The Codcast

FOR THE Massachusetts High Technology Council, blocking a transportation revenue package is a two-step process.

The first step, which proved successful last week, was convincing House leaders to put off any action on a revenue package until next year. Chris Anderson, president of the council, argued on the CommonWealth Codcast that delaying action at least until January will give lawmakers more time to better understand the state’s revenue and political picture.

Monica Bharel, the state’s public health commissioner, is definitely a glass-half-full type of person.

On the Health or Consequences edition of the Codcast with Paul Hattis of Tufts University Medical School and John McDonough of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Bharel went through a series of major challenges facing her agency and in each instance ended her discussion on an optimistic note.

In this second installment of MassINC Insights, we hear from the journalists and thought leaders of MassINC about the education funding debate.

As lawmakers on Beacon Hill approach agreement on a school finance package, MassINC members dig in to the history of Massachusetts school funding that’s led up to this landmark bill. Plus, a piece of the legislation calls for schools’ accountability for the funding they receive.

After the many years MassINC researchers have spent looking into accountability, they discuss the impacts of local, state, and federal accountability through the lens of the debate between the House and Senate.

The derailment on the Red Line in June may have been a turning point.

After Gov. Charlie Baker visited the crash site, he decided it was time to accelerate repairs on the MBTA and greenlight more shutdowns of the system to speed up projects. The derailment also galvanized the debate over new transportation revenues – for the MBTA and the state as a whole.

The state’s business organizations weighed in last week on the new revenue issue. Several wanted no part of a tax increase and there was scattered consensus on what taxes or fees to raise among those calling for additional transportation revenues. But Jim Rooney, the president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and long-time government analyst Michael Widmer said on the CommonWealth Codcast that the derailment and continuing problems with the T have helped build a case for additional funding.

This week on The Codcast, we bring you an episode of MassINC Insights, the first installment in a series of conversations with the journalists, researchers, and pollsters of MassINC, The MassINC Polling Group and CommonWealth. The nonprofit consistently leads the way in producing nonpartisan research and independent reporting that make serious waves in the Bay State. And today, we're pulling back the curtain on the organization, asking our talented team about the transportation funding debate, what to watch out for, and why.

JAY KAUFMAN, THE former state rep from Lexington, remembers a conversation he had with House Speaker Robert DeLeo the last time the Legislature considered raising taxes to pay for transportation.

It was 2013, the morning before the House vote on a bill that would raise the gas tax 3 cents, index that tax to inflation (later rescinded by voters), jack up tobacco taxes, and impose a tax (later jettisoned by lawmakers) on some computer software services.

Kaufman, who was the chair of the Revenue Committee, said he didn’t think that tax package would provide enough new revenue to meet the transportation system’s needs. But he said DeLeo told him that if he voted against the bill he would lose his chairmanship of the Revenue Committee.

“He made it very clear to me that my options were to vote for it or not be part of any conversation going forward,” Kaufman said. “He said, ‘If you can’t vote for this, I can’t have you as part of my team.’”

Kaufman wanted to remain in control of the Revenue Committee to ultimately usher in a progressive system of income taxation in the state, so he says he went along with the speaker’s request. But now, after not seeking reelection last year and with another transportation revenue bill poised to come up for consideration, Kaufman decided to speak out on the Codcast.

Richard Parr, the research director of the MassINC Polling Group, said he was surprised at the strong support in a statewide, online poll for regional rail and a number of other ambitious transportation initiatives, including an underground rail link connecting North and South Stations. The most popular initiative was transitioning the commuter rail fleet from diesel to electric power. The poll also found support for a number of initiatives to fund regional rail, including a surtax on millionaires, proceeds from putting a price on the carbon content of automobile fuels, and regional ballot questions. Jim Aloisi and Josh Fairchild of TransitMatters, who interviewed Parr, pointed out that the poll numbers indicated less support for hikes in more straightforward taxes such as the gas tax. Aloisi, for example, noted more than two-thirds of those polled opposed raising the gas tax to pay for regional rail while roughly the same percentage were open to funding regional rail by putting a price on the carbon in auto fuels. Aloisi said those two numbers are inconsistent because the impact on drivers is basically the same. What does it mean? “People want everything and they want someone else to pay for it,” Aloisi said.

SUFFOLK COUNTY Sheriff Steve Tompkins insists his decision to sever ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement had nothing to do with protests, and everything to do whether the people in his jail’s cells are destined to remain in the state.

“I was hired to do local, not federal work. The ICE population is transient — they’re not staying here,” Tompkins said on CommonWealth’s Codcast. “But the ladies we’re going to service, they either live in my county or the Commonwealth. They’re staying here. They have kids. They have families. We want them to go back home in better shape than they arrived.”

Congresswoman Katherine Clark supports the idea of opening facilities where people can use illegal drugs under medical supervision to prevent overdose fatalities and refer people to treatment for drug addiction when they are ready.

“These sites, in particular, if it is saving some lives, if it is allowing us to have the intervention to stop this cycle before a person does lose their life to an overdose, that’s a piece of this puzzle that we have to be open to and figure out,” said Clark.

In a wide-ranging interview on CommonWealth’s Codcast, Clark also talked about her work on a bill dubbed the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act, which would take a number of different approaches to empower the victims of workplace sexual harassment and try to curb the type of predation made infamous by the torrent of #metoo stories over the past two years.

Seven months ago the MBTA’s oversight board indicated it was going to weigh in on whether the Legislature should explore new transportation funding initiatives, but since then there’s been nothing.

Joe Aiello, the chair of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, said the timing was not right back then. But soon it will be, he says, pointing out that there have been some new developments on the revenue front. Aiello also says the board is likely to lay out options for the Legislature rather than recommend anything specific, perhaps because of Gov. Charlie Baker’s continued opposition to new revenues.