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🌤️Mostly sunny and a bit warmer, with highs in the 50s. Sunset is at 7:02 p.m.
After Martha Stewart announced lobster rolls will cost $50 a pop at her restaurant at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, GBH’s Marilyn Schairer asked other crustacean sandwich sellers to weigh in.
“People are super-surprised at that price,” said Joby Norton of Mullaney’s Harborside Fish Market in Scituate and Cohasset. “But if you figure lobster meat is $75 a pound, that’s almost $5 an ounce, they’re putting six ounces in a lobster roll. That’s almost $30 just for lobster meat in that lobster roll before the roll.”
Most places probably won’t see lobster rolls reach the $50 mark: Eddie Hook, co-owner of James Hook & Co. in Boston’s Fish Pier, said he’s selling them for $30 to $38. “We expect it to be that way, you know, through the rest of the spring and into the summer season,” Hook said. Schairer dives deeper into the economics of lobster rolls here.
Four Things to Know
1. Boston’s police union has said that the local district attorney’s office acted politically when arresting Officer Nicholas O’Malley, charged with manslaughter in the shooting of 39-year-old Stephenson King earlier this month. “I’ve been involved in probably a hundred or more police shootings,” O’Malley’s defense attorney Ken Anderson said. “This is the first one anyone’s ever been arrested.”
But legal experts said O’Malley is being treated like other criminal defendants. “I think perhaps because police officers are almost never charged and held accountable for shootings, that’s why we haven’t seen them arrested,” said Shira Diner, a lecturer and clinical instructor in the Defender Clinic at Boston University School of Law. A judge released O’Malley after his court hearing last week as his case plays out.
2. We have a bit more information about how an attempt to find a company that can redesign rest stops along Massachusetts highways fell apart last year. Text messages and other communications show the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s then-chief strategic officer, Scott Bosworth, was very friendly with representatives of Applegreen, the Irish company that was awarded the contract and then backed out of it.
“This was like a love-fest,” said State Sen. Mark Montigny, chair of the oversight committee. “It was like wet kisses and heart emojis.” Massachusetts Inspector General Joshua Shapiro did not go so far as to say Bosworth broke ethics laws, but said the messages “created the appearance of a conflict of interest that diminished the integrity of the process.”
3. Lawmakers had some pointed questions for the people behind a ballot question campaign to make cannabis possession illegal again in Massachusetts. One person testified in support of the ballot question: Wendy Wakeman, a Massachusetts GOP strategist and spokesperson for the campaign to repeal marijuana legalization. “Massachusetts is just not as comfortable a place to live in anymore.... We walk across the common and smell weed. I drive down [Interstate] 93, the car in front of me is a hotbox. It’s everywhere. It’s pervasive,” Wakeman said.
Sen. Paul Feeney said that “the majority of people can use it safely without issue. But you’re saying the ills of a very small minority of people is what outweighs legal use by adults?“ Wakeman replied: “as you reflect it back to me, I’ve become more uncomfortable with that statement. I just don’t think we know. The research on cannabis use is scant. We can all agree on that.”
4. After Massachusetts House Minority Leader Brad Jones announced he won’t run for reelection, it’s not clear who will lead Republicans in the chamber. While Republicans make up only about 15% of members in the state House, the caucus leader can still push for votes to get other legislators on the record or try to delay votes. Jones, from North Reading, has held the top job since 2002. His second-in-command, Assistant Minority Leader Kimberly Ferguson, isn’t seeking reelection either.
“I think for Republicans, it’s always a balancing act in terms of whether it’s the right opportunity to be pushing back or to be working for the advancement of their members, and that’s something that I think only the Republican members themselves can determine — when’s the right time to be pushing back, when’s the right time to be negotiating,” Massachusetts Republican Party Chair Amy Carnevale said.
Behind the bills: Ballot question boogie on Beacon Hill
By Katie Lannan, GBH News State House reporter
In 2018, Beacon Hill lawmakers struck a deal with activists, writing a legislative compromise that cut in half the number of ballot questions going before voters that year. This year, with a record-breaking number of potential ballot questions, the mood is different and tensions are high among legislators and advocates.
So what’s changed?
Eight years ago, there were three ballot questions that put labor and business interests on opposite sides: a minimum wage increase, creation of a paid family and medical leave program and a sales tax cut.
One big difference this year — one that would make that kind of dealmaking harder — is that there are so many questions in the mix, on so many different topics, including housing, marijuana policy and nature funding. There’s not a clear set of trade-offs, or even a set group of parties to ask to the table.
House speaker Ron Mariano told reporters last week that no campaign has come to him to ask for something along the lines of that 2018 grand bargain. But even if there’s not much chatter about negotiations that span multiple issues, there might be interest in finding an alternative path forward, one question at a time.
Take rent control: lawmakers held a hearing last week on a ballot question that would cap annual rent hikes statewide. After testimony from both sides, state Sen. Cindy Friedman said she was tired of hearing the extremes, that rent control would either crush the economy or have no consequences besides helping people stay in their homes. “Well, somewhere in the middle is the truth,” Friedman said. “What would be really wonderful for the Legislature is if you all got together and figured out what a middle ground is.”
As for Mariano, he says he’s always open to negotiation. But he’s also been a big critic of the whole idea of making laws by ballot. He thinks there needs to be more transparency around who’s footing the bill, and he doesn’t like that ballot questions bypass the Legislature on complex policy.
Remember: ballot question campaigns don’t need buy-in from the Legislature. That doesn’t mean, though, that lawmakers are fully stepping aside.
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the Senate ask the state’s high court to weigh in on whether two questions — on public records and lawmaker pay — are constitutional. And the House passed a bill that would prevent some other tax breaks from taking effect if a ballot question to cut the income tax rate passes.
Ultimately, it’s voters who will make the call. But it does seem lately like the Legislature has been trying to take a more active role in those decisions.
Dig deeper:
-Rent control could hurt property values, local budgets long-term, report says
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