Some of us, no doubt, were expecting the worst. But I have to say that, so far, by and large, Charlie Baker’s appointments are not scary. Some of them are even encouraging. With a couple of possible exceptions.
The two major possible exceptions I can see are Jim “Charter King” Peyser for Secretary of Education, and Matthew Beaton as Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. There’s a good deal of discussion about Peyser in this post. Beaton doesn’t seem like a bad guy, and his side job (aside from being a legislator) of running a small construction company that “focuses on building energy efficient homes” suggests that, in some respects at least, his heart is basically in the right place for the job. But one does wonder whether a 30-something, 2-term state rep with no evident experience overseeing anything other than a small construction company and a state rep’s tiny office is ready to hit the ground running with respect to a large secretariat that encompasses at least seven different agencies (honestly, if I had to hazard a guess as to which major Baker appointee will step down “to spend more time with his family” first, it’d be Beaton, since Baker will be the last guy to have patience for someone who isn’t up to the managerial aspect of the job). And Beaton seems perhaps overly enamored of GOP orthodoxy when it comes to taxes and the like. Still, most of the state’s enviros seem content to give the guy a chance, and I agree that that seems reasonable.
Those two aside, the list actually looks pretty good. Everybody apparently loves Jay Ash, currently Chelsea’s city manager and Baker’s pick to head Housing and Economic Development. Marylou Sudders, the incoming head of Health and Human Services, has a lot of relevant experience both in and out of government, and seems nearly as popular as Ash within her field. And today’s news brought another encouraging health-related appointment: Monica Bharel, a doctor who has devoted her career to working with the poor, especially the homeless, will be the next Commissioner of Public Health. Hard to argue with that one.
I don’t know much about Steven Kadish, the former Northeastern University official who will become Baker’s Chief of Staff (one of the most powerful unelected state jobs), but at least he’s a Democrat. Ditto for Ronald Walker, the incoming Secretary of Labor, and for Lon Povich, Baker’s pick to be Chief Legal Counsel (I have met Povich once or twice, but I wouldn’t claim to know him well). I do know Kristen Lepore, the incoming Secretary of Administration and Finance – I worked fairly closely with her when I was Deputy Legal Counsel in the Welducci administration. I’d certainly put her right of center on the political spectrum, but she’s very smart and she knows the state budget really well. And, though the Secretary of A&F is an influential job, at the end of the day the job is less about ideology than it is about getting the numbers right.
A good number of the staff jobs (as opposed to Secretariat/Agency jobs) do appear to be going the more traditional Republican route. Which is not surprising. But even on the staff, some of the senior appointments – Kadish and Povich, for instance – are Democrats, and others like Joel Barrera are, at least, not doctrinaire GOPers [UPDATE: Kate, in the comments, notes that Barrera appears to be a Democrat as well].
So, as of now, could be worse. A lot worse.
…but once worked for MassPIRG…that is a real head scratcher. I’d wager to guess that many RMG posters spent their college years fighting to defund PIRGs on their college campuses.
I went to Tufts with Steve and we first met when he was a MASSPIRG advocate and I was a member of the Student Senate (and the Tufts Republican Club) fighting the negative check off system. I learned from Steve the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. But more, I learned to respect people who give a damn regardless of what conclusions they made about a particular policy issue. Steve will be an excellent COS and the Gov’s senior staff will be very lucky to have a chance to work with him. Great pick by Charlie among many great picks.
What are you up to these days?
I have opposed PIRGs on campuses for as long as they’ve existed, going all the way back to my college days in Pittsburgh in the early 1970s (1970-1974).
I found the funding model (a “default” check-off applied automatically by the school) deceptive and extraordinarily difficult to turn off. At least on my campus, the organization did nothing useful. I was politically active at the time, and was embarrassed and offended by PIRGs ham-handed approach.
Fighting to defund PIRGs on college campuses strikes me as a good cause that I support.
…not something I approve of. Spent an afternoon each of four years waiting in the “Cesar Chavez Reading Room” to get my opt-out donation to my PIRG back.
At that time, the claim of PIRG and the school was that PIRG was not a political group, and instead was working in the allegedly objective “public interest”.
The whole thing smelled bad in 1972, and as far as I can tell still does.
I definitely don’t recall it at U of C. We had a very strict guideline defending institutional political neutrality called the Kalven Report.
shows that both UMass Amherst and Rutgers have a “negative check-off” where the PIRG fee is attached automatically to a student’s bill but the student may ask to have it removed. No doubt there are many other colleges with similar schemes but these were the first two to catch my eyes.
Imagine the liberal howls of protest if a conservative campus group had similar privileged access to student checkbooks.
It MASS PIRG was a for profit organization – they would be sued for fraud. Especially as Umass where there are a lot of fees that support the campus. Some of the college “health insurance” fees are just as bad – the fees fund poor quality insurance – with ridiculously low limits – for a very healthy population.
BTW – I didn’t realize MASS PIRG had negative check offs at private colleges.
do I have that right?
The MA Constitution designates the Governor as the official chairperson of the Council and the LG as simply a member thereof, and chairperson in the absence of the Governor.
To my knowledge, Joel Barrera is a Democrat. I know him through Democratic circles. I checked VoteBuilder and that is showing him as a Democrat. He voted in the fall primary as a Democrat and has a long history of voting in Democratic primaries. It’s possible that there was a recent change, this is what the information that I have shows.
Definitely not a great pick from a educational point of view. He represents what’s wrong with education policy today from charter schools to educational entrepreneurship. Charter proliferation will likely continue to be hamstrung by our budget picture. The MTA and its membership aren’t in a mood to cooperate and local school budgets are still getting hammered without the drain of charter schools.
With that said, Patrick’s educational administration was pretty bad as well and should provide a basis of comparison. That cheerless piler of initiative upon initiative Mitchell Chester and the hapless, well-intentioned Paul Reville took us nowhere in Patrick’s eight years. And Peyser will have to go quite a distance to be as bad Arne Duncan. Can Peyser be worse? It’s possible.