There’s nothing like the threat of a bit of direct democracy to get the slow-going wheels of representative democracy turning.
For more than a dozen years, Beacon Hill lawmakers have thrown a wrench into efforts to expand the state’s bottle bill. They’ve sent various bills off to be “studied,” legislative doubletalk for killing a bill. They’ve kept legislation from coming out of committee. House Speaker Robert DeLeo has even tried attaching the dreaded “T” word to bills, declaring bottle deposits a tax, when they clearly are nothing of the sort.
All this has played out despite votes to pass an expanded bottle bill in the Senate, lots of support among House members, and poll numbers showing strong public support for adding bottled water, sports drinks, and other noncarbonated beverages to the nickel-deposit law that now covers carbonated drinks and beer. Every year, 30,000 tons of non-carbonated beverage containers are buried in landfills, burned in waste disposal facilities, or littered across the state, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.
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But there is now real hope among advocates that the state will address the issue once and for all. The chairmen of a joint Beacon Hill Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy have appointed a subcommittee of two proponents of an expanded deposit law and two opponents to try to work out a compromise that is acceptable to all sides. The sudden burst of Beacon Hill activity is not the result of the heeding of any call to conscience that has convinced House leaders to let the democratic process play out. Instead, it’s the threat that advocates will take matters into their hands and try to have voters directly approve an expanded bottle deposit law on the November ballot that has caused long recalcitrant lawmakers to come to the table.
Proponents, led by the public-interest advocacy group MassPIRG, seem poised to submit enough signatures by the July 2 deadline to put the question on the fall ballot, a measure of their frustration at years of inaction on Beacon Hill. “This bill has long represented good common-sense policy, but now it’s also about democracy,” Janet Domenitz, the group’s director, told the Globe.
“The initiative definitely provides motivation to get something done,” Rep. John Keenan, the House chairman of the joint committee and a longtime opponent of the measure, told the paper.
Opponents, led by the beverage industry and the Massachusetts Food Association, would like to avoid a costly campaign to try to defeat a ballot drive. But it’s unclear whether the two sides will be able to find common ground in the month they have before the July 2 deadline. The two sides currently seem pretty far apart.
Direct democracy has its shortcomings, but so does the deliberative legislative process when deliberation becomes a nice way to dress up foot-dragging that snubs democracy. In 2002, former state representative John McDonough offered a thoughtful take on the topic in CommonWealth. “Voter initiatives may not be the best way to craft public policy, but they’re not the worst, either,” he wrote. “In Massachusetts, the initiative process has, on balance, done more good than harm. It’s given citizens a voice on important controversies, and it’s compelled action when the Legislature preferred not to take any.”
–MICHAEL JONASĀ Ā
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute and a Japanese bank are sponsoring a trade mission led by Mayor Carolyn Kirk to Japan, the Gloucester Times reports.
Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera wants to rent some of the city’s closed firehouses, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
The pros and cons of a residency requirement for municipal employees get an airing as Lawrence considers reinstating the policy that was repealed by voters in 2001, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
It was a proud day for Dorchester and its native-son-made-good Marty Walsh, who marched yesterday in his first Dorchester Day Parade as Boston’s mayor.
CASINOS
Rep. Joseph Wagner of Chicopee, whose committee handles casino bills, is noncommittal on whether the Legislature will approve changes in the state gaming law before recess at the end of July, the Item reports.
With the first casino expected to open no sooner than 2017, six years after the Legislature authorized casino gambling compared to four years or less in other states, Massachusetts is on pace to be the slowest state to get commercial casinos up and running.
MARATHON BOMBING
The arrest last week of Khairullozhon Matanov for interfering in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation also brought some answers to Quincy residents about a mysterious plane flying around the city about a month after the bombing. The plane was being used to conduct surveillance on Matanov, according to the Patriot Ledger.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Republican centrists mount a comeback bid in California.
It’s a complicated New York thing, but the Working Families Party voted over the weekend to give Gov. Andrew Cuomo its ballot line, meaning the Democratic pol successfully fended off a challenge from his left flank.
ELECTIONS
The candidates for governor all tout the virtues of diversity and celebrating the state’s rich mix of residents, but their campaign staffs don’t necessarily reflect that, the Globe reports. Democrats Martha Coakley and Steve Grossman and independent Evan Falchuk scored the highest in the Globe‘s review of campaign staff diversity, while Republican Charlie Baker scored the lowest. The other candidates fell somewhere in between.
The Herald discovers super PACs.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Route 128, once dubbed “America’s technology highway,” is no longer where it’s at, as tech startups overwhelmingly are turning urban and anchoring themselves in Boston or Cambridge.
TRANSPORTATION
A corporate jet carrying the co-owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and six other people crashes during takeoff at Hanscom Field, killing everyone on board, the Associated Press reports. The National Transportation Safety Board says the plane never left the ground, NECN reports.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The EPA plans a 30 percent cut in power plant emissions, primarily by scaling back coal use, the New York Times reports. The rule will hit the US’s 600 coal-fired power plants the hardest, exacerbating an already difficult financial situation for the plants; CommonWealth previously detailed the uphill climb coal plants are facing. The National Review says it’s an end-run on Congress for President Obama’s failed attempt pass a cap-and-trade bill and will do little to stem pollution.
In a good news/bad news story, a report to be released tomorrow says state-owned beaches in Greater Boston are in better shape than they have been in decades, but that progress is imperilled by cuts in state funding for maintenance workers and lifeguards.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich says he plans to sign into law a bill scaling back the state’s green energy requirements, Governing reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Kelly Manchester , the former girlfriend of Sen. Mark Montigny of New Bedford, says the senator opened the door for her at Probation but she won a job there on her own, CommonWealth reports. In their opening statement to the jury, prosecutors described Manchester as the 21-year-old girlfriend of Montigny when he helped get her the job. It turns out she was 24, a difference that one of the prosecutors says was “literary license,” CommonWealth reports.
The high rate of suicide among corrections officers is explored by the Telegram & Gazette.
A former sales representative for Canton-based Organogenesis, a regenerative medicine company, was charged with stealing more than $350,000 worth of human skin from the firm.
A disbarred lawyer from Somerset who is awaiting trial on federal charges on securities and mail fraud crimes for an allegedly bogus real estate scheme, wants permission to go to Hawaii for a wedding anniversary trip with his wife.
Women are rising up and fighting back against rape and sexual assault in the US and beyond. Meanwhile, theĀ CEO of Snapchat comes under fire for misogynistic rants he dreamed up as an undergraduate.
MEDIA
The Chicago Sun-Times laid off 28 photographers a year ago. Four were rehired by the newspaper as multimedia journalists under a new contract, four were hired by Yahoo, and the rest have left journalism, Poynter reports.
