Baker could have done more but for Beacon Hill | Lots of bureaucracy, few solutions for struggling students | Trumpie MassGOP chair battles to save his job | Region’s electric grid in good hands? | Always a slow news day at Gannett’s local papers |
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After speaking out in Globe about energy transition, NE power grid operator faces political backlash
No one will be storming the barricades after reading this wonky, 775-word op-ed by the head of New England’s power grid.
That said, Gordon van Welie, president and CEO of ISO New England, made a vital point in his Jan. 3 piece in the Globe: transitioning to a clean electric grid “isn’t as simple as flipping a switch.”
We can’t simply pull the plug on the region’s gas fired-power plants until the new infrastructure, including sufficient battery storage capacity, is in place, van Welie writes.
Sounds like common sense, something in short supply at times in the debate over the epic transition to a clean energy economy.
That argument, however, didn’t go over well with our state’s senior senator.
Running out of patience with New England’s grid operator? U.S. Sen. Edward Markey: (By U.S. Senate Photographic Studio-Rebecca Hammel
In a letter to the Globe, U.S. Sen. Edward Markey blasted van Welie and ISO New England for “keeping pricey dirty energy on the grid and cheap clean energy off.”
Really? We’d like to see more of a debate on the details and pros and cons of ISO New England’s current policies, rather than simply blasting the whole organization as some sort of hopeless shill for the fossil fuel industry.
In the meantime, who would you rather have running the New England power grid and keeping the lights on? The bland technocrat from ISO New England, or the U.S. senator playing to his constituents in the environmental movement with rhetorical red meat?
Thought so.
Forget the happy talk about bipartisanship. The Baker era was the same old story of a popular governor thwarted by our state’s insider political culture.
Just call it the Charlie Baker farewell tour. On his way out the State House door last week, our now former governor touted his accomplishments, chief among them a lack of “partisan bickering” during his eight years in office.
If Baker runs for higher office some day, such as for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, this will surely be his campaign theme.
But in terms of factual accuracy, Baker’s rosy assessment doesn’t stand up under scrutiny, because serious partisan acrimony and feuding hasn’t been a major force in Massachusetts politics for decades.
No, Baker’s main challenge in getting things done wasn’t having to bridge partisan divides.
Rather, Baker’s biggest obstacle was the insider political culture on Beacon Hill, where petty feuds and turf battles trump ideology, and where his status as one of America’s most popular governors carried little sway.
Where good ideas too often go to languish or die: The Massachusetts State House
To his credit, Baker was surprisingly effective despite it all, from guiding the state through the pandemic to passing a law aimed at revving up desperately needed residential construction, but it sure wasn’t easy.
In the midst of a horrendous housing crisis, Baker spent years trying to push his now signature Housing Choice bill through the Legislature.
The law, which in its final form opened the door to potentially a couple hundred thousand new apartments and condos across the state, languished on Beacon Hill for more than three years before passing in early 2021.
House and Senate leaders were mum on why they sat on the vital housing legislation for years, but then again, they clearly don’t feel any democratic duty to communicate meaningfully with either the public or the the press.
During Baker’s final year in office, the same pattern repeated itself, and with a vengeance, even as the governor pushed plans that should have been crowd pleasers on Dem-dominated Beacon Hill.
The Democratic-controlled Legislature, with little or no comment, lopped hundreds of millions in dollars off Baker’s proposal to boost spending on affordable housing, refused to pass a bill criminalizing revenge porn, and took no action on tax breaks aimed at seniors and low income workers.
Press coverage of the State House has been ravaged by years of cuts to local newspapers and media organizations, while legislative leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers alike are shielded from public records laws.
House and Senate leaders run their respective chambers like medieval fiefdoms, keeping potential rivals and upstarts in line with plum committee assignments, which come with not just extra cachet, but extra pay as well.
Gov. Maura Healey may be a Democrat, but that’s unlikely to win her any favors up at the State House.
Until or unless there is meaningful reform of the way business is done on Beacon Hill, we can only expect more of the same.
