After Hurricanes, the MA-Puerto Rico Connection Comes into Sharper Focus

This past Wednesday, Jeff Sanchez of Jamaica Plain, a proud son of Puerto Rico and one of the most powerful members of the legislature, came to the podium in the House chamber to call attention to those in the Caribbean suffering greatly because of recent hurricanes.

“I stand here to ask for a moment of silence for the victims of Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria and the affected regions of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico in particular: 3.5 million United States citizens are crying for help right now in a way that so many of us would expect to be heard from this commonwealth if we were in the same situation,” said Sanchez, who was recently appointed chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. 

“Puerto Rico is a United States territory, a commonwealth,” Sanchez continued, “and the U.S. citizens there are seeking help.  I want to thank all of you for the outreach and the outpouring of help so many have come to us offering.  Make no mistake, the (electric) lines are down, the communications are down, people are crying, people are hurting.  Hospitals are inundated with water.  I want to recognize this travesty with a moment of silence.”

That same day, Governor Charlie Baker telephoned Ricardo Rossello, Governor of Puerto Rico, to offer assistance in the island’s recovery effort.

Puerto Ricans are not just citizens who reside in a distant U.S. territory.  They have been, for generations, our neighbors here in Massachusetts.  According to the 2010 U.S. census, the last definitive national population count, two of the 10 U.S. cities with the largest Puerto Rican populations are in Massachusetts. Springfield is Number 4 on the list with 50,798 Puerto Ricans, (exceeded only by New York, Philadelphia and Chicago), and Boston is Number 9 with 30,201. 

The 2010 census pegged the total Puerto Rican population of Massachusetts at 266,125 -- 5.76% of our entire population at that time.    

I thought that the unprecedented damage done to Puerto Rico by Irma and Maria might bring the subject of statehood to the fore again, but so far that has not happened. 

Not four months ago, on Sunday, June 11, the latest in a widely intermittent series of plebiscites on whether Puerto Rico should try to become the 51^st state was held.  Ninety-seven percent of the Puerto Ricans who voted that day favored statehood.  

Only the U.S. Congress can grant statehood. With Republicans controlling both branches of the Congress, nothing will be done any time soon to advance the cause of statehood because Puerto Rico would be entitled to two U.S. Senators and three U.S. Representatives. Republicans know that Democrats would be likely capture most if not all of those seats.

I think that’s too bad, not for partisan reasons, but rather for peace and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere and for the security of our nation.

A long time ago, a very astute person, my older brother, Jim, said to me, “I don’t know why we (the U.S.) spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year stationing troops overseas and keeping the sea lanes in the Middle East open for oil shipments.  We’d do way more for our security by building the best possible relationships with our neighbors in the Americas.  Think about it.  If the Canadians and the Mexicans and all of the people in the Caribbean love us and trust us, who could ever defeat us militarily -- or economically?”

Elevating the status of a strategically important island some one thousand miles from our shores, an island whose residents are already citizens of the U.S., would make us a stronger and safer nation in the long run.  It would also convey respect for all of the Spanish-speaking nations in the region, strengthening the peaceful bonds we have with them.

If anyone’s interested in contributing to the relief and rebuilding of Puerto Rico, one of the organizations worthy of donations is “United for Puerto Rico.”  For more information, go to:

http://unidosporpuertorico.com/en/

 

  

 

It's Inevitable that MA Legislature Will Give us 'End of Life Options'

Forty-five of the 200 members (22.5%) of the Massachusetts legislature are sponsoring a bill, An Act Relative to End of Life Options, that would allow persons with terminal illnesses to get prescriptions for suicide drugs.

You will not find the words “suicide drugs” in the bill.  That’s my term. The bill calls these pharmaceuticals “aid in dying medication.”  To get them, a person would have to fill out a form that goes like this:

“I, [Insert Name], am an adult of sound mind and a resident of the State of Massachusetts.  I am suffering from [Insert Deadly Condition], which my attending physician has determined is a terminal illness or condition which can reasonably be expected to cause death within 6 months.  This diagnosis has been medically confirmed, as required by law.

