Greenroots, to discuss the role of environmental justice in climate legislation. They focus especially on the environmental justice community designation, and why environmental advocates wish it had a larger presence in the current climate bill.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith talks to Amy Schectman, President and CEO of 2Life Communities, about the challenges of providing supportive and community-based housing for low-income elders.
This week on the Codcast, Congressman Seth Moulton talks to CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl about his support for the proposed Rail Link that would allow trains to run between Boston's North and South Stations, and why he believes it would revolutionize travel across all of Massachusetts.
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the TH Chan School and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute are joined by Lauren Peters, executive director of the MA Center for Health Information and Analysis. They discuss the center's role in informing public policy discussions, its involvement in the Steward saga, and a variety of significant trends in MA health care, including overall spending and the shortage of primary care physicians.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Jen Healy, Rural Transit Program Manager for the Quaboag Valley Community Development Corporation, to talk about the place of microtransit in Massachusetts's transportation systems. They discuss different models of microtransit service, how it's funded, how it connects with other transit modes, and what impact West-East Rail service will have.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Moddie Turay, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation, to discuss the Equitable Developers Fund, and how to build enough housing to supply the current shortage while addressing community needs.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl is joined by Gordon van Welie, president and CEO of ISO New England, to discuss the challenges of moving to a decarbonized grid while maintaining an adequate and affordable electricity supply.
This week on The Codcast, Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute and John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are joined by Eric Gold, partner at Manatt Health and former Chief of the Health Care Division at the MA Attorney General's Office. They discuss the implications of the Steward Health Care bankruptcy for regulatory oversight, as well as the healthcare reform bill currently in the legislature.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka and Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues to discuss the Senate's budget proposal. They get into differences between the Senate and House proposals, potential revenue measures, transit and shelter funding, programs supporting families and youth, and more.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith is joined by Juliette Kayyem, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former Assistant Secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, to discuss the ongoing student protests around Israel and Gaza. They touch on the character of the protests, different university responses, what an effective response to protest looks like, and how to balance free speech and safety concerns.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Paul S. Grogan, former president of The Boston Foundation, to discuss his new memoir, "Prepared to be Lucky: Reflections on Fifty Years of Public and Community Service." Together with coauthor Kathryn E. Merchant, they discuss Paul's long career in Boston politics and philanthropy, and the model of nonprofit civic leadership that he pioneered.
This week on The Codcast, Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute and John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are joined by Charlie Donahue, executive director of the Health Planning Council of Greater Boston from 1981-88. They discuss the successes and failures of that organization, and whether a similar model could work today.
This week on The Codcast, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell joins CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss several office priorities, from enforcing the MBTA Communities Act, to gun control, to regulating the state's gambling systems.
This week on the Codcast, we're bringing you a recording of a recent discussion on the MBTA Communities Act, moderated by CommonWealth Beacon's Gin Dumcius. The panelists are Andrea Harris-Long of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, State Rep. Russell Holmes, and Quincy City Council President Ian Cain. [Note: the recording has been condensed for clarity]
This week on The Codcast, Jonathan Wynn of UMass Amherst and Dan Skinner of Ohio University join CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss their book, The City and the Hospital, about the mixed effects nonprofit hospitals have on the neighborhoods they operate in, and how they do and don't fulfill their community obligations.
This week on The Codcast, Jennifer Smith of CommonWealth Beacon talks to Enid Eckstein of the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition about their effort to increase the Massachusetts minimum wage to $20 an hour and index it to inflation. Along the way, they discuss the cost of living, inequality, business competitiveness, and political strategy.
This week on The Codcast, longtime Massachusetts Nurses Association executive director Julie Pinkham talks to John McDonough and Paul Hattis about the MNA's relationship to Steward Health Care over the years, the consequences of healthcare deregulation, and how the state can facilitate a positive outcome in the present situation.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith sits down with Billie J. Farrell, the first woman commander of the historic USS Constitution. They discuss her path to the post, the ship's role in naval history, and how she keeps that history alive for the public.
This week on The Codcast, MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng talks to CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl about his first year running the T, why he's optimistic about bringing riders back, and where things stand with train car manufacturer CRRC.
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute talk to CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl about what went wrong with Steward Health Care, and the different paths out of the current situation.
This week on the Codcast, Embrace Boston president Imari Jeffries talks to CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith about the story of the Embrace statue, the organization's upcoming projects, and its approach to memorializing Boston history while embodying values of diversity and equity.
This Valentine's week, on a special joint recording of The Horse Race and The Codcast, co-hosts Steve Koczela and Jennifer Smith ask the burning question: is #mapoli breaking up? They're joined by a crew of #mapoli veterans to discuss how social media has impacted political communications over the past decade and a half, and what the declining political twittersphere means for the future.
In the past few years, Boston has been reshaping the institutions it uses to guide the city's growth. This week on the Codcast, Arthur Jemison, Boston's Chief of Planning and Director of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, talks to CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith about these changes, how they fit into a broader vision for Boston's development, and how they incorporate community involvement in that vision.
This week on The Codcast, National Grid experts Owen Brady-Traczyk and Bill Foley join CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss two pilot programs bringing networked geothermal heating and cooling systems to Massachusetts.
This week on Health or Consequences, John McDonough and Paul Hattis are joined by Michael Levine, Assistant Secretary for MassHealth. They discuss the importance of MassHealth in the MA healthcare landscape, the agency's holistic approach to coverage and service provision, its response to the pandemic, and its relationship to the federal government.
Gov. Maura Healey's State of the Commonwealth address included ambitious language about supporting transportation, but the details remain to be seen. This week on The Codcast, former Sec. of Transportation Jim Aloisi and Executive Director of the MBTA Advisory Board Brian Kane join CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl to discuss what kind of support Massachusetts's transportation system needs and is likely to get.Note: Jim Aloisi kindly joined on short notice, and his audio has some construction noise. It's been cleaned up as much as possible.
Last year, the Dirty Deeds Project brought to light hundreds of racially restrictive covenants in home deeds on the North Shore. North Shore NAACP branch president Kenann McKenzie-DeFranza and Harborlight Homes Advocacy and Education Manager Jean Michael Fana join CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss the project, and how telling this ugly history can empower Massachusetts communities to confront it together.
Few industries have faced more challenges in the past few years than restaurants. Devra First, the Boston Globe's restaurant critic and food writer, joins CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss how restaurants are adapting to those challenges, her approach to criticism, and what makes a great restaurant in 2024.
After many years in which it was effectively illegal to build new triple-deckers in Somerville, any homeowner can now add a third unit to their property. Somerville city councilor Matt McLaughlin, and Jesse Kanson-Benanav of Abundant Housing, join CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss the past, present, and future of the triple-decker and its contribution to affordable housing in Massachusetts.
Mayor Michelle Wu has had to negotiate a tremendous number of labor contracts, including most recently with the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. Lou Mandarini, Wu's senior advisor for labor, joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith and Gin Dumcius to discuss the BPPA contract and the city's approach to collective bargaining.
Journalists, like everyone else, are wrestling with the impact of AI on their work. Sarah Scire, deputy editor of Nieman Labs, joins CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith to discuss predictions about AI tools in journalism, their use and misuse, and how readers feel about the technology.
This week on Health or Consequences, hosts Paul Hattis and John McDonough are joined by David Seltz, founding executive director of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. They discuss what the HPC has learned about health care costs over the last decade, where Massachusetts stands relative to other states, and the HPC's current policy priorities.
CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by former Gov. Jane Swift to discuss political changes since her time in office, her current policy work, and the process of public grieving.
This week, Paul Hattis and John McDonough of Health or Consequences are joined by Barbara Fain, executive director of the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety. They discuss the state of knowledge around medical care errors, as well as ongoing efforts to respond to and reduce it.
Ranked-choice voting and rent control will not be on the 2024 ballot in Massachusetts, but supporters are still pushing the policies in the legislature and locally. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Paul Craney and Jennifer Braceras of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance to discuss their opposition to both issues.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Chrissy Lynch, the new president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, to discuss the current pivotal moment for organized labor, the changes she's seen in the movement over the years, and her policy priorities.
Are we a beacon? This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon's Michael Jonas is joined by Steve Koczela of the MassINC Polling Group and Erin O'Brien of UMass Boston to discuss new polling data on how Massachusetts residents see the Commonwealth relative to other states, and relative to 20 years ago.
In this live episode of The Codcast, Commonwealth Beacon's Jennifer Smith is joined by Danielle Allen of Harvard University and Partners in Democracy to discuss how Massachusetts's democracy is doing.
CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith is joined by the head of the Boston Housing Authority, Kenzie Bok, to discuss housing justice, the role of public housing in the city and commonwealth, and what's on the horizon in the world of public housing.
Co-hosts John McDonough and Paul Hattis are joined by Robbie Goldstein, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, to discuss what he learned working at the CDC, his thoughts on public health issues facing the Commonwealth, and more.
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith is joined by Jack Schneider, coauthor of Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To). They discuss the book's argument in the context of current debates over Massachusetts's testing requirements and proposals to rethink them.
CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith is joined by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio to discuss her attempt to audit the Massachusetts legislature, as well as other audits her office is conducting.
Hosts Paul Hattis and John McDonough are joined by Sree Chaguturu, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Health, to discuss the role played by Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) in drug pricing in light of proposed state and federal regulation.
The Worcester Chamber of Commerce recently announced its support for the launch of the Worcester Guardian, a nonprofit digital news organization. Tim Murray, the Chamber's president, joins CommonWealth's Michael Jonas to discuss the Guardian, local nonprofit journalism, and questions of funding and independence.
The Dorchester Food Co-op is a new community & worker-owned grocery store that aims to make healthy food accessible and advance economic opportunity and neighborhood engagement. General manager John Santos joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith to discuss the co-op's origins and business model.
Ed Augustus is the first Secretary of the newly-formed Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. He joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith for a wide-ranging discussion of the challenges facing housing in Massachusetts, including shelter capacity, low vacancy rates, and changing patterns of work.
State Rep. Peter Durant and Evan Horowitz of the Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis join CommonWealth's Bruce Mohl to discuss Massachusetts's Right to Shelter law in relationship to the current shelter emergency and housing crisis.
Oren Sellstrom is the litigation director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which recently filed a complaint claiming that Harvard's legacy and donor admissions preferences violate federal civil rights law. He joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith to discuss the complaint, admissions preferences, affirmative action, and diversity in educational institutions.
Tanisha Sullivan, president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP, joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith to talk about the recent national NAACP convention (the first in Boston in 40 years), its goals, and its impact.
On a special nautical episode of the Codcast, CommonWealth editor Bruce Mohl visits the construction site of Vineyard Wind 1, the nation's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm.
Cheryl Clyburn Crawford, Executive Director of MassVOTE, discusses a new campaign to bring ranked choice voting to Boston with CommonWeath's Jennifer Smith.
The Old North Church, best known for its starring role in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” turns 300 years old this year. Nikki Stewart, Executive Director of Old North Illuminated, joins CommonWealth’s Jennifer Smith to talk about the role of myths in teaching history and why the Old North site has been designated as a “site of conscience.”
Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and Sarah Evans with Open Society Foundations join CommonWealth reporter Jennifer Smith to discuss the international landscape of safe consumption sites and Somerville’s proposal to be the first municipality in the state to allow supervised consumption.
Sarah Iselin, President & CEO at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts by CommonWealth Magazine
Kim Driscoll joins CommonWealth Magazine’s Jennifer Smith to talk about her switch from Salem mayor to lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Driscoll’s taking on a jack-of-all-trades role as the administration reshuffles leadership and cabinet positions to address simultaneous housing, transportation, and competitiveness crises.
Andrea Campbell is about five months into her role as Massachusetts' new attorney general, replacing now-governor Maura Healey, who backed her for the post. This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Magazine’s Jennifer Smith talks with Campbell about the transition from Boston City Councilor and mayoral candidate to top prosecutor, focusing the office’s fire on issues ranging from energy policy, criminal justice, and even the state lottery.
This week on the Codcast, Jennifer Smith explores artificial intelligence’s growing prominence in our everyday lives with Dr. Nir Eisikovits, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Eisikovits founded the school’s Applied Ethics Center (https://www.umb.edu/ethics) and has spent the past years thinking about the impact of AI on moral decision making and its unique relationship to work and creativity.
Moulton’s ambitious, expensive, and enthralling transportation vision by CommonWealth Magazine
One month into his tenure as the first state Secretary of Veterans' Services, Dr. Jon Santiago has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust in the beleaguered agency. He talks with CommonWealth’s Jennifer Smith about his path from Puerto Rico to a cabinet level secretary in Massachusetts, and the jobs and passions he’s juggled along the way.
Educators in four Massachusetts school districts went on strike over the past year, despite it being illegal in the state. A re-filed bill on Beacon Hill looks to change that, giving public employees the right to strike after six months of failed negotiations. CommonWealth’s Jennifer Smith talks through the case for and cost of strikes with bill sponsor Sen. Becca Rausch and Tom Scott, Executive Director of Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.
Real estate groups are launching broadsides against Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's rent control home rule and attempts to lift the statewide rent control ban are once again hitting Beacon Hill. Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, and Rep. Sam Montaño of the 15th Suffolk District, join CommonWealth to break down Boston’s controversial rent control proposal.
Meet the leaders of the state's two health care conversion foundations by CommonWealth Magazine
Should vocational high schools be able to continue using selective criteria, including middle school grades and attendance record, to award seats, or move to a lottery system that gives all applicants an equal chance at admission?
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says it's time to remake the city's antiquated development and planning system, which dates to the late 1950s and isn't serving the needs of a 21st century city.
Bruce Mohl talks to State Senator Mike Barrett of Lexington and State Rep. Jeff Roy of Franklin, Massachusetts.
Bump says DiZoglio is being ‘well-schooled’ in auditor’s duties by CommonWealth Magazine
After four decades as Democratic foot soldier, Kate Donaghue will be a first-term state rep by CommonWealth Magazine
Avangrid's Kimmel says wind farm needs 'very modest' price increase by CommonWealth Magazine
Governor’s Council candidate would seek pro-choice, anti-racist judges by CommonWealth Magazine
Why Black women die from childbirth twice as often as White women by CommonWealth Magazine
Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow and Father Richard McGowan analyze the Senate vote on sports betting and the odds of passage by the Legislature.
Paul Hattis and John McDonough talk to Phoebe Walker, director of community services at Franklin Regional Council of Governments, and Ruth Mori, president of Massachusetts Assn. of Public Health Nurses and Wayland's public health nurse
Gordon van Welie, the president and CEO of ISO-New England, discusses the challenges facing the region's power grid.
Michelle Wu on the need for "bold, urgent" change -- and responding directly to detractors by CommonWealth Magazine
Brownsberger and Day on the challenge of making sense of correctional spending by CommonWealth Magazine
State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, a Democrat running for governor, lays out her progressive vision for a state that deals with everything from public education needs to climate change with greater urgency.
Carlene Pavlos, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association, says the Baker administration’s policy of leaving many of the major COVID decisions to local boards of health helps explain why local officials are facing harassment and many are leaving public service.
Defense lawyer dismisses Baker marijuana bill as ‘junk science’ by CommonWealth Magazine
Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute and John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University trace the origins of the fight over Mass General Brigham’s $2.3 billion expansion plan back to the 1990s.
Students are contracting COVID-19, occasionally in school – but medical experts say school is the safest place for kids. Parents are urged to vaccinate their children against COVID, though children are unlikely to get seriously ill. State policymakers are encouraging schools to increase one form of COVID testing, while ramping down another. Education policy during COVID is complex, with no easy answers. “As an education system, we need to be able to explain to parents what is being done, why it's being done, and convince them, frankly, that what's being done is still going to keep their kids safe,” said Natasha Ushomirsky, state director for Massachusetts at the Education Trust, a policy organization that advocates for low-income students. Ushomirsky and Dr. Richard Malley, a senior pediatrician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital, spoke to The Codcast about changing COVID policy in schools.
Interview with Josh Sharfstein, an architect of the Maryland health care rate-setting system.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss is finishing his first year in Congress representing the state's 4th Congressional District. The Newton Democrat saw an insurrection at the Capitol and took an impeachment vote against the president in his first days in office. That set the tone for a year in which he said he's had to struggle to represent the values of his constituents -- Auchincloss won't co-sponsor legislation with any Republicans who voted against certifying the fairly conducted 2020 presidential election -- while also advancing their priorities through the give and take and often bipartisan cooperation and compromise needed to move legislation in Congress.
House Speaker Ron Mariano wants to make a robust offshore wind industry, delivering electricity at reasonable rates, part of his legacy -- and he doesn't plan to stay in power as long as his predecessor, Robert DeLeo, to accomplish it.
