Happening Today
Michael Chesna funeral, ICE protest, Revere sand sculpting
— United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley brings together 350 volunteers and 40 businesses, government agencies and organizations to provide services and resources to more than 200 families at risk of or experiencing homelessness, Reggie Lewis Center, Roxbury, 9 a.m.
— Matahari Women Workers Center, Hand In Hand and community organizers hold ‘Playdate Protest’ in front of the ICE Field Office to demand an end to family detention, ICE Field Office, 1000 District Ave, Burlington, 11 a.m.
— A funeral mass and burial will be held for Police Officer Michael Chesna, 42, who, along with 77-year-old Vera Adama, was killed in shooting Sunday morning in Weymouth, St. Mary’s Church, Hanover, 11 a.m.
— Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton, Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Judith Judson and officials from 80 municipalities to award Green Communities Competitive Grants, Robert A. DeLeo Senior Center, 35 Harvard Street, Winthrop, 1:45 p.m.
— U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez meet with Jaene Miranda de Silva, the mother who was recently reunited with her children after border separation, Araujo & Fisher, Suite 620, 75 Federal Street, 3 p.m.
— Gov. Charlie Baker, U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Leo Roy, Revere Mayor Brian Arrigo, Sen. Joseph Boncore and Rep. RoseLee Vincent gather at the welcome ceremony for the three-day Revere Sand Sculpting Festival, Revere Beach, in Between Beach Street and Chester Avenue, Revere, 5:45 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
Senate drops supervised-injection plan after Lelling issues warning
The Senate approved a major drug treatment and prevention bill yesterday – but only after it dropped a controversial supervised-injection site proposal within the legislation. The action followed U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s warning that his office wouldn’t turn a blind eye to safe injection sites, saying he “cannot envision any scenario in which sites that normalize intravenous use of heroin and fentanyl would be off limits to federal law enforcement efforts.” The State House News Service (pay wall) and Shira Schoenberg at MassLive have more.
The Globe, in an editorial headlined ‘Mr. Data goes missing on safe injection plan,’ is blasting Gov. Charlie Baker for opposing the measure on non-legal grounds.
‘Sanchez in hot seat’
Michael Jonas at CommonWealth magazine has a good story about how Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is now on the political hot seat in his home district for not getting the sanctuary-state amendment included in the final state budget that was approved by lawmakers earlier this week. Nika Elugardo, a liberal activist who’s challenging Sanchez in the Democratic primary, is having a field day with the omission, accusing Sanchez of “blindly taking marching orders from House Speaker Robert DeLeo,” reports Jonas.
Btw: DeLeo is defending the House action, saying there’s nothing in state law precluding local governments from adopting their own local sanctuary policies, reports SHNS’s Michael Norton at the Greenfield Recorder.
Will Baker put the brakes to ‘congestion pricing’?
Gov. Charlie Baker sounds like he’s prepared to veto a pilot program, inserted by lawmakers into the state budget, that calls for ‘congestion pricing’ on state toll roads, saying working constituents would see the program as “incredibly punitive,” reports the Herald’s Mary Markos. The Herald’s Michael Graham is hoping the governor indeed vetoes the plan.
But the Globe, in an editorial, says it’s a “policy that Baker should champion,” noting the test program calls for lowering tolls in some places and leaving tolls at current levels elsewhere. But that pricing structure is for the test program, not how the pricing structure would inevitably work in reality on a full-time basis, as we all know, or should know. The test program would be just the start of much higher tolls for many motorists – and higher tolls only for Pike/Tobin drivers if the state sticks to its current unfair policy of not imposing tolls along other major roadways.
‘Harvard Humanitarian Initiative puts executive director on leave for not being very humanitarian’
Universal Hub’s Adam Gaffin reports that Theresa Lund is paying the price for asking the wrong question about where a fellow neighbor lived.
Kennedy slams GOP for blocking the subpoena of Helsinki translator
U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III is blasting House Republicans, specifically House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes, for blocking an effort to subpoena President Trump’s translator at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kennedy wants the translator to spill the beans on what was said during a private meeting between Trump and Putin. Shannon Young at MassLive has the details.
California’s Devin Nunes used campaign funds to buy $15K in Celtics tickets?
