Editorial Roundup: New England
Bangor Daily News. November 1, 2023.
Editorial: Missed warnings before the Lewiston shooting are troublingly familiar
There are many specific things we don’t know about last week’s shooting in Lewiston. What we do, tragically, know is that the pattern is eerily, horrifyingly familiar.
It’s familiar because it happened in Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Orlando, Fort Hood and in many other communities that share the unwanted distinction of being the site of a mass shooting.
In previous cases, warning signs were missed. Men who were prohibited from having guns got them anyway. Men who needed mental health treatment either couldn’t or didn’t get it or, it seems, that treatment was ineffective.
Every aspect of the Lewiston case must be fully examined and hard questions asked. Gov. Janet Mills on Wednesday announced her intent to create an independent commission to review the events leading up to the Oct. 25 shooting and the police response to it.
“The complete facts and circumstances, including any failures — must be brought to light and known by all,” Mills said in a press release. “The families of the victims, those who were injured, those who are recovering, and the people of Maine and the nation deserve nothing less.”
This review must be used to improve systems in Maine. But it also must be shared nationally with hope of preventing future mass shootings, preventing the grief that has overtaken Maine from shadowing another community.
Again, we only have an outline of the failures that led to last week’s massacre, an outline that changes multiple times a day as new details are learned and revealed. Filling in all the details is critical. But, from what we already know, it seems that many fixes can be made now. Some don’t need legislation or rule changes. Instead, they just need the sober understanding, which came to Maine last week, that standard operating procedures aren’t enough.
From news reports, it is clear that numerous people, including Robert R. Card II’s family and his supervisors and fellow soldiers in the Army Reserves, worried about Card’s mental health. This worry was compounded by his gun ownership and his military training. On Tuesday, we learned that the U.S. military barred Card from handling weapons and live ammunition two months before last week’s shooting. After threatening fellow reservists during training at West Point in July, Card was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility in New York, the Boston Globe reported.
It appears that those reports weren’t always shared with or directed to the appropriate agencies. Or, when they were, they were not able to be acted upon with the urgency with — yes, it is in hindsight — that was warranted. They also did not stop Card from obtaining guns, although he was prevented from buying a silencer in August after he acknowledged his mental health treatment on a background check form.
Attention has and will continue to be focused on Maine’s relatively new yellow flag law. It was clear from the beginning that this law was not as strong as the red flag laws that many states have enacted. Maine lawmakers should quickly consider improvements, with the full involvement of the medical community, which has to do the hard work of evaluating people who are needed armed and considered dangerous.
Law enforcement agencies and others need to fully assess their information sharing protocols. A statewide bulletin about Card was shared by the Sagadahoc Sheriff’s Office in September, and officers twice tried to locate Card without success. The “attempt to locate” report was canceled a week before the shooting in Lewiston.
Documents released by the sheriff’s office show that multiple officers were in contact with members of Card’s family and personnel from the Army Reserve about Card’s deteriorating mental health and threats. They discussed ways to approach and help Card, and to secure his guns. They were fearful of upsetting him if they reacted too harshly.
Although details are continuing to emerge, it is clear that many failures at many levels contributed to the horrific events in Lewiston. Pinpointing those failures and identifying and implementing ways to solve them are essential.
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Portland Press Herald. October 29, 2023.
Editorial: ‘Humility is called for as accountability is sought’
Our U.S. senators’ reluctance to support a federal assault weapons ban must be reconsidered now.
In the devastating aftermath of last week’s mass shootings in Lewiston, this editorial board is calling on Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King to support a workable federal ban on assault rifles – however they wish to get there.
As a solemn attempt to weaken the sickening grip the threat of gun violence has on our families and our neighbors, as an acknowledgment of the consequences of decades of failure to take this action and as an act of faith in the future of our state, nothing less than an effective ban on the sale of military-style assault rifles can do.
No credible argument in favor of continuing to allow these guns onto store shelves and into our communities can be made or has ever been made.
And yet, as this newspaper reported in stark detail in May, three of four members of Maine’s congressional delegation – Sens. Collins and King and Rep. Jared Golden – withheld their support for a ban, despite a majority of voters now strongly supporting it in principle.
Three of four, with Rep. Chellie Pingree as the longstanding exception – until last Thursday night. Referring to “false confidence” in abstract ideas about local safety and control and “many other misjudgments,” Rep. Golden stood up at a lectern and told the public that he had reconsidered his position on the accessibility of “weapons of war.”
Among the memorable lines from the congressman’s speech, one stood out to us: “Humility is called for as accountability is sought.”