Boston journalists Yawu Miller of the Bay State Banner and Gin Dumcius of the Dorchester Reporter look back at Michelle Wu's landslide win in the Boston mayor's race and look ahead to what a Wu administration in City Hall could portend.
8/19/21--On the finale episode of Mass Reboot, we examine the early days of the pandemic when elected officials' jobs quickly got even more complicated and important. State Senator Adam Hinds, State Representative and Boston Medical emergency room physician Jon Santiago, and State House News Service Reporter and president of the Massachusetts State House Press Association Katie Lannan discussed what legislating was like back in those days.
Now, as we look forward to a slightly more open, but still worrisome future, we have to ask, how will our leaders learn from what came before? What is informing their decisions? What can we expect to change, and stay the same?
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Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
When the pandemic hit, just about every aspect of our lives changed. And that includes our relationships-- with family, friends, and partners. Whether you were single, dating, married, or divorced during the pandemic, chances are, dynamics changed at least slightly. Today, we hear from two sets up couples -- Honey Goodenough and Kenneth Dyer, and Eden Heller and Dan Hopkins -- about their experiences together during the pandemic, as well as the Boston Globe Love Letters columnist Meredith Goldstein about the patterns she saw emerge among people navigating love and dating before, during the height of the pandemic, and now.
Next week: Government.
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Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
8/5/21--School administrators, teachers, parents, and students were all thrown for a loop when COVID shut down school buildings and demanded immediate innovation. Some schools, and some students, were better off than others. So much depended on available resources like technology, Internet, and childcare. Families that lacked any one of these struggled with remote school and hybrid school. Learning loss was certainly a symptom of the COVID school year, but the voices on today’s podcast emphasize that it should not be the sole focus as we look towards recovery--that addressing students’ grief; relationships; and physical, social, and emotional well-being takes precedence over reaching a certain benchmark in reading or math.
Takeru Nagayoshi of New Bedford High School, Tracy O’Connell Novick of the Worcester School Committee, Tanya Nixon-Sillberg of Little Uprisings, and Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Education Jason Lewis reflect on the past year and a half of school plagued by COVID interruptions and provide insight on what the next academic year could and should provide for teachers, students, and their families.
Next week: Love.
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Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
This week’s episode is sponsored in part by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
Episode 6 is also sponsored by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, an employer-driven member organization comprised of CEOs and Senior Executives from large employers. Through the Roundtable, business leaders engage with the public and private sectors to advance policies that support the state’s competitiveness and long-term economic prosperity.
Senate President Karen Spilka and Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues say there is "wisdom in waiting" to spend the federal American Rescue Plan Act money.
7/28/21--Each episode of Mass Reboot thus far has touched on one thing over and over again-- a particular, consuming aspect of our lives: work. Restaurant workers lost jobs due to the pandemic. So did artists. Work has, for the most part, dictated where we live, and how and where we travel day to day.
If any one event had the ability to upend work as a grounding force in our lives, it was the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, people lost that root--either they were laid off or lost wages. Or, they kept their jobs but took their work from the office to the home. Others still who remained in in-person jobs had to face the looming threat of COVID when they went to work.
When the distribution of vaccines began, many workers and their bosses looked forward to a hybrid work format that would offer the best of both worlds: the ability to collaborate in person with colleagues some days, but enjoy the comfort of working from home other days. Now, however, with COVID cases rising in all states, that future is up in the air. Yajaira Toribio of Dreams Nail Lounge, Segun Idowu of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, Maeghan Welford of the MITRE Corporation, JD Chesloff of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable discuss their perspectives on how our ideas of work changed during the pandemic, and what work looks like in the coming months and years.
Next week: Love.
Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
This week’s episode is sponsored in part by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
This week on Mass Reboot, the pandemic’s impacts fell heavily on restaurants. What did industry professionals do to survive the pandemic, and how are they bouncing back as eager diners return in droves as the state reopens? Find out on Episode 4, Food.
Bob Luz, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, describes what it was like reckoning with an entire sector of the economy screeching to a halt almost overnight, and what it took to keep restaurants afloat during that time.
Former Lawrence mayor Dan Rivera remembers the quick mobilization of a local coalition when COVID hit-- to both support restaurants and provide food assistance to those who needed it.
Restaurant employees Ashley, Caroline, and Bruno anticipate a return to full restaurants and bars, but wonder whether Boston will remain the thriving hub of lunch spots and after-work drink hangouts if remote and hybrid work continues to be as popular as it has been.
Next week: Work.
Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
This week’s episode is sponsored in part by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
7/8/21--Welcome to the third episode of Mass Reboot, a summer podcast series about restarting Massachusetts after COVID-19 and what we lost along the way. Each week, we’ll dive into a sector of life in the commonwealth, exploring how the pandemic hit it, how it adapted, and how the people inside it envision a new normal.
This week: Transportation.
The pandemic swiftly brought the traffic crisis well-known to Bay Staters to a halt. But that didn't last long. As businesses, office, and schools reopen, traffic is back with a vengeance. Meanwhile, the public transit system is only getting a fraction of the ridership it received before the pandemic.
State Representative William Straus describes a need for better connectivity throughout the state. He represents parts of the South Coast, where drivers to Boston spend about 5 hours round-trip on the road.
Monica Tibbits-Nutt, executive director of the 128 Business Council, sees public-private partnership is a key to closing transit gaps, and incentivizing commuters out of their cars and onto public transportation options.
Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
This week’s episode is sponsored in part by Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
Episode 3 is also sponsored by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, an employer-driven member organization comprised of CEOs and Senior Executives from large employers. Through the Roundtable, business leaders engage with the public and private sectors to advance policies that support the state’s competitiveness and long-term economic prosperity.
6/30/21--Welcome to the second episode of Mass Reboot, a summer podcast series about restarting Massachusetts after COVID-19 and what we lost along the way. Each week, we’ll dive into a sector of life in the commonwealth, exploring how the pandemic hit it, how it adapted, and how the people inside it envision a new normal.
This week: Home.
In a state where housing costs were already sky-high, what did the pandemic mean for people who lost jobs and wages? Did the shifting of populations and economic upheaval budge the housing or rental markets? And how did our ideas of home change when it became our only safe space for 15 months?
These are the questions hosts Libby Gormley, Steve Koczela, and Jennifer Smith seek to answer this week. Guests Denise Matthews-Turner of City Life / Vida Urbana, Jessie Partridge Guerrero of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and Symone Crawford of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance weigh in on what they witnessed during the pandemic and what they predict the future holds for Massachusetts.
Next week: Transportation.
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Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
A big thank you to our sponsor this week, Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
6/23/21
Welcome to the first episode of Mass Reboot, a summer podcast series about restarting Massachusetts after COVID-19 and what we lost along the way. Each week, we’ll dive into a sector of life in the Commonwealth, exploring how the pandemic hit it, how it adapted, and how the people inside it envision a new normal.
This week: Art.
Hosts Libby Gormley, Steve Koczela, and Jennifer Smith of The Horse Race are spending time in Boston’s Theater District and Dorchester, then taking a wide view of the Massachusetts arts world over the past year.
Joe Spaulding, CEO and President of the Boch Center, describes the shock of a silent Wang Theatre and the long and unsteady road back to a vibrant performance space. Emma Leavitt, of the Dorchester Art Project and Brain Arts, recounts the struggles of the local arts program to continue supporting and reaching its diverse arts community.
As for impacts across the state, and the long-term inequities that still exist in the arts space, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Michael Bobbitt breaks down the scale of creative losses and the need to rethink arts sector power structures.
Next week: Home.
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Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group, in association with CommonWealth Magazine. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. To help us make more episodes, donate at patreon.com/mass_reboot.
A big thank you to our sponsor this week, Rasky Partners. They’re a long-time supporter of ours and a nationally recognized government affairs and communication firm. For over 30 years the team at Rasky has worked with all types of organizations, large and small, helping each one reach their business objectives through advocacy and storytelling. Find out more about Rasky Partners at rasky.com.
Hi Codcast listeners! We're taking a brief hiatus for the summer. We'll be back in the fall, but until then, please enjoy a 10-week podcast series created by our friends at The MassINC Polling Group called Mass Reboot.
What happens when you reboot a whole state? Yesterday, after one year, three months, and five days, the COVID-19 state of emergency ended in Massachusetts. With millions vaccinated across the state and with summer on its way, the gears are beginning to turn again. Things that stopped are starting. Things that were closed are re-opening. That leaves a big question.
What does a post-pandemic Massachusetts look like?
The team behind The Horse Race, Massachusetts’ favorite political podcast is back with a new summer podcast. Mass Reboot is a 10-episode series on restarting Massachusetts after COVID-19 and what we’ve lost along the way. Steve Koczela, Jennifer Smith, and longtime Horse Race producer Libby Gormley will share hosting duties, telling the stories of Massachusetts residents as we emerge from the pandemic. Each week, they will explore a new area of Massachusetts society - from housing and government to sports and food.
The first episode, “Art” will post June 23rd. New episodes of Mass Reboot will post weekly on Wednesdays and will be available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Horse Race and The Codcast will find the podcast in their feed.
Mass Reboot is a production of The MassINC Polling Group and CommonWealth Magazine and is sponsored by Rasky Partners.
Massachusetts Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver talks about the return of traffic and the challenge of finding room for all of the transportation infrastructure in the Allston I-90 project.
Annissa Essaibi George: A 'Boston girl' shaped by immigrant roots by CommonWealth Magazine
Vaccines may be here, but the need for COVID-19 testing is not going away any time soon. That’s the prediction of Tim Rowe, the CEO of CIC Health, a private company that has been overseeing COVID-19 testing programs and also running mass vaccination sites in Massachusetts. “We are going to have a period of time where not everyone has the vaccine,” Rowe said. “And it's a little unclear what younger age groups will yet have the vaccine. And we have a world which is going to have storming COVID.” Rowe said the current forecast is it will take four years for the world to reach herd immunity, which means there is the possibility of new virus strains developing in other countries and migrating to the US. “So if you are a policymaker making a plan for the fall and you want kids in school and you want to get us back to something like the economy that we had prior to the pandemic, you probably want to have in place a system that you know is going to work to track is there disease spreading?” Rowe said. “If it's spreading, what strains are they? And if there's a significant population which is not protected by vaccines - and that may be a lot of the kids in this country - you want to make sure that they're not spreading that disease within society.”
Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser is one of the foremost thinkers about the role played by cities. His 2011 book "The Triumph of the City" lays out all the ways cities have been central drivers of human civilization and innovation. Could the pandemic lead to a long-term repositioning of their role? Yes and no, he says on this episode of The Codcast.
Dr. Eric Dickson, the CEO of UMass Memorial Health Care, says the health care inequities that have surfaced during the coronavirus pandemic can be addressed through policies that help hospitals like his that cater to some of the poorest people in the state.
On The Codcast with John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard and Paul Hattis, formerly of Tufts University Medical School, Dickson outlined three key policies to improve health care equity – stop the expansion of Mass General Brigham into Westborough, Westwood, and Woburn; raise Medicaid payment rates; and make Medicare available to more people by steadily lowering the age of eligibility.
All three policies center around the way hospital care is paid for, with Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and elderly, paying lower rates than commercial health insurers. The disparity in payment rates means hospitals that cater to the poor rely more on Medicaid funding and can only survive if they are cross-subsidized by higher payments from commercial insurers.
As it is, UMass Memorial is just breaking even, Dickson said. “We can keep the lights on but having dollars to invest in new buildings and technologies, that comes really hard to us,” he said.
Danielle Allen is a scholar of Athenian democracy who has decided that she may have something to offer to the practice of democracy in 21st century Massachusetts. The Harvard professor announced in December that she was launching an exploratory run for governor,
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell is of two minds about Vineyard Wind, which after lengthy regulatory delays seems poised to finally get underway.
The mayor is excited about the potential for offshore wind farms to transform New Bedford the way they have many older European port cities, but he also worries that Massachusetts may be missing the boat when it comes to capturing the true value of the industry.
“Offshore wind is really a generational opportunity for a city like ours to leverage its competitive advantages in a way that brings in investment, creates jobs, and improves a city’s quality of life,” Mitchell said.
Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins and the no-prosecution study findings by CommonWealth Magazine
The US could have prevented the surge of COVID-19 cases this winter that killed hundreds of thousands of people if only the FDA had approved methods for at-home rapid testing and made the tests widely available. That is the argument made by Dr. Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, one of the country’s strongest proponents for the use of at-home rapid COVID-19 tests. “Had the regulatory barriers been broken down in the summer last year, and the companies that could produce these were actually allowed to produce them at scale…we could have seen the surges of the fall and winter that happened and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, those could have largely been prevented,” Mina said on The Codcast.
Chelsea leaders reflect on COVID's toll on state's hardest hit community by CommonWealth Magazine
Sen. Joseph Boncore and Rep. William Straus, the chairs of the Transportation Committee, engage in a lively debate about free bus fares.
Stephanie Jones and Nonie Lesaux of the Saul Zanentz Early Education Initiative at Harvard's Graduate School of Education discuss the lessons learned about childcare during COVID and how to rethink the industry in the diseases aftermath.
An interview with Tom Croswell, the CEO of the still unnamed company combining Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan. He talks about the benefits of consolidation but also raises questions about its value in other areas of health care.
Sens.-elect Adam Gomez of Springfield and John Cronin of Lunenburg pledge a focus on equity.
Doug Bacon, the founder of the Red Paint Hospitality Group, and Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce, share how COVID-19 is decimating the restaurant industry.
Jim Hunt, who is preparing to stop down as president and CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, talks with Paul Hattis and John McDonough about the origins of the community health center movement and the current challenges.
Devin Alexander, the co-founder of Rolling Releaf, and Chris Fevry, co-founder of Your Green Package, talk about the nascent marijuana delivery industry, and some of the controversy surrounding the drafting of state regulations. They argue a courier model won't work and push for delivery companies that buy their own marijuana wholesale and sell direct to consumers. Challenges ahead include getting licenses and signing municipal host agreements.
With Gov. Charlie Baker pressuring schools to reopen in-person, no one is arguing that this is the best way for students to learn. Some union officials and parents are worried about sending their kids to school with community-based cases increasing, and have pushed back.
But what metrics should districts be basing their reopening decisions off of, and how can communication improve between local decision-makers and the state?
Mary Beth Miotto, Vice President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Glenn Koocher, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees join the Codcast to unpack these questions.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Massachusetts allowed no-excuse mail-in voting for the first time this year as well as expanded early voting – and millions of voters took advantage. By Saturday evening, 2.28 million voters had cast their ballots, either by mail or in person – a number equivalent to more than two-thirds of all ballots cast in the 2016 election. For Pam Wilmot, vice president of state operations for Common Cause, said that is all the proof needed to retain no-excuse mail-in voting going forward. “This process works, and we should absolutely make it permanent,” Wilmot said. Wilmot and state Sen. Barry Finegold, an Andover Democrat who chairs the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Election Laws, joined The Codcast to talk about the changes to voting made in this year’s elections and the implications for future elections.
Evan Falchuk, in favor of Question 2 calling for ranked choice voting, squares off with Nick Murray, a policy analyst at the Maine Policy Institute.
We talk to David Seltz, the executive director of the state’s Health Policy Commission, about how the coronavirus is changing health care.
Michelle Wu is, by conventional standards, an unlikely figure to be challenging a sitting Boston mayor (though incumbent Mayor Marty Walsh has yet to declare his candidacy, he is widely expected to seek a third term next year). She is shy by temperament, and when she entered Harvard as an undergraduate in 2004, politics was so removed from Wu’s upbringing that she considered herself neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
But our conversation with Wu on The Codcast, focused more on getting to know her than on details of campaign policy points, reveals how various strands of her family history, childhood, and college years, even if removed from formal involvement in politics, connect in ways that make a future in public service not that unlikely after all.
Massachusetts voters will be asked in November whether to update the Right to Repair law -- but they may have a hard time wading through the complexities of a ballot question when supporters and opponents cannot even agree on the basics of what it will do.
Tommy Hickey, director of the Right to Repair Coalition, and Conor Yunits, a spokesman for No on One, joined the Codcast to discuss the ballot question – and disagreed on even the most factual details of what the current law says and how the ballot question would change it.
Today, cars are equipped with a port where a mechanic can plug in and diagnose a problem. The ballot question would require manufacturers to create a new open access data platform where consumers, and their repair shops, could use a mobile app to access telematic data, which is information transmitted wirelessly.
I took a Red Line train last week that was crowded according to the MBTA’s COVID-19 crowding standards, but the consensus on this week’s Codcast was that I didn’t need to worry.
Jim Aloisi, the former secretary of transportation and TransitMatters board member, called my story on the crowded train ride a mild over-reaction “Your article might have given people an impression that they should be fearful of a situation that I don’t think is any more or less risky than any of the other activities that people do normally all the time,” he said.
With less than two weeks until school starts, parents from Somerville and Newton say they have yet to get any details on what classes will look like for their children and whether remote learning will be better than it was when schools suddenly shut down last spring amid COVID-19.