Calling all Trumpies: Embattled MassGOP chair launches statewide tour to rally support and save his skin
That would be Jim Jones Lyons.
A card-carrying member of the wacky right, the MassGOP chair led the state party to an historic drubbing in November, with Democrats sweeping all statewide offices and expanding their already overwhelming majority on Beacon Hill.
Oh yeah, and the state party is dead broke, with Lyons busy suing other party functionaries who have dared to cross him.
Starting Monday, Lyons is scheduled to make his pitch to party activists and state committee members at nine different confabs across the state. The embattled party chair will kick things off in Worcester on Monday, followed by Attleboro on Tuesday and Fitchburg on Wednesday, winding up at the Italian Vets hall in Milford on Jan. 23.
The election for party chair is slated for Jan. 31 in Marlborough.
Meanwhile, Amy Carnevale, a Republican state party committeewoman from Marblehead who is looking to oust Lyons as MassGOP chair, appears to be picking up momentum.
As we reported here on Thursday, Carnevale has picked up a key supporter: former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson.
Sheriff Hodgson: Backing bid to oust embattled MassGOP chair
A Trumpian lightning rod who offered to send inmates to the southern border to help build the ex-president’s farcical wall, Hodgson is a popular figure among the MassGOP’s now dominant hard-right faction.
So just how did the state Republican party wind up in such a desperate situation?
A newly launched newsletter, the MassGOP’s Majority’s Substack, has the details.
A bureaucrat’s dream: State education officials still debating what to do about student learning loss, years after Covid first hit
By David Mancuso
As the third anniversary of the COVID-19 outbreak fast approaches, there’s one thing all sides agree on: The pandemic wreaked havoc with the educational progress of untold numbers of students across Massachusetts.
Study after study has detailed how the virus has upended learning in classrooms across the state and the country, leaving students months or even years behind in key subjects.
Yet as $2 billion in federal aid languishes on the sidelines, state education officials continue to spin their wheels in an exhausting, process-orientated debate - one tenuously connected, at best, to the goal of helping Massachusetts students recover from pandemic-related learning loss.
Guaranteeing equity in education remains a priority all can agree on.
However, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) misses the mark with their so-called “recovery targets” proposal, substituting a convoluted, bureaucratic process for actual classroom initiatives to help students make up lost ground.
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education held a special meeting with DESE officials on Jan. 3 to address the disturbing but widely varying levels of learning loss in schools across the Commonwealth.
The board, which is appointed by the governor and provides oversight for the state’s K-12 schools, was focused on what strategies schools should implement to close learning gaps and to return students to current year grade level competency.
However, DESE, which represents the state’s educational bureaucracy, was on another page entirely.
Commissioner Jeff Riley kick things off, emphasizing that DESE plans were “ambitious yet attainable.”
DESE Associate Commissioner Rob Curtin then followed that up by outlining a byzantine process schools will now be expected to follow in place of mandated accountability targets - required by state and federal statute to reflect actual classroom improvement - with “recovery targets” based on returning students to 2019 levels of learning.
To do so, some schools would be allowed to follow a one-year path to recovery while others would be given up to four years to return students to 2019 levels, Curtin said.
State education board members expressed serious reservations about the plan, noting that 2019 learning levels weren’t all that impressive to begin with.
Another concern: Under DESE’s proposal, students most at risk could spend as many as four years - a quarter of their K-12 education - catching up, while others less impacted by COVID-19 would potentially surge ahead.
DESE’s proposal would likely result in widening achievement gaps by creating “separate but equal” paths, further exacerbating a lack of equity in the system, board member Tricia Canavan said.
Anticipating the comments of her fellow board members, Canavan argued DESE must do better and should use the massive federal funding available for mandatory tutoring, extending the school day and other actions that get to the heart of learning loss as quickly as possible.
Canavan’s peers on the board who spoke at the meeting all expressed similar reservations, characterizing DESE’s process as insufficient and inadequate.
In fact, there are numerous examples across the country where students have been able to recover “a year’s worth of math or English instruction within a period of a few months,” the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education noted in a letter to Riley, the state’s education commissioner.