Speaking of U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes: When he’s not battling Joseph Kennedy III and DOJ investigators on the trail of President Trump, the chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee is apparently a big Celtics fan. From Kate Irby at McClatchy: “Rep. Devin Nunes used political donations to pay for nearly $15,000 in tickets to Boston Celtics basketball games as well as winery tours and lavish trips to Las Vegas, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission and two nonpartisan watchdog groups. Nunes, R-Calif., has reportedly been a Celtics fan since high school, though he grew up in Tulare, California.”
File under: Go figure.
Kennedy’s challenger hopes to win by losing
And speaking of U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III: The Globe’s Nestor Ramos has a good column this morning on the quixotic quest (no need for the word ‘seemingly’ on this one) of Gary Rucinski, a project manager at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and a PhD holder in elementary particle physics who’s challenging Kennedy in the Democratic primary. Gucinski know he’ll lose, but he hopes to win by pressing the issue of climate change in the race, writes Ramos.
So where is GE’S center of gravity now?
The BBJ’s Greg Ryan has an excellent piece that looks at how much General Electric has downsized in recent months, after selling off key business units, and he wonders where exactly future corporate decisions will be made. Yes, GE is pushing ahead with its Boston headquarters plans, but the real power may lay elsewhere. Btw: Even after its forced corporate diet, GE remains one hell of a big company, as Ryan notes.
The pot-shop shakedown by communities: How much is too much?
It’s classic Massachusetts: Shaking down developers and new businesses for whatever communities can get in exchange for local zoning and other approvals. But it appears communities are outdoing themselves when it comes to squeezing pot-shop applicants – and Sen. Patricia Jehlen and Rep. Mark Cusack have had enough. The Globe’s Dan Adams has the details.
Btw: Pot entrepreneurs are raring to go on Cape Cod, if they can get state and local approvals. One of them is Constantinos “Dino” Mitrokostas, owner of Dino’s Sports Bar in Mashpee, who wants to sell marijuana pizza. He already has a slogan: “Take and get baked,” reports Geoff Spillane at the Cape Cod Times.
DA candidate Chapman: Black group is trying to ‘bully’ her into dropping out of race
As you’ll see, former state senator and ex-con Dianne Wilkerson’s fingerprints are all over this one. From Brooks Sutherland at the Herald: “A candidate for the Suffolk district attorney’s seat said she believes other members of the black community are trying to push her and other minorities out of the race. Linda Champion is slamming an email from a group calling itself the Black Collective that wants to unify the community behind a single African-American for the office, saying it is a bid ‘to bully us into getting out of the race.’”
At least 11 die after duck boat capsizes in Missouri
This tragedy is going to get a lot of local attention, and follow-up scrutiny, because of Boston’s own booming duck-boat tourism business. From the Washington Post: “Authorities say 11 are now confirmed dead after a duck boat carrying about 31 passengers capsized and sank Thursday on Table Rock Lake near the tourist town of Branson, Mo., Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader told reporters late Thursday night. An additional seven people have been transported to the hospital, Rader said. … Five people may be still missing, Rader said. Some of the dead passengers were children.” The accident apparently happened after a freak storm.
Baker’s choice: Help police or reject new fee?
Gov. Charlie Baker would appear to be on the spot on this one: Sign a bill that calls for a $2 car-rental fee to pay for municipal police training or hold the line on new taxes and fees. The Globe’s Matt Stout has the details. But it sounds like the governor is on board. After all, he did just sign the “grand bargain” bill with its even bigger payroll-tax component for family leave. So we’re not exactly waiting with bated breath on this one.
Debates set: Capuano vs Pressley, Galvin vs Zakim
With the September 4 primary elections now just around the corner, candidates in two key races have agreed to debates, reports the Globe’s Milton Valencia. U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano and City Councilor Ayanna Pressley have agreed to a Seventh District faceoff at UMass Boston on August 7, while Secretary of State Bill Galvin and City Councilor Josh Zakim will go at it at the UMass Club on August 24. Mark your calendars.
