IN NO HURRY TO SPEECHIFY. “Never speak when you can nod.” That was the maxim of Martin Lomasney, a Democratic ward boss from the West End of Boston back when mostly poor folks lived there. Lomasney’s been dead since 1933. It’s doubtful most politicians today have heard of him. But I can’t help but wonder if Rep. Tackey Chan, D-Quincy, maybe has. Chan, 44, worked for a number of years as a top legislative hand for former Senator and now Norfolk County DA Michael Morrissey and as an assistant district attorney before running for and winning the 2nd Norfolk House seat in 2010. With his experience and drive, Chan was a mover in the House from the start. In 2017, he became House chair of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure. Yet, it was not until last month, on Feb. 14, that Chan rose, at long last, to deliver his maiden speech on the House floor. He devoted that speech to a forceful appeal for the enactment of House Bill 4232, An Act Removing Fees for Security Freezes and Disclosures of Consumer Credit Reports. “With free credit freezes and thaws and lifts, there is a great savings for customers,” he said. “…I think we should be proud of the fact we’re able to address this in a timely manner, and tell people at home we’re creating a new consumer protection for everyone in the Commonwealth.” On a roll call vote, H.4232 was promptly adopted. House members gave Chan a sustained round of applause. Then, as is customary upon the conclusion of a maiden speech, every representative came forward, shook Chan’s hand and congratulated him, both on his speech and the winning vote for his bill. Maiden speeches have always been treated as a big deal. It’s one of the many customs I love about the Massachusetts legislature. I cannot recall there ever being a seven-year lag between a legislator taking office and making his maiden speech, but it’s probable there has been a similar or longer lag at some point in our state’s long history. Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with that. Less talk can be a smart career move, if combined with a good brain for strategy and a good personality for alliance building, as Tackey Chan has shown us.
MUCH-NEEDED WORKER
PROTECTIONS. On Friday, March 9, Gov. Baker
signed into law House Bill 3952, An Act
to Further Define Standards of Employee Safety, which applies federal
Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace standards to municipal
workers. Good thing he did. An estimated 400,000 workers are getting
protected under this law. It’s great the
Commonwealth will be enhancing safeguards for municipal employees who handle
many inherently risky tasks, like working on pipes in trenches. And it would be even better if our state
found a way to address a somewhat parallel situation involving commercial
fishermen, who are not covered by any federal workplace safety mandates. That’s right, OSHA stops at the shore. The men and women employed in one of the
world’s most dangerous industries lack workplace protections that have been
taken for granted on land for decades.
Franklin Roosevelt’s Fair Labor Standards Act also does not apply to
fishermen, meaning such good things as child labor laws and overtime rules do
not apply to fishermen. It’s not like
there isn’t sufficient profit in the consumption of seafood to enable modern, reasonable
protections for fishermen. It’s just
that the money does not trickle down to the persons who do the actual hard work
of catching fish. While the seafood industry in Massachusetts is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year
industry, the average fisherman makes $35,000 a year. Approximately 6,000 full-
and part-time fishermen (or “harvesters” as they are often termed in official
documents) support 90,000 jobs on land -- everything from seafood processors
and delivery truck drivers to chefs and waitresses in seafood restaurants. It’s about time you hugged a fisherman.
FORRY FAREWELL, PART 2. Former Senator Linda Dorcena
Forry got her start in the legislature as chief of staff to former Rep.
Charlotte Golar Richie in 1996. In 2005,
she won former House Speaker Tom Finneran’s House seat after Finneran left the
legislature for a job in private industry, and she held the seat until 2013, when she won a
special election in the 1st Suffolk Senate district, Jack Hart’s,
Steve Lynch’s and Bill Bulger’s old bailiwick. It was nice that Forry, during her
Feb. 14 farewell, acknowledged the support she received early on from former
House Speaker Sal DiMasi, whose career in politics did not end well. DiMasi’s wife, Debbie, was in the
audience. Said Forry, “I was fortunate
to serve under Sal DiMasi. Sal saw
promise in a young woman from Dorchester.”
When Sal was holding all the cards, he treated people well, regardless
of their status, rank or situation.