Humility is called for. In contemporary politics, any change of mind or approach is remarkable enough. In choosing to take responsibility for his failure, however, in explicitly asking for forgiveness and support from his constituents in the 2nd Congressional District, Golden went further than that. What we saw was a rare display of moral courage.
“Sometimes things happen that bring your worst nightmares to life,” Golden said of his own tipping point, the mass shootings in his hometown that left 18 people dead.
Our reporting back in May, which followed the April shootings in Bowdoin and Yarmouth, was characterized as much by the delegates’ reluctance to support an assault weapons ban as it was their reluctance to tell the public exactly why.
The positions of Sens. Collins and King on an assault weapons ban are different.
Collins has previously explained that past proposals have been too broad. King has repeatedly expressed concern that the proposed bans he has encountered so far would be too weak, too easy for manufacturers to find their way around. The senator has instead been focused on placing limits on functional elements like high-capacity magazines and bump stocks.
In the immediate, emotional aftermath of a tragedy like Lewiston’s, reservations about the content or form of any proposal to ban these weapons outright is particularly hard for us to accept.
Defenders of the right to access to automatic and semi-automatic rifles do the same thing when they wring hands about regulatory overstep that would deprive gun owners of choice, or quibble about what qualifies as a modern sporting rifle, as if it were a term that could not reasonably be defined.
The upshot of staying in the weeds is that our elected representatives have been at odds about what a ban on assault weapons should or should not look like for years on end. All the while, new assault weapons are being sold into our towns and cities – more than 20 million are now in circulation.
That is not to say that there is not critical detail and definition that needs to be carefully negotiated. But at some point, and we firmly believe that point is now, lawmakers must set aside differing ideals and get real about putting an end to the availability of these guns.
Responding to the events in Lewiston, President Biden urged lawmakers in Congress to “end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers.”
In calling for our senators to lend their support to a ban on assault weapons, we are urging the same. Until that happens, it should not be hard for anybody to say that these guns simply do not belong in people’s hands. And how best to achieve that end? By instituting a federal ban on their sale.
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Boston Globe. October 31, 2023.
Editorial: Governor Healey adds equity, fairness to her clemency priorities
Historic new rules provide renewed hope for second chances in a long-stagnant system.
Clemency is a simple enough concept. It’s an act of mercy, a tempering of a justice system that hasn’t always been just. But in Massachusetts it has been nearly unicorn-like in its rarity — and largely for political reasons.
In the past 25 years, risk-averse Massachusetts governors have only granted four commutation petitions, the most recent three near the end of Governor Charlie Baker’s term. Commutations reduce an inmate’s sentence, but do not expunge their record. Pardons — an erasing of the record — are also relatively rare in the state. Baker issued a little over a dozen — all during his final days in office.
Commutations, which can only be granted by the governor (with the approval of the Governor’s Council), are the last legal remedy available to right a wrong. But they are more than that. A truly functional clemency process — not the unicorn variety — also provides hope to the incarcerated and signals that good behavior and taking advantage of the too-scant programs the state’s Department of Corrections offers counts for something. It can also be used to make up for past racial disparities in criminal sentencing — a sad fact of life in this state documented most recently in a Harvard Law School study.
Now Governor Maura Healey is issuing her own set of clemency guidelines — this time not just legal boilerplate, but for the first time in the state’s history explicitly acknowledging they will be used to address “historical wrongs” pointed out by that Harvard study, and “make our Commonwealth more compassionate and more just.”
“We need to insure that our system is fair, that it’s equitable, that sentences are proportionate to the crimes committed, and that the guidelines recognize all that,” Healey said in an interview with the editorial board.
“And it’s the right thing to do,” she added. “I don’t care how much political risk there is. There’s no sense in delaying what we need to do.”
The guidelines now spell out the governor’s priorities to the Advisory Board of Pardons (the name given to the Parole Board when it sits on clemency petitions) and to the legal community.
The Healey guidelines closely follow those proposed last spring by the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Clemency Task Force, which were also in part guided by the results of that Harvard Law School study. That and such compelling real-life cases as that of William Allen, who served some 28 years under a life without parole sentence when the man who actually wielded the knife in a 1994 robbery had been released 10 years earlier after pleading guilty to the crime.
Allen was one of more than 1,000 men and women (of the state’s current population of 5,429) serving life without parole sentences. At least 108 of them — like Allen — were sentenced under the felony murder statute that was considerably narrowed by the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, but without an order requiring a legal look-back at those cases. According to an amicus brief recently filed in a case seeking that retroactive review, 82 percent of those individuals are people of color.