“Families cannot live in a state of uncertainty,” said Keri Rodrigues of Somerville on The Codcast. “I am two weeks away from the first day of school in Somerville. I still don’t have a specific hour-by-hour schedule of what remote learning is going to look like, when my child is expected to be on Zoom. I don’t even know who my kids’ teachers are going to be and frankly they don’t know my kids either. I just spent six months with my children. I have a lot of information I’d like to tell their teachers about who they are, how they learn, and what they’re capable of. And there has not been any communication with me and … what this is going to look like when it gets down to brass tacks.”
Jack Cheng of Newton says he and his two teenagers are also in the dark. “They don’t know what school is going to be like and they’re frustrated,” he said.
The federal government allows states to recoup Medicaid costs after the deaths of patients who use the program. Estate recovery allows homes to be seized and sold to pay off expended Medicaid dollars, a move advocates decry as penalizing low-income families, and making Medicaid into a loan program.
Some states take the federal rules a step further. “MassHealth has some of the strongest and most draconian state recovery rules in the country,” Somerville Rep. Christine Barber said on a new “Health or Consequences” episode of The Codcast with John McDonough of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Dr. Paul Hattis, who recently retired from Tufts University School of Medicine.
Two opponents debate a ballot question in Maine with huge importance for Massachusetts.
Differences between AIM official and transportation advocate mirror the split on Beacon Hill.
Michael Curry: Waging a duel-front war on the pandemic and racism by CommonWealth Magazine
6/7/20-- Rep. Russell Holmes and Segun Idowu, the Executive Director of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, discuss the impact of George Floyd's death and racial justice reform. Holmes is a sponsor of several bills, including one that would allow for decertification of officers for misconduct. Idowu addresses misconceptions about recent protests in Boston.
EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE these days to be inside a supermarket, but few people know what it’s like to be in the shoes of the essential workers who keep those stores running.
On the Codcast, Boston-based Stop and Shop employee Jose Lopes and Whole Foods worker Dan offered their assessment of the risks they face these days working at grocery stores during the coronavirus pandemic. (Dan has asked that his last name not be used.)
Lopes unloads groceries from trucks, and spends the second part of his shift on the floor. “It’s extremely hectic. I wouldn’t imagine in the 38 years I’ve worked at Stop and Shop that I’d be seeing this,” he said.
Stop and Shop has provided its workers with gloves and a N95 mask, which must be reused several times since they are in short supply. Lopes said he’s concerned about wearing the mask so many times when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends only wearing it once.
“I go in with the mask and gloves. I try not to take them off, to take a break, or eat anything,” he said. “Keep the mask on until you go home.”
Dan, a shelf stocker, said it’s almost impossible to not come in contact with customers who pass by in aisles and come up close to workers to ask questions. Whole Foods has tape on the floor spacing people out, but besides the six-foot distance from whomever is checking out at the cash register, customers don’t always respect that spacing.
Lopes said the new rule allowing in only customers equal to 40 percent of the capacity of the store at a time is “not enough.”
The two employees also have concerns about how their stores handle situations when workers test positive. “We’re calling for stores to be shut down until they’re safe for employees and customers to come back and reopen,” Dan said.
Joined by Rep. William Straus, cochair of the legislature's Transportation Committee and Jim Aloisi, TransitMatters board member and formed Secretary of Transportation
With a portion of the state’s casino revenues, the Massachusetts Cultural Council is testing whether arts and culture can be prescribed just like medicine.
The organization is running three pilot projects where health providers, counselors, and social workers prescribe cultural activities for those with whom they work. The goal is to see whether going to the zoo, visiting a museum, or attending the symphony can have beneficial health impacts.
Anita Walker, the executive director of the Cultural Council, is convinced the experiment will work, in part because the health benefits of cultural activities have been documented in a number of studies. She’s using a portion of the revenues her agency receives from casino gambling to pay the cost of the pilot project prescriptions, but in the long run she hopes health insurers will come to see the health benefits of arts and culture and pick up the tab themselves.
SOME OF THE STATE’S leading transit advocates are calling for extending the life of the existing MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board for six months to a year and making buses free across the state.
On the TransitMatters Codcast hosted by CommonWealth magazine, Jim Aloisi, the former transportation secretary and TransitMatters board member; Josh Fairchild, the co-founder and president of TransitMatters; and Stacy Thompson, the executive director of Livable Streets, looked back at 2019 and forward to 2020. They predicted the Legislature would pass a transportation revenue package and assembled a wish list of fairly predictable initiatives they would like to see action on.
Can Hampshire College rise, if not from the dead, from the higher ed death watch list?
Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen has predicted that as many as half of all US colleges and universities will close or go bankrupt over the next decade, and a year ago it looked like Hampshire would be one of them.
The Amherst college, founded in 1970 with a commitment to rethinking traditional liberal arts education, said it was in dire financial straits and would be seeking a “strategic partner” to merge with. The college, which depends almost entirely on tuition revenue to operate, seemed to push itself closer to the fiscal cliff by then announcing it would not accept a new entering class this fall.
The news of Hampshire’s death, however, has been premature.
Students, faculty, and alumni rose up in protest against the planned merger, and within months the college president who said it was the only viable path had resigned, along with the leaders of the college board of trustees who backed the plan. The remaining college leaders declared they would instead mount an aggressive fundraising drive and pursue other reforms to remain an independent college.
Now charged with leading that effort is Ed Wingenbach, who arrived in August as Hampshire’s new president. For a guy facing a very tall task, the veteran college administrator -- most recently at Ripon College in Wisconsin -- sounded enthusiastic and upbeat as he talked about the challenge on The Codcast. The college has about 730 students after what Wingenbach calls the “self-induced crisis” of not enrolling a new class this fall. He says Hampshire will be back to 1,100 or 1,200 students within five years.
There’s a back to the future feel to some of the changes taking place in US health care, and Atrius Health, which provides care to some 740,000 patients, is a leading player in that effort in Massachusetts.
After years of soaring health care costs, there is growing interest in moving away from the fee-for-service model that has long dominated care, where providers are paid for each patient interaction or procedure. The trend now is toward giving health providers a set budget to care for patients over the course of a year. The idea is that it creates an incentive for providers to do all they can to maintain patient health, even if it means more spending on preventive services to prevent costlier outcomes down the road.
It harkens to the early days of managed care, when such a system was touted as a way to achieve the double-win of better health outcomes at lower cost. By the 1990s, however, HMOs were in retreat, faced with a public pounding as many big for-profit companies seemed more interested in managing costs by denying various services than promoting good health outcomes. The idea behind managed care, however, is enjoying a revival as the US health care system struggles to find ways to better coordinate care and control cost growth.
At Atrius, one of the state’s largest health networks, with more than 700 physicians and 400 non-physician providers, more than 80 percent of all revenue now comes from some sort of global payment structure that moves away from the traditional fee-for-service model.
“Which means we are directly aligned with our patients’ interests,” said Dr. Steven Strongwater, the CEO of Atrius, on this week’s episode of The Codcast. “We want to keep patients healthy and well and out of ERs and hospitals to lower their out-of-pocket costs, and to improve their outcomes, their patient experience, and safety.”
There is a struggle going on for the soul of the Massachusetts Republican Party between Trump loyalists who control the party apparatus and a more moderate brand of Republicanism espoused by Gov. Charlie Baker.
The state party is headed by Jim Lyons, a social and economic conservative who said in a recent email to state Republicans that President Trump’s economy is working for Massachusetts residents. “We learned on Election Day that even here in ‘blue’ Massachusetts, voters in our targeted areas are picking common sense over creeping socialism,” he said.
But the party is also headed by its top office-holder, Baker, who is no fan of Trump and practices a brand of politics that blends social liberalism, fiscal restraint, and a willingness to work cooperatively with the Democrats who dominate Beacon Hill. A relatively new super PAC affiliated with Baker spent money on behalf of Republicans and Democrats in the November municipal elections.
While Lyons and Baker refrain from attacking each other publicly, it’s clear they represent competing factions within the party. On the CommonWealth Codcast, two Republicans from those factions engaged in a sometimes testy debate about the struggle over the party’s direction.
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s “City to City” program sets out to take Boston civic and business leaders to other cities so they can expand their thinking on challenges at home by learning about policies and practices elsewhere. Walsh, who was part of the program’s trip earlier this month to Los Angeles, has clearly taken that mission to heart.
Appearing on The Codcast, Walsh repeatedly pointed to the “bold” move taken by Los Angeles leaders, who brought a countywide ballot question to voters asking them to raise the local sales tax to support major investments in the region’s transit infrastructure.
“That’s a bold idea,” Walsh said of the LA ballot effort. “We have to think bold here in Massachusetts, and I don’t think we think bold enough.”
FOR THE Massachusetts High Technology Council, blocking a transportation revenue package is a two-step process.
The first step, which proved successful last week, was convincing House leaders to put off any action on a revenue package until next year. Chris Anderson, president of the council, argued on the CommonWealth Codcast that delaying action at least until January will give lawmakers more time to better understand the state’s revenue and political picture.
Monica Bharel, the state’s public health commissioner, is definitely a glass-half-full type of person.
On the Health or Consequences edition of the Codcast with Paul Hattis of Tufts University Medical School and John McDonough of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Bharel went through a series of major challenges facing her agency and in each instance ended her discussion on an optimistic note.
In this second installment of MassINC Insights, we hear from the journalists and thought leaders of MassINC about the education funding debate.
As lawmakers on Beacon Hill approach agreement on a school finance package, MassINC members dig in to the history of Massachusetts school funding that’s led up to this landmark bill. Plus, a piece of the legislation calls for schools’ accountability for the funding they receive.
After the many years MassINC researchers have spent looking into accountability, they discuss the impacts of local, state, and federal accountability through the lens of the debate between the House and Senate.
The derailment on the Red Line in June may have been a turning point.
After Gov. Charlie Baker visited the crash site, he decided it was time to accelerate repairs on the MBTA and greenlight more shutdowns of the system to speed up projects. The derailment also galvanized the debate over new transportation revenues – for the MBTA and the state as a whole.
The state’s business organizations weighed in last week on the new revenue issue. Several wanted no part of a tax increase and there was scattered consensus on what taxes or fees to raise among those calling for additional transportation revenues. But Jim Rooney, the president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and long-time government analyst Michael Widmer said on the CommonWealth Codcast that the derailment and continuing problems with the T have helped build a case for additional funding.
This week on The Codcast, we bring you an episode of MassINC Insights, the first installment in a series of conversations with the journalists, researchers, and pollsters of MassINC, The MassINC Polling Group and CommonWealth. The nonprofit consistently leads the way in producing nonpartisan research and independent reporting that make serious waves in the Bay State. And today, we're pulling back the curtain on the organization, asking our talented team about the transportation funding debate, what to watch out for, and why.
JAY KAUFMAN, THE former state rep from Lexington, remembers a conversation he had with House Speaker Robert DeLeo the last time the Legislature considered raising taxes to pay for transportation.
It was 2013, the morning before the House vote on a bill that would raise the gas tax 3 cents, index that tax to inflation (later rescinded by voters), jack up tobacco taxes, and impose a tax (later jettisoned by lawmakers) on some computer software services.
Kaufman, who was the chair of the Revenue Committee, said he didn’t think that tax package would provide enough new revenue to meet the transportation system’s needs. But he said DeLeo told him that if he voted against the bill he would lose his chairmanship of the Revenue Committee.
“He made it very clear to me that my options were to vote for it or not be part of any conversation going forward,” Kaufman said. “He said, ‘If you can’t vote for this, I can’t have you as part of my team.’”
Kaufman wanted to remain in control of the Revenue Committee to ultimately usher in a progressive system of income taxation in the state, so he says he went along with the speaker’s request. But now, after not seeking reelection last year and with another transportation revenue bill poised to come up for consideration, Kaufman decided to speak out on the Codcast.
Richard Parr, the research director of the MassINC Polling Group, said he was surprised at the strong support in a statewide, online poll for regional rail and a number of other ambitious transportation initiatives, including an underground rail link connecting North and South Stations. The most popular initiative was transitioning the commuter rail fleet from diesel to electric power. The poll also found support for a number of initiatives to fund regional rail, including a surtax on millionaires, proceeds from putting a price on the carbon content of automobile fuels, and regional ballot questions. Jim Aloisi and Josh Fairchild of TransitMatters, who interviewed Parr, pointed out that the poll numbers indicated less support for hikes in more straightforward taxes such as the gas tax. Aloisi, for example, noted more than two-thirds of those polled opposed raising the gas tax to pay for regional rail while roughly the same percentage were open to funding regional rail by putting a price on the carbon in auto fuels. Aloisi said those two numbers are inconsistent because the impact on drivers is basically the same. What does it mean? “People want everything and they want someone else to pay for it,” Aloisi said.
SUFFOLK COUNTY Sheriff Steve Tompkins insists his decision to sever ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement had nothing to do with protests, and everything to do whether the people in his jail’s cells are destined to remain in the state.
“I was hired to do local, not federal work. The ICE population is transient — they’re not staying here,” Tompkins said on CommonWealth’s Codcast. “But the ladies we’re going to service, they either live in my county or the Commonwealth. They’re staying here. They have kids. They have families. We want them to go back home in better shape than they arrived.”
Congresswoman Katherine Clark supports the idea of opening facilities where people can use illegal drugs under medical supervision to prevent overdose fatalities and refer people to treatment for drug addiction when they are ready.
“These sites, in particular, if it is saving some lives, if it is allowing us to have the intervention to stop this cycle before a person does lose their life to an overdose, that’s a piece of this puzzle that we have to be open to and figure out,” said Clark.
In a wide-ranging interview on CommonWealth’s Codcast, Clark also talked about her work on a bill dubbed the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act, which would take a number of different approaches to empower the victims of workplace sexual harassment and try to curb the type of predation made infamous by the torrent of #metoo stories over the past two years.
Seven months ago the MBTA’s oversight board indicated it was going to weigh in on whether the Legislature should explore new transportation funding initiatives, but since then there’s been nothing.
Joe Aiello, the chair of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, said the timing was not right back then. But soon it will be, he says, pointing out that there have been some new developments on the revenue front. Aiello also says the board is likely to lay out options for the Legislature rather than recommend anything specific, perhaps because of Gov. Charlie Baker’s continued opposition to new revenues.
KATE WALSH says she favors Medicaid for all, not Medicare for all. It’s not a political slogan you hear much these days, but Walsh, the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, has a unique perspective since so many of her hospital’s patients are on Medicaid.
“I actually think Medicaid is the most important insurance plan in the country,” she said, noting that it covers roughly 79 million mostly poor and elderly Americans and provides them with coverage for long-term care, medicine, behavioral health, and substance abuse. Every state offers Medicaid, so there is opportunity for local customization of insurance offerings.
“Why I’m a Medicaid for all person is it’s a public option that works for the public,” she said.” I think Medicare for all is a much better political slogan and I’m afraid it’s just that.”
On the Health or Consequences Codcast with John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University and Paul A. Hattis of Tufts University Medical School, Walsh said the issue that keeps her up at night is “the dissatisfaction most Americans have with our health care system.”
When the year started, with Beacon Hill poised to make another go at a bill revamping the state’s education funding formula, some advocates were focused on boosting funding for schools, while others were insisting that new money come with new ways of holding districts accountable for how it’s spent and for closing the yawning achievement gaps that characterize the state’s K-12 landscape.
The fact that leading voices from both camps are applauding the legislation that was rolled out last week underscores the success legislative leaders have had in crafting a bill that’s receiving widespread support.
“Two thumbs up,” said Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz on a new episode of The Codcast. “In vast majority, it hits all of the marks,” she said of the bill unveiled jointly by the education committee co-chairs, Rep. Alice Peisch and Sen. Jason Lewis, together with House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka.
Rick Lord has a unique perspective on health care in Massachusetts. He serves on the state’s Health Policy Commission. He stepped down in May after more than 28 years as head of the business group Associated Industries of Massachusetts. And previously he served as the budget director of the House Ways and Means Committee on Beacon Hill.
Lord talked health care on this week’s Health and Consequences segment of the CommonWealth Codcast with John McDonough of Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of Tufts University Medical School. To give you a taste of the discussion, here are seven questions posed to Lord.
The band of right-wing provocateurs who staged a "straight pride" parade in Boston 10 days ago were hoping to stir the pot. But they likely never imagined that the tempest they'd cause would be a judicial showdown among local officials that exposes tensions set off by last year's election of a reform-minded district attorney.
Things got unruly in the streets as the straight pride marchers were met by hundreds of counter-demonstrators, but there wasn't exactly order in the court either when the cases of many of the three dozen counter-protesters who were arrested came before Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott.
