Baker’s most high-profile failure is almost certainly at the MBTA. It, and the public that relies on it, will suffer for years to come from service reductions, slow train speeds because of rail and maintenance problems, deteriorated infrastructure that causes frequent service interruptions and delays, and the failure to get new subway cars delivered on schedule. The Baker administration’s lack of transparency about all of this is legendary and exacerbated the misery for MBTA users. See more detail below.

Chelsea Soldiers’ Home: The serious and deadly problems at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home weren’t enough to get Governor Baker to pay attention to serious problems at the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home. The Baker administration knew about squalid conditions at the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home and about the incompetence of the superintendent there but for at least six months did nothing about them. Way back in June 2020, Senators Warren and Markey called for an independent investigation into the Covid outbreak at the Home, but the Baker administration never completed one.

Department of Developmental Services: In 2014, Massachusetts passed the Real Lives law that directed the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) to make self-directed service planning available to adults with disabilities. Self-directed plans offer choice, flexibility, and self-determination to adults with disabilities and their families. Baker’s DDS dragged its feet for eight years before even proposing regulations late in 2022 for the implementation of the Real Lives law. The regulations that were finally proposed were described as not appearing to “properly implement or interpret the law.” The result is that the Massachusetts service system for adults with disabilities is in disarray and thousands of individuals are without services.

Department of Public Utilities: Baker’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU) was extremely slow in processing cities’ and towns’ proposals to create or update community choice electric power aggregation programs, under which they could purchase cheaper and cleaner electricity for their residents and local businesses. Over 30 municipalities waited two years or longer for approval of their proposals.

The DPU, whose three Commissioners are appointed by the Governor, is also supposed to oversee safety at the MBTA. When the Federal Transit Administration stepped in to review the MBTA after a number of safety issues including a death, its report stated that the DPU wasn’t providing appropriate oversight and, furthermore, didn’t have the expertise to do so.

Department of Corrections: In December 2022, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in which it promised to make major changes in its treatment of prisoners with mental health issues. Two years earlier, the DOJ had issued a scathing report finding that DOC violated the constitutional rights of prisoners by failing to provide mental health services and subjecting them to conditions and circumstances where they harmed themselves, including committing suicide. DOC had placed prisoners under prolonged mental health watches, which were akin to solitary confinement, and, nonetheless, failed to adequately keep watch over them. The agreement with the DOJ requires DOC to report regularly on prisoners on mental health watch, to create a new, intensive stabilization unit run by a contracted health care provider within 18 months, and to implement all elements of the agreement within three years.

In 2018, Massachusetts passed legislation establishing medical parole for DOC prisoners. However, the Baker administration and DOC have repeatedly implemented the law too narrowly, making very few prisoners eligible. In 2020 and 2021, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), in two separate cases, voided DOC regulations as too restrictive. Two more cases were brought to the SJC in the fall of 2022.

In December 2022, the Legislature held a hearing on DOC’s treatment of prisoners and other criminal justice issues related to the implementation of the reform law passed in 2018. It included the lack of use of medical parole, the continuing excessive use of solitary confinement, and the lack of educational programming for prisoners. It was noted that DOC has a waiting list of 3,170 prisoners who want educational programs, while only 843 are enrolled in such programs. Testimony also indicated that DOC has failed to comply with the 2018 law’s requirements for reform of solitary confinement and that more than half of the youth in the juvenile justice system have special education plans that DOC has routinely failed to implement. Legislators had requested detailed information and testimony from Baker administration officials, but they refused to attend the hearing and submitted a written response that ignored some of the questions asked.

Department of Children and Families: Tragedies at the Department of Children and Families (DCF), which serves children who have experienced abuse or neglect, continued to the last days of the Baker administration. Governor Baker promised on multiple occasions to fix problems at DCF. The litany of tragedies, reports on DCF’s failures, and recommendations for change at DCF goes back to the initial days of the Baker administration. The most recent fatal tragedy was in September 2022 when a 12-year-old girl in DCF custody died. Not quite as tragic, but a travesty nonetheless, in the fall of 2022 a 15-year-old boy in DCF custody spent 40 days in a hospital emergency room. He had gone there for a psychiatric evaluation because of behavior issues and for 40 days he wore paper hospital scrubs and didn’t leave a tiny windowless emergency room except to go down the hall to use the bathroom or shower.

In addition, on average, more than two dozen children in DCF custody have been in inpatient beds in hospitals, ready to be discharged, except that DCF had no other place to house them. Children have also been spending nights in DCF offices (which are not equipped for overnight stays) and have been shuttled on a day-by-day basis among emergency, short-term placements. To subject already traumatized children to these kinds of inappropriate and sometimes chaotic and re-traumatizing experiences is horrifying.

