Lawmakers have been enjoying summer recess since the beginning of August, but pressing issues are stacking up on Beacon Hill that the House and Senate may or may not address when they return to formal session in September. Mike Deehan, GBH News State House reporter, joined Aaron Schachter on Morning Edition to look ahead at what’s in store for lawmakers. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Schachter: Lawmakers have about five billion dollars in federal pandemic relief funds they need to spend. Are they going to be prepared to pass any spending bills in the fall?
Deehan: They say they are. They still actually have a handful of hearings on that five billion dollars that they mean to have in September, potentially into October. After they have all of these hearings with stakeholders, municipal officials, with the Baker administration, [who] have been a big presence in these hearings so far — once they wrap all those out, the Ways and Means Committees will probably, behind closed doors, formulate some kind of new spending plan that results from those public hearings. So you kind of have secret negotiations based on public hearings. It's kind of the way things go here.
One thing that actually could speed up the spending when it comes to these federal funds is if the House and Senate negotiate before they bring these plans to their two chambers. This is something that we've seen the Senate president and the Speaker of the House do a few times over the years, and increasingly these days, is to kind of pre-negotiate — get a deal made already and then put it before their members, hopefully don't change it, and then pass it through. That's a pretty strong exercise in leadership control, though, if the Speaker and the Senate president want to go that route.
Of course, Charlie Baker, the governor, has his own plans for this. He wants to spend it on housing and infrastructure and workforce development and all that stuff right now. So, we're going to see what pans out. But it is going to take well into the autumn before we know how the legislature wants to go.
Schachter: Mike, another piece of legislation that seems like everyone wants to do but never gets done is this one legalizing sports betting. What is happening with that in the fall?
Deehan: Yeah, there's a pretty strong chance this could go through. The House has actually passed repeatedly different versions of this in the last couple of years. But the Senate keeps punting and keeps saying, well, ‘we need more time.’ But there are indications, especially from Senator Eric Lesser from Longmeadow, who's kind of leading up this on the Senate side, that he is getting ready to put something before the chamber so they can pass it.
It's still very up in the air. Do we allow betting on college sports? Do we allow betting only at casinos? What kind of vendors would be able to do this online version, things like Draft Kings? So there [are] a lot of details and there could be different paths between the House and the chamber as they go forward. If what the Senate does eventually pass differs greatly from what the House has already passed, then we could get into a much longer period of negotiations that could take months, if not another year.
Schachter: Mike, now that the 2020 census data has been released, lawmakers have to get to work on drawing up new district boundaries for Congress. Things have been delayed a bit at the federal level. But how are things going here?
Deehan: As more data comes out, the committee that's in charge of redistricting here at the State House is more and more prepared to draw up those maps. So they are also having a number of hearings. They're hearing from constituents in western Massachusetts, Cape Cod, eastern Mass., really across the state, because they have to move and bend these lines to accommodate population shifts that have happened over the last decade. There's a lot of lobbying and a lot of politics involved, as you can imagine, as to which district goes where and who's living where.
Schachter: And who loses a seat?
Deehan: Well, exactly. And it's not necessarily, you know, winning and losing, but it's all the constituencies that might want to grab more power. For instance, just this week, a group of communities of color coalition got together and said that they want to have three seats in the State Senate for Boston that are majority people of color. So that's kind of a hard task to carve out exactly where that would be. That's just an example of a lot of the demands that are being put on this committee as they draw up these new plans. If history is any guide, though, they will finish up proposals for maps around October and put those before the legislature for passage in the fall as well.
WATCH: Mike Deehan on state vaccine mandates
Schachter: Mike, is there anything we know won't be on the agenda for the fall?
Deehan: Do not get excited about vaccination mandates, especially when it means coming from the legislature. That is something that I've spoken to a few people about. A member of House leadership told me last week that that is not really on the short term agenda. They're looking at more expertise, more information about what it would mean to require vaccines either in the public or private workforces. So that's something that unless things really get bad, I don't think lawmakers are going to try to.
Schachter: And Baker? There are calls for him to issue mandates.
Deehan: Of course — and so, since the legislature might not do it, they may put pressure on the executive, on Baker, to do that instead. It remains to be seen whether or not he has the power to do a lot of that stuff without a state of emergency order. So lawmakers do have some kind of responsibility to do something along those lines, whether it's the kind of soft push or a hard law passage.
