Following a private meeting with Gov. Maura Healey and House Speaker Ronald Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka talk with reporters on May 8, 2023. Photo by Sam Doran | State House News Service
Without agreements on major bills and with less than 36 hours left for formal sessions, Senate Democrats had no news about done deals early Tuesday afternoon, and the top Senate Democrat responded to criticism from the House.
“I believe that the conference committees continue to move forward,” Senate President Karen Spilka told reporters at about 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Spilka talked about the private negotiating panels trading proposals and “rolling up their sleeves,” but Democrats haven’t been able to lock down deals and whether it’s due to personal conflicts or legitimate policy differences is anyone’s guess.
The ideas in play range from the state’s response to its housing affordability crisis to an expansion of the bottle redemption law, a path for a professional soccer stadium in Everett, oversight of the hospital sector, the future of clean energy expansion, new checks on prescription drug and long-term care sectors, and more.
“These bills are too important. Our residents deserve for us to resolve them and I believe and I’m hopeful that we will still do that,” Spilka said.
For months, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has been pushing a proposal to insulate residential property owners from a potential spike in tax bills by temporarily shifting more of the tax burden to commercial property owners. Wu and top House Democrats announced a deal Tuesday for the House to advance the measure as filed, then for Wu to scale back its scope a bit via executive order once it’s signed into law.
The House on Tuesday voted 132-24 to approve the city’s home rule petition filed June 18. While the topic has been hotly debated for months and aired before a joint House-Senate committee, Senate leaders gave no indication they’re ready to act.
“I can’t respond to that too much,” Spilka said when asked about the legislation. “We haven’t debated, discussed or even seen the bill, the new complex bill. And as you know, any time you release a bill the day before session ends, it’s a very difficult expectation for us to hear it, especially when it has new proposals, major proposals that haven’t had the opportunity to be debated or voted on. It sort of tells you that they’re not really serious about passing the bill to begin with.”
Spilka’s comment, which she read from a sheet of paper, featured some of the same language House Speaker Ron Mariano used to zing the Senate on Monday after Senate Democrats included a controversial proposal to allow supervised drug injection sites in a bill aimed at preventing deadly opioid overdoses.
“Anytime you release a bill the day before the session ends, it’s a very difficult expectation for us to hear it, especially when it has proposals, major proposals, that we haven’t even had the opportunity to debate or vote on,” Mariano told reporters Monday. “It sort of tells me you’re not really serious about passing the bill to begin with.”
After Mariano knocked the Senate on Monday for surfacing new bills for votes in the dying hours of formal sessions, Spilka pointed out on Tuesday that the House had also produced batches of new legislative proposals for votes on Tuesday, and last Thursday.
“They’re doing so many I can’t keep track of them,” she said.
Whether the double-zingers represent the end of this week’s flareup between the branches, or an escalation of it, remains to be seen.
The mayor’s home rule petition on property taxes is not amendable because of the way it was filed, so the Senate faces an up-or-down vote on the legislation, if it decides to take it up. Republican opposition in the House also means the bill would face obstacles in informal sessions that after Wednesday are set to run for the rest of 2024, where opposition from any legislator can stop a bill from advancing.
