MASSACHUSETTS HAS SOME of the toughest gun control laws in the country, but House Speaker Robert DeLeo said he thinks the state can do more.
In a speech to the House at the opening of the 2013-2014 legislative session, DeLeo said the tragic shooting of 20 school children in Newtown, Connecticut, has made gun control a top priority. He said most of the work will take place at the federal level, but he indicated Massachusetts must also take action, with a particular focus on the “dangerous intersection of guns and mental illness in schools and throughout society.”
DeLeo said he plans to bring together members of the House and outside experts to study the problem and craft legislation. He said the effort would be led by Jack McDevitt, an associate dean at Northeastern University and the head of the school’s Institute on Race and Justice.
McDevitt said in an interview outside DeLeo’s office that the group is still being assembled and its focus is yet to be determined. But he suggested the group will probably focus less on trying to restrict the supply of guns coming in to Massachusetts and more on trying to restrict access to guns. He quickly added that he didn’t want to stigmatize people with mental illness.
Over the years, the speaker’s speech to the newly elected House of Representatives has taken on more of the trappings of the governor’s state of the state address, a chance for the House leader to lay out his priorities for the coming year. (Senate President Therese Murray gave a similar speech yesterday in the Senate.) Even though DeLeo is just one of 160 House members, his election as speaker automatically makes him one of the most powerful people on Beacon Hill.
In his speech, DeLeo strongly indicated that he would be receptive to passing new revenues to support the state’s transportation system. The speaker said he would continue to seek spending efficiencies, but he also said the state needs a first-class transportation system to grow economically. “We will have to be prepared to make investments,” he said, without specifying where the revenues for those investments will come from. The governor is expected to lay out a revenue plan for transportation in the coming days.
DeLeo also said any transportation plan must reflect a sense of regional equity. “The cost burden must not be borne by any one region nor may the plan benefit one region at the expense of other regions of the state,” he said. Later, outside his office, he added: “This isn’t going to be a fix that involves just the MBTA.”
The only other priority DeLeo mentioned in his speech was freezing the state’s unemployment insurance rate. At the press availability outside his office, DeLeo also said he continued to be concerned about the US Congress’s failure to fully address the nation’s budget problems. He welcomed the action on tax rates that the Congress took on New Year’s Day, but he said massive spending cuts continue to loom ahead. He indicated those spending cuts could have a $350 million impact on the state’s budget this year and a $1 billion impact next year.
Three former speakers – Tom Finneran, David Bartley, and Robert Quinn – attended yesterday’s swearing-in session. Former House Speaker Charles Flaherty did not join his former colleagues in the chamber, but was spotted ducking into DeLeo’s office afterward.
Also in attendance was Roderick Ireland, the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. DeLeo described Ireland as his “partner and a friend.” The two officials became political allies in 2011 when DeLeo pushed legislation to keep the state’s Probation Department in the judicial branch rather than moving it to the executive branch, where Gov. Deval Patrick wanted it. Ireland, meanwhile, lauded DeLeo for pushing court reform legislation without mentioning that the Probation Department had become a patronage haven for the legislative branch. DeLeo’s godson even landed a job at the agency and rumors abound on Beacon Hill that a federal investigation of probation may yet yield indictments of lawmakers.