“I have been fully informed of my diagnosis, prognosis, the nature of the aid in dying medication to be prescribed and potential associated risks, the expected result, and the feasible alternatives and additional treatment opportunities, including comfort care, hospice care, and pain control.

“I request that my attending physician prescribe aid in dying medication that will end my life in a peaceful manner if I choose to take it, and I authorize my attending physician to contact any pharmacist to fill the prescription.

“I understand that I have the right to rescind this request at any time.  I understand the full import of this request and I expect to die if I take the aid in dying medication to be prescribed.  I further understand that, although most deaths occur within three hours, my death may take longer and my physician has counseled me about this possibility.  I make this request voluntarily, without reservation, and without being coerced, and I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

The person seeking such medication would have to sign this form in the presence of two witnesses, who would also have to sign it.  The person would also have to be adjudged by a mental health professional fully capable of making the decision to end her life.

That so many legislators are sponsoring An Act Relative to End of Life Options does not mean the bill is an odds-on favorite for enactment during the 2017-18 legislative session.  But I would not be surprised if it does become law. 

When a referendum question to legalize physician assisted suicide appeared on the statewide Massachusetts ballot in 2012, it came within 2.3 percentage points of passing.  Physician assisted suicide -- again, my term; it is not found in the bill text -- has the feel of recreational marijuana prior to the election of November, 2016: an idea whose time has come. 

Laws like this are already on the books in California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C.

The Joint Committee on Public Health conducted a hearing on An Act Relative to End of Life Options on Tuesday of this week.  Among the many witnesses who testified in favor of the bill were Framingham State Rep. Christopher Walsh, who is undergoing treatment for Stage 4 Lymphoma, and Allison Scobie-Carroll, Massachusetts President of the National Association of Social Workers.  As reported by the State House News Service:

Walsh said, “I had to come to terms with this idea when I got this diagnosis, which is: Am I afraid of dying?  I’m much more afraid of not living well.”

Scobie-Carroll said, “Those facing a prognosis of death in just a matter of months, secondary to an illness that will erode their personal agency and quality of life should be afforded the ability to decide the manner in which they wish to die.”

The case against An Act Relative to End of Life Options is fundamentally theological -- and theology has never occupied a comfortable spot in our constitutional system.

Traditional Western theology holds that life is a gift from God, that human beings are incapable of comprehending God’s ultimate nature and purposes, and that human beings must not expropriate the powers of God but rather submit to God’s will and design, or else risk eternal damnation.

I or any number of my fellow citizens may bow to tradition, but so what?  America in its founding document committed itself to the pursuit of happiness (and, by implication comfort). 

Human beings have always had the ability to end their lives by means violent (rope ) or passive (self-starvation) any time they chose.  Today, however, we possess the blessings of pharmacology and may bring about our deaths quickly and nearly painlessly.  The desperation and fierce will needed to self-inflict fatal damage are no longer required.  Thus, it is only a matter of time before An Act Relative to End of Life Options or something like it is enshrined in Massachusetts law and more people start taking their own lives.

 

Voters Don't Seem to Be Holding Social Media Slip Against Rep in Mayor's Race

If you’re running for public office and make a slip on social media, even a small one, it can take months to live it down.  Just ask Paul Heroux, who’s running for mayor of Attleboro and is the favorite in the race after Tuesday’s preliminary election in the town.

Three months ago, on Facebook, Heroux sent this message to a former girlfriend, thinking it was for her eyes only: “What you don’t know was behind the scenes I applied for a couple of jobs.  I have several job opportunities available to me in New York.  I don’t want to run for mayor.  I’d much rather go down there and rebuild with you.  I’m pretty sure that’s not an option though, for you that is. What do you say?”

Heroux accidentally posted the message publicly.  Within minutes, his political adversaries learned of it, and, within an hour, they were distributing print copies of it around town.  Heroux found out and promptly removed it from Facebook.  This all happened in the early morning hours of June 22.

With his commitment to a mayoral campaign questioned, Heroux did the best he could to explain away the situation.  According to an account in the Sun Chronicle newspaper, he said that he had made it clear when he first announced he was running for mayor that it was not a move he ever envisioned for himself. There are other goals in life he wanted to pursue, he told the Sun Chronicle, but he saw it as his duty to run.

