Happening Today
‘NASTY’ bill, Beth Israel-Lahey merger, National Grid workers’ rally
— Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center releases a report with a state by state assessment of the growth of clean energy technologies, State House, 10:30 a.m.
— Senate meets in formal session without a calendar, Gardner Auditorium, 11 a.m.
— House meets in formal session and is expected to consider legislation, known as the “NASTY” bill, that would wipe ‘archaic’ anti-abortion laws off the state law books, House Chamber, 11 a.m.
— State Auditor Suzanne Bump chairs a meeting of the Municipal Finance Oversight Board, Auditor’s Office, Room 230, 11 a.m.
— Health Policy Commission meets with plans to consider a preliminary cost and market impact report on the proposed merger of Beth Israel Deaconess Care Organization, Lahey Health System and other hospitals into a combined network, 50 Milk St., 8th floor, Boston, 12 p.m.
— Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito chairs a weekly meeting of the Governor’s Council, Room 360, 12 p.m.
— The Massachusetts Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board will meet to discuss advancing bicycle and pedestrian transportation for MassDOT and other state agencies, City Hall, 1 Government Center, Fall River, 1 p.m.
— Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack, MBTA general manager Luis Ramirez and MBTA deputy general manager Jeff Gonneville tour a new Green Line car, Riverside Station, 333 Grove Street, Newton, 1:30 p.m.
— A second rally and march to support unionized gas workers who have been locked out by the National Grid will be held in downtown Boston, Boston City Hall Plaza, 4 p.m.
— Critics of President Donald Trump’s statements at a Helsinki press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin plan to gather outside the State House Wednesday and in locations across the country as part of a national vigil, State House, 7 p.m.
For more calendar listings, check out State House News Service’s Daily Advances (pay wall – free trial subscriptions available) and MassterList’s Beacon Hill Town Square below.
Today’s Stories
Mentally ill patients can wait days, or even weeks, in emergency rooms for care
This says so much about the pathetic state of mental-health care in America today. From Liz Kowalczyk at the Globe: “Some patients with mental illness, particularly children, are spending days stuck in tiny windowless rooms in hospital emergency departments waiting for treatment, a persistent problem despite new statewide rules designed to resolve the backlogs. From February through May, 155 patients in mental health crisis spent at least four consecutive days in an emergency room, according to Massachusetts officials who began gathering the data six months ago. A few patients slept or ‘boarded’ in the ER for two weeks.”
Speaking of the mentally ill …
Neal Simpson at Wicked Local reports that before Weymouth police officer Michael Chesna and Vera Adams were gunned down with a stolen handgun on Sunday morning, Weymouth police received a frantic 911 from a woman warning them that her 20-year-old boyfriend had been acting erratically and was prone to manic episodes. Specifically, she said her boyfriend suffered from a bipolar disorder. That boyfriend, apparently, was none other than Emanuel Lopes, who yesterday was ordered held without bail on charges of murdering Chesna and Adams, as the Globe reports.
We’re not making excuses for Lopes. He stands accused of murder. But he was also clearly mentally ill and, well, see the above post about how society deals with the mentally ill. He was, it appears, a ticking time bomb.
Towns and cities see drop-off in police recruits
Regarding the dangers of police work, from Mary Markos at the Herald: “The number of men and women willing to join the Thin Blue Line is plunging in an era of execution-style killings of cops and heightened scrutiny of officers’ split-second decisions in high-stress situations, police commanders say. Once a much sought-after job that offered honor, prestige, good benefits and lucrative details, there are now dramatically fewer people sitting for the civil service exam, and retaining veteran cops is becoming a problem.”
Obviously, this past weekend’s killing of a Weymouth police officer isn’t helping matters.
GOP candidates fume over Warren’s two-track campaigning
The Herald’s Hillary Chabot reports on the intense frustration among Republican U.S. Senate candidates over U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s apparent simultaneous bid to win re-election here while also maneuvering for the Dem inside post in the 2020 presidential election. But before Republicans get too outraged, remember that former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney did roughly the same thing early last decade, i.e. running the state while running for president, as Democrat Phil Johnston notes in Chabot’s piece. For that matter, ditto for former U.S. Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
Meanwhile, Walsh hits the campaign trail in … Ohio?