However, based on the presentation made by Curtin, the department’s associate commissioner, DESE appears more concerned about what schools can accomplish rather than what students need.
Now outside of this discussion at the state board of education, curious readers might wonder where the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) stands in all this?
Based on public comments, Max Page, head of the teachers’ union, appears to be pumping all of his organization’s energy into calling for the state to authorize teachers to strike.
Apparently, to Page’s way of thinking, current collective bargaining rights don’t cut it and being able to hold parents, districts and legislators hostage via a strike will improve student learning.
Page and the MTA haven’t said much about what they believe needs to happen in the classroom - beyond, that is, the union’s Captain Ahab-like obsession with killing the MCAS test, which ironically has given us the data needed to diagnose learning loss to begin with.
So where does all that leave us? Gov. Healey, who was just sworn into office on Thursday, stressed in her campaign that she is serious about advancing equity in our schools.
But our new governor might want to take a closer look at the turgid, process-focused plan produced by the state’s educational bureaucracy.
Supporting DESE’s cumbersome plans would appear to be in direct opposition to Healey’s goal, all but ensuring students in disadvantaged districts will be spending years catching up, if they ever do at all.
Time will tell what all the players will do in this crucial debate over how to repair the educational damage done by Covid.
But everyone involved would be better served if the powers that keep one key fact in mind: The clock is ticking, and the future of our students are in their hands.
David Mancuso is a veteran communication, public affairs, business strategist and founder of Mancuso Communication Strategies. Mancuso has served as a pro-bono consultant to a number of non-profit organizations, including the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education where formerly served as a member of the board of directors.
Local news, Gannett style: Two weeks after major high school sports scandal breaks, MetroWest Daily News finally runs a story
It was big news, and not just in Natick: One of Natick High School’s winter sports teams had its season cancelled after the principal discovered racist and anti-Semitic material posted online and talk of potential violence toward female students.
School officials, in turn, had contacted Natick Police, requesting a hate crimes investigation.
Contrarian Boston ran a story on the suspension and investigation on Dec. 23, just a few hours after the school district sent out a letter to parents. The Framingham Source and The Natick Report did their own stories that day as well.
But it took the MetroWest Daily News two weeks to run a story, finally posting a piece this past Friday, and a perfunctory one at that. There were no additional details, with the reporting apparently based on the December 23 letter sent to parents.
It’s no mistake that MetroWest is owned by Gannett, a corporate chain with a major presence here in Massachusetts that has been slashing and trashing newspapers.
Along with cutting reporters and editors, Gannett has been filling papers like the MetroWest Daily News, a once-proud local news powerhouse, with wire stories and advertising-friendly features.
Apparently, when real news comes along, no one can be found to cover it in a timely fashion.
That’s what happens when you get rid of reporters and editors and forget what the purpose of a newspaper is in the first place: covering the news.
Contrarian Boston’s housing coverage cited by Globe
We were the first to report the big drop in approvals of new apartments and condos in Boston.
The Globe cited CB’s story in an Jan. 4 editorial on concerns raised by the new demands the Wu administration is placing on housing and lab developers.
The editorial makes some interesting points, including the city’s decision to require new projects with as few as seven condos or apartments to offer at least one subsidized unit.
“Where is that sweet spot that will raise money (or provide actual affordable housing units) without acting as a disincentive to construction?” the Globe’s editorial asks.
Fair question.
Quick hits:
Town meeting voters apparently have some big issues to hash out, including lifting a long-standing ban on drive-throughs and fast food: “Is Concord ready for fast food?” The Concord Bridge
Brazil’s Jan. 6: “Hundreds arrested as Brazil authorities push rioters out of congress, court” Washington Post
As tech layoffs mount, more tough times ahead for downtown Boston? “Tech workers had their pick of jobs for years. That era is over for now.” Washington Post
But can this actually get built? “Project to replace long-closed Somerville Star winning favor with 46% of its units affordable” Cambridge Day
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.
Markey isn't 'running the energy grid.' His constituents want clean energy. They are educated enough to understand it's much more cost effective in the long run. Hard to see the problem.