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.

Throw the Bums in Jail!

Or, barring that, at least have the bums pay for shenanigans out of their own pockets. We’re inching closer to the latter, as the legislature advanced a bill yesterday that would make politicians and other public board members personally culpable for violations of the state’s Open Meeting Law. As things stand now, pols break the law, and when the get caught and fined, taxpayers foot the bill.

How eager is government to reform government? I first wrote about this bill way back in June, 2007. (See for yourself!) It had had a hearing the previous week, and was originally filed back in January of last year. And then it sat and sat some more. Most bills had to either be reported out of committee by the first week of April or die until next session; this one got a three-week extension, and beat out its new deadline for action by a whole day.

By comparison, Therese Murray’s health care reform-reform bill was filed six weeks ago, and it’s already cleared the Senate.