Sinnott repeatedly, over the course of two days, rejected efforts by prosecutors to dismiss cases against those arrested for non-violent offenses of disorderly conduct or resisting arrest. (The DA's office said it was pursuing cases against those charged with violent crimes, including assaulting police officers.) The problem: It's not clear Sinnott is within his rights to do so, as charging decisions are generally the province of prosecutors.
Susan Church, a well-known local defense lawyer, says Sinnott absolutely was out of bounds in refusing prosecutors' efforts to drop charges against a young woman she was representing on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Church was so emphatic in that belief that she got into a testy exchange with Sinnott that ended with the Cambridge lawyer hauled out of court in handcuffs for contempt when Sinnott ordered her to stop making her argument but she persisted.
"He has no leg to stand on," Church said about Sinnott's ruling on this week's Codcast. Describing her experience of being handcuffed and held for several hours in the courthouse lock-up area as "surreal," Church offered her account of what transpired in the courtroom
The service disruptions caused by the MBTA’s more aggressive maintenance schedule could provide a catalyst for better bus service, according to some of the chief proponents of bus rapid transit.
More common in other countries than the United States, bus rapid transit, or BRT, is a strategy that uses buses so they mimic the conveniences of a rail line. That should include a dedicated right-of-way in the center of roads to avoid turning traffic; bus stations with seating, shelter, platform-level boarding, a fare system that enables passengers to board at all doors; and priority given to the buses at traffic signals, according to Julia Wallerce, Boston program manager for the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy.
Wallerce found a lot of common ground with Jim Aloisi and Jarred Johnson of TransitMatters on this week’s episode of The Codcast, where the three discussed the benefits of BRT and some of the challenges of implementing it in metro Boston.
When two aides to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh were convicted earlier this month on federal charges of conspiring to extort organizers of the Boston Calling music festival in 2014, US Attorney Andrew Lelling touted it as another victory for efforts to root out corruption in government.
But a lot of people don’t see it that way. The case has generated a tremendous amount of blowback from advocates, labor leaders, legal experts, and, last week, most members of the Boston City Council, who say the US attorney’s office has criminalized the usual give-and-take of political advocacy.
“We’re in a different world where advocacy is now considered extortion,” said Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards on this week’s Codcast. She called it a “true concern” and said the convictions have created incredible uncertainty for elected officials and advocates who are accustomed to pushing their causes vigorously, but now wonder whether that could land them in prosecutors’ crosshairs.
Cara Solomon and George Powell think personal stories – gathering them and reading them – are the way to bridge differences and build a stronger sense of community in Boston. Solomon is the founder and Powell is one of the most successful story ambassadors at Everyday Boston, a nonprofit organization that is attempting to knit together Boston one person’s story at a time. Solomon and Powell are about as different as can be. Solomon is white and a former newspaper reporter for the Hartford Courant and Seattle Times who grew up in Wayland. Powell, who is black, grew up in Roxbury and spent eight years in prison. They would seem to have little in common, but listening to them on The Codcast they seem to have a powerful connection.
How do you balance public safety and neighborhood quality of life concerns with support for the most marginalized people in a community?
Those issues exploded into public view with the recent arrests of homeless people and drug users as part of “Operation Clean Sweep,” a set of Boston police actions centered on the streets near Newmarket Square where the city’s South End, Roxbury, and Dorchester neighborhoods converge.
But the issues are nothing new to state Rep. Liz Miranda and her constituents. She grew up in the shadow of Newmarket Square in a tight-knit Cape Verdean enclave of Roxbury, and says residents have been dealing for years with problems stemming from the concentration of drug treatment facilities and homeless shelters on their doorstep. The situation has gotten dramatically worse, she said, since the 2014 closing of the city’s shelter and addiction treatment facilities on Long Island.
For the former community organizer who is serving her first term in the House, the controversy that boiled over earlier this month brought some satisfaction that attention is finally being paid to the problems, mixed with concern over the approach city officials took, and questions about why longstanding community calls to deal with the deteriorating situation had gone ignored until now.
This “is a community that’s been speaking up pretty loudly for the last couple of years saying we need help,” Miranda said on The Codcast. “There’s a clear saturation of services at this corner that I don’t see another city or town or even another neighborhood being able to withstand.”
“This is a statewide problem,” she said. “Boston cannot solve it alone.”
Miranda was joined by Yawu Miler, senior editor of the Bay State Banner, who wrote about the issue in the paper’s current issue.
Most of the focus so far in the scandal at the Registry of Motor Vehicles has been on finding out what went wrong. Now attention is starting to shift to why.
On the Codcast, Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow and Paul Levy, one of the state’s most experienced managers, discussed why an agency would ignore all the warning signs and allow notices about Massachusetts driver violations in other states to pile up unattended. The situation only came to light when a Massachusetts driver who should have had his license suspended because of a drunken driving arrest in Connecticut plowed into a group of motorcyclists in New Hampshire, killing seven of them.
Lesser is vice chair of the Legislature’s Transportation Commission, which heard seven hours of testimony last week from an assortment of Registry officials who acknowledged they were aware of the backlog of out-of-state violation notices but did little or nothing to address the problem.
“What was clear from the top is that a culture had developed where this was not a priority,” he said. “There were clear warning signs along the way and there were red flags along the way and there were audits that flagged these issues. But for whatever reason, the can was kicked down the road and it wasn’t made a priority to get that backlog resolved.”
Alex Morse, the 30-year-old mayor of Holyoke, may look like he’s on a fool’s errand by challenging Rep. Richard Neal in next year’s Democratic primary. After all, just seven months ago Neal’s three decades of toil in the DC vineyards landed him in one of the most powerful positions in the House, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. But Morse says the veteran Springfield pol is out of step with the urgency of the times, and he questions whether Neal’s new clout will deliver tangible gains for the First Congressional District.
“I think there’s an urgency to this moment right now in our country,” Morse says in this week’s Codcast. “These aren’t normal times. It isn’t business as usual. And that urgency isn’t matched by our current representative in Congress.”
It's humane. It’s a violation of international law. It’s not the way things have worked since the mid-1960s. These were the arguments of immigration advocates following last week’s announcement by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice that rules for claiming asylum in the US would be changing.
Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University Law School, and Susan Church, a partner at the immigration law firm Demissie & Church in Cambridge, say the most massive asylum overhaul since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is also doing away with due process rights and the governmental rule of separation of powers.
Under the new regulations, an applicant seeking asylum in the US must be denied refuge in each country along the way to the American border.
“It’s blatantly illegal,” said Church on The Codcast. “You cannot change a law that Congress enacted with a regulation that isn’t passed by elected members of Congress.”
It isn't surprising that Amy Rosenthal, the executive director of Health Care for All, wants to rein in the cost of prescription drugs. She's been quite clear that breakthrough drugs don't have much of an impact if people can't afford them.
But her talk of shared responsibility on the Health or Consequences Codcast with Paul Hattis and John McDonough took the debate in a new direction. She said she has made the rounds with all of the players in the Massachusetts health care system and discovered a shared pride in all that has been accomplished in terms of near-universal coverage and moderating prices. Each of the players has contributed.
"Individuals were required to start buying health insurance, the individual mandate," she said. "Employers had an employer assessment. Hospitals and insurers have to go before the Health Policy Commission. All of these things were not easy. People had to put some serious skin in the game. And all we're saying at this point is that it's time for pharma to do their part in this."
The CommonWealth Codcast hosted Center for Immigration Studies' Jessica Vaughan and immigration attorney Matt Cameron to break down the history behind courthouse arrests in Massachusetts, and what a recent decision barring most ICE agents from courthouses could mean. Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies for the D.C.-based Center for Immigration studies, a nonpartisan research institute that examines economic, security, and social impact of immigration.
Cameron is the managing partner of Cameron Law Offices, and the director of Golden Stairs Immigration Center, an East Boston non-profit immigration legal service provider. He also teaches immigration policy at Northeastern University.
In a wide-ranging discussion about the Bay State's transportation problems, former congressman Mike Capuano and Kendall Square Association CEO C.A. Webb made their case for new revenue and bold new investments in transit, while Steve Baddour, a lobbyist who previously served as Senate chair of the Transportation Committee, highlighted the plight of car commuters.
In the most recent episode of the Codcast, those three, who have played a vocal role in transportation policy over the years, batted around some other proposed solutions to get people where they are going faster.
The Stop & Shop strike earlier this year cost the company about $100 million and resulted in a contract the workers could agree to, but whether the power on display at Bay State grocery stores was an aberration or a sign of resurgent force in private sector labor is an open question.
For decades, private sector labor has been on a decline around the United States, but the Stop & Shop strike gained big buy-in from the public and politicians. Jeff Bollen, who is president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1445, noticed a connection between his union reaching an agreement with Stop & Shop and then later gaining some concessions from Macy’s.
“We believe when the strike ended, and we won that strike, that Macy’s came right back to the table and settled – the best contract we’ve ever gotten from them,” Bollen said.
Bollen and Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steve Tolman both sat down for an interview on the most recent episode of the Codcast to provide organized labor’s viewpoint on that strike and where the labor movement stands today.
Add Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell to the list of officials talking about creating a dedicated bus lane along busy Blue Hill Avenue.
In a wide-ranging interview on the CommonWealth Codcast with three members of TransitMatters – Josh Fairchild, Jim Aloisi, and Jarred Johnson – Campbell said transportation is one of the top issues in her district, which covers parts of Mattapan, Dorchester, Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain.
“More and more people are paying attention to transit and transportation because they need to get to their jobs, or they need to get their kid to school, or they need to get someplace for a recreational purpose and they don’t want to be on a bus for an hour or two,” she said. “If we want them to connect to these opportunities, we have to have a really thorough and thoughtful conversation about Blue Hill Avenue – dedicated bus lanes, rapid transit, everything needs to be on the table.”
In March, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh accelerated the city’s efforts to launch dedicated bus lanes; Blue Hill Avenue was broached as a possibility at that time but city officials said more outreach to residents in the area was needed first.
The Center for Health Information and Analysis produces reams of data for both Massachusetts policymakers and the public, providing a window into state health care expenditures and offering tools to compare prices between different providers.
Ray Campbell, the executive director of CHIA, walked through some of the available online data tools during a recent conversation with Paul Hattis and John McDonough for their “Health or Consequences” Codcast.
“No other state has an organization quite like CHIA,” said Campbell, who added that the agency, which is funded by assessments on the health care industry, looks into spending on hospitals, drugs, and doctors, and it gains some important insights from the all-payer-claims database.
While CHIA has access to tools that are unavailable in other parts of the country, the agency can’t see everything, so it works collaboratively with the health insurers to give consumers a more complete idea of what they might pay for a particular procedure.
With spring comes the annual ritual of MCAS testing in Massachusetts schools. It’s how we gauge the performance of individual students as well as schools and districts. The assessment of basic skills in math, English, and, more recently, science offers a snapshot of academic achievement levels, and it is the central measure used in the state’s accountability system that aims to hold schools responsible for outcomes.
And, argues Jack Schneider, it fundamentally gets everything wrong.
The UMass Lowell professor wrote in his recent book, Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality, “We have two decades of evidence that current approaches to educational measurement are insufficient and irresponsible.”
Schneider says on this week’s Codcast that test scores serve only as “demographic data in disguise,” telling us more about the family income of students than about the quality of their education.
In the world of transit advocacy, there are those who push for sweeping changes such as regional rail, connecting the Red and Blue subway lines, or doing away with transit fares. And then there are people like Richard Prone, who advocates for smaller, nitty gritty initiatives that nevertheless play an influential role in the broader debate.
Prone spent most of his working life as a train engineer and now, in retirement, serves as the Duxbury representative on the MBTA Advisory Board. He is a relentless advocate for the South Shore at meetings of the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, where he shows up week after week during the public comment period and uses his two minutes of speaking time to doggedly make the case for policies he believes will help his neighbors and increase commuter rail ridership.
“You have to be persistent and you have to make sense,” he said on the Codcast.
Greater Boston’s booming housing market may be lucrative to real estate speculators, but the constricted supply of housing isn’t helping those who make long-term investments in their homes, according to a Boston city councilor and housing advocates.
Councilor Lydia Edwards, who chairs the Housing and Community Development Committee and represents East Boston, Charlestown, and the North End, said that if housing production (including affordable housing production) rises to a rate that better meets demand, speculators might be hurt but ordinary homeowners will gain a more long-term perspective on their investments.
“What we’re seeing is an inflation of that value and people buying in like it’s the new stock market in order to get a return that is just unheard of even on Wall Street on housing that they’re not occupying or even – sometimes – renting out,” Edwards said. “If that’s your goal, to make that kind of return on your investment, yes, building a lot more units might actually hurt that.”
Boston’s version of Vision Zero, an idea that originated in Sweden more than two decades ago, sets as its target zero fatalities or serious injuries by 2030 among people who walk, bicycle, or drive.
A recent policy report from the Vision Zero Coalition indicates the number of fatalities has been declining in Boston, falling from 21 in 2016 to 10 in 2018, with the number of pedestrian fatalities dropping from 14 to 7 over that time period. But the number of crashes that required response by emergency medical service teams actually increased slightly, rising from 4,355 in 2016 to 4,367 in 2018.
“Generally speaking the trend lines are better, or at least they’re not any worse, than when the program was adopted,” said Matthew Lawlor, who is active in WalkUP Roslindale. “We’re making progress, but those of us who are advocates think progress isn’t coming fast enough.”
The co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing may be new to their posts, but both seem to grasp the urgency of tackling big issues facing the state’s health care sector and both sound optimistic about solutions to some thorny problems emerging in the current session on Beacon Hill.
That’s the takeaway from a conversation with Sen. Cindy Friedman and Rep. Jennifer Benson convened by Paul Hattis and John McDonough as part of their “Health or Consequences” interviews on The Codcast.
One of the biggest issues looming over the health care sector: the large price variation in what hospitals charge for similar services, a problem that vexed lawmakers last session, as they adjourned without reaching agreement on an approach to dealing with it.
Gov. Charlie Baker finds himself increasingly isolated on Beacon Hill with his opposition to new revenues for transportation.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka are both open to raising additional revenues for transportation and the two chairs of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, in an interview on the CommonWealth Codcast, said new money is desperately needed.
Rep. William Straus of Mattapoisett said his first priority this session is developing a revenue package with money dedicated for transportation along with a list of spending priorities for the future. He said lawmakers don’t like to increase taxes, so the revenue option chosen will be “the one people hate the least.”
“For me,” he said, “it’s hard to see the kind of revenue in the kinds of numbers we’re talking – hundreds of millions of dollars – that isn’t built at least as a core component of a gas tax change.” He said raising the gas tax is efficient and relatively straightforward, with each penny increase in the tax raising $35 million a year.
Winds of change are starting to blow through Boston’s business community.
One clear signal came earlier this month, when close to 20 business organizations said they would heed an appeal from House Speaker Robert DeLeo to help develop a transportation policy that likely will call for additional revenues. "It's time for a united voice from the business community that can be a powerful driver of progress," said Jim Rooney, the CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
On the issue of climate change – and what to do about it – the folks at the Environmental League of Massachusetts say business community attitudes are also changing on climate change. League officials offered up for the CommonWealth Codcast three business leaders who reflect that change -- Cynthia Curtis, senior vice president of sustainability at the commercial real estate firm JLL; Kyle Cahill, director of corporate responsibility at John Hancock; and Tedd Saunders, chief sustainability officer at the Saunders Hotel Group.
“For a long time, legislators were only hearing from industry representatives and businesses that said this legislation or that policy is going to be bad for business – we’re going to have to lay off people and costs will go up,” said Saunders.
Much has changed in the national discourse since a pro-war rabble two centuries ago tore down a Baltimore newspaper building, besieged the paper’s editor, and later broke into the city jail to attack him yet again.
But while legal and conventional structures have been erected to protect a robust free press, the baying mob hasn’t exactly gone away, according to Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, and Rep. Josh Cutler of Duxbury, author of the new book Mobtown Massacre: Alexander Hanson and the Baltimore Newspaper War of 1812.
The two appeared on the Codcast to talk about the violence that followed Alexander Hanson’s decision to publish an anti-war editorial, and to then double-down with another screed after political opponents tore down his newspaper building.
Everyone has an opinion on the polarizing topic of immigration reform, but rarely do immigrants get to be in the presence of key decision makers who determine their fates. Student Estefany Pineda and community organizer Jose Palma got that opportunity recently, when Pineda attended the State of the Union as a guest of US Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Palma testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
Pineda is a recipient of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which gives legal status and work authorization to those brought into the country illegally by their parents as minors. Palma, who came to the US in 1999 after a natural disaster in El Salvador, has temporary protected status, which allows him to live and work legally here as well.
Pineda and Palma described the challenges faced by immigrants under President Trump's administration on the Codcast. While they represent different groups of immigrants, Pineda and Palma say the best way forward for both of them is to find a pathway to citizenship through the recently proposed Dream and Promise Act. The new legislation, proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House leaders, is the first to seek permanent legal residency for both groups of immigrants.
The chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care doesn’t want the government to take over the entire health insurance business – at least until after he retires – but he sees some advantages to the movement seeking an expansion of Medicare so that government-backed insurance covers everyone.
For one, Harvard Pilgrim CEO Michael Carson thinks Medicare for All – a rallying cry among many Democrats – is part of an important discussion to have. For another, Carson said, the best plan is a middle way that involves more collaboration between the government and private insurers.
Carson shared his thoughts about potential changes big and small to the health care marketplace with Paul Hattis, an associate professor at the Tufts University Medical School, and John McDonough of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, during the “Health or Consequences” Codcast.
Michelle Wu and Paul Regan took very different positions on the MBTA fare increase, but they both agree on the big picture needs of the transit authority.
Regan, the executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, said on CommonWealth’s Codcast that the $29 million derived from the fare increase approved by the Fiscal and Management Control Board last Monday is needed just to cover a small wage increase for union employees, not to mention rising costs for commuter rail, paratransit service, and other operations. “They’ve spent the entire fare increase already,” he said.
Wu, the Boston city councilor, presented a petition to the control board calling for no fare hike, free passes for students and seniors, and selective bus routes operated fare-free. Wu said it made no sense to raise fares and lose riders at a time when congestion is pervasive and climate change is looming.
On a special live edition of the Codcast, Jesse Mermell and Jennifer Nassour bridge the gap between women in the early 1900s, who were protesting for the right to vote, and today, when the struggle goes on in a different way.
In the first segment of the podcast, Mermell and Nassour interview Tina Cassidy, the author of a book about Alice Paul, a woman who not only led the first women’s march in US history but who changed stereotypes about feminism by putting an attractive woman on a white horse at the head of a group of protesters seeking the right to vote.
After learning about Paul, Mermell and Nassour sit down with Tanisha Sullivan, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP; Andrea Campbell, president of the Boston City Council; and Keiko Orral, a former state legislator. They talk about the challenges facing women today in politics, how women sometimes hold women back, and how Republican women are not always welcome at the table.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh made a splash last week by announcing a bunch of new transportation initiatives, some of which were set in motion by the advocacy of Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu.
In a speech to the annual meeting of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau on Thursday, Walsh called for reducing the speed limit on neighborhood streets to 20 miles per hour, providing free T passes to every Boston student at public and private schools in grades 7 through 12, creating two new dedicated bus lane pilots, and testing a new pickup-dropoff spot for ride hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft at the intersection of Boylston and Kilmarnock Streets in the Fenway.
On the Codcast with Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of TransitMatters, Chris Osgood, Walsh’s chief of streets, detailed the proposals and said a major goal of the city’s new transit team will be to accelerate these types of initiatives. The team currently has two members focused on planning and engineering, but Osgood said it will be expanded to six.
The Massachusetts nursing home industry says inadequate state funding caused 20 facilities to close last year and is putting another 39 at risk of going out of business this year.
Tara Gregorio, the president of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association, and Naomi Prendergast, president and CEO of D’Youville Life and Wellness Community in Lowell, sounded the alarm on the Codcast, saying rates provided by MassHealth are way too low because they are based on cost benchmarks from 2007. There are 398 skilled nursing care facilities in Massachusetts.
“We’re very concerned today that we don’t have the resources, whether it’s staff or funding, to support today’s needs let alone what’s coming in the next five to 10 years,” Gregorio said, referring to the so-called silver tsunami caused by the aging of the state’s baby boomer population.
When it comes to the state of our health, there is a glaring disconnect in the US, says Sandro Galea. We spend far more on health care per capita than any country, yet we’re far less healthy than those in many other developed countries as measured by all sorts of indicators, including life expectancy.
Our cutting-edge new medical treatments and drugs are wonderful, says the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health. But he says we are focusing on them to the exclusion of all sorts of factors in everyday life that have a profound effect on health. Galea joined John McDonough and Paul Hattis for the latest installment of “Health or Consequences” on the Codcast, where he unspooled his take on how we’re missing the boat when it comes to promoting good health.
A native of Malta who trained as in emergency medicine in Canada, Galea described his migration from work as an acute care doctor to the field of public health. When treating patients on the frontlines of medicine, “you are sharply aware of what really shapes health,” he said. “What drives health is not so much the immediate experience, but a lifetime of experiences in the world around people and the context in which people live.”
Adam Friedman calls it being Nadered.
In the 2012 congressional race in the 6th District, Democrat John Tierney won with 46 percent of the vote. Republican Richard Tisei came in second with 45 percent of the vote. Libertarian Dan Fishman was way out of the running, but he may have been the deciding factor in the race as he garnered 4 percent of the vote.
In the 2010 election for governor, Democrat Deval Patrick emerged victorious with 48 percent of the vote. Republican Charlie Baker came in second with 42 percent of the vote and Independent Tim Cahill was a distant third at 8 percent. Was Cahill’s participation a deciding factor?
Michael Sullivan follows the money.
Sullivan is the director of the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which monitors and publicizes how candidates for office in Massachusetts raise and spend their campaign cash. He makes sure politicians follow the rules, and in some cases he has to set the rules.
He recently proposed a new rule covering expenditures by unions on behalf of political candidates. Labor unions are currently allowed to give no more than $15,000, or 10 percent of their gross income, to a political candidate before having to register as a political committee and face tighter regulation. Sullivan’s proposal would impose a $1,000 limit on union contributions to political candidates, a $500 limit on contributions to political action committees, and a $5,000 limit on donations to a political party’s committee.
Andrea Campbell’s twin brother Andre died seven years ago while awaiting trial in the custody of the state Department of Correction, and she says that has everything to do with how she wound up on the Boston City Council.
The 36-year-old Mattapan resident says government needs to share more stories. By that she means we can often gain greater clarity about how to approach public policy issues through stories that put a human face on the often dry matters of city and state. Campbell, who is starting her second year as City Council president, leads by example and unspools some of her own life story on this week’s Codcast.
It is, by turns, both heart-wrenching and inspiring, and when you hear it it’s easy to see how she connects her life experience with the issues that drive her work as a Boston city councilor. Campbell has been a relentless advocate for public schools – and for ensuring all students get the sort of education she received at Boston Latin School. She’s been outspoken on criminal justice reform issues and, most recently, on the need for greater diversity in the city’s police and fire departments.
TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY Stephanie Pollack is being likened by two of her predecessors to former governor Frank Sargent for her decision to replace the elevated section of the Massachusetts Turnpike between Boston University and Allston with an at-grade version. Sargent 50 years ago called a halt to the proposed inner belt highway that would have continued the state’s auto-centric approach to transportation and carved up many of Boston’s neighborhoods.
On the Codcast hosted by TransitMatters members Jim Aloisi and Josh Fairchild, former state transportation secretaries Fred Salvucci and Aloisi praised Pollack for deciding not to follow conventional wisdom and rebuild the elevated section of the Turnpike as is, which would have maintained the Pike as a de facto wall separating one part of Boston from another.
Andrew Dreyfus, the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, is excited about a series of initiatives the state’s largest health insurer is pursuing to improve care while simultaneously treating patients in less costly settings.
One initiative, a pilot project with South Shore Hospital, rewards the facility if it succeeds in admitting fewer patients and doing fewer procedures. Dreyfus, appearing on the “Health or Consequences” Codcast with Paul Hattis, an associate professor at the Tufts University Medical School (co-host John McDonough of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health was on jury duty), said the goal of the pilot project is to reverse the incentives that currently reward hospitals for seeing more patients and doing more procedures.
State leaders appear to be serious about finally passing new legislation this year that would update the state’s education funding formula for K-12 schools. But exactly what would a new funding bill look like?
Tracy Novick of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and Liam Kerr of Democrats for Education Reform tackle that question on The Codcast. Their spirited conversation offers a preview of the debate that’s likely to unfold on Beacon Hill.
Two first-term legislators who tried unsuccessfully last week to change the way the speaker is selected say the fight for rules reform in the House is far from over.
Rep. Maria Robinson of Framingham and Rep. Patrick Kearney of Scituate said on the Codcast that a broader rules reform package is in the works, and one of their chief concerns is with the way rules are routinely suspended in the House.
Three leading transportation advocates – Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters, Chris Dempsey of Transportation for Massachusetts, and Stacy Thompson of the Livable Streets Alliance – ring in the new year on The Codcast with a discussion about priorities.
One of the biggest is putting a price on transportation carbon and using the proceeds to invest in expanded transit options, cleaner vehicles, and climate resiliency. Massachusetts and eight other states plus the District of Columbia plan to spend the next year developing the initiative. Dempsey calls it a “really big deal,” largely because it will provide badly needed revenues that can be used by the participating states to bolster their transit systems and reduce emissions.
According to Gov. Charlie Baker’s Commission on the Future of Transportation, which recommended pursuing a regional price on transportation carbon, the initiative could raise somewhere between $150 million (at $4.50 per ton of carbon) and $500 million (at $15 a ton) a year for Massachusetts. For the average driver, that works out to between $24 and $84 a year.
Jim Aloisi likes to write a holiday verse every year for CommonWealth, and this year he went all out. This year’s ditty is a clever take on linking the Red and Blue Lines. You can read/sing it yourself (to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) or you can listen to Aloisi and Chris Dempsey, the director of Transportation for Massachusetts, belt it out for you. Enjoy, and have a happy holiday season!
Republican Jenn Nassour and Democrat Jesse Mermell tee up a year-end conversation for the final 2018 installment of "Disagreeing Agreeably" on the Codcast. To help them, they brought in guests who lean left, political consultant Wilnelia Rivera, and right, Paul Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
Asked for a one-word description of politics for the year that was, their guests had starkly contrasting takes. For Craney, it was "boring," as he pointed to the big statewide races that held little suspense. Rivera, who was a strategist on the campaign that delivered the year's biggest upset, Ayanna Pressley's Democratic primary victory over 20-year incumbent congressman Mike Capuano, stuck with the rule by declaring as her word "#disruptthenarrative."
What’s it like to be in charge of nearly half the state budget?
Extraordinarily humbling,” said Marylou Sudders. But don’t confuse humbling with cautious indecision or lack of tenacity.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s health and human services secretary has a reputation for strong leadership and a social worker’s commitment to the enormous range of state programs she oversees, led by the Medicaid program that delivers health care coverage to 1.8 million state residents. Sudders said she is on board for a second Baker term, and highlighted some of the priorities she’ll focus on, including another stab at reining in Medicaid drug costs, an initiative to preserve access to community hospitals, and continued work to ensure access to mental health services.
Sudders said the state has built up a lot of protections against any rollback of the Affordable Care Act, but called herself a “worrier” who nonetheless closely tracks developments outside the state -- prescient words on Friday afternoon, only hours before a federal judge in Texas struck down the entire federal law.
Sudders touched on those topics and more in the inaugural episode of “Health and Consequences,” a new health policy-focused entry to the Codcast line-up being helmed by John McDonough, a one-time Massachusetts legislator who now teaches at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and Paul Hattis of Tufts University’s School of Medicine.“
Emily Rooney, who is celebrating her 20th year hosting Beat the Press on WGBH, says the biggest change she's witnessed over that time period has been in the news-gathering business itself.
In television, the network and local news shows have narrowed their focus and range. Locally, she says, the focus increasingly is on traffic, weather, and "two-bit crime coverage. Anchors, once known by their first names, are now barely known at all."
"Everything looks exactly the same and they've got these fungible anchors that all look the same," she says on The Codcast.
The head of the MBTA’s oversight board says the hoped-for transformation of the transit agency has a long way to go yet.
“We’re still at the very beginning,” says Joseph Aiello, the chair of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board. He says the collapse of the T during the winter of 2015 exposed the sorry state of the agency. “We were probably in as dark a hole as you can possibly be in,” he says.
But Aiello is not all gloom and doom. He says the agency is moving ahead with an overhaul of the Red and Orange lines that will double their capacity and committing to an annual maintenance schedule that will prevent the sort of deterioration of service that occurred the last time the two lines were upgraded. “We’ve got a pretty radical transformation going on,” he says.
Some people may have been taken aback by the overflow crowd of 350 people who showed up earlier this month for a Boston City Council hearing in Roxbury to hear concerns about displacement. Kim Janey was not one of them.
“I was not surprised at all,” said Janey, the district city councilor who represents Roxbury along with parts of Dorchester, the South End, and the Fenway.
Janey, who sponsored the November 13 hearing, said concerns about displacement have reached a fever pitch in Roxbury, where housing costs shot up by 70 percent from 2010 to 2015, twice the rate of the overall citywide appreciation of 36 percent during that period. “People are feeling the heat,” she said on this week’s Codcast. “People are being pushed out of our neighborhood. And so we need to come up with creative solutions to keep residents who want to be in Roxbury in Roxbury.”
It feels like an odd time to be celebrating charter school success in Massachusetts, but that’s just what Cara Candal does in a new book that not only touts the schools, but telegraphs a bold claim about them in its title.
The Fight for the Best Charter Public Schools in the Nation, published by the charter-friendly public think tank Pioneer Institute where Candal is a senior fellow, leaves no doubt about the author’s view of the independently operated, but publicly funded, schools that were first authorized in the state’s 1993 Education Reform Act.
But Candal is an honest broker. She doesn’t ignore criticism of charters, such as their long-standing practice in the past of not “backfiling” empty seats during the school year. And she says charters have, as some critics charge, not always made good on the promise that these schools would share with districts best practices and other lessons to improve education more broadly.
Republican Jennifer Nassour and Democrat Jesse Mermell call their version of the Codcast “disagreeing agreeably,” but there is no disagreement on this pre-election edition. They talk about the shortage of housing in Massachusetts with Rachel Heller of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association and Paul McMorrow of Mass Housing, and they discuss campaign camaraderie with Sarah Groh, the campaign manager for Ayanna Pressley, and Republican political consultant Matthew Sisk. Remember to vote on Tuesday.
Mark Twain once famously observed, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”
The irony is, of course, there’s nothing much you can do about it but grumble. That is perhaps where we are at with transportation, especially public transit, here in Massachusetts. The MBTA is getting a lot of attention in the gubernatorial race, with Democrat Jay Gonzalez constantly trying to hang the decaying system around Gov. Charlie Baker’s neck. But for all the talk, it doesn’t look like it’s hurt Baker’s standing among voters.
Republican Jennifer Nassour and Democrat Jesse Mermell explored the phenomenon on their “Disagreeing Agreeably” program on The Codcast. They were joined by Pioneer Institute’s Charlie Chieppo and Marc Ebuña, from TransitMatters, who had different, albeit not divergent, takes on the state of transportation and later, Rich Parr of MassINC Polling Group joined the conversation to talk about where transportation ranks in importance to voters.
The Massachusetts president of National Grid defends the nearly four-month lockout of 1,250 workers by saying the company is doing what it needs to do to bring its costs in line and protect customers from excessive charges.
It’s an interesting line of reasoning at a time when union leaders and their supporters are saying the company is putting profits ahead of public safety. To buttress their point, the unions and their allies regularly note that National Grid is a British company that earned more than $4.6 billion in profits last year.
Marcy Reed, the Massachusetts president and executive vice president for US policy and social impact at National Grid, says on the Codcast that the utility had three options when the contracts of its two steelworker locals expired on June 24. The union could strike, which its members had voted to do, she says. The company could keep the workers on under the terms of the current contract while the two sides continued negotiating, which is what the union says it wanted. Reed, however, says National Grid tried that approach two years ago but had no success in reducing costs. “We didn’t feel it would result in any productive conversations,” she says.
All the talk in Massachusetts about the referendums before voters next month focuses on Questions 1 and 3, with little acknowledgement that there's a number missing in between.
However, unlike the other ballot questions which seek to create or maintain state laws, Question 2 would launch that most typical Bay State of creatures, a commission to talk about changing the US Constitution. But while the referendum is about process, the underlying motive is the hot button issue of campaign finance and, more specifically, overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates for corporate money to influence elections.
Frank Bellotti is 95, the kind of 95 you'd want to be if you live to be 95. Trim, tan, sharp of mind (but perhaps slower of gait), Bellotti joined me recently to record a CommonWealth Codcast. He is, I'm pretty sure, the oldest living former statewide office holder - he was lieutenant governor from 1963 to 1965, and attorney general for 12 years, from 1975 to 1987. Most people today probably remember him as the former AG, a role that was perfectly suited to this progressive libertarian whose personal discipline and rigorous preparation made him a formidable lawyer.
Even in a year when women are expected to make strong political gains, there are no guarantees.
Beth Lindstrom, who came in third in the Republican primary for US Senate, and Gerly Adrien, who came in a close second in a Democratic primary for a state rep's seat from Everett, explain why they ran for office and why they think they lost on CommonWealth's Codcast, hosted by Democrat Jesse Mermell and Republican Jennifer Nassour.