The question dogged Heroux’s campaign and will continue to pose a problem for him until the final election on November 7, although probably not a fatal one.  On Tuesday, he topped the ticket in the preliminary, receiving 2,217 votes -- 251 more than the incumbent, Mayor Kevin Dumas, who received 1,966 votes.  The third-place candidate in the preliminary, retired Attleboro Fire Chief Ronald Churchill, got 587 votes.

You can be sure that Dumas, who’s been mayor for 14 years, will campaign hard to hold onto his job and not hesitate to remind voters that, mere weeks ago, Heroux was musing about starting a new life for himself in New York, so how seriously can he be taking this mayor thing?

On the last day before the preliminary, Heroux, interestingly, turned to Facebook to demonstrate how much he wanted to be mayor, posting an account of how he had just been bitten by dog while out on the streets campaigning.  The story was accompanied by photos of a bloody, torn sock and of Heroux in a medical office. 

“I have been bitten six times knocking on doors,” Heroux wrote.  “I still love dogs.  But if anybody ever questions whether or not I want to be mayor, they really should think again.”

Paul Heroux is one of the most highly educated members of the legislature.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience from the University of Southern California, a master’s in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s in international relations from the London School of Economics, and a master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  He’s 41 years old and has been in the House since January of 2013.  He’s at the point in life where most men and women do some very hard thinking about the direction of their lives and careers.  By deciding to stay in politics, he may well be closing down permanently routes to some very lucrative and exciting alternatives to public life.  I don’t feel bad for him because his political adversaries have been tormenting him with questions about his commitment to public service.  He brought the problem on himself. 

But it’s no big deal, and certainly no evidence of a character flaw, that he was privately weighing other options.  (Who, by the way, reading the message to the former girlfriend cannot be touched by the cautious hope of a reignited romance and a new life together in the capital of the world – the idea that he’d ditch politics for the woman he still loved but who may not love him?  Heroux, of course, is a Democrat.)  If I were a resident of Attleboro, I would not hesitate to give him my vote for mayor.

 

This Month in Corruption: Different Schemes to Yield False IDs, Free Cocaine

Last December, with just a few days left in 2016, I decided to devote some time each month during the upcoming year to tracking new cases of public corruption and providing a summary of those cases in an end-of-the-month blog post for an entire year.

Out of simple curiosity, I’d been reading, for years, every press release out of the offices of the Massachusetts Attorney General, the Massachusetts Inspector General, and the United States Attorney for Massachusetts, a habit that always left me shaking my head.

I’d be amazed by how much corruption “business” these offices had and by how few of the corruption cases, whether they were at the point of indictment or sentencing or somewhere in between, were reported upon in the mainstream media. 

With the opportunity to be a breaker of news, albeit a modest one, I could not help but unleash “This Month in Corruption” on an indifferent world.  It’s been an interesting exercise, bordering at times on the comedic.  [Think “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”]  More often it’s been rather depressing, which is why I’ll close it down on 12-31-17. 

Now to our fleet-footed Month 8:

Aggravated Identity Theft.  Who Knew There Was Such a Thing?  This month was only two days old when word came from the U.S. Justice Department that four employees of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) were among six persons arrested and charged with aggravated identity theft in connection with an alleged scheme to produce false identification documents. 

According to the State House News Service, federal authorities allege that Bivian Yohanny Brea, 41, and Rafael Bonano, 32, also known as “Flako,” conspired with four RMV clerks, who were identified as: Evelyn Medina, 56; Annette Gracia, 37; Kimberly Jordan, 33; and David Brimage, 46.

The Department of Justice claims that Bonano sold Puerto Rican birth certificates and U.S. Social Security cards to Brea for about $900, and that Brea then sold the stolen identities for more than $2,000 to clients seeking legitimate identities in Massachusetts.  The department further alleges that the employees in question accepted cash to use the stolen identities to illegally issue authentic RMV documents, including driver’s licenses and state ID cards.