MBTA: The litany of problems at the MBTA are truly mind boggling. Governor Baker promised during the first months of his administration – after the cessation of MBTA service during and after a major 2015 snowstorm – to fix the problems at the MBTA. A snapshot of how bad things had gotten under Governor Baker came in August 2022 when the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) reported on its investigation of the MBTA (which was triggered by a series of serious safety problems including a death). The FTA identified 545 action items. As-of late February 2023, 36% of them had been completed but some of them won’t be done until 2025, underscoring the depth of deterioration at the MBTA during Governor Baker’s eight years.

Here are a few, recent low lights of Baker’s legacy at the MBTA:

• Extensive speed restrictions are in place on the MBTA due to track problems, missing safety records, and maintenance issues, requiring trains in some places to slow to 3 miles per hour. (The standard is 40 mph.) At one point, the maximum speed on the whole system was temporarily reduced to 25 miles per hour when it was discovered that the MBTA could not produce documentation verifying what sections of track were in good working order. As-of March 24, 2023, 27% of subway tracks have speed restrictions.
• Reductions of over 20% in the number of trains run per day on the Blue, Orange, and Red Lines were ordered by the FTA in June 2022 because of a shortage of dispatchers in the control center – a serious safety issue. There were 15 dispatchers at the time although the budget called for 18. As-of February 2023, it has been identified that the minimum staffing level should be 24 and the goal is to have 32 dispatchers.
• To address the backlog of infrastructure problems, which grew under Governor Baker, the MBTA scheduled nine shutdowns of 2 – 9 days on various lines in March 2023. Six are all day shutdowns and three are evening only shutdowns. There were at least 12 shutdowns in February. Furthermore, it seems that hardly a week goes by without a major interruption in service due an infrastructure failure, such as a power outage, a signal system problem, a switch malfunction, a train breakdown, or some other failure.
• Delivery of new cars for the Red and Orange Lines is way behind schedule and cars that have been delivered have had problems requiring some of them to be removed from service temporarily. A $567 million contract for 284 cars was awarded in 2014 and in 2016 the Baker administration added 120 more cars and $277 million to the contract. As-of September 2022, just 78 Orange Line and 12 Red Line cars had been delivered of the 404 ordered in 2014 and 2016. Problems with these cars led the MBTA to send a letter to the manufacturer, CRRC MA, in December 2022 presenting a list of 16 serious concerns about workmanship quality and inspection of the cars.

(For an historical perspective on the extensive leadership and management failures of Governor Baker and his administration during his eight years in office see the PDM website at https://www.progressivedemsofmass.org/baker-watch/. Serious mismanagement and scandals occurred in the State Police, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the state’s Covid response, transportation policies and planning, energy and environmental policy, the criminal justice system, and elsewhere.)

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The post END OF SESSION DYSFUNCTION AT THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE appeared first on PDM.

For an in-depth explanation of how over-centralization of power, lack of professional expertise and resources and other factors have created this high level of dysfunction, including a dearth of transparency and accountability, please see our report The Massachusetts Legislature: Democracy in Decline. The report was released in November 2021 and was prepared by the Legislative Reform Working Group convened by Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts.

The MA Legislature has kept the State House closed to the public – the only one in the country that remains closed in Jan. 2022 – which is perhaps symbolic of its lack for transparency and accountability. Meanwhile, legislative business continues to ignore deadlines, lack careful execution and be rushed through at the last minute. (Boston Globe Editorial, 1/4/21, “ ‘People’s house’ still shuttered, but crucial work lies ahead.”)

• Covid-related emergency voting reforms (e.g., no excuse mail-in and early in-person voting) expired (again) on Dec.15, 2021, with the Legislature failing to pass permanent changes.
• Essential legislation to implement mental health parity, which has been the law in theory for some time, has not been passed.
• Fixes to the governance of the state’s Soldiers’ Homes have not been passed despite the presence of a good bill developed largely in responses to the 76 Covid-related deaths at the Holyoke Home in early 2020. Neither legislative chamber has held a floor vote on the bill.
• Key elements of police reform were assigned (by the bill passed in late 2020) to commissions to study and make recommendations on them. The joint commissions charged with the use of facial recognition software, qualified immunity, and police officer hiring and training, have failed to meet deadlines, make recommendations, or produce any legislation.
• Commissions and task forces on corrections and juvenile detention officer training, on corrections funding, on early education and care funding, and on changing the state seal also failed to produce timely results.
• Corrections to a 2016 bill regulating the conditions for raising egg-laying chickens and pork-producing pigs were delayed until days before its Jan. 1, 2022, effective date, , just averting a crisis in the supply of eggs and pork in MA. (Lisinski, C., 12/20/21, “Mass. Legislature passes animal welfare law changes, set to ease egg supply fears,” WGBH and State House News Service.)
• Five years after marijuana legalization, laws on driving under the influence have not been updated. In January 2019, a commission recommended over a dozen changes in the law, and Governor Baker filed a bill to make those changes, but the Legislature has not acted. (Boston Globe Editorial, 12/28/21, “Toking and driving just isn’t cool.”)
• The spending of $3 billion of federal Covid-relief (ARPA) funds MA received in early 2021 and $5 billion of state surplus funds identified in June 2021, was delayed by the Legislature until December 2021. It was finally approved in an informal session with only a handful of legislators participating. (Murphy, M., & Doren, S., 1/18/21, “ARPA and surplus spending might have to wait until 2022,” WBUR and State House News Service; Young, C., 9/15/21, “More than 90% of state’s ARPA money not allocated,” WBUR and State House News Service.)
• A law updating dangerousness detention standards to protect domestic violence victims has not been passed despite the Governor filing it three times. (Boston Globe Editorial, 12/27/21, “Victims make their case for better protections.”)
• The Legislature has failed to adopt joint rules to govern the operation of joint committees, the primary policy-making vehicle for the Legislature, a year after the beginning of this legislative session.
• The annual MA state budget has not been passed on time for the last 11 years, nor for 18 of the last 23 years.
• Roughly 2/3 of substantive state policy-making happens through outside sections of the budget, thereby bypassing the normal legislative process that gives the public and the full Legislature the opportunity to have any input.