The “bro” culture of pot is a dominant image of marijuana. Cheech and Chong are the dudes who most represent the “stoner” generation while the legal industry is increasingly seeing corporations and investors dominated by men.
The reality is a little more diverse, though, and Massachusetts is aiming to hold the door open for previously disenfranchised people who want entrée into the booming business, such as minorities, ex-convicts with marijuana-related records, and women.
Perception often being stronger than reality, though, makes it difficult for women to get a foothold in the industry. Caroline Frankel, who has applied for a retail license for a store she plans to open in Uxbridge, and Angela Brown, owner of T Bear Inc. who is aiming to open a free-standing manufacturing facility in Wareham, joined the Codcast to talk about what it’s like being a women in business and, especially, the emerging marijuana industry.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Gonzalez filled in one big missing piece of his campaign platform last week, a plan for how to pay for the new investments in transportation and education he has vowed to pursue if elected.
His proposal to levy a 1.6 percent annual tax on the holdings of Massachusetts colleges and universities with endowments greater than $1 billion became the topic of the week in the race — and it’s the first of two issues Jennifer Nassour and Jesse Mermell tackle in their latest Codcast installment. The Republican and Democratic voices live up to the show’s tagline, “disagreeing agreeably,” staking out opposing views on the matter.
In the second half, they set their sights on the November ballot question that would repeal the state’s transgender rights law signed two years ago by Gov. Charlie Baker. On this issue, Nassour and Mermell are in agreement, with both supporting the “yes” side that would retain the law.
Jeanne Talbot, the mother of a transgender high school student, Nicole Talbot, is their guest, along with Matt Wilder, a spokesman for the Yes on 3 campaign.
Everett wanted to launch a dedicated bus lane, so Mayor Carlo DeMaria Jr. just did it in December 2016. No community meetings or endless analysis. DeMaria gave residents four days notice that the parking lane on a 1.5-mile stretch of Broadway was going to be eliminated during the early morning hours and then put up orange cones..
Jay Monty, the city’s transportation planner, said everyone expected complaints. But bus riders and drivers alike said the dedicated bus lane improved their commute, so the one-week experiment turned into two weeks and then three weeks and it eventually became permanent in 2017.
“It was a lot easier than we thought,” Monty told Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters on the Codcast.
“Politics, Ideas & Civic Life in Massachusetts” has been the tagline describing the focus of CommonWealth’s coverage since the magazine was launched 22 years ago. We didn’t say it explicitly, but the goal also was to promote a civil civic life here. A robust exchange of views and ideas, argued vigorously but respectfully, seemed then like an essential ingredient to maintaining a healthy body politic -- and it still does today.
With today’s episode of The Codcast, two smart voices -- from either side of the partisan divide -- are joining that effort. Jennifer Nassour, the former chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, and Jesse Mermell, who served as communications director to Gov. Deval Patrick, plan to host regular installments of The Codcast, exploring issues, interviewing guests, and debating each other.
Two Democrats -- Quentin Palfrey and Jimmy Tingle -- are vying for the September 4 nomination for lieutenant governor. The winner will be paired with the victor in the party’s gubernatorial primary and go into the November match-up against the GOP ticket -- widely expected to be led by Gov. Charlie Baker (who faces underdog challenger Scott Lively) and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito (who is unopposed for the Republican nomination).
The two Democratic hopefuls, who came in for separate conversations on the Codcast, both bring a passion for the party’s values of tackling inequality, but with very different backgrounds.
Will this be a change election in Massachusetts?
A lot of political energy has been unleashed in reaction to Donald Trump’s election two years ago. Nationally, Democrats are hoping it will translate into big gains in the midterm congressional elections, with possibility of taking back control of the House.
In Massachusetts, where Democrats already hold the overwhelming share of elected offices, that energy and the appetite for change is mostly playing out within Democratic primaries, with several longtime incumbents facing serious challenges for the first time in years. The two most prominent races are the 7th Congressional District, where 20-year incumbent Michael Capauno is being challenged by Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, and the race for secretary of state, where 24-year incumbent Bill Galvin faces another Boston city councilor, Josh Zakim.
CommonWealth colleagues Bruce Mohl, Jack Sullivan, and I explored what’s going on here in a pre-primary installment of the Codcast.
Mayor Jon Mitchell has come out strongly against the expansion proposals, arguing they would be devastating to city finances and the state of its district schools.
The head of the state charter school association, Tim Nicolette, penned an op-ed last week in the New Bedford Standard-Times in support of the charter growth and the options they give families who are desperate for quality school options. He said New Bedford is the fourth lowest performing school district in the state. “Parents and students deserve better, and they shouldn’t have to wait another generation to get it,” he wrote.
Mitchell joined the Codcast to talk about the charter issue. We reached out to the charter school association to invite Nicolette to take part. He declined.
In today’s Codcast, we talk to two Democrats challenging incumbents from their own party – Samantha (Sam) Hammar of Melrose, who is taking on Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester, and Ted Steinberg of Needham, who is running against Rep. Denise Garlick of Needham.
Gov. Charlie Baker has an R next to his name, but many Republicans don’t think it belongs there.
Ed Lyons, a Republican activist who is a big fan of Baker, said the governor’s acceptance of the grand bargain in the recently completed legislative session disturbed many in the GOP. The grand bargain embraced legislation raising the hourly minimum wage to $15 and mandating paid medical and family leave as a way to take ballot questions off the table that would have accomplished both actions more quickly and would also have cut the sales tax to 5 percent.
“They are worried. A lot of Republicans are losing faith in the Republican character of our governor,” Lyons said on CommonWealth’s Codcast. “Charlie Baker doesn’t sound like the Republicans they’re seeing on Fox News.”
Lyons said some Republicans would like to see Baker go to war with the Democrat-controlled Legislature and fight for more conservative causes. He, however, says Baker’s strength is in choosing which battles to fight and framing issues differently than a Democrat would.
To say there’s a chasm as wide as the Rio Grande between both sides of the immigration debate would be an understatement. The conversation about compromise is a non-starter because neither side can even agree on what terms to use.
US Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, in a recent sit-down with CommonWealth, acknowledged his office is ramping up identifying defendants by their nationalities if they are immigrants who commit a crime in the country. And Lelling said he refuses to call them undocumented, the term favored by immigrant advocates, because what they have done is illegal, much like carrying an illegal handgun, “not an undocumented handgun.”
“I think word choice is often a political statement,” Lelling said. “The term undocumented immigrant strikes me as a consciously politicized term. It's a euphemism… So I don't use the term undocumented immigrant where advocates in this area might. I say illegal immigrant because that strikes me as more literally correct.”
Bristol Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, a strident supporter of President Trump’s immigration policies, and Marion Davis of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), joined The Codcast for an impassioned discussion over the tensions of words in the hot-button debate.
Uber and Lyft are expanding their vision of ride-sharing to include not just cars but bicycles, electric bicycles, and electric scooters.
Uber jumped in first, adding the electric bikeshare company Jump to its app earlier this year in San Francisco and then acquiring the company outright in March for an estimated $100 million.
Lyft earlier this month bought Motivate, the nation’s largest bikeshare company, with operations in such cities as Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. The value of the deal was estimated at $250 million.
And California-based Lime announced recently that its bikes and scooters would also begin appearing on the Uber app and that several investors, including Uber, Fidelity, and Alphabet, the parent of Google, had invested $335 million in the company. The investment suggested the company is now valued at more than $1 billion.
“Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” said Rachel Holt, an Uber vice president.
Lime is a dockless bike-sharing company that operates in 16 states and the District of Columbia. In Massachusetts, the company is in 15 communities, including Arlington, Belmont, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Milton, Needham, Newton, Waltham, and Watertown.
Scott Mullen, Lime’s director of expansion in the northeast, joined Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters on the Codcast to talk about the business. He said 40 percent of trips connect riders to transit, while 28 percent start or end at local retail stores.
Massachusetts is in the midst of procuring vast amounts of clean energy, but on Beacon Hill clean energy advocates say the state isn’t doing nearly enough.
The Senate approved legislation that would triple the annual increase in renewable energy purchases. The House last week took up a bill that would have doubled the annual increase, but then, under pressure from some in the business community, watered it down when the legislation came up for a final vote. The House and Senate will now have to decide whether they can come to agreement on a final bill.
It’s become one of the hottest issues on Beacon Hill, but few understand it well. Three chamber of commerce CEOs, in an op-ed in CommonWealth, insisted Massachusetts was falling behind its neighboring states in pursuing renewables. The CEOs even suggested the state’s bid to build an offshore wind power industry was in jeopardy if much higher renewable purchases were not mandated. “We cannot afford to lose this competition to other states,” they said.
Today’s Codcast takes a closer look at the complex issue and the big takeaway is that the debate over renewables is really a debate about which renewables we should promote.
Alli Gold Roberts says the business community is a bigger supporter of addressing climate change than you might think.
A senior manager for state policy at Ceres, which works with Fortune 500 companies and other business groups in addressing sustainability issues, Roberts said many businesses view climate change from a perspective of self-interest. Transportation, for example, accounts for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions in New England. Business leaders want to reduce those emissions, but they also want to reduce congestion and improve public transit so their employees can get to work and their products can get to market.
Roberts joined James Aloisi, a board member of TransitMatters, and Stacy Thompson, executive director of the Livable Streets Alliance, on this week’s Codcast. They discussed the role businesses and their employees can play in addressing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.
July 1 has come and gone and no one legally bought marijuana in Massachusetts. Plenty of people bought illegal marijuana and legally smoked it, sort of a "don't ask/don't tell" situation.
But the date viewed by many as a launch for retail recreational sales is now looking like the end of the summer, almost two years after voters approved a statewide referendum legalizing adult use. James Smith, a former state representative who championed legal weed back in the 1970s and now is an attorney representing the nascent industry, says the cause of the delay lays squarely with cities and towns who are dragging their feet on zoning and host agreements if they haven't enacted bans and moratoriums.
"Parochialism, puritanicalism," said Smith, who, along with Jennifer Flanagan of the state Cannabis Control Commission joined The Codcast to talk about the slow rollout of the law. "The statute and our history gives an awful lot of power to our communities...It's as if we're trying to site a nuclear waste dump downtown."
Marty Walsh rolled to a huge reelection win last year and just hosted a national gathering of the US Conference of Mayors, where he could bask in the glow of a city booming on the strength of its enviable position as a leader in areas driving the global economy.
But the city’s mayor knows better than to rest on Boston’s laurels, and Walsh, in a Codcast conversation with Bruce Mohl and me, was frank about the challenges facing Boston -- from development and transportation gridlock to the state of its schools.
Charlie Baker, the most popular governor in America, looks like a lock for reelection, according to polls, pundits, and even lots of Democrats you talk to. But don’t count John Walsh as one of them.
The former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party insists Baker can be defeated -- and he says the governor’s team knows it. It explains why, Walsh says, Baker is furiously raising millions of dollars for his campaign -- and bending all sorts of campaign finance rules to do so.
Is Walsh onto something, or is he on something?
Transportation guru Fred Salvucci said on the Codcast that the proposed West Station is needed now to deal with congestion in Kenmore Square and the Seaport District, not future congestion caused by Harvard University's creation of a new neighborhood in the Allston Landing area.
Salvucci’s position is sharply at odds with the views of the Baker administration, which believes current ridership projections for the station are too low to justify building West Station in the near future. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack has said it would be wise to hold off on West Station until around 2040 when Harvard's development plans for the area are more fully formulated.
But Salvucci, who served 12 years as state transportation secretary under former governor Michael Dukakis and now teaches at MIT, said the transit connections offered by West Station are needed now to relieve existing congestion on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Fred Salvucci, one of the state’s most influential transportation officials, traces the decline of the MBTA to the early years of the administration of former governor William Weld.
Salvucci, who served 12 years as secretary of transportation under former governor Michael Dukakis and now teaches at MIT, said support for transit gained momentum after former governor Frank Sargent in the early 1970s brought a halt to new highway construction inside Route 128. Under Dukakis, Salvucci said, transportation officials turned their focus to extending the Red Line to Alewife, expanding the Orange Line, and burying the expressway through downtown, a project that came to be known as the Big Dig.
Throughout the 1980s, according to Salvucci, the MBTA built complicated transit projects and managed the system well. He said the successes were important. “If we had just succeeded in stopping bad things and not succeeded in getting some good things built, the bad things would have just come back,” Salvucci said during a Codcast hosted by Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters.
Buses aren’t as sexy as new Orange Line cars or the extension of the Green Line into Somerville and Medford. But they are a lot cheaper to buy and much easier to operate. Which is why a bus renaissance of sorts is happening – a series of initiatives that hold the promise of changing the transportation landscape in a relatively short period of time.
On this week’s Codcast, Chris Osgood, the chief of streets for the city of Boston, and TransitMatters guys Jim Aloisi and Josh Fairchild sing the praises of buses and a series of initiatives to both expand and improve bus service across the metro area.
When New England Patriots co-captain Devin McCourty joined the protests first set off by Colin Kaepernick and “took a knee” during the National Anthem last season, he was making a statement about racial justice issues in the country and the treatment of blacks by law enforcement officials.
President Trump quickly “hijacked” the issue, McCourty says on the Codcast, by painting it as a sign of disrespect toward those who have served in the military. It’s an absurd charge, says the team’s standout free safety, adding that many of those protesting have family members who serve in the military or who have given their lives for their country. But the controversy over the symbolic protests did reinforce for McCourty a belief in the need to take more tangible steps to back up the broad statements with real work at the ground level.
That has led the soft-spoken NFL star into a new role: champion of criminal justice reform. In February, he co-authored an op-ed in the Boston Globe with team owner Robert Kraft and team president Jonathan Kraft, calling on Beacon Hill leaders to enact reforms related to juveniles, and McCourty made a trip to the State House to lobby for the issue. He gives a huge shout-out to the team owners for their willingness to get involved in the issue. “This is real life,” he says. “I think it shows more of who they are as people.
When disputes arise between communities bordering each other, the public proclamations are usually fairly muted and respectful.
Then there’s the battle between Quincy and Boston over rebuilding the Long Island Bridge to connect to a planned addiction treatment and recovery campus.
“Boston answers to a different set of rules, said a fired-up Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch in a conversation with The Codcast. “They get all sorts of special legislation. Boston does what it wants. I don’t think they give two hoots about their neighbors south of Boston. They’re going to do what they’re going to do and that’s Boston.”
Richard Freeland is a man of careful thought and measured words.
That made it noteworthy when the former state higher education commissioner and president emeritus of Northeastern University appeared at a recent hearing of the state Board of Higher Education and blasted the announcement that the University of Massachusetts Amherst planned to buy the Newton campus of Mt. Ida College. And it prompted us to invite Freeland to talk more about his concerns on The Codcast.
The sweeping criminal justice bill that Gov. Charlie Baker signed earlier this month received widespread, but not universal, praise as a welcome turn away from the tough-on-crime policies of the 1980s and ‘90s.
One notable dissenting voice was that of Setti Warren, the former Newton mayor who is now one of three Democrats vying to challenge Baker in the November election. Warren said there was lots that he liked in the bill, which pulled back sanctions in all sorts of areas, including eliminating or ratcheting back several mandatory minimum drugs sentences. But he denounced the inclusion in the bill of new mandatory minimum sentences related to the synthetic opioids Fentanyl and Carfentanil and said he would have vetoed the legislation because of them.
Sen. Will Brownsberger, the lead Senate author of the bill, called Warren’s position “uninformed,” and said it prompted him to endorse Jay Gonzalez, one of Warren’s rivals in the Democratic primary for governor.
Warren and Brownsberger sat down together to discuss their differences in this week’s Codcast. The crux of the debate came down to finding the right balance between sticking with one’s principles and the need for compromise to move things forward.
Two of the state’s leading health care analysts say they aren’t sure whether creating a powerful alternative to Partners HealthCare will reduce health care costs in Massachusetts or increase them.
“It’s the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know,” said John E. McDonough, a professor of public health practice at the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. “Are we better off having one Partners or two Partners?”
Paul Hattis, an associate professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts Medical School, said he also has mixed feelings about the “fight fire with fire” approach advocated by proponents of a merger between Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston, Lahey Health of Burlington, New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, and Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport. The proposed health care goliath currently goes by the name of NewCo.
Attorney General Maura Healey wants to shut down the companies that sell electricity to residential customers in Massachusetts, but officials with two of the firms say the answer to any problems with their industry isn’t less competition but more.
Chris Kallaher, senior director for government and regulatory affairs at Direct Energy, and Ed Brolin, director and assistant general manager of Just Energy, said on this week’s Codcast that the attorney general is overreacting.
It’s been a long march for the Boston Police Camera Action Team, but nearly four years after the community-based group set out to push Boston police to have officers deployed with body-worn cameras it looks like victory is in sight.