There’s a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for persons convicted of aggravated identity theft, which none of the above have yet been.

Shady Cops Squeezing Drug Dealers.  Everyone Knows There Is Such a Thing. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced earlier today (8-31) that John Desantis, Jr., 45, a resident of Methuen and a member of the Lawrence Police Department for 16 years, had agreed to plead guilty to the crime of using his official position to extort cocaine from a drug dealer.  The charge against him is one count of “extortion and attempted extortion under color of official right and through the use of threatened force and fear.”

U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Saylor, IV, deferred acceptance of the guilty plea until Desantis’s sentencing hearing on Nov. 17.

According to federal prosecutors, Desantis purchased small amounts of cocaine from a drug trafficker once or twice a week for 10 months to a year without identifying himself as a police officer.  However, during a drug deal at his home on May 16, 2016, federal prosecutors said, Desantis displayed his badge and firearm, seized his drug dealer’s cocaine, and threatened to arrest the trafficker if he did not continue to supply drugs to him. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Desantis will be sentenced to no less than 12 months and no more than 18 months in prison, should the court accept his plea.

 

Historical Significance Had Little Heft on the Scale of Progress in Booming Malden

The First Church in Malden, Congregational, a once-cherished emblem of the history of Malden, Massachusetts, was wiped out a few weeks ago for the sake of a new downtown development.

The site of the church was contiguous to the Malden Government Center complex (city hall and police headquarters), which had been built in the mid-1970s in the middle of Pleasant Street in an attempt to create a pedestrian shopping mall from that point down to where Pleasant Street spills in to Main Street.  It turned out to be an ill-conceived and ridiculously hopeful project: no mall ever materialized. 

For years, the people of Malden yearned to correct that colossal mistake by demolishing the Government Center and reopening the entire length of Pleasant Street to the smooth flow of vehicular traffic.  Enter the Jefferson Apartment Group of Virginia in 2015.  It proposed spending $100 million to demolish the Government Center; replace it with apartments, offices and hundreds of parking spaces; and re-open Pleasant Street.  The plan hinged on combining the Government Center and church properties.  Suddenly, it made sense to deem the church edifice expendable.

Located at 184 Pleasant Street, the red-brick First Church, with its New-England-classic white steeple, was much more than a beautiful and distinctive building.  It was a direct link to the first European settlers of Mystic Side, the farming hamlet north of Boston that became the town, and later the city, of Malden.

Arriving in 1629, those settlers were Puritans, adherents of the Congregational faith.  Out of that faith ran a current of self-reliance and independent thinking that energized the Revolutionary War and helped to define the resulting institutions of democratic government in the United States.

James F. Cooper, Jr., wrote in his book Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts that “Congregational thought and practice in fact served as one indigenous seedbed of several concepts that would flourish during the Revolutionary generation, including the notions that government derives its legitimacy from voluntary consent of the governed, governors should be chosen by the governed, rulers should be accountable to the ruled, and constitutional checks should limit both the governors and the people.”  

The First Church was not the original Congregational meeting house in Malden, nor did it occupy the site of the original meeting house.  It was a successor church, a “new” church constructed only 83 years ago, in 1934, when that part of Pleasant Street was the retail hub of greater Malden.  First Church members then were numerous and influential in the community – and justly proud of being able to trace their faith lineage to the Englishmen who founded the city.

Malden is booming. The population has increased by more than 3,000 over the last 15 years and now stands just below 60,000.  New apartment buildings and condos are rising, it seems, on every available site.  Restaurants old and new are busy most nights.  There is even a serious proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium on a former industrial site on the outskirts of downtown.

One can welcome progress of this magnitude.  One can cheer for the city and its leaders because their economy is so robust.  One can celebrate that these developments constitute “smart growth” -- buildings and uses that capitalize on Malden’s proximity to Boston and its connection to mass transit. (The Malden Center stop on the T’s Orange Line sits about a hundred yards from the site of the demolished First Church.)

Still, I have to mourn that something with as much character and historical significance as the First Church could disappear because its congregation had dwindled and the real estate it occupies had become so incredibly valuable.  I feel badly that Malden is like most places in the U.S. in that local citizens are inherently averse to paying more taxes for the preservation of buildings and places of historical importance.

