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It was a tale of two Jay-Z quotes this week as state lawmakers got ready to pass a month-overdue, $56.2 billion annual budget.
This year’s budget is the fifth crafted by Ways and Means Committee chairs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz of Boston and Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport, and the two made a point of highlighting their working relationship in their opening remarks.
“My counterpart in the Senate, the gentleman from Westport, who has now done five of these with me, and is still talking to me. I guess that’s pretty good,” Michlewitz quipped, making his way through a list of thank-yous. “And as Jay-Z said, we’re on to the next one.”
Rodrigues followed suit: “To quote Jay-Z, who I’m told is hip by my counterpart in the House, I got 99 problems but this budget ain’t one.”
Playful hyperbole aside, the Legislature is facing its share of problems. At this point, it’s worth noting when a pair of committee chairs from the House and Senate are not only on speaking terms, but willing to come together on lyrics — or legislation.
It’s been almost three months since the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee — the panel behind recent major climate laws — essentially divorced. With chairs Sen. Mike Barrett and Rep. Jeff Roy at odds over process and power dynamics, the committee’s Senate members and House members have been holding separate hearings on the same bills.
That spat appears to be part of a larger dispute over who controls the flow of bills through Beacon Hill’s joint committees, where representatives outnumber senators. Last session, the House and Senate never reached an agreement on a full set of rules governing their interactions, and this session’s joint rules package similarly has been mired in closed-door talks since February.
"Process fights matter because they introduce new hurdles and delays, even for bills that have broad support among lawmakers."
Strife over rules is nothing new. (In 2015, senators floated the “nuclear option” of leaving the joint committees and setting up their own.) But this year’s iteration seemed to reach new heights last week when, as CommonWealth Magazine reported, four House chairs initiated votes on bills without involving their Senate peers.
The disagreement is more fundamental on a high-profile gun law reform bill. The two branches, both controlled by Democrat supermajorities, can’t even agree on which committee should review it, and it looks likely that each will forge its own path on gun legislation and have to reconcile later.
Process fights matter because they introduce new hurdles and delays, even for bills that have broad support among lawmakers. When the Senate and House disagree on policy, that’s a hangup of its own.
Since late June, the two chambers have been holding closed-door negotiations on different plans for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax relief — also led by Rodrigues and Michlewitz. It’s a second go-around after tax break talks floundered last summer.
We’ll see if they’re still talking after that next one.