In recent days, Mayor Marty Walsh and Police Commissioner Bill Evans have both signaled that body cameras are coming to Boston.
“We are happy that the mayor is listening the majority of Bostonians now,” says Segun Idowu, a cofounder of the group, on this week’s Codcast.
On this week’s Codcast, Josh Fairchild of TransitMatters chats with Andrew McFarland, community engagement manager at the Livable Streets Alliance, and Kathryn Carlson, director of transportation for the business-backed group A Better City.
Boston residents are probably more reliant on the MBTA than anyone in the state, yet city government has no formal say in the operation of the T. It’s been an easy way for city officials to pass the buck about problems with the T – of which there have been more than a fair share in recent years.
But city officials are finally stepping up and speaking out on transit issues. One of the strongest voices has belonged to City Councilor Michelle Wu, who joined Bruce Mohl and me for this week’s Codcast.
To listen to the state’s newest regulatory commission in its meetings, the tenor and terms, for the most part, are no different than hearings regarding oversight of most industries in the state.
But the big difference is the industry they are charged with overseeing – legal marijuana – and members of the Cannabis Control Commission have just hit a historic milestone, finalizing regulations to get legal recreational sale and use of marijuana ready to roll.
“July 1 is the start date, not the end date,” says commission chairman Steven Hoffman, who along with commissioner Shaleen Title joined The Codcast to talk about the regulations. “The industry is going to take time to evolve. It’s going to take a few years, I believe, before this industry looks mature.”
This week’s Codcast features representatives from the two opposing camps -- Robert Rio, the senior vice president of government affairs at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, one of the founding members of the Coalition for Sustainable Energy, and Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, the president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, which also represents many members of the business community. Listen and get up to speed.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration has spent three years whipping the MBTA into shape. Costs have been pared back and revenues have been increased -- all so more money could be invested in long-range improvements.
But as the race for governor starts to heat up, Baker finds himself asking riders for more patience, saying his administration is dealing with decades of neglect at the MBTA. The governor called last Wednesday’s derailment, which knocked out the Red Line between JFK/UMass and Broadway stations for most of a day, not acceptable. But he promised big improvements over the next few years, particularly on the Red and Orange Lines.
On the Codcast, Setti Warren, the former mayor of Newton and a Democratic candidate for governor, and James Aloisi, the former secretary of transportation, said the MBTA needs to address its problems more quickly and more forcefully. Both called for more revenue for the T and both faulted Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo for resisting that effort.
On this week’s Codcast, Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters interview David Bragdon, the executive director of TransitCenter in New York City, and Neil Smith, the executive director of Transit Systems, an Australian company that provides transportation services to government agencies in Australia, Singapore, and London. (Transit Systems is the company that acquired Bridj, the Boston-based firm that tried to launch on-demand bus service.)
Could the Massachusetts Gaming Commission really pull the plug on the $2.4 billion Wynn Resorts hotel and casino going up in Everett?
Chip Tuttle and Jay Gonzalez are at the forefront of those pressing for the commission to do just that. They say the resignation of Steve Wynn as chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts is not enough – that top company officials were either aware or should have been aware of the sexual misconduct alleged by the Wall Street Journal. As a result, they say, the company’s casino license in Massachusetts should be revoked.
Jeff Riley won the backing last week of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to be the next state education commissioner based in large part on his work over the last six years as the state-appointed receiver for the Lawrence schools.
Riley says he tried to “build a plan that was collaborative,” including a strong voice for teachers, parents, and other community stakeholders in Lawrence. That’s the same approach he wants to bring to his state post, where he hopes to help “heal” the divisions that have sometimes turned education policy debates into trench warfare.
State officials announced on Thursday that they had selected a project called Northern Pass to import a massive amount of hydro-electricity from Canada, enough to supply between 15 and 20 percent of the state’s electricity needs. Northern Pass, a partnership between Hydro-Quebec and Eversource Energy, immediately came under fire from environmental groups concerned about the route of its transmission line through New Hampshire and the way in which the project was selected.
On the Codcast, we talked to Greg Cunningham, director of the Conservation Law Foundation’s clean energy and climate change program, and Mark LeBel, a staff attorney at the Acadia Center. Both had concerns about Northern Pass and both said the state’s selection of the controversial project is likely to be challenged in court, which could lead to delays.
Michael Manville, an assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA, says the best way to ease congestion in Boston is to put a price on it.
In a Codcast interview with Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of TransitMatters, Manville said our roads are clogged because we have too much demand for scarce road space at certain times of the day. We’ve all been there, inching along because everyone is trying to get to work or head home at the same time.
Harriette Chandler never had designs on the Massachusetts Senate’s top post, and she readily admits to mixed feelings about landing there. Her unexpected ascension was the result of the scandal swirling around her close ally, Stan Rosenberg, who temporarily relinquished the Senate president’s job last month while an investigation is underway.
Congratulated on her new role of acting president as we kicked off the Codcast conversation, Chandler wondered if that’s the right word.
CommonWealth’s Winter issue comes out Tuesday, but we give you a sneak peek in today’s Codcast. We run down our stories Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, ed reform’s 25th birthday, Worcester’s renaissance, Yvonne Spicer and much, much more.
In this week's Codcast, the folks from TransitMatters (Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi) sit down with Jessica Robertson and Ari Ofsevit, two members of the Allston Interchange Task Force (Ofsevit is also a TransiMatters member) to hash out the West Station issue. All of them believe the station needs to be built at the beginning of the development process, so don't expect a point-counterpoint type of debate. What their discussion reveals, however, is how the debate over West Station has become a debate about the future of the T and commuter rail.
There’s been a lot of talk about the MBTA’s plan to install a new fare collection system, most of it focused on the problems associated with going cashless. The concerns were exemplified by a headline in the Boston Globe last week that said: “The MBTA wants to go cashless. What about people who might be left behind?”
A pretty strong response emerged to that question over the weekend. Jim Aloisi, the former secretary of transportation and board member of TransitMatters, said not to worry. In a column (for those who like to read) and a Codcast (for those who like to get a slightly different take by listening), Aloisi explained how the benefits of not using cash on board buses and trolleys far outweigh the minor inconvenience of having to buy a fare before boarding.
It was 10 years ago that MassINC launched its Gateway Cities initiative with a report documenting the challenges -- and huge opportunities -- in the state’s once vibrant industrial cities.
“Massachusetts’ proud, old manufacturing cities must be counted, on balance, as distressed,” it said. Yet, concluded the report, “For the first time in decades, these cities’ reconnection to prosperity seems at least imaginable.”
A decade later, MassINC, the non-partisan public policy think tank that publishes CommonWealth, has continued to carry out research showing some of the pathways to renewed prosperity in Gateway Cities. It has also pushed initiatives to help them get there, such as a MassDevelopment project that has placed mid-career “fellows” with expertise in urban planning and development in Gateway Cities to help with strategic planning, site acquisition for redevelopment projects, and other initiatives.
But none of that would be happening without the energy and initiative of residents in the 26 Massachusetts communities that have been dubbed Gateway Cities, says Maureen McInerney, public affairs associate at MassINC, in this week’s Codcast. “They say, yes, we are ready to take this and run with it,” she says of leaders in the communities. She says they are simply looking to MassINC as a “catalyst” to help them tap the energy and potential in their community.
One new approach to that catalyst role at MassINC is the publication this month of a magazine spotlighting interesting people, initiatives, and ideas taking hold in Gateway Cities. Gateways is a glossy 80-page magazine that tells the tale of today’s Gateway Cities through stories rather than the research reports that are the bread and butter of MassINC’s Gateway Cities Innovation Institute.
Everyone knows about the retrenchment and redistribution of resources by media outlets, especially newspapers. While some regions have filled the vacuum with blogs purporting to be news but are really opinion pages in disguise, true local news and events often go uncovered.
The Codcast this week is an MBTA twofer: James Aloisi and Josh Fairchild of TransitMatters make a pitch for an overnight bus service pilot and also interview Matthew Casale, a staff attorney from MassPIRG, about the accuracy of a reliability indicator the T is using.
Everyone knows about traffic congestion in Boston. It’s why we’re often late for meetings. It’s why sightseeing firms are paring back their tours because the tourists are spending too much time sitting in traffic. And it’s why many Boston officials are worried Amazon will take a pass on the city -- traffic is just too heavy already.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the federal government is subsidizing this congestion. Tax policies approved in the 1970s and 1980s give a break to people who drive to work and park in employer-provided or employed-subsidized parking spots. Normally that type of fringe benefit would be taxed as income, but under federal law employees are granted an exemption of up to $255 a month.
The federal tax break is most valuable to people in the highest tax brackets who are commuting to areas where parking is most expensive. “We’re subsidizing them to drive in precisely the places and at precisely the times that experience the most congestion,” said Tony Dutzik, a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Group, during a Codcast interview with Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of TransitMatters.
As you pore over the bids for Amazon’s second headquarters, put your headphones on, call up The Codcast, and listen to Shirley Leung and Chris Dempsey talk about what’s at stake.
Leung, a pro-growth columnist for the Boston Globe, and Dempsey, the director of Transportation for Massachusetts and one of the leaders of the No Boston Olympics campaign, find more common ground than you might think. But they also have some fundamental differences, which makes the conversation both entertaining and enlightening.
The tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and 90s has given way to what some are calling the smart-on-crime era, a time in which policymakers and politicians are rethinking what it takes to keep communities safe while also giving criminal offenders the best shot of getting on a more positive path after paying their debt.
That debate will come front and center on Beacon Hill this fall, as lawmakers take up bills that would address perceived shortcomings in the current system. The most ambitious proposal was unveiled last week by Sen. Will Brownsberger, cochairman of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, who is this week's guest on The Codcast.
When it comes to the November match-ups for mayor in Boston and Lawrence, it looks like very different tales of two cities, one where a highly competitive race is now on tap, and one where that seems unlikely.
That’s the assessment from this week’s Codcast with Yawu Miller, senior editor of the Bay State Banner, and Ted Siefer, a CommonWealth contributor who penned a feature for the magazine’s summer issue taking stock of Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera’s first term and teeing up the reelection race he was facing.
Everyone talks about equity these days. Pay equity, gender equity, racial equity. You can add to that list mobility equity and neighborhood equity, areas that are affected by all other social and economic equity issues.
Chris Osgood, Boston’s chief of the streets, says successful transportation planning now has to start at those equity points in order for the city to have a viable system that meets everybody’s needs. In a conversation with Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters for The Codcast, Osgood detailed what Boston’s hopes and plans are for a multi-modal transportation system in a city where as many as 60 percent of the residents don’t own cars.
Boston’s streets and sidewalks comprise 9 square miles in a city that is only 48 square miles in total. Chris Osgood, with the odd but apt title of Boston’s chief of the streets, is the person in charge of not only maintaining that infrastructure but making sure that residents have access to it whether they drive, bike, or walk.
Osgood, joined by Vineet Gupta, the director of policy and planning for the Boston Transportation Department, and Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of Transit Matters, said on The Codcast that his charge from Mayor Marty Walsh is to find ways of incentivizing commuters and residents to rely less on their cars and to take advantage of other modes of transportation that help reduce greenhouse gases.
With last year’s election of Donald Trump, complete with his campaign talk about about bad hombres and Mexican rapists, it’s hard to feel too optimistic about the prospects for comprehensive — and reasoned — immigration reform. Trump adds a loud exclamation mark to what had already become a starkly partisan divide on the issue.
But Ali Noorani — the guest on this week’s Codcast — says a solution to the immigration debate isn’t just a matter of the political dynamics in Washington. (Noorani may be familiar to folks in Massachusetts because he spent a decade in Boston serving as director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.)
After this month’s white nationalist rally in Virginia, statues of Confederate leaders are falling across the South. Protests by white supremacists against the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville has set in motion a rush to rid town greens and parks of icons to the Confederate cause.
The context in which many of the Confederate statues were erected is an important part of the debate, says Boston University historian Nina Silber on this week’s Codcast. Many were put up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and sent a “message of white supremacy” as Southern states were consolidating the Jim Crow system of segregation as part of the backlash to Reconstruction.
Riding the T sometimes feels like a step back in time. Red Line cars that are 40 years old. Payment systems that are slow and inefficient. Underground stations that leak whenever it rains.
But David Block-Schachter, the MBTA’s chief technology officer, says the transit authority is changing. In an interview for The Codcast with Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi of TransitMatters, Block-Schachter, who doesn’t own a car or a driver’s license, provides a glimpse of what technology can do for the T.
What Gov. Charlie Baker calls a common-sense approach to dealing with federal immigration officials, Carol Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts dismisses as fraternizing with the “Trump deportation machine.”
Rose calls Baker “well-intentioned,” which is fairly mild since many of her political allies on the immigration issue are calling him racist or worse. But Rose makes clear she believes there is no middle ground in the fight over state cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials.
While “not in my backyard” has become the default response to development proposals in many communities, in a few places NIMBY is starting to meet its match. YIMBY — which stands for “yes in my backyard” — is a fledgling national movement, concentrated largely in already densely populated and high-cost urban areas, that is pushing a very different message: We want to see more housing, more density, and a tempering of the run-up of housing prices in our community to make it more accessible to all, say YIMBY activists.
The Boston area has several YIMBY groups — in Somerville, Cambridge, Newton, and Jamaica Plain. Eric Herot and Meg Wood of JP YIMBY join the Codcast this week to preach a bit of the community-based, pro-growth gospel. They’re not out to carry water for developers, but Herot and Wood often support their projects because they say neighborhoods like theirs will benefit from more housing. The tensions that can set off are clear.
On this week’s Codcast, Paul Levy, the former CEO of Beth Israel describes Partners as a regulated monopoly. He is skeptical that a merger of the BI, Lahey, and several other hospitals will steal a lot of business away from Partners or produce dramatic savings that will be passed along to patients in the former of lower insurance rates.
Stephen Lisauskas, a vice president at Waste Zero, a North Andover company that advises municipalities on ways to reduce their trash disposal costs, says cities and towns can fairly easily boost recycling and reduce trash generation. He worries that inertia on Beacon Hill and out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitudes toward trash among residents of the state are likely to discourage recycling and lead to a boost in expensive trash exports. Massachusetts and the rest of the states in the northeast already have the highest trash disposal costs in the country.
After a dumbfounding outburst by House Speaker Robert DeLeo on Wednesday evening, it appears the House and Senate are finally getting down to business. A fiscal 2018 budget is slated for a vote on Friday and the House and Senate lawmakers trying to broker a deal between the branches on marijuana legislation are finally getting back to work.
In this week’s Codcast, CommonWealth’s Michael Jonas, Jack Sullivan, and Bruce Mohl analyze the legislative maneuverings of the last week, particularly around pot. Why did DeLeo issue a statement denouncing those who would link the budget and pot negotiations for political leverage, and then say the negotiations were never linked by the House? Even though his comment appeared to point the finger at the Senate, it turns out there was no evidence anyone, let alone any senators, had engaged in political machinations. The speaker’s spokesman said DeLeo made the statement solely in response to press queries.
The health care debate is coming to a head in Washington, where the moment of truth has arrived for Republicans who have vowed for seven years to “repeal and replace” Obamacare the first chance they get. On Beacon Hill, state leaders are wrestling with how to restrain Medicaid costs without cutting people off coverage.
No one understands these issues as well as John McDonough, who joined Bruce Mohl and me for this week’s Codcast. McDonough is a professor at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, but his policy studies today are informed by decades he spent as a policy practitioner.
The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy gained a measure of stability this week as the state, the city of Boston, and park abutters agreed to provide $2 million a year to help cover the organization’s operational expenses.
The Codcast provides two interesting views on the deal. James Aloisi, the former secretary of transportation who played a hand in the formation of the Conservancy, said he has a hard time understanding why the state was playing hardball in the first place. He likened the situation to a homeowner who buys a piece of property and builds a house on it -- and then goes to his neighbors to ask them to share in the cost of upkeep. (Gov. Charlie Baker should know all about this situation; he used to serve on the board of the Conservancy.)
Jay Gonzalez and Bob Massie grabbed some badly needed media attention this week when the two candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor issued a joint press statement attacking Gov. Charlie Baker for refusing to take a stand on the millionaire’s tax.
Today’s Codcast features the TransitMatters guys who put the brakes on an $11 million MBTA redesign of the Auburndale commuter rail station that was going to improve handicap accessibility but result in poorer service on the Framingham-Worcester Line.
It’s boom time in Dorchester. That’s what Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter told Bruce Mohl and me when we sat down to talk with him about what’s going on in Boston’s largest neighborhood.
Dorchester is Boston’s grand melting pot -- or at least its polyglot point of convergence. It is home to more than 120,000 people with roots that span the globe, who, these days, mostly get along well.
It was just two years ago that the Greater Boston region was in the thick of a high-stakes showdown over whether to proceed with a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. In January 2015, Boston was designated the US entry in the global competition for the 2024 Games.
