Governor Baker, despite his professional experience and his (self-proclaimed) expertise as a problem solver and manager, has left a legacy of serious dysfunction at multiple state agencies. This legacy will haunt Massachusetts for years to come as subsequent Governors work to fix problems he ignored or exacerbated in his eight years as Governor. 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 ..read more

The Massachusetts Legislature continues to display its long-running and pervasive dysfunction. There are some of the recent examples below. For an in-depth explanation of how over centralization of power, a lack of professional expertise and resources, and other factors cause this high level of dysfunction, including a lack of transparency and accountability, please see the 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 Legisl ..read more

The Baker-Polito Administration has failed for years to fix systemic operational issues at its Department of Children and Families (DCF), which serves children who have experienced abuse or neglect. Many of the problems cited by the most recent investigation into a child’s death were the same as those in reports at the start of the Baker-Polito administration in 2015. 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 ..read more

The Baker-Polito Administration’s numerous vacillations on the vaccine rollout reflect a lack of good planning and a failure to follow plans that were in place. Long-standing plans for vaccinations through local public health agencies were scrapped at the last minute. Initial plans for vaccinations through hospitals were abruptly ended after they had begun. Yes, the supply of vaccines has been limited, but that was known in advance. The receipt of vaccines has mostly met the federal government’s predictions, with a few minor, short-term glitches, and the current pace is exceeding initial predi ..read more

Joan Vennochi’s excellent column  in the March 16 Boston Globe describes how the Baker-Polito Administration’s small government mindset, lack of good planning, and support for privatization led to a botched response to the Covid pandemic in multiple ways. She writes that “Baker squandered the opportunity to show leadership” and harmed “his image as a can-do manager.” https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/15/opinion/breaking-news-charlie-baker-is-republican ..read more

The Baker-Polito Administration has announced that it is stopping sending vaccines to hospitals to prioritize mass vaccination sites. This probably further hurts non-white and low-income individuals, who were already lagging in vaccinations. It also led to hospital networks notifying their out-patient populations that they would not be able to provide vaccinations to anyone not already scheduled. In some rural settings, including Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, the local hospital is the only place to get vaccinated. However, these local hospitals are part of larger hospital networks, so their ..read more

Some Massachusetts residents haven’t received the unemployment benefits they are owed for six weeks due to mismanagement at the Baker-Polito Administration’s Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA). Frustration is rising over this massive delay, compounded by the DUA’s lack of transparency about what the problems are and reliable information about when benefits will be received. Hundreds of thousands of workers, unemployed due to the pandemic, have navigated an unnecessarily complicated process to file a claim for unemployment benefits. Although the delays are worse now, delays in receivin ..read more

Massachusetts Senator Pat Jehlen’s newsletter does an excellent job of describing the frustrations with the Baker-Polito Administration’s rollout of vaccinations for people 75 and older. I urge you to read it. https://mailchi.mp/electpatjehlen/vaccination-frustration?e=06c0f8c150 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 Administr ..read more

The Baker-Polito Administration says widespread COVID testing for public school students and staffs is finally coming in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, some parents with the time and financial resources had implemented their own testing. They created the model that the Administration is now going to replicate and expand. Public school parents in Harvard, Wellesley, and Needham implemented their own testing systems run by volunteers and funded with private fundraising in the absence of testing by the state. https://commonwealthmagazine.org/health/state-launching-weekly-school-covid-te ..read more

Despite the Baker-Polito Administration’s promises to make equity for communities of color a centerpiece of the state’s vaccination plan, white residents have been getting vaccinated at rates well over 50% higher than the rates for Black or Latino residents. Access has been part of the problem. In Boston and Suffolk County, only 14% of Blacks and 26% of Latinos live within a mile of a vaccination site, while 46% of white residents do. In suburban Weston, which is 80% white and has a median income of over $200,000, eligible residents can get vaccinated at Town Hall. Two other wealthy, white sub ..read more