As Healey’s new guidelines now state, “The governor will consider if continued incarceration would constitute gross unfairness in light of the basic equities involved, including, but not limited to the severity of the sentence received in relation to sentences received by other equally culpable and similarly situated defendants, the extent of petitioner’s participation in the offense, and intervening changes in the law.”
The guidelines will also take into account “the persistence of racial disparities and their root causes,” as shown by the higher incarceration rates of Black and Latino defendants. They also recognize “science-based evidence” on youthful brain development and will take into account “the age, maturity, and intellectual abilities of the petitioner at the time of a criminal offense.” Likewise the advanced age or diminished health of inmates over the age of 50 will be considered, although the guidelines explicitly note that commutation is not a substitute for medical parole.
Also acknowledged are the “unique circumstances” of the incarcerated who are LGBTQ+, survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking, who are “often at heightened risk of harm and experience additional trauma while incarcerated.”
But this is no get-out-of-jail-free card.
“I was attorney general for eight years,” Healey said. “I prosecuted and my office prosecuted human trafficking cases, and we prosecuted major crimes. There are violent offenders out there. But we’re going to make sure we’re putting public safety first.”
It will, however, take a clemency process that was virtually meaningless and turn it into meaningful tool for rehabilitation. The specific timetables for action by the Advisory Board of Pardons make the process a far cry from the sham it has been for decades.
Healey signaled early on that she intended to make more generous use of her clemency powers than her predecessors by issuing 11 pardons only halfway through her first year in office — breaking from the standard gubernatorial practice of that being a parting gesture. She proposed two more pardons Tuesday.
But clemency is a matter of both policy and personnel — requiring a Parole Board willing and eager to implement the governor’s new rules. Healey has already made two appointments and one re-appointment to the seven-member board, leaving just one vacancy, which she said would be filled “soon.” So in short order this will indeed be Healey’s board — newly charged with moving expeditiously on clemency petitions.
That board combined with a sound and merciful policy — a policy that gives real meaning to rehabilitation and to second chances — won’t open some mythical floodgate on the state’s prisons, but it can offer new hope where once there was none.
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Boston Herald. October 31, 2023.
Editorial: Stop killing the Massachusetts economy, governor
Gov. Maura Healey and the state Legislature need to stop everything they’re doing and focus on the dismal business tax climate in Massachusetts today!
Business is the backbone of our democracy, and neglecting the engine that drives our freedom is irresponsible. Every warning light is blinking, governor, so erase your calendar, roll up your sleeves, and get out your toolbox.
The Tax Foundation ranks Massachusetts as the 5th worst state in its Business Tax Climate Index. New Jersey, New York, California, and Connecticut rank lower — but New Hampshire is in the Top 10. That alone should worry Gov. Healey. Last time when drove north it was a quick trip.
The sad part is Healey doesn’t seem to care. Neither does Speaker Ron Mariano and state Senate President Karen Spilka. Our Democratic-run government is more adept at knocking down entrepreneurs than helping them out.
This Tax Foundation report — showing the Bay State dropping 12 spots in just the past year — should be a wake-up call. Businesses and citizens vote with their feet, and we risk losing both if the status quo remains.
A driver behind the state’s nosedive in tax competitiveness, the Tax Foundation found, is the state’s new Fair Share Amendment – or Millionaire’s Tax – which taxes incomes over $1 million an extra 4%.
“While the $1 million threshold at which the surtax kicks in is indexed to inflation, the surtax imposes a sizable marriage penalty that the Commonwealth lacked previously,” authors wrote in the report which came out last week. “This policy change represents a stark contrast from the recent reforms to reduce rates while consolidating brackets in many other states.”
Paul Craney, a spokesman for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance and a staunch opponent of the Millionaire’s Tax, called out proponents who pledged that the surtax would strictly apply to individuals with an income of over $1 million.
“With a flip of a switch, the Legislature lowered that threshold to $500,000 for married people and the Tax Foundation is predicting a clear negative outcome from this,” Craney added.
Why should you care?
Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, told the Herald this weekend that people and businesses alike are continuing to leave Massachusetts due to taxation.
His organization represents 4,000 businesses in the state so it’s not wise to ignore his comment.
The Tax Foundation also called out a payroll tax that went into effect this year in Massachusetts’ poor ranking. The organization also found that the state dropped 33 spots from the 11th-best state for individual taxes to the sixth-worst.
Hurst said high unemployment and health insurance costs, both of which are the worst in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, need to be fixed.
The Healey administration and Beacon Hill lawmakers can not be allowed to go unchallenged. It’s embarrassing to be near last on any list. It’s unacceptable and reflects how out of touch our lawmakers have become.
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