Just in from the Deval Patrick Committee:
Over the last few days, some of us who work both inside and outside of the Administration began to discuss what we’ve been able to accomplish since the Governor took office a mere 18 months ago.
As a result of these conversations, a list of accomplishments has started to come together, and from somewhere the idea bubbled up to share this list with attendees and delegates at this weekend’s Massachusetts Democratic Convention.
But just as we were getting it ready for final printing, we took another look at “the list” and realized it was incomplete. Something was missing, and we weren’t quite certain what. Yes, it clearly reflected our desire to push a broad-based, innovative, and far-reaching agenda, but it seemed incomplete.
And then we realized, what was missing was input from our supporters at the grassroots level. Only you could create a more complete picture of the Administration’s accomplishments and complete the list.
So we’re asking you to think back over the past year-and-a-half and tell us what you believe to have been the three most significant accomplishments of the Patrick Administration thus far. Now, a “significant accomplishment” doesn’t necessarily mean something that got the most glowing headlines in the newspaper. It could be a policy decision that positively affected you or your community, a personal connection, or something that just made you proud that you had worked so hard during the campaign.
Since this is for the convention in Lowell this weekend, time is short. Use the comments for your “top three” lists.
And a note to the critics: please save your snark for other threads (you’ve had and will continue to have lots of opportunities to make your voices heard on this site). In a departure from usual BMG policy, I will enforce the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” principle and simply delete comments in this thread that don’t comply with this request. Thanks in advance. UPDATE: The foregoing was probably a bad idea. Having created certain expectations about the way this site operates, I should just stick to them and not try to create special purpose carve-outs. And so I will don the hair shirt I keep in my closet for such occasions and retract my request. Carry on.
1) Preserving marriage equality. Some of you straight folks out there may not get why this was such a big deal, but those of us in the glbt community know that there’s just no substitute for being treated equally under the law. And it demonstrated that the Governor was a man of his word and would keep his campaign commitments.
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p>2) Job creation. The administration has done a good job so far in establishing the policies, incentives and outreach to help move Massachusetts from near last to middle of the pack in job creation and economic development. Another commitment kept.
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p>3) Rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and support for clean energy and sensible energy policy in general. What’s more important than addressing climate change? Why don’t more of our political leaders get it? Glad we have a guy in the corner office who does.
1. Deval is great!
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p>2. Deval is fantastic!
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p>3. Governor Deluxe is deluxious!
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One way to stay honest, focused, and on track is to have two way communications – that is, communications between the Deval Patrick administration and the grassroots/netroots.
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p>In having Doug Rubin post and respond to comments, this 2-way communication is beginning to happen.
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p>2. Appointing first-class people, for the most part, to run state agencies. I’m not up on the specifics as much as I should, but people I trust tell me they’re impressed.
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p>3. Absolutely blowing it on casino gambling. I’d feel better if the governor showed greater awareness that it’s time to move on, but I’m grateful that he lost round one.
is greatly underappreciated by most of the press and by the public, and yet is incredibly important for the day-to-day functioning of the government and delivery of services that people rightly expect. The appointments people have done really excellent work, largely unrecognized outside “The Building.”
which seems to be forgotten, but I’d like to learn more about was the homelessness intiative.
Inside baseball: I like that David experimented with a “no snark” and then decided to get rid of it. Two good qualities: desire to experiment, willingness to go back.
The good:
– Appointing a Secretary of Education. A fair-minded one at that.
– An assist on marriage equality (though the lion’s credit goes to Murray and DiMasi)
– Moving qualified people into state government
– A dedication to public secondary ed
– Successful Pursuit of green energy companies
– Administration of the health care bill
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p>The unresolved:
– The life sciences bill
– Auto insurance regime change
– Cape Wind
– The ongoing pissing match with DiMasi. You won’t win. Don’t try.
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p>The ugly:
– Casinos
– Casinos (bears mentioning twice)
– Extensive out-of-state travel
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p>The possible deal breaker:
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p>Washington, DC. If Patrick moves into the presidential Cabinet in 2009, this will confirm so many bad suspicions of him: he was as interested in Massachusetts as Mitt Romney, his campaign was essentially a dry run for Obama’s, and change and hope were about career, and not community. Nothing would make the Republican Party happier.