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Massachusetts continues to be very slow in getting DCF involved children into a permanent home, either through reunification with parents or adoption. Children are spending a median of 37 months between home removal and adoption, well beyond the state and federal standard of 15 months. This introduces additional trauma and disruption into the already difficult lives of these children.

Racial disparities persist throughout the system, including in removing children from their homes where 31.9% of those removed are Latinx, while 19.0% of the population is Latinx, and 14.3% of those removed are Black, while 8.8% of the population is Black.

DCF was found to have discriminated against parents with disabilities and months later still had no policies, standard practices, or training curriculum on people with disabilities.

It has recently been accused of civil rights violations for failing to provide first-language services and documents for non-English speakers.

The systemic failures at DCF have led to preventable tragedies, including deaths. The Baker-Polito administration, which claims to excel at management, needs to take serious action to improve the efficacy and capacity of the DCF; lip service to reform and remorse after tragedies occur are not sufficient.

Sources: (The Editorial Board, “Lessons from the Almond case–and Beyond,” The Boston Globe, 5/8/21; Stout, M., “DCF to visit every child it supervises in person by month’s end, state officials tell lawmakers,”  The Boston Globe, 5/4/21; Mustafa, S., Race-blind decision-making could reduce racial disparities in child welfare system,” Commonwealth Magazine, 4/5/21)

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/17/metro/pivots-reversals-mark-bakers-vaccine-rollout/

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The Baker-Polito Administration has told these rural hospitals and other sites that have vaccines on hand that even if they have completed vaccinating the currently eligible group (those over 75), they could not begin vaccinating the next group (65 to 75 year olds) until the 75+ group has been completed statewide.

The Baker-Polito Administration continues to botch the rollout of vaccinations despite its supposed management and health care system expertise. Problems with its confusing, conflicting, and non-sensical guidelines, coupled with the disaster that the state’s vaccination sign-up system has been, led a Harvard analysis to give the Administration’s vaccination rollout a grade of F. (West Virginia, by comparison, got an A.)

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Note that although the Administration is trying to blame the problems on the federal government and is claiming that Massachusetts has not received enough vaccine doses, there are hundreds of thousands of doses in Massachusetts that have not been administered. The Globe reported on Thursday, Feb. 4, that the Administration was “redirecting large quantities of unused doses now sitting in freezers.”  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/03/metro/baker-says-reggie-lewis-center-roxbury-will-designate-days-local-residents-get-their-shots/

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Their testing reassured families and teachers that returning to classrooms is safe; it provided important peace of mind. Identifying people who are carrying and potentially spreading the virus, even if they don’t have symptoms, is critical in building confidence that schools are safe. The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents has expressed frustration about the lack of a statewide plan for weekly surveillance testing in public schools. By the way, many local higher education institutions and some local K-12 systems implemented broad testing of students and faculty last fall because they realized it was necessary to safely re-open face-to-face education.

In recent months, up to 100 private individuals, including school superintendents, school committee members, school nurses, and local Board of Health members, have participated in weekly Zoom calls convened by Wellesley parents on systematic COVID testing in schools. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/31/metro/frustrated-with-governments-virus-response-citizens-are-building-their-own-testing-programs-its-working/

The failure of the Baker-Polito Administration to host such calls and to plan and implement broad school-based testing reflects managerial incompetence and a lack of leadership. This failure has not only put people at risk and delayed students getting back in schools safely, it has also exacerbated inequality. Many of the suburban parents who created these testing programs are well aware that it’s their financial and social privilege that has allowed them to do so, for the benefit of their privileged children. The Administration’s failure to provide this testing in all school districts exacerbates, once again, the inequalities experienced by non-white and low-income students and their families.

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