From the Globe’s Matt Stout: “In moves that will undoubtedly stoke speculation about his own political future, Mayor Martin J. Walsh will kick off a tour of Midwest states that figured prominently in Donald Trump’s 2016 victory to stump for like-minded Democrats and rally local laborers this week. The second-term mayor is scheduled to fly to Ohio Thursday before visiting Indiana for a two-day trip through Republican-leaning districts where Democrats are vying for open congressional seats or mounting challenges to longtime incumbents.”
Walsh says his trips, similar to those by other big-city mayors, is being done out of party loyalty, not personal ambition for higher office.
Scott Lively shifts into full conspiracy-theory mode over opioids, government control of citizens, etc.
This must be his idea of a political pivot. From Matt Stout at the Globe: “Scott Lively, the controversial pastor mounting a long-shot conservative challenge to Governor Charlie Baker, indicated Tuesday that it’s ‘plausible’ the state’s elected officials are conspiring to use government-funded programs to control the citizenry, with the intent of funneling federal money to the state’s coffers and keeping hold of their respective offices.” Specifically, he says “cynical politicians who have controlled this system” are “using (opioid) addicts like cash cows.”
Senate opioid bill would create pilot program for safe injection sites
Speaking of the opioids crisis and lawmakers: Even though Gov. Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo have expressed reservations about the idea, the Senate is nevertheless pushing forward with a proposal to create a pilot program for state administered “safe injection sites” in Massachusetts, reports SHNS’s Andy Metzger at Wicked Local.
Keating goes there: ‘Our president could be compromised’
As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports, there used to be a time when suggesting President Trump might be getting blackmailed by the Russians was “Something We Didn’t Talk About.” No more, he notes. Not after President Trump’s performance at this past weekend’s Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Locally, U.S. Rep Bill Keating is among those going there: “This raises very serious questions … that our president could be compromised,” Keating said of the Helsinki summit, as reported by WGBH’s Tori Bedford. “That issue is an open issue, but it’s one, given the actions of the president, that can’t be dismissed.”
Other Helsinki-horror stories: ‘How bad is it? So bad that … ‘
Even though the president yesterday was backtracking from his controversial Helsinki comments, there was no shortage of local reactions from pols and bleacher-seat pundits over the president’s original remarks that were seen as exonerating Russia of any election-year meddling. “How bad is it?” writes the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld of Trump’s Helsinki debacle. “So bad that Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Lively, best known for blaming the Holocaust on gay Nazis, gave it ‘two thumbs up.’ So bad that Gov. Charlie Baker himself had to come out of his shell to condemn it.”
Speaking of Baker, he initially said yesterday that it’s important that the election-interference investigation of Robert Mueller continue – but that he didn’t know what was said in Helsinki, reports Shira Schoenberg at MassLive. But, as Battenfeld writes, the governor later condemned the president’s remarks as “disgraceful.”
But state Rep. Geoff Diehl, who is running for the U.S. Senate in the GOP primary, thinks the Helsinki summit went just swell, reports Mary Whitfill at the Patriot Ledger.
The Globe’s Renée Graham agrees more with Gov. Baker: “What happened Monday at their post-summit press conference in Helsinki was nothing short of an American president, in the presence of a tyrant, collapsing like a cheap beach chair.” The Globe’s Scot Lehigh writes that things sure are getting “stinky” for Trump.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern is pressing House Republicans to fund grants that help protect U.S. election systems from foreign hackers, reports Shannon Young at MassLive.
Ah, yet another anti-Trump protest, this one over his Helsinki statements
We must be suffering from a variation of the Trump fatigue that the Globe’s Annie Linskey was writing about the other day, for, even though we’re as shocked as others about the president’s Helsinki performance, we really can’t get worked up by the fact that left-wing groups, including MoveOn, Daily Kos and Need to Impeach, etc., are planning vigils this evening at the State House and across the country to protest Trump’s statements, as SHNS’s Michael Norton (pay wall) reports. It’s just, well, the same old outraged protesters.
As Linskey wrote: “There have been nationwide protests on a slew of topics: marches to oppose Trump’s inauguration and to support women’s rights, marches to oppose the Muslim ban, marches to support gun control, amid a spate of mass killings, and marches to oppose Trump’s now recanted policy of separating immigrant families arriving at the southern border. It’s a lot of outrage and an awful lot of protesting.”
Andrew Bacevich, in a Globe opinion piece this morning, is advising the left to calm down a bit: “If there is a paranoid style in evidence in American politics today, it is proliferating like kudzu among anti-Trumpers who have allowed their understandable dismay with the president to become an all-consuming mania.”