At the tables where big decisions are made on a city’s future, a city’s past has no seat.

We’ve all witnessed circumstances like those that spelled the doom of the First Church in Malden, Congregational.  In our hearts we know that civic pride is wonderful up to the point that we the citizens are invited to uphold it with the dollars from our pockets.

It's Not Etched in Stone that Sales-Tax-Free Weekends Be Held Only in August

This comes as no surprise to the people I work with (nor to my wife) but I was dead damn wrong in my last post, “Guv’s Sales Tax Holiday Bill Looks D.O.A.  Appearances Are Deceiving,” 8-6-17.

I thought Charlie Baker must have set everything up with legislative leaders before filing a last-minute bill August 2 to have a sales tax holiday the weekend of August 19-20.

I believed that despite the immediate negative reaction to the bill from an important House committee chairman, Revenue’s Jay Kaufman, who said it would be a “colossal mistake” to have a sales tax holiday this year.

I figured our governor must have quietly secured support for the idea from House Speaker Bob DeLeo and Senate President Stan Rosenberg before the filing and that Kaufman must have been out of the loop. I figured wrong.  Kaufman was most definitely in the loop. 

I’m not sure where Baker was.

This past Thursday brought the last possible opportunity for Baker’s sales tax holiday to be enacted. The last informal sessions of the House and Senate prior to the hoped-for event were held that day and the sales tax holiday wasn’t even mentioned.

I have to admit, almost as soon as I posted “…Appearances Are Deceiving,” I started second guessing myself.

Second guessing turned to serious worrying on Tuesday, August 8, when Chairman Kaufman declared he was “certain” there would be no sales tax holiday this year.

And when Friday, August 11, came and went without any action on the bill, I knew I had blown it.

What would be the point of scheduling a sales tax holiday weekend without there being at least one full week to promote it?  

So, if Baker did not have a solid plan in place for the sales tax holiday on August 2, why did he plunge ahead with the bill? 

One can say he did it as a sop to the retailers of Massachusetts, and to the business community as a whole, which is unhappy with him over his failure to persuade the legislature to adopt reforms to the Medicaid program a few weeks ago as part of a state budget that includes new assessments on businesses.

If this conjecture is valid, Baker filed the bill knowing it had no chance but at least comfortable knowing he could lay its failure on the legislature.  A cynical approach like that, however, would mark a big philosophical change in the Baker administration, which puts a premium on dealing sincerely with legislators and not posturing at their expense.

Around the office, I call Charlie Baker “our Eagle Scout governor” because he’s always about solving problems and his eagerness to take on challenges has a refreshingly boyish aspect to it. So I’m going with a simple interpretation of these events:

Baker filed the sales tax holiday bill recognizing that (a) he could not pull it off in August, the time when it has traditionally been held, and (b) he might be able to build a legislative consensus for the holiday sometime later in the year.  There’s no reason why we couldn’t have a sales tax holiday over the Columbus Day weekend, for example, is there? 

Though disappointed it wasn’t held in August, as it has been in 11 of the previous 13 years, retailers would rather see a sales-tax-free weekend happen later than not at all.

 

 

 

Guv's Sales Tax Holiday Bill Looks D.O.A. Appearances Are Deceiving.

Given the hand-in-glove nature of the relationship between the governor and legislature, it’s hard to believe Charlie Baker introduced a bill last week to establish a sales tax holiday on the weekend of August 19-20 if he had any doubts it would be enacted promptly.  Yet, at this point, it appears that the governor’s plan to suspend the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax the weekend after next is in serious trouble. 

The bill was filed on Wednesday, August 2, and, the day after, it was sent by House leaders to the Joint (House-Senate) Committee on Revenue, whereupon Rep. Jay Kaufman of Lexington, the House co-chair of the committee, said it would be a “colossal mistake” to have a sales tax holiday because of how hard it is going to be to balance the state budget this fiscal year.