It was all downhill from there.
The bid’s boosters seemed to do just about everything wrong, from adopting a secretive approach to bid documents in a city that demanded everything be put on the table to the mayor disparaging residents with the nerve to ask tough questions as a tiny group of naysaying cranks -- “10 people on Twitter.”
By July, it was over and the bid was withdrawn. It was an astonishing fall given the set of Boston political and business power brokers lined up behind the effort. In the end, the public was widely skeptical of the idea, which would have put the city and possibly the state on the hook for any cost overruns. No one did more to plant those doubts than No Boston Olympics, a small group of 30-something-year-old Bostonians who became convinced of the folly of the Olympic pursuit.
One of the group’s co-founders, Chris Dempsey, has now authored an account of the drama together with Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist. No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on The Torch is a great telling of a still-fresh piece of Boston history. They came in to talk about the book for this week’s Codcast.
The phrase “mealy-mouthed politician” often seems redundant, so closely do we associate political figures with an aversion to direct answers that cut through the usual fog.
That does not describe Seth Moulton, the second-term Democratic congressman from Salem. Moulton answers questions with a degree of candor that is refreshing and sometimes jarring.
When CommonWealth sat down with him for this Conversation interview in November 2014, just after his election, Moulton said he was now wearing the politician badge reluctantly. When Bruce Mohl and I talked to him for this week’s Codcast, he still seemed to be in full candor mode.
Moulton has become a huge booster of the North-South Rail Link, and we dug into the details of why. (The project still looks like a longshot -- but Moulton is a pretty good salesman.) He had nothing positive to say, however, about the MBTA and its ability to constructively lead the way on the effort. “The T is very wedded to this old-fashioned 1950s-era diesel-powered commuter rail system,” he said. “I’m just afraid they’re really out of touch with what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
Our Spring 2017 print issue has you covered. We've got stories on invasions, interesting people, politics, education, health policy, and even sports.
Patrick Sullivan, executive director of the Seaport TMA, estimates 4,000 people on a typical weekday come into North Station and then take shuttles to the congested Seaport District. He said his organization hopes to eliminate a lot of that vehicle traffic by launching a water shuttle between Lovejoy Wharf and the South Boston waterfront this summer. Test runs showed the trip would take about 13 minutes.
Sullivan, participating in the Codcast with James Aloisi and Marc Ebuna of TransitMatters, said Silver Line service from South Station to the Seaport District is at capacity most weekday mornings, but there are no plans to expand the 32-bus fleet. The three discussed ways to boost capacity by creating dedicated lanes or adjusting traffic signals to speed up the buses.
Massachusetts is about to submit to the US Department of Education its plan for monitoring and holding schools accountable under the new Every Student Succeeds Act, the law passed in late 2015 that replaced the No Child Left Behind law.
The new law, which, like the No Child statute, is really a reauthorization of landmark 1965 legislation creating a bigger federal role in overseeing and funding education, gives states more leeway in how they hold schools and districts accountable for improving student outcomes.
MassINC research director Ben Forman and Linda Noonan, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Education, say the state plan mainly holds pat.
State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg says when she talks to counterparts around the country, there is one aspect of her job that stops them in their tracks: Her office’s regulation of the state’s liquor industry.
Goldberg now has another mood-altering substance to oversee with the passage of the ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. Under the wording of the ballot question, the treasurer’s office will appoint a three-member Cannabis Control Commission that will form rules and regulations and report to the treasurer.
Goldberg joined The Codcast to talk about her plans for how she intends to ramp up oversight which she said she’s been planning for since learning about the ballot question 15 months ago.
Beth Osborne, a senior advisor for Washington-based Transportation for America, was in town recently to discuss transportation needs with state officials and policy advocates. Osborne, a former undersecretary in the Department of Transportation and a longtime congressional aide to several lawmakers, said Trump's "skinny budget" isn't going to give a lot of answers for transportation, at least in the immediate future.
Osborne joined Transit Matters board members Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi for this week's edition of The Codcast, and they talked about the uncertainty of just what transportation means in the Trump administration. Trump promised during his campaign and in his February address to Congress that he plans to launch a $1 trillion infrastructure program, music to the ears of transportation officials and advocates. But Osborne cautioned not to start spending the money just yet.
State Sen. Harriette Chandler of Worcester and state Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli of Lenox have introduced bills in the Legislature to create a new practitioner called “dental therapists,” a highly trained dental hygienist who can perform basic procedures such as fillings, simple extractions of non-impacted teeth, and x-ray readings.
Dr. Ray Martin, president of the dental society and a dentist with a private practice in Mansfield, joined The Codcast to talk about the measure along with One-time gubernatorial candidate Dr. Don Berwick, a pediatrician who was administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration.
Most transportation advocates focus on the need for more money, but Chuck Marohn comes from a different starting point, asking why the system needs more money in the first place. The one thing Republicans and Democrats in Washington seem to agree on is that the country should invest in its infrastructure. But Marohn asks why the nation’s infrastructure, and particularly its transportation infrastructure, has been allowed to deteriorate so badly?
Marohn, the founder and president of Minnesota-based Strong Towns, says that all too often infrastructure gets built with little or no thought as to how it will be maintained down the road.
Today’s Codcast was produced by TransitMatters, the transportation advocacy group, in conjunction with CommonWealth. Marohn was interviewed by Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters.
In what may be a precursor to a soon-to-come Beacon Hill debate on the Pacheco Law, state Auditor Suzanne Bump squared off with Greg Sullivan, research director at the right-leaning Pioneer Institute, to discuss (sometimes heatedly) the pros and cons of the law that regulates privatization of state services.
It was one thing when Sydney Chaffee was named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year. Now she's been named one of four finalists for National Teacher of the Year, with announcement of the winner due in April.
The Codcast sat down with Chaffee and asked what she thinks makes for great teaching. The two top ingredients, she says, are a passion for what you're teaching (she says she has that in abundance for the interdisciplinary study of history and English that is her focus) and building relationships with students to see them "as whole people," gain their trust, and motivate them to take risks. I'm "really trying to fire them up," she says.
The press has been giving Gov. Charlie Baker a lot of advice on how he should deal with President Trump, so we thought we might as well get into the act.
This week's Codcast features the CommonWealth staff kicking around what's at stake for Baker as the nation's preoccupation with Trump intensifies. Does Baker need to become more emotional and less of a technocrat? Can someone differ with Trump without going all-in with visceral statements of condemnation? And are Baker's would-be Democratic rivals going to make him pay for failing to attend rallies and marches where Trump is pilloried.
Sen. William Brownsberger has been a supporter of the pay raises and one of the few willing to speak out in justifying the hikes. He joined us on The Codcast to offer his insight and defend why the time is never right but it is the right thing to do. Brownsberger said the quickness with which the bill made its way through the process was because "it's not rocket science," that what you see is what you get.
But he also said he understand the anger and frustration from voters over the issue and pointed out that while the entire measure is immune from repeal by initiative petition because of the inclusion of judges, it doesn't prevent an effort from targeting lawmakers pay alone at the ballot box.
In this week's Codcast, Jackson rips Walsh for his focus on a financially reckless Olympic bid, the ill-fated IndyCar race, and for squandering nearly $3 million in an unsuccessful legal fight against the Wynn casino in Everett. All of that has happened, says Jackson, while the city's schools have struggled to maintain programs for students and a yawning income and housing affordability gap threatens to displace long-time residents from their neighborhoods.
Sears and Macy's, two iconic names in retailing, recently announced they plan to close hundreds of stores resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs around the country. Both have targeted for closure a handful of stores at struggling malls in Massachusetts.
David Harris, associate managing editor of the Boston Business Journal, and Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, joined us on The Codcast to talk about the impact of the changes and what they bode for the state's economy moving forward.
At CommonWealth, we try to give you a little more in-depth coverage of the issues but don’t always have the time to apply what we know to an analysis of where we think things will go. So as an end-of-year Codcast, Bruce Mohl, Michael Jonas, and I decided to offer a little added value insight into some areas we’ve written extensively about.
It's almost Alice through the Looking Glass. An emerging industry leader that legally operates tax-free is asking - no, imploring - lawmakers to slap a levy on its business. That's exactly what Airbnb, the web-based app that pairs up travelers with people looking to cash in on a spare room or three in their private homes, is asking the Massachusetts Legislature to do.
Will Burns, the director of policy for Airbnb, says it's a matter of fundamental fairness, but taking off his corporate hat, he admits the effort is to legitimize the technology as an accepted commercial entity.
Lynn Weissman, the co-president of the Friends of the Community Path, joins us on The Codcast to explain why she thinks the MBTA’s decision to truncate the path is bad policy. The Somerville activist also would like to see the latest path design modified to allow more community access to the trail, which runs below grade.
Did you hear? Legal marijuana for adult recreational use is coming to Massachusetts. It may be soon, it may be later, but make no mistake, it’s on its way.
Scott Moskol, a partner at the venerable Boston law firm Burns & Levinson LLP, joined The Codcast to talk about the budding industry. Scott has been traveling around the country and become familiar with the laws of the 29 states that have legalized some form of medical marijuana and is boning up on the laws in the seven states that have legalized commercial pot.
Steve Koczela of the MassINC Polling Group and Politico’s Lauren Dezenski join The Codcast to take stock of the jaw-dropping turn of events.
Lots of the focus is on Boston, home to about one-quarter of the state’s 40,000 charter school students and the place that is likely to see the most charter school growth should the ballot question pass. Two Boston city councilors joined The Codcast to share their opposing views on the question. Andrea Campbell, a district councilor representing Dorchester and Mattapan, supports Question 2. Ayanna Pressley, an at-large councilor who lives in Dorchester, opposes the measure.
Americans love polls. Except when they don't say what they want them to say.
"I'm not sure the polls have changed," says data expert John Johnson,CEO of Edgeworth Economics in Washington, DC. "The results have. The time you really should trust the polls is the closer you get to the election."
Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group, says those self-selecting surveys are merely clickbait, for entertainment purposes only, and should not even be labeled polls. He says there often are no controls over who can respond or how many times they can answer the questions, unlike scientific surveys that have representative groups and random selection with a defined margin of error.
Both sides of the debate over the ballot question to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana are running television ads in the final weeks of the campaign and it’s safe to say neither will be awarded points for honesty.
John Carroll, a Boston University professor of communications and former journalist and commentator, and Dave Wedge, a former political reporter and currently a vice president at the political consulting firm Northwind Strategies, bring their expertise to help us break down what’s real and what’s just smoke and mirrors in these ads and the marketing campaigns for both sides.
What should be done? The Codcast talks with Whitney Hatch, chairman of the DCR Stewardship Council, and Stephen Pritchard, who spent four years in the administration of former governor Mitt Romney, including six months as DCR commissioner and a little over a year as secretary of energy and environmental affairs.
The impact of charter schools on district school budgets has become a central point of contention in the debate over Question 2, the November ballot question that would allow an expansion in the number of charter schools in Massachusetts.
Stephanie Hirsch, a municipal and state finance consultant, and Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, dig into those issues in this week’s Codcast. Hirsch has developed a web tool to examine the impact of charter growth on district budgets with her husband, Joe Calzaretta, a mathematician and software engineer. They describe it here.
The Environmental League of Massachusetts put out its latest legislative scorecard this week, and the rankings provided a number of interesting insights about Beacon Hill.
The Massachusetts economy is humming along. The unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent in August, its lowest level since 2001. But state tax revenues are not keeping pace. They fell so far behind the level that had been forecasted that the Baker administration is now trying to clean up a $575 million budget shortfall from the previous fiscal year.
What’s going on? We explore that issue with Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, and Alan Clayton-Matthews, an associate professor at Northeastern University. Both of them conduct state revenue forecasts and work with state officials to develop a consensus forecast.
CommonWealth's Jack Sullivan and Bruce Mohl discuss the Boston Globe's extensive coverage of Sen. Brian Joyce, and particularly the story last month suggesting the Milton lawmaker expanded his house without the necessary permits and was shortchanging the town on property taxes. Is this a media war between the Globe and CommonWealth, as media critic Dan Kennedy has suggested, or is this about something else?
State Sen. Jamie Eldridge has managed to liven up a quiet August on Beacon Hill.
The Acton Democrat shared some thoughts on Democratic Party politics with an email to fellow Bernie Sanders supporters that made its way into the hands of the Globe's Jim O'Sullivan. That led to a front-page story in the Globe headlined, "Democrat tries to nudge state party left; Senator wants some lawmakers voted out."
Eldridge says in this week's Codcast that the email was in response to the frustration many progressive activists felt with the national party as well as with "the Democratic party and Democratic legislators in Massachusetts." He says his main message to them was, don't break off and join a third party but redouble their efforts to push a progressive agenda joining their local town or city Democratic committee or consider actually running for elected office. There are "plenty of conservative Democrats who have been elected, unchallenged, for years if not decades, including at the local and legislative level," he wrote.
It's been more than a month since Attorney General Maura Healey announced her crackdown on sales of assault weapons she said are in violation of the 1998 state law barring such rifles, and the only thing that's slowed down are sales.
Because of what some say was confusion over when her enhanced action took effect, Healey said no one who bought one of the guns would be held responsible but she refused to exempt dealers, threatening them with sanctions for violating her order. After declining to reveal her decision one way or the other for weeks, Healey, in a conversation on The Codcast, said she's decided to move on and not bring action against any dealers - for that day.
Gov. Charlie Baker's decision last week to veto a legislative provision directing the state to seek federal funds for an all-volunteer study of vehicle-miles-traveled, or VMT, turned some heads. The tax-averse governor said the proposal, which would test out the imposition of a fee on drivers for the miles they drive on state roads, raised all sorts of fairness questions. But two VMT supporters said such questions are exactly what the study was meant to answer.
The Codcast this week talks to Michael Widmer, the former head of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, and James Aloisi, the former secretary of transportation. They believe the state needs to transition away from the gasoline tax to a VMT fee and explain why they think the governor was wrong to veto the study.
The Massachusetts Trial Court this week issued its new rules and regulations regarding public access to court records and it's fair to say officials erred on the side of less rather than more.
Esme Caramello, faculty director of Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and a tenants' rights advocate, and Todd Wallack of the Boston Globe, a member of the vaunted Spotlight team who has been at the forefront of reporters' attempts to bring more transparency to public records, joined us to talk about the new rules.
When you cut through the Beacon Hill weeds, Senate President Stan Rosenberg's message is clear: The system for reviewing and considering legislation is badly broken, and he's not happy about it.
Baker this week waded into the weeds at the MBTA and tried to adjust public expectations, warning that the turnaround at the T would take years to accomplish. Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and co-chair of the FixOurT Coalition, and Rafael Mares, vice president at the Conservation Law Foundation, came on the Codcast to discuss Baker's remarks and the long-term prognosis for the state's struggling transit authority.
Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow, one of the members on the panel that wrote the Senate’s final version, and Christopher English, policy analyst and project manager for the city of Boston who was appointed by Mayor Marty Walsh to chair the Taxi Advisory Commission overseeing changes in regulations, joined The Codcast to discuss the shifting landscape in the ride-for-hire industry.
CommonWealth's Michael Jonas talks with Gin Dumcius of MassLive.com and Kyle Clauss of Boston magazine about the string of problems in the administration of Mayor Marty Walsh, capped most recently by the indictment this week of a second City Hall official on federal corruption charges.
Steve Koczela of the MassINC Polling Group offers a pollster’s perspective on the Libertarian candidates and Michael Jonas and Bruce Mohl of CommonWealth magazine dissected their CNN performance.
Just over a week ago, 17-year-old Raekwon Brown was fatally gunned down just steps from Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, where he was a student. Three others, including a 67-year-old woman, were wounded. The shooting, which took place in broad daylight after a fire alarm emptied students onto the street near the school, was a reminder of the daily toll of urban gun violence -- and of the terrorism-like quality it often has, as a calm and seemingly ordinary moment suddenly turns to a mini-war zone.
William Weld made libertarianism sound like a political middle ground between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during an interview Tuesday night with CommonWealth magazine.
The Senate’s point person on energy, Sen. Ben Downing and the developer behind Cape Wind, Jim Gordon share their concerns about the House energy bill, which calls for the state’s utilities to solicit large amounts of offshore wind power and hydroelectricity from Canada, possibly in tandem with onshore wind or other forms of clean energy.
Will Luzier, leading the campaign for legal marijuana, and Corey Welford, of the anti-referendum group, make their cases.
State Sen. Dan Wolf, a Sanders delegate to the DNC, and former secretary of public safety Andrea Cabral, a Clinton delegate, have at it.
Should we lament the loss of IndyCar and the Olympics or worry more about growing our own legacy events? Former Boston city councilor Mike Ross and No Boston Olympics co-founder Chris Dempsey debate what makes for a world-class city.
James Aloisi, Ari Ofsevit, and Jeremy Mendelson make the case for 24-7 service on the MBTA.