Mr. President, about that shipment of Russian LNG to Boston …
OK, one last Helsinki-related item: We didn’t know that President Trump, who recently criticized Germany for its natural-gas deals with Russia, was asked point blank by a Russian journalist about this past January’s shipment of Russian LNG to Boston. The president dodged the question. Craig LeMoult at WGBH has the details.
Woman who threatened to shoot newspaper reporter held without bail
After the Capital Gazette shooting in Annapolis, better safe than sorry. From Norman Miller at Wicked Local: “A Wrentham District Court judge on Tuesday declared a Shutesbury woman accused of threatening to shoot a reporter in the Walpole Times office a danger to the public. Judge Maureen McManus said there were no conditions of release for Amy Zuckerman, 64, that could protect the reporter or the public at large, ordering Zuckerman held without bail for 120 days.”
Alli Bibaud case quietly fades away – but not Troopergate
From Brooks Sutherland at the Herald: “A drugged-driving case that toppled the state police command staff and put a district attorney and the state’s public safety chief under investigation ended quietly yesterday in Framingham District Court with an admission of facts and referral to a treatment program. Alli Bibaud, 31, the embattled daughter of Dudley District Court Judge Timothy Bibaud, was granted a continuation without a finding, placing her on probation until Jan. 16, 2019.”
So all of the alleged cover-up activities on her behalf was over a case that ended with a mere continuation. Yet, the Troopergate repercussions will be felt for years. Was it worth it, gentlemen?
House to take up NASTY bill today
The Massachusetts House today is expected to take up a bill to eliminate an archaic anti-abortion law and other old statutes related to women’s health issues, reports Shira Schoenberg at MassLive. The Senate has already voted to repeal the old laws, christening the bill the “NASTY Women Act,” which stands for Negating Archaic Statutes Targeting Young Women, Schoenberg writes.
Better luck next year: Non-compete reforms lose out again
This bill is starting to look like the pre-2004 Red Sox. From the Globe’s Jon Chesto: “Advocates for curbing the use of noncompete agreements will soon run up against the same obstacle that has blocked reform efforts in the past: the legislative calendar. They missed a Tuesday deadline to get versions of a bill to limit noncompete agreements sent to a conference committee — a panel of negotiators that’s typically appointed to resolve differences between the House and Senate on controversial or complex legislation.”
One hundred years ago, German U-boat shelled Cape Cod
The AP’s Virginia Mayo and Raf Casert have a cool story, with an accompanying photo gallery, on the 100th anniversary of a little-known attack by a German submarine on Cape Cod during World War I, the only known shelling of continental America during the war. Check out the blaring Boston Herald headlines from the time and photos of lifeboat survivors of a German submarine attack off the coast of Orleans.
The cost of telling Chang to go away: $267,383
From Colman Herman at CommonWealth magazine: “Former Boston Public Schools superintendent Tommy Chang received $267,383, the equivalent of one year’s salary, for agreeing to resign two years before his contract was scheduled to expire. According to the settlement agreement, Chang will also be paid for 27 days of accrued vacation time and three days of accrued personal paid time off.”
Report: State shortchanging schools by $1B
From James Vaznis at the Globe: “Beacon Hill lawmakers have been shortchanging the education of students across Massachusetts by nearly $1 billion a year, causing many school districts to cut teachers, classroom supplies, and technology, according to a report being released Wednesday.” We’re sure that cities and towns now eyeing possible school-funding lawsuits couldn’t agree more.
Report: More than half of all immigrants arrested by local police are not turned over to ICE
From Christian Wade at the Salem News: “The Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative Washington, D.C think tank, cites data from the Boston offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing that 495 foreign nationals sought by immigration officials were arrested by local police from March 19 to May 30. More than half of those suspects were not turned over to federal authorities, the group said, either because local police refused to cooperate with ICE by honoring immigration detainers, or because local agencies released the immigrants before a detainer or warrant was issued.”
Rep. Matias brings in the out-of-state ringers: Two Congressmen and a NYC pol
From SHNS’s Katie Lannan: “Two congressmen and a former New York City Council speaker will join U.S. House hopeful Juana Matias on Saturday for a rally and day of door-knocking. … U.S. Reps. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Adriano Espaillat of New York, and Melissa Mark-Viverito, who served as New York’s city council speaker from 2014 to 2017, are billed as special guests at a ‘day of action’ in support of Matias’ campaign.”
