Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Massie criticized Gov. Charlie Baker for not speaking up more urgently against injustice in Massachusetts.
“It’s always a day late, a dollar short, signing on to somebody else’s letter, [and] worded in the most modest way he can get away with, and I think that’s a pattern,” Massie said in an interview Wednesday with Boston Public Radio.
Massie referenced Baker’s own words from early June, when the governor said his administration would do some “nipping and tucking” to address a $439 million gap in state revenue. “You can scour the governor’s budget or his State of the State address, and he has no long-term plans laid out,” Massie said. “[He’s] perfectly happy to manage the budget on a quarterly basis. That’s the opposite of good business management.”
According to Massie, Baker’s resistance to raising taxes to pay for infrastructure or transportation programs shows a vision only for the short-term.
“We can keep getting worse, or we can have a fundamental discussion about what kind of a state we want to become,” he said. “The role of a governor is not just to manage a budget, it’s also to inspire people, it’s to inform people, it’s to help convene people so they have a discussion [about] what we really want.”
“People hate taxes because they don’t think they’re going to get anything from them,” Massie continued, “but I’ve seen people come together and say, well, if we get that, if we were to get our train speeds up more than 40 miles an hour, and we could get back and forth, we might be willing to spend … we just can’t afford another four years of a governor who is not willing to tackle these structural problems.”
To hear Bob Massie's full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio player above.
