Massachusetts State Senator
Representative Ken Gordon (D-Bedford) and Senator Mike Barrett (D-Lexington) joined their colleagues in the Massachusetts Legislature on Monday, October 26 to pass An Act relative to additional unemployment benefits for the neediest recipients currently excluded from the Lost Wages Assistance program, which enhances unemployment benefits for certain Massachusetts workers by as much as $1,800 each. The Governor signed the legislation into law last week.
Senator Barrett described campaigning as “a lot of fun, because typically you’re meeting a lot of people”, but observed that due to the pandemic he’d mostly be campaigning by phone, which is “not as satisfying” because “I love going door to door.”
He’s not having trouble staying busy, though, because he’s leading the Senate side of a conference committee that is trying to harmonize the two very different climate bills that passed in the Massachusetts House and the Senate. “It’s taking all my time.” Working out a compromise when the bills are so different, he said, isn’t the usual split-the-difference process, but “trading apples for oranges”, which he finds far more difficult to negotiate. “I’d have been hard-pressed to do both. If I’d had a serious race, I don’t know how I’d have juggled it.”
If he were running against an opponent, Barrett told us, he would keep the focus on climate change, and try to make the election “a referendum on progressive climate policy”
Nevertheless, those juggling a competitive race are “essentially out of commission,” said state Senator Michael J. Barrett, a Lexington Democrat who is on the six-person conference committee negotiating climate change legislation.
“There is a habit of deference to those incumbents, whether there are a lot of them or just a few of them who really have to devote September and October to campaigning,” Barrett said. The larger concern, he said, may be the raft of priorities left, all of which can suck up oxygen in an ever-shrinking calendar.
“I’m concerned overall for our productivity,” Barrett said.
The bridge on The Great Road spanning the Shawsheen River near Stop and Shop Plaza will be closed for repairs from the evening of Friday, October 2, to the morning of Monday, October 5.
State Representative Ken Gordon (D – Bedford), Senator Mike Barrett (D – Lexington), and Bedford Town Manager Sarah Stanton remind residents to seek alternate routes, if possible. The work will be contained within one weekend.
As the morning ceremony started, a hawk circled overhead at 554 Lexington St.
Many in Waltham might see it as a fitting symbol for the occasion of the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Waltham High School which will be filled with new generations of students or Waltham ‘Hawks’ by fall of 2024.
Gordon’s counterpart in the State Senate, Mike Barrett, said Trump’s “words were vile.” He observed that as there is no political constituency that supports the position, Trump was expressing his “personal reflections of contempt for people who have their lives for this nation.”
State Senator Mike Barrett talks to the folks gathered along the Concord River in Bedford Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. They came to speak out against President Trump’s recent remarks, calling the fallen “losers” and “suckers.”
Lexington’s legislative delegation of Sen. Cindy Friedman, D-Arlington, Sen. Mike Barrett, D-Lexington, and Rep. Michelle Ciccolo, D-Lexington, announced that the Legislature and Baker administration have committed to providing a baseline amount of unrestricted local aid and Chapter 70 funding for fiscal year 2021.
This commitment will give municipalities and school districts a critical planning tool as they finalize their budgets.
Under the agreement, Lexington will receive $1,627,400 in local aid and $14,438,034 in Chapter 70 education funding. The town is additionally eligible for federal relief funding of $1,787,737.
“This agreement comes at a time when towns are having to overcome new challenges seemingly every week,” said Barrett. “I’m glad we were able to provide a measure of certainty when so much is still up in the air.”
Representative Ken Gordon (D-Bedford) and Senator Mike Barrett (D-Lexington) announced today that an agreement between the Legislature and the Governor will ensure increases to local aid and Chapter 70 education funding in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. The agreement will allow cities and towns to avoid significant budget cuts despite the uncertain conditions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sen. Michael Barrett, Golden’s Senate counterpart at the Committee on Telecommunication, Utilities and Energy, said the House’s bill would make it nearly impossible to monitor the state’s progress towards those goals, and said he favors the Senate’s approach of installing interim targets every five years rather than every 10 years.
“Here we have goals widely spaced apart with no accountability back to the public or the Legislature in the House bill,” he said. “There’s a reason the Senate proposed a standalone, independent climate policy commission. That’s because the executive branch charged with realizing the goals cannot also be left to report on whether they’ve achieved them. You’ve got to separate out implementation and monitoring, and I’m deeply disappointed that the early drafts of the House bill leave the two roles together.”