SHNS (pay wall — free trial subscription available)
Warning bell: ‘Nursing home sector on verge of collapse’
They’ve been sounding the same alarm for a while now, but this time they may be right. From Matt Salmon, chief executive of SALMON Health and Retirement and chair of the Mass Senior Care Association’s board of directors, at CommoneWealth magazine: “To ensure quality resident care, meaningful state and federal government investments are immediately needed to stabilize a sector on the verge of collapse. Over the last 10 years, the financial state of Massachusetts nursing homes has worsened so dramatically that I fear we are now in jeopardy of being unable to meet the needs of Massachusetts citizens.”
James Taylor: America is bigger than Trump and ‘it will be back’
Finally: Feeling down about the state of the country and world post-Helsinki? Here’s some uplifting words from Boston native James Taylor, who, while giving a concert in London, briefly brought up the subject of a certain guy with orange hair living at 1600 Penn. Ave. in Washington. “There’s an America different than the one represented by that guy,” Taylor told the cheering crowd of 60,000. “It’s bigger than that, it has a soul, and it will be back.” Via Clarence Fanto at the Berkshire Eagle.
CFO of the Year Awards 2018
Don’t miss your chance to meet & learn from Boston’s top CFOs at the 10th annual CFO of the Year Awards!
DCI Campaign Bootcamp – Brockton
Are you looking to build on your skills as a Democratic campaigner? Do you want to learn from local campaign experts skilled in the Massachusetts political arena? Are you eager to take the first steps to join our efforts to get Democrats elected up in all corners of the Commonwealth? Then you need to sign up for on of our Massachusetts Democratic Party Campaign Bootcamps this summer!!
Massachusetts Democratic Party
Afternoon Cocktails & a BBQ Reception With Governor Charlie Baker
Forum with Candidates for Middlesex County DA and Governor’s Council
Participating candidates: District Attorney: Donna Patalano and Marian Ryan (incumbent); Governor’s Council: Nick Carter and Marilyn Petitto Devaney (incumbent). Co-Moderators: Patti Muldoon and James Milan
Massachusetts Democratic Party
A Job Fair & CORI Sealing Clinic for a New Economy
The Massachusetts Cannabis Business Association, the Commonwealth Dispensary Association, the Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council, the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance, Equitable Opportunities Now, and ELEVATE NE are pleased to collaborate and co-host a special event connecting prospective employees to one of Massachusetts’s fastest growing sectors.
Coffee with the BBJ Editor & Publisher
Join Boston Business Journal Editor Doug Banks and Publisher Carolyn M. Jones for coffee at our office. You’ll get the chance to network with business professionals from various industries & introduce yourself and/or your business to our team.
2018 Summer Institute in Global Leadership: Advanced Public Speaking
Advanced Institutes bring together older students who are passionate about global issues and are in, or aspire to be in, leadership roles that demand advance communication skills. This week, students will work together to develop public speaking skills through the format of Model UN crisis simulations. There will be a particular focus on presentation tips and tricks and extemporaneous speaking.
United Nations Association of Greater Boston
NAIOP 8th Annual Harbor Cruise
Mix business with pleasure on the decks of the NAIOP Harbor Cruise, featuring networking, an 80’s theme party, and cocktails. Connect with friends and colleagues while enjoying a 360-degree view of Boston’s ever-changing waterfront.
2018 #FlipMyFunnel B2B Marketing and Sales Conference
Each year, more than 1,000 B2B marketing and sales professionals gather together to learn about the latest in B2B marketing and sales, network with one another and explore the latest technologies to power their programs.
Malden Democratic City Committee Annual Summer BBQ
We hope you’ll join us for our summer BBQ! This annual event is always a lot of fun and a great chance to catch up with old friends while supporting MDCC.
Malden Democratic City Committee
Today’s Headlines
Metro
Boston’s battle against youth homelessness gets a big boost – Boston Globe
Marty Walsh’s next stop? Trump country – Boston Globe
Massachusetts
Rep. Keating: Trump ‘Sold Our Country Out On A World Stage’ At Summit With Putin – WGBH
Gov. Baker says probe of Russian election interference must continue – MassLive
Judge orders woman charged with threatening Walpole newspaper office held – Wicked Local
Nation
Trump Now Says He Accepts U.S. Intelligence Reports on Russian Election Meddling – NYT
Martha Roby, Former Trump Critic, Wins Alabama House Runoff – NYT
Democrats look for another potential House flip in Ohio – Washington Post
As tensions with US worsen, Europe courts new partners – Boston Globe
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