PART TWO:
Governor Charlie Baker joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan for his monthly #AskTheGovernor segment on Boston Public Radio, answering our questions and yours.
Answers below are from Governor Baker, some have been edited for length.
THE MBTA IS IN THE TOILET… BUT IT SURE IS A BARGAIN
For years and years, everything that happened at the T happened behind the curtain and out sight. A big part of why the T is where it is today is because there’s been virtually no sunshine on that operation for a really long time. The legislature, working with us after the storms of last winter, agreed to create a Fiscal and Management Control Board, that board meets every week. All of its work is public record, as it should be, and for the first time ever, we’re having a pretty transparent conversation about what goes on at the T and how it works.
We’re finally having the kind of public discussion about how the T works that we should have had a long time ago. My belief is that this will help us dramatically to reform it, and to get it to perform the way it should, on behalf of the people who ride it and the people who pay for it.
The MBTA presented its mid-year operating performance (on the expense side) to the Fiscal and Management Control Board, and spending, year over year, is up one percent, so far. They’re doing a lot of the hard work, they’ve already started doing a lot of the things that they should be doing to manage their budget. That should be part of the public discussion as well. Even if you take either of the proposals that were made by the T, with respect to fares, it’s still a bargain relative to every other system in the country.
People who almost never ride the T, who live all over Massachusetts, pay a $1 billion a year to subsidize the people who do, and the people who work there. Believe me, those people want to see the T get fixed, and see its performance improved. But they’re also the people, for the most part, who, when people talk about a fare increase, the first thing they say is, ‘I never ride the T, but I know I’m paying for it.’
If, in fact, the price of a ride on the T or the commuter rail is still going to be a bargain, relative to what you would pay elsewhere around the country, after one of these proposals go into effect, then obviously, from just a benchmark, if we’re going to complain about all the other issues associated with how much the T costs, compared to other people, we should talk about that too.
OPIATE BILL: WHAT HE GOT
The first thing I wanted was quick action, the good news is that the senate has passed a bill, the house is going to debate a bill tomorrow that the speaker announced yesterday...my guess is, there will be a lot of amendments, but they’ll probably move something through the floor by the end of the day. The big issue is...the senate won’t be back in session until the 21st of January, so my hope is that sometime in either late January of early February, we get a bill. I don’t expect to agree with everything that’s in any legislation, it’s a democracy. But I do believe that the most important thing we need to do is disrupt the status quo, and I think there are a lot of elements in both the senate and house bills that will do that. My view is—let’s get something through, let’s start to implement it, and let’s see what comes next.
...AND WHAT HE WANTED
There were a bunch of components of our bill that I knew were controversial; the three-day limit on first prescriptions, that’s controversial. The house went with seven days. Seven days isn’t three days, but seven days is better than no policy, which is where we were before. This is about first prescriptions, this is about acute pain, it’s not about long-term carefully monitored chronic pain and chronic conditions.
We should remember that in Massachusetts in 2014, prescribers wrote prescriptions, 4.5 million schedule two and three prescriptions that added up to over 200 million pills. We have six million people and most of them are healthy most of the time, we definitely have an issue here with the way we, as a commonwealth, prescribe.
On the alternative paths to treatment piece, the 72 hour review that was part of our bill, they went with an alternative: within 24 hours a hospital needs to do a clinical assessment of somebody who comes into the E.R. who has overdosed.
I just want to do some things and see what works.
MARIJUANA DECRIMINALIZATION
(A big group of Senate members are in Colorado examining the decriminalization of marijuana)
Having spoken with our Attorney General, who has talked at some length with the Attorney General in Colorado, there are some legitimate and significant problems with legalizing marijuana. Apparently the edibles issues is a really big deal. they’re pretty much everywhere, a lot of people who are ingesting them are being negatively affected by them, the AG out there says they’re a huge issue with respect to Emergency Room admissions, automobile accidents, all sorts of stuff. It’s a lot more about the edible stuff than [anything else], which is sort of the corporatization of legalized marijuana.
BAKER: CAMPAIGNING AGAINST WEED?
I would say that I’m certainly going to make my views known, and I respect everybody’s opinion on this stuff, it’s a personal issue, and I get all that, but I think it’s really important that the public make an informed decision here, and we now have evidence in Washington and Colorado, and we should take advantage of that and make sure it’s part of the debate.