According to Department of Revenue estimates, the state would forego around $25 million if no taxes were collected on the sale of goods during the third weekend of this month.  (Only purchases of $2,500 or less would be covered by the proposed law.)

In 11 of the past 13 years, there has been a sales tax holiday in August, each authorized year to year by a special act of the legislature.  Bricks-and-mortar retailers, pummeled by online competitors, have practically been begging the Commonwealth to turn that into a 12-of-14 record.  With Amazon getting bigger by the week, how can a Republican governor not feel their pain?

There were already bills before legislative committees to establish permanent two-day sales tax holidays when the governor came up with his bill for a 2017-only holiday. 

House Speaker Robert DeLeo was quoted last Wednesday by the State House News Service as saying “it makes little sense” for the governor to have filed his own bill at this juncture.  That was a typically careful comment from the leader of the lower branch.  DeLeo did not say he was opposed to the bill.  He did not say it made no sense. He only implied that, at first blush, he was puzzled by the governor’s strategy in putting it forward now. 

Puzzlements are like rumors: made to be dispelled…and there’s no one like the nation’s most popular governor at this time (and member of the Bob DeLeo fan club) to do the dispelling.

The governor’s bill looks now to be dead on arrival in the Revenue committee.  This is a money bill and only the House can initiate a money bill; therefore, Chairman Kaufman’s opposition would seem to be dispositive, as the lawyers like to say. 

I’m focusing on how Senate leaders have not yet concurred in the referral of the bill to Revenue.  Senate President Stan Rosenberg and Speaker DeLeo, working quietly together, could now decide to pull the bill from Revenue and send it instead to the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, whose House co-chair, Joe Wagner of Chicopee, is known to favor sales tax holidays.

Wagner could then become the point man in the House for moving the bill, sparing Kaufman from having to disavow his colossal mistake comment as he retreats to the pool of unanimous support for the bill willed suddenly into existence by the Speaker.

The legislature is in recess until September and is holding only informal sessions once or twice a week in August.  Under legislative rules, only “non-controversial” items may be taken up during informal sessions.  If even one member present during an “informal” objects to voting on a bill, it must be immediately tabled, killing the possibility of any action on it that day.

I think the governor had the tacit support of Speaker DeLeo and President Rosenberg when he filed the sales tax holiday bill last Wednesday or was exceedingly confident of winning their support once it was filed.  Baker of course knows that the leaders of both branches can make things happen smoothly and quickly if they want to, and that each leader could secure the acquiescence of any reluctant member of his Democratic caucus on an issue as popular as making taxes disappear for a spell, no matter how short.  (No Republican would think of voting against a deal like this.)  

For two-and-a-half years, Baker, Rosenberg and DeLeo have formed a team as cohesive and as mutually respectful as any could be with players from different parties with different agendas.

We should keep in mind that, just about now, Rosenberg and DeLeo owe Baker one.  Before recessing, the legislature rejected a major initiative dear to the governor’s heart, a package of Medicaid reforms strongly supported by business groups.  To avoid a fight with the legislature, the governor reluctantly signed into law the measure wherein the Medicaid reforms were rejected and accepted a kind of fuzzy offer from the legislature to consider the reforms slowly and deliberately over the next few months.   Business groups, which had been calling for the governor to veto the measure, did not hesitate to criticize him publicly for not vetoing it.  The National Federation of Independent Businesses, for instance, said it was “incredibly disappointed” in Baker.

Baker can begin to mend fences with his natural constituencies in private enterprise by getting a sales tax holiday done in a hurry.  The Democrats who run the legislature can help him do that because they like and respect Baker and value the relationship they have with him.  At the same time, they’ll help their party by giving voters a break at the cash registers on August 19-20.  This colossal mistake will become no big deal in no time. 

Guess what.  Twenty-five million in lost tax revenue in an overall state budget of nearly $40 billion isn’t  a big deal. 

Baker’s new Secretary of Technology Service and Security, Mark Nunnelly, for example, could save at least $25 million by eliminating the state’s 1980s-style, grab bag approach to procuring computer and telecommunications systems and replacing it with the mindset and methods in evidence at scores of successful Massachusetts businesses, universities and medical centers.