The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from the mighty mighty Boston Daily)

It’s budget season on Beacon Hill again. And it’s apt that it should coincide, roughly, with the run-up to area colleges’ final exams. After a semester of lying around and drinking, the legislature now has to pull a week of harried all-nighters before it can knock off work for the summer.

In broad strokes, this year’s House budget is big but not unduly wicked big, is unkind to out of state corporations, hates smokers, and offers, in Speaker Sal DiMasi’s own estimation, “nothing spectacular about any new initiative.” But you already knew that already.

So, in the interest of wrapping up the week with some semi-original reporting, here’s a few of the more interesting budget skirmishes to keep an eye on in the upcoming weeks.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

We may be watching the balance of power tip on Beacon Hill. While Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Sal DiMasi go back and forth about casinos and taxes—and whether or not they’re going back and forth at all—Senate President Therese Murray is showing herself to be both smart enough to recognize the power vacuum brought on by the bickering, and strong enough to fill that vacuum with substantive policy proposals.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Deval Patrick has got to hate St. Patrick’s week. This time a year ago, House Speaker Sal DiMasi appeared before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and absolutely brutalized the governor – much to the delight of the assemblage of reporters and rich people in nice suits.

And now, no sooner had the vomit dried on Broadway than the speaker was back before the Chamber, telling everybody that casino gambling “will absolutely cause damage on a grand scale” and ruin lives and everything. If it’s not the end of civilization as we know it, it sounded pretty damn close.

And with that, the great casino death train of 2008 pulled back into the station. In celebration of the occasion, some people jibbered. Others jabbered. Facts, figures, reports and the like were bandied about, and somewhere along the line, the governor’s casino proposal flatlined.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Word broke early this week that Governor Deval Patrick’s casino bill was dead. House Dean David Flynn told the Taunton Gazette, “The casino bill isn’t going anywhere. I find very little support for it from members of the house,” adding that he expects a roll call vote on his racino bill, while “the casinos won’t,” because Dan Bosley’s committee “will issue an adverse report, preventing the house from voting on the casino bill.”

It’s not how things work – the Speaker’s office has repeatedly said that Patrick’s bill will receive a vote on the House floor before it wraps its budget bill in April, regardless of whether or not it gets a favorable committee report. (PS – it won’t.) But that doesn’t mean that casinos still aren’t headed for a messy demise.

Dept. of Buried Ledes: What the Chamber Study Missed

Hell of a header on this Globe story today – “Casino Study Backs Patrick.” The lede’s even better: “Governor Deval Patrick’s promise of thousands of new jobs and billions of fresh dollars would come true if three state-licensed resort casinos are opened across Massachusetts, according to a long-awaited Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce study released yesterday that largely bolsters the governor’s economic case.”

But, for a better summary of what the Chamber’s much-discussed report actually says, you’d have better luck looking to Dan Kennedy – “Casino Supporters Support Casinos.”

I understand that some of the issues we’re dealing with here are tricky. And I’m a reporter, so math does scare me, too. But you can’t write off the costs just because the Globe editorial board does.

If you chase down half the “opponents say” caveats in today’s front page story, you’ll find a much different scenario at play than all the governor’s promises being fulfilled.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Hey, guess what, everybody? Governor Deval Patrick wants to build three casinos in Massachusetts. He’s been saying that they’ll bring 30,000 jobs in tow. Turns out, they won’t. Shocking, we know. But it’s this revelation that gripped Beacon Hill this week. All other concerns were crowded out.

Most close observers (depending on whom you read) have known for several months now that the governor’s casino research is compromised and his economic assumptions shaky. And now that the town’s paper of record has spoken on the subject, the fan is really covered in it.

The administration has even stopped citing its 30,000 jobs figure, and taken to speaking of “tens of thousands” of jobs instead.

That’s a significant fact, because it marks the first time in this whole gambling debate that reporting has been able to knock the administration off its talking points.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

The most talked-about man on Beacon Hill continued to be widely talked about this week, as news that Speaker Sal DiMasi has been playing golf with a decades-old friend while not playing golf with a guy with a horrific haircut sparked an ethics uproar. It’s the surest sign yet that the state GOP has given up trying to win elections altogether, and will now focus solely on lobbing wobbly ethics complaints at its Democratic foes. And that Scot Lehigh hasn’t met a bad golf metaphor he doesn’t like.

The threat golf poses to democracy extends far beyond the current casino debate, though. Boston minorities who enjoy voting had better watch their backs: DiMasi occasionally hits the links with former Speaker Tom Finneran. Can federal voting rights violations, disgrace, and tears be far behind?

Outside Job

Deval Patrick’s administration has finally hired an outside firm to evaluate the basic assumptions behind its casino gambling proposal, four months after filing legislation to legalize casino gambling, five months after initially backing the legalization of Class III gambling, and a mere seven months after the governor first disappeared into the Berkshires with an armful of industry-authored research to decide whether or not casinos made good fiscal sense.

Patrick’s people see no problem with the timeline at work here, nor with the credentials of the firm looking over the gov’s numbers; Sue Tucker begs to disagree.

But for my money, all you need to know about Spectrum is that Clyde Barrow likes their resume – they’re “one of the most notable private sector gaming analysts in the Northeast,” the guy who virtually made the Patrick administration’s pro-gaming case for them tells the Herald.

Something tells me Dan Bosley won’t be happy with these guys.

UPDATE: From Bosley: “I don’t know how anyone could call [theirs] an unbiased viewpoint. I don’t think they’ve ever done a report that says you shouldn’t do gambling. But we’ll take a look at it.”

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

These are strange times for the state’s coastal legislators.

First, in November, they were subjected to an energy bill sneak attack that, unbeknownst to them, opened up their coastlines to unfettered wind farm development. They balked, as did the Senate, which had been pushing an oceans management bill authored by Senator Robert O’Leary as a way to set up a framework for plopping turbines down in the water. The senate had threatened to hold Sal DiMasi’s energy bill hostage if the House didn’t act on their oceans bill, and so, last week, House leadership pushed a gutted bizzaro version of the senate’s bill to the floor.

Turns out, it wasn’t a whole lot more than a reworded version of amendment leadership tried to cram through in November – reportedly at the behest of prospective developer Jay Cashman.

When Slots Met Racism

There’s a hilarious, and hilariously depressing editorial in this week’s Banner. Melvin Miller, the paper’s editor and publisher, excoriates the legislature – particularly the Speaker – for trying to run out the clock on the Governor’s casino gambling proposal. Which is fair enough – everybody from broke-ass mayors to labor unions to labor-friendly reps have gotten into that game lately.

But it’s not enough for Miller to just whack Sal upside the head – that act is weeks old. This late in the game, Melvin’s got to have a reason for killing Sal. Conveniently enough, Sal happens to be a filthy racist. Or so we read…