Just a couple months ago the leaders of public sector unions in Massachusetts were up in arms about attempts on Beacon Hill to curb their collective bargaining rights. They threatened to withhold union support in the next election. They vowed to fight to the bitter end.
But after the House vote in April to give municipalities far more power to design local health care plans, labor leaders changed their tune. They saw the handwriting was on the wall, dropped the threats, and began trying to cut the best deal they could. As the measure is signed into law today, after some modifications in the Senate and a few last-minute “refinements” by the governor, everybody, at least publicly, seems to be on board.
With the controversy dissipated, news coverage has largely dried up. The Herald, NECN, and many of the news outlets outside Boston carried nothing today. WBUR tucked coverage of municipal health care reform into a story about Patrick signing the state’s budget.
A Globe story focused on national interest from labor unions and the White House in the Massachusetts collective bargaining changes. CommonWealth reported on Gov. Deval Patrick’s efforts to distinguish the approach taken in Massachusetts from what Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio have done. The Lowell Sun story followed a similar path, but it included negative comments from the two lone Republicans to vote against the measure. “It is another example of the governor bowing down to special interests rather than doing what is best for the Commonwealth,” said state Rep. Jim Lyons of Andover.
–BRUCE MOHL
BEACON HILL
State Treasurer Steve Grossman is investigating whether pension abuse at a Merrimack Valley special education collaborative has been more widespread than already reported.
The State Ethics Commission hasn’t collected some $23,000 in fines it is owed, the Herald reports.
The budget Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law yesterday includes a new approach to helping homeless families that reduces the state’s reliance on shelters and motels by using $38.5 million in homelessness funds to keep families in their homes or help pay rent once they find an apartment.
Gov. Deval Patrick says he wants more answers following a Sunday Boston Globe report suggesting state transportation officials were encouraged not to create a paper trail on possible defects in Big Dig construction, but he voiced support for the man at the head of the agency, Transportation Secretary Jeff Mullan.
At a “summer conversations” tour stop in Framingham, Lt. Governor Tim Murray defended the administration’s decision not to participate in the Secure Communities program. Meanwhile, a Herald editorial gives a whuppin’ to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino for threatening to pull out of the Secure Communities program. “Is there no special interest he won’t cave in to?” the Herald asks.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Brockton officials insist the 15-year-old residency law is well-enforced even though the city relies on self-reporting with limited verification. The issue arises as questions swirl over whether School Superintendent Matthew Malone lives in the small apartment he rents in Brockton, where the Enterprise says he never seems to be when they go by, or his house in Roslindale.
The Gloucester Times carries CommonWealth reporter Jack Sullivan’s piece on the mooring mess along our coast. Here’s the original story and the Times’s edited version.
The Eagle-Tribune reports that Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua’s choice for city budget director has a bit of a checkered past.
Dartmouth’s health inspector and animal control officer said a proposed bylaw aimed at controlling pit bulls who officials claim have the highest risk of biting people would be impractical to enforce.
Abington selectmen voted to bring back the personnel board disbanded in 2004 in an effort to eliminate inequities caused by some contracts for nonunion employees.
An upgrade project for a sewage treatment plant in Pittsfield is escalating in cost to nearly double the original cost, the Berkshire Eagle reports.
Hospitals in three Western Mass towns will receive ‘transitional relief payments’ from the state to help offset the cost of seeing Medicaid patients.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The stand-off continued yesterday over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, with President Obama insisting that a deal include new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and House Speaker John Boehner resisting the call. In an editorial, the Washington Post says President Obama gets it right on the debt deal. Time magazine reports that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, not Boehner, is the hard-line Republican with the real power in the nation’s debt talks.
The Washington Post explains Social Security’s role in the national debt.
EDUCATION
The Cape Cod Times editorializes in support of the new rules on teacher evaluations.
HEALTH CARE
Organ transplants could forever be changed after a man in Sweden received a synthetic trachea that was developed in part by a Holliston biotech company.
TRANSPORTATION
The MBTA is considering selling the naming rights to its train, subway, and bus stations, the Worcester Telegram reports. The Herald, in its story, says the T is trying to close a $137 million budget gap.
The MetroWest Daily News calls for an end to the “culture of silence” at MassDOT on the Big Dig structural and cost problems.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
A new underwater mapping technology that displays the sea floor in 3-D will be one of the most important aides to coastal planners as more and more development turns to the ocean.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Day One of the bail hearing for Whitey Bulger accomplice Catherine Greig featured lots of new details from the government on the couple’s 16-year fugitive run.
The family of a former South Boston man who was allegedly forced to sell James “Whitey” Bulger a share of his winning $14.3 million Lottery ticket is selling off on eBay old photos and documents that purport to include Bulger’s signature.
MEDIA
The bankrupt Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and a number of regional dailies and weeklies, is laying off editors at the Hartford Courant and New Haven Advocate and editing stories from Chicago. Via Media Nation.
Carl Bernstein (remember him?), writing in Newsweek, asks whether the scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will be the publishing magnate’s Watergate. The Atlantic offers a helpful infographic on the British newspaper landscape in the wake of the News of the World scandal.
The North Adams Transcript has a new publisher.
SPORTS
Bill Buckner, the manager of the Brockton Rox, appears on Radio Boston and talks about the ball that went through his legs without any prompting. “When I missed the ground ball,” he said, “my first thought was, ‘Wow, I get to play in the seventh game of the World Series. We’ll get ‘em tomorrow.’”