‘Now in living color: Ted Williams’s last game’
The ‘holy grail’ of baseball films has been found. Bill Pennington at the NYT reports how, against all the odds, color film taken by a then 19-year-old college student of Ted Williams’s last at bat at Fenway Park in 1960 has managed to survive – and it’s now part of a new PBS documentary on Williams. Take a bow, Bill Murphy, a retired art director who worked at three Boston advertising agencies. His 8-millimeter color wonder, now digitized, accompanies the Times piece.
Lawmakers pass bill raising tobacco purchasing age to 21
There’s still a lot to do on Beacon Hill now that a new state budget has been passed. This was one of the tasks, though its passage was expected. From Shira Schoenberg at MassLive: “A bill that would raise the statewide age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21 was sent to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk on Thursday, after final procedural votes by the House and Senate. … Baker has said in the past that he is ‘conceptually’ in favor of the idea.”
Senate passes less stringent net-neutrality bill
And here’s another post-budget bill coming out of the State House, also via Shira Schoenberg at MassLive: “The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a bill that would require internet service providers to provide more transparency related to net neutrality and consumer privacy. But lawmakers rejected on a voice vote an amendment by Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Action, that would have actually imposed state-level net neutrality.”
‘Liberal blind spots are hiding the truth about ‘Trump Country’
You may have seen this column by Sarah Smarsh, for it’s now one of the most-read pieces in the Times. But if you haven’t read it, do so. Smarch, author of the forthcoming ‘Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,’ rips into coastal liberal and media (especially) elites for stereotyping white working-class people, like her father, who she says “live lives of quiet desperation mad at their white bosses, not resentment of their co-workers or neighbors of color.”
Among others, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been hammering away at this same general point, i.e. that there’s a lot economic anger out there that too many don’t see and/or refuse to see.
Report: The top 1 percent earned 31 times the average of everyone else in Mass.
Speaking of economic and social classes, from Benjamin Swasey at WBUR: “Massachusetts has the sixth-biggest gap between its highest-paid residents and everyone else, according to a new report, with the state’s top 1 percent of families in 2015 earning 31 times what the average of the bottom 99 percent made. The analysis, out Thursday from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, cites tax data to examine income inequality by state, metro area and county.”
State’s only glass recyling plant closes
WGBH’s Craig LeMoult takes a look at the closure of the state’s last glass recycling plant – and how communities and the recycling industry are reeling in general these days in Massachusetts.
Feds file more charges in Framingham meningitis-outbreak case
From the BBJ’s Jessica Bartlett: “Federal prosecutors have charged another person in the sprawling New England Compounding Center case, accusing a former pharmacy buyer at a Boston hospital with making false statements about payments he allegedly received from the Framingham pharmacy and its sister company, Ameridose.”
Sunday public affairs TV
Keller at Large, WBZ-TV Channel 4, 8:30 a.m. This week’s guest: MBTA general manager Luis Ramirez, who talks with host Jon Keller about the T’s woes and what they’re doing to fix them.
This Week in Business, NECN, 10 a.m. Retailers Association of Massachusetts president Jon Hurst discusses the ‘grand bargain,’ the local impact of Amazon Prime Day and other issues; Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe talks about the new state budget, the proposed Beth Israel-Lahey merger and other top business stories.
CEO Corner, NECN, 10:30 a.m. Michael DeLacey, chief executive of both Microdesk and M2 Technologies, talks about how technology is dramatically changing the way buildings, bridges and tunnels get made.
On The Record, WCVB-TV Channel 5, 11 a.m. This week’s guest: Lawrence Mayor, Dan Rivera, who talks with anchor Ed Harding and co-anchor Janet Wu.
CityLine, WCVB-TV Channel 5, 12 p.m. With host Karen Holmes Ward, this week’s main focus: Things to do with the kids this summer, with a look at Michael James Scott ‘s play the ‘GENIE in Aladdin!’ and the YMCA of Greater Boston and MIT’s unique programs.
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
DA candidate says she feels pressure from group – Boston Herald
City Councilor: Ex-superintendent Chang’s deal a ‘violation of public trust’ – Boston Herald
Massachusetts
Lawmakers send bill raising Massachusetts smoking age to 21 to Gov. Charlie Baker – MassLive
Judge awards family of Andrew Wagner $35 million in wrongful death suit against woman – MassLive
Nation
Trump criticizes Federal Reserve, breaking long-standing practice – Washington Post
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