OLD WISDOM FOR NEW DIGITAL ERA. If you’ve heard this before, please
bear with me. I love this piece of
Boston political folklore and am wont to recite it at odd moments. The full “never speak when…” Martin Lomasney
credo goes like this: “Never write when
you can speak. Never speak when you can nod.
Never nod when you can wink.”
Were he alive today, Lomasney would not ever be undone by the
publication of an email or text tapped out late at night in a weak moment.
NO SUMMER VACAY FOR DEAN.
The longest-serving member of the House, Rep. Angelo Scaccia of Hyde
Park, will likely have two opponents when he stands for re-election in the
Democratic primary this September: Gretchen Van Ness and Segun Idowu. “The Dean,” as he is known to one and all in
the lower branch, has been in the House, with only one two-year interruption,
since 1973. He’s now in his twenty-second
two-year term and is on the outs with current House leadership. Van Ness, a former head of the Women’s Bar
Association, was dubbed “the patron saint of underdogs” in a 2006 profile in
Boston Magazine. Idowu served as an aide
to former Boston City Councilor Charles Yancey and organized the Boston Police
Camera Action Team in 2014 to promote the adoption of body cameras by the BPD. Neither
Van Ness nor Idowu has ever held elective office but both are obviously
fighters. At the least, they’ll make it interesting
for The Dean.
TAKE THAT, SNOOTY CONDO BOARDS. The Senate has moved to a third
reading Senate Bill 1117, An Act Relative
to Solar Drying of Laundry, meaning it is now one quick step away from
passing in the upper branch. Sponsored
by Senator Michael Barrett, D-Lexington, the bill would authorize municipalities
to enact laws preventing homeowners’ associations from barring clotheslines on
their properties. Clothes dryers may not
be real energy hogs, but, in an era of climate change, every bit of carbon is worth
keeping out of the atmosphere.
GUV’S ENEMY: THE CALENDAR. We’re entering the biannual hourglass phase of the legislative
session, when time available for lawmaking is fast running out and everyone
more or less acknowledges that a lot of good -- and maybe even quite necessary
-- bills just won’t get done. It’s about
calendar math. This is year two of the
session, an election year for all legislative offices. By law, the legislature must adjourn by July
31; no formal sessions of the House and Senate may be held after that. In the less than five months remaining on the
calendar, the legislature will be mainly occupied with formulating and passing
a new state budget for Fiscal Year 2019 (July 1, 2018 – June 30, 2019), and
then dealing with overriding gubernatorial vetoes of various budget
items. The annual budget process
mercilessly crowds out other legislative business and priorities; however, the
crowding out is especially problematical in the second year of the session
because virtually all unaddressed bills die at midnight on July 31 of the
second year. This past Monday, March 12,
at the end of a State House press conference promoting a bill to
spur housing construction, Gov. Baker was asked by the State House News
Service if he was concerned by the legislature's slow pace and frustrated
by the lack of action on major bills he’s proposing. Never one to pick a fight with a legislator,
any legislator, Baker answered, “I fully expect that we’re going to have to
push and advocate with our colleagues and others to try to get all of this
stuff done over the course of the next four months, but the one thing I think
we can all agree on is that there’s a tremendous amount of traffic and activity
that takes place in the legislature in the last four months of the session, and
we’re anticipating a big piece of that agenda will get done over the next 120
days.” Translation: “Yes, the calendar
is my enemy. I don’t like my situation but
it would only get worse if I tried to crack the whip on the legislature.”
FORRY FAREWELL, PART 3. Like any good, natural performer, former
Senator Linda Dorcena Forry ended her farewell speech with a
tantalizing hint of things to come. “I’m
excited to move into the private sector and join John Fish (as Vice President,
Northeast Region, Diversity), but I will not be a stranger. And I won’t promise I won’t be back some way,
somehow. You never know what tomorrow
brings. For the people! The people!” According to the State House News Service,
she choked up at that point and could not continue, whereupon everyone in the
chamber stood and applauded.
Forry regained her composure and concluded thusly: “To the
people I’ve been honored to represent, this is not a forever goodbye. This is a time to say, ‘Thank you and I love
you.’ Thank you and God bless.” Always leave them wanting more, right?