DESIGNATING ATTACKS ON ABORTION CLINICS ACTS OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM
I’ve always been a public official who supports a woman’s right to choose, and in this particular case, what said, (because it happens to be factually accurate) is that all decisions associated with the definition of whats a ‘terrorist attack’ are made by the federal government, not by state officials or local officials. If you look at the number of federal agencies that were involved in the Planned Parenthood shooting that took place a few weeks ago, it was an all hands on deck, everybody on the ground, everybody involved, which is frankly, as it should be. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who shoots up any organization; any group of people, any set of innocent bystanders, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a domestic act of terrorism, period. Whether or not the federal government chooses to define it that way or not, is up to them. But there’s no doubt that the response that they brought to the Planned Parenthood shooting was overwhelming.
WELCOMING REFUGEES TO MASSACHUSETTS, IN LIGHT OF CONGRESSMAN SETH MOULTON’S 9-YEAR-OLD REFUGEE STATE OF THE UNION GUEST
Massachusetts has always been an engaged and active participant in refugee resettlement, and we will continue to do that, and to be a collaborative partner with the non-profit agencies and with the federal government on this. I think it’s important to understand what the connectivity is and what the process is for reviewing refugee resettlement issues that involve people from countries that are either hostile to us or simple have governments that are basically broken. That would include Syria, and Iraq and probably Iran as well. We’ve had, as administration, conversations with people at the State Department, and at the Department of Homeland Security. I’ve had some personal conversations of my own with people who serve in those roles, and have those responsibilities… the answers I’ve gotten have been helpful, but not necessarily complete. We should be a welcoming committee, we should continue to be supportive of people who are fleeing terrorist regimes resettle in this country, but we should also be mindful of the fact that there need to be processes on the ground that are credible and thorough.
If you’re a man between the ages of 15 and 40, you are treated differently if you’re from one of those countries and you have no identification, or no verification, or if your fingerprints don’t fit with anybody’s in any system, you get treated differently.
They also tier which people go to the head of the line, if you’re a family that has direct connection to people in the United States already, If you’re a woman with children, if you’re an unaccompanied minor, that moves you to the head of the line. They do tier this process to make it one where they treat different groups differently, and they take a special look at anybody who doesn’t have identification, a history, and happens to be a man between the ages of 15 and 40. Those are all good things.
NEW GUIDELINES ON SEX OFFENDERS
(500 convicted sex offenders will be removed from public records due to new guidelines)
We gave [Kevin Hayden, head of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry board] the authority to hire some additional people to work through those hearings as quickly as he can.
The additional funding is a big part of it. Lets face it, we have an SJC (Supreme Judicial Court) decision here which we can choose to like or dislike, but we have to deal with it. [Hayden] said they’re going to to start with the people they’re most concerned about, and work their way down the list from the top, working it down like that. If in conversations with him and [Secretary of Public Safety Daniel Bennett] they believe there are significant risks to public safety, and they want to seek additional funding to either move quickly or to get to a certain segment of the population more quickly, I’d be wide open to that.
RAPE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BILL CLINTON… A RELEVANT PART OF THE 2016 CAMPAIGN?
In the end, I would say that voters get to make the call in this whole thing. I think what triggered this whole thing was some public comments from Juanita Broaddrick, who said Bill Clinton raped her when he was president. Look, in public life, and in a democracy, it’s important that people be able to speak. Then it’s up to the voters to make decisions about what they think is important, and what is not. To say [I am troubled that it’s part of the debate] would mean to say that I don’t think Juanita Broaddrick has an opinion that matters, and I’m not going to say that. She does have an opinion that matters, just like everybody else does.
BOSTON’S BIG FIGHT OVER CHARTER SCHOOLS
(Governor Baker proposed twelve more charter schools every year)
It’s perfectly possible to have a big fight without it turning into a screaming match or a name-calling activity, and I get the fact that people are passionate on both sides of this issue. But there are a lot of issues where people are passionate.
We’ve had a bunch of conversations with the House and the Senate about charter schools, about whether or not it makes any sense to do something legislatively, in anticipation of that campaign, and I’m hoping that we’ll continue to be able to have those conversations, and if we can get something done that’s meaningful, and works, I think that would be great. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the people who care about the fact that it’s very hard to create any new charter school capacity in Massachusetts, to put a question on the ballot, and to advocate for it. If you look at the last round of PARCC/MCAS scores, the highest performing middle schools in Massachusetts are the Brook Academy middle schools in Roslindale, East Boston, and Mattapan. They serve almost exclusively low-income populations, and many of the folks come from communities of color. They are the highest-performing collection of middle schools in Massachusetts. There are people who live right next door and down the street from the families who send their kids to those schools, who can’t get into them, and who believe that they’re being denied an opportunity to give their kids the single most important thing as a parent you want to give your kids: a chance, and a shot. I think this is an incredibly important issue.
To hear more from Governor Baker’s interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio links above.