Editorial Roundup: New England
Boston Globe. November 22, 2023.
Editorial: Massachusetts has the latest primary date in the country. Here’s why that’s a problem.
Massachusetts needs to end its incumbent-protecting tradition by switching to spring, rather than fall, intraparty contests.
The Massachusetts Legislature had another of its patented but oh-so-predictable failures last week, proving itself unable to get its $2.7 billion supplemental spending plan done before the formal session expired — and leaving public employees and the state’s shelter system in the lurch at a time when need is high.
But the House at least showed what its real priority was. While failing in its people-serving functions, representatives did vote to change next year’s primary date, as the Globe’s Matt Stout reported.
No doubt in a manner that would make things more convenient for voters, an ingenuous farm boy new to Massachusetts might assume. No, actually, scratch that. Not even the most credulous of naifs would make such an assumption.
In fact, House members voted to move the primary date from Sept. 17 to Sept. 3, the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend. That is, to a day when, for many, the primary will get lost in the kaleidoscopic complexities of daily life.
After a long holiday weekend, the vacation period of summer will have just ended. Parents will be rushing to get kids ready for school and to readjust to fall routines. That will make voting a rushed affair, one that, if past is prologue, many voters will skip.
Which is bad news for citizens but good news for incumbents. And that is exactly the point, and has long been the point, of this state’s September primary.
A late primary date also means that most of the campaign year is devoted to the primary campaign in a state where most officeholders go unchallenged. Then, post primary, challengers have two months or less to make their case against entrenched incumbents — entrenched incumbents who usually have sizable campaign war chests.
There are other complications as well. Federal law requires states to mail requested absentee ballots to military personnel and Americans overseas at least 45 days before the general election date. Combine that law with the September Jewish holidays and the window of September dates that are both available and convenient for voters is small indeed.
Because the supplemental budget failed to pass, at least for now the 2024 primary is still scheduled for Sept. 17, which would be the latest such date in the country. So let’s assume for a moment that Massachusetts legislators were interested in what works best for Massachusetts citizens, rather than Beacon Hill incumbents. Instead of trying to move the primary to the day after Labor Day, lawmakers would shift it to the spring, when most states hold their intraparty contests.
Illinois, for example, will hold its primary on the cusp-of-spring date of March 19. Georgia primary voters will go to the polls on May 21. New Jersey and New Mexico are both June 4 states. Maine holds its primary on June 11. New York’s primary date is June 25.
At least 29 states will have held their primaries by the end of June.
Only three states other than Massachusetts have September primary dates. Another 14 hold their primaries in August. (Some states have a preliminary primary and then, if necessary, a runoff. If the two are scheduled to occur in separate months, they aren’t included in all aspects of this tally.)
A June primary would mean the state parties would have to hold their endorsement conventions early in the year, probably into March. It would also mean adjusting other aspects of the electoral timeline, notes Secretary of State William F. Galvin. But it’s all eminently doable.
We can’t, of course, expect the Legislature to do this on its own, any more than we can expect it to, say, deliver a budget on time. Or to get pressing matters done in formal session.
So how could it ever happen? Well, one way is through a ballot question campaign. Voters would almost certainly approve such a change — if an enterprising group of reformers took it upon themselves to bring it to the ballot.
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Boston Herald. November 22, 2023.
Editorial: Beacon Hill spending sprees must stop
Spending other people’s money is addictive, and unfortunately for Massachusetts, our state Legislature is hooked.
It’s with this understanding that we both applaud the business leaders calling on Beacon Hill to dial back expenditures, and fear that it won’t make any difference.
“The drastic increase in government spending over the past five years is a growing concern for our future competitiveness and may detrimentally impact the long-term fiscal health of Massachusetts,” the heads of nine business groups said in a letter to Gov. Maura Healey and legislative leaders released Tuesday by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
As business leaders, they know that the actions of today affect tomorrow’s outcomes – the future of their companies and their workers depend on it. But for Bay State pols, today’s massive spending is but a precursor to tomorrow’s cash outlays meant to offset the damage.
State officials are ramping up the fiscal year 2025 budget process, and as State House News reported, the biz leaders are asking them to limit spending growth to the inflation rate and to revisit tax reforms if they determine that projected revenues will outpace inflationary growth.
Sound, responsible fiscal thinking. Good luck with that.
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Portland Press Herald. November 19, 2023.
Editorial: Mills administration’s effort to fix child welfare system is failing
Our state’s ability to recognize children in peril and act on their behalf is getting worse.
It’s been years since a series of tragedies exposed Maine’s child welfare system as fatally flawed and, despite a lot of attention, no one can say it’s any better today.
In fact, the system appears to be teetering on the edge of collapse, as caseworkers plead for more resources and support from top officials who don’t seem to appreciate how bad things are.
In the meantime, who knows how many children are being left unprotected from abuse and neglect?
Gov. Janet Mills may have inherited this mess from the LePage administration, which gutted the Department of Health and Human Services and left the ranks of child welfare workers too thin to do its job properly.
But it’s the governor’s problem now, and what’s she’s doing is simply not working. Worse, her administration won’t admit it.
More evidence of the failures within the Office of Child and Family Services came in an internal review released in September, which found that the child welfare system often has trouble identifying children at risk, and does not adequately address those risks when it does find them. The report states that Maine’s rate of recurring maltreatment is double the national standard, and has risen steadily in recent years.
The findings echo those from several earlier reports, including one from the Maine Child Welfare Services ombudsman in January, which found “ substantial issues ” with more than half of the cases it reviewed and a “downward trend in child welfare practice.”
In one case after another, the ombudsman reported, the state’s child welfare workers failed to see that a child was being kept in a risky situation, either because they did not gather enough information or they failed to act on the information they did have.
It’s the same set of shortcomings we’ve heard about since 2018, when a series of child deaths brought the latest round of scrutiny onto DHHS. They are the result of cuts made to the child welfare system by then-Gov. Paul LePage at a time when the opioid crisis, and the lack of mental health and substance abuse services, were causing an increase in child abuse and neglect. Caseworkers became overwhelmed, unable to give each of the complex cases before them the attention they needed, opening huge cracks for abused kids to fall through.
Gov. Mills and the Legislature have since made a number of investments in the child welfare system. Some are in long-term prevention strategies that will take some time to bear fruit.
But others were designed to help give caseworkers a more manageable workload, so they can make accurate assessments of the risks facing the children and families they work with. Thus far, the effort has been a failure.
Speaking to a legislative committee in recent weeks, former and current caseworkers say the system is breaking under the pressure of increasing caseloads. Many positions remained funded but unfilled, and those left are forced to work long hours under great stress, with the knowledge that a mistake could put a child’s life in jeopardy.
Managers, the caseworkers say, have given them little support and inadequate training. Caseworkers feel they are being left out in the cold by upper management, and that feeling is leading many of them to consider leaving. Without improvement, the Office of Child and Family Services will continue its spiral downward.
The people in charge of fixing this mess have to admit there’s a problem before anything will get done.
The Mills administration, however, has repeatedly downplayed criticism. DHHS blamed the state’s broad definition of maltreatment on the high rates found in Maine. Todd Landry, director of OCFS, has cited the difficulty of gathering evidence against uncooperative parents, and of dealing with the increasingly complex family situations caused by mental illness, poverty and substance abuse, as reasons for the department’s shortfall.
But those excuses don’t explain why Maine’s rate of abuse keeps getting worse, nor do they recognize that every other child welfare agency in the country is dealing with the same set of circumstances.
Under Gov. Mills and the leadership at DHHS, Maine has made solid investments in children and families, supporting them in ways that should lessen abuse and neglect in the coming years.
We were hoping that additional efforts to support caseworkers, and the kids they protect, would be showing progress by now. They’re not. It’s time the administration admits it isn’t doing enough.
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Hearst Connecticut Media. November 19, 2023.
Editorial: Climate planning falls to everyone
Climate change in Connecticut is often considered a hypothetical issue. Yes, it gets hotter in the summers, but we’ve mostly been spared the devastating hurricanes, the weeks of extreme heat and the deadly wildfires that much of the rest of the country has seen in recent years.
Don’t expect that situation to continue.
Connecticut, as Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said recently, is “front and center in the climate change conversation.” Speaking at a conference on climate change and insurance, Bysiewicz said, “We need to strengthen our infrastructure and coastal defenses to better protect our communities from the rising sea levels and extreme weather events.”
That’s all true. Connecticut is a coastal state, and the barrier of Long Island won’t protect us from whatever the ocean is going to throw as us in coming decades. Already, river flooding has damaged property in severe storms in recent years, and as the climate warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, ensuring that future storms will be more devastating.
This is not if, but when.
The question at the recent conference was how such eventualities play into the insurance industry, which has a huge presence in Connecticut. Insurers do a good job of pricing risk, one presenter said, but individual homeowners are not yet reacting in ways that prioritize protecting their investments. That needs to change.
One priority, experts said, is better education for property owners about the dangers of climate change. In some states, it’s hard to get flood insurance in coastal areas because of the certainty of catastrophe from future storms. We’re not there yet in Connecticut, but we need to know it’s coming.
There are responsibilities at both the individual level and from the government. Connecticut has spent money on resilience projects, and more is on the way. Protecting our homes and lives from rising waters falls to everyone.
Just as crucial is the need to stop making the problem worse. That means a commitment to moving away from polluting technologies that have brought us into this mess in the first place.
Transportation is key. We pollute the atmosphere every time we drive – most of us, anyway – and it’s imperative that we cut those emissions. That’s why California has moved to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars in favor of less-polluting vehicles, and why Connecticut should follow suit. Unless it is derailed by a group of naysayers who have no legitimate plans of their own and appear only to want to start a political fight, Connecticut will do just that.
That’s not the end of what we need to do on climate change policy. But it is a necessary step. Resilience projects are needed for the damage that has already been done but has yet to arrive. Reducing emissions will help prevent even greater damage.
The waterfront has always been an inviting place to build a home, and to spend time. But the dangers are real. They aren’t going to fade just because a lot of money went into buying a piece of property. Unless we change course, in a variety of ways, waterfront homes will come to be seen as folly in the very near future.
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