If anyone is keeping tabs on what is happening regarding the legislative leadership’s transportation / revenue bill, please comment. I have checked in with the live feed occasionally today but that doesn’t help me much – all I can figure out is that amendments are being offered, some are debated, and votes are taken.
If the bill has been significantly amended, I’m curious to know how.
Please share widely!
but no significant changes so far and none really expected.
offerred by the Cape and Islands delegation that will fund a tunnel from Hyannis to Edgartown.
An extra 2.5 cents on the gas tax will pay for the bonds.
Labor pushed it big time at the last minute.
Ernie has offered an an attempt at what is known as “satire.”
an attempt at satire?
Like hester prynne
The Globe published the story, but did not include a roll call. Another stumble for what used to be a paper of record.
is here.
I appreciate you posting this. I’m very happy to see that my representative, Denise Provost, voted against this travesty. I knew she would, I’m gratified that my confidence in her is well-placed.
for Rep. Khan. Deeply disappointed.
is here.
I’m in a rush, so hopefully someone else will go into this further, but based on this list, here are the only NAYS from the “progressive caucus” (way more yeas than nays):
Andrews
Farley-Bouvier
Garballey
Hecht
Provost
Sciortino
Sullivan
Sanchez was a no vote and I don’t see Rushing listed. Any mistakes or misspellings in this list are my errors.
The list I was using as “the progressive caucus” was missing Dave Rogers, who also vote no. Thanks, Dave!
Let me know if there are any other discrepancies.
After a cross-check with the Progressive Mass list, I see I am also missing Mary Keefe.
My apologies. I was dashing out of the house this morning and didn’t have time to double-check the work until now.
The full list of NO votes from the Progressive Caucus:
Andrews, Denise
Farley-Bouvier, Tricia
Garballey, Sean
Hecht, Jonathan
Keefe, Mary
Provost, Denise
Rogers, David
Sciortino, Carl
Sullivan, David
If so, no political courage.
It is the progressive reps who voted yes who are taking their reelections for granted. Some of them have said that if not for the wrath of DeLeo that they would have voted no (see the progressivemass comment below; I’ve heard personal accounts also). The courage was in bucking the leadership.
We posted the roll call last night here – http://www.progressivemass.com/2/2013/04/08/jwmhousevote/
Good news – no veto proof vote.
Bad news – many, many friends and so-called progressives voted with leadership. The pressure appears to have been intense – and focused exclusively on the left. Conservative dems – opposing taxes – were given a pass and allowed to vote “no” because leadership – and many politicians themselves – continue to believe that the threat is from the right. We think many of us will have much to say about that from now through 2014.
44 in the “Progressive Caucus.” Looks like we got 7 of them to vote against this crap bill.
I spoke to one of the 44 on Sunday. He told me that he would vote *for* the bill, but vote *against* a governor’s override.
I wasn’t in a position to ask him WTF. But, it’s what he said.
Standing with leadership until some “higher principle” of not overriding comes into play? Kinda transparent and I don’t see what it accomplishes.
it cuts out the legs of the Governor’s proposal early, and then pisses off the Speakah when he needs the vote more. (shrugs)
This was an important vote and too many “progressive” legislators went the wrong way. It’s time that we progressives “put a bit of stick about”.
This was not just “an” important vote in my book. This was “the” vote, as important as most of the other votes on the scorecard combined. How we resolve the issue of revenue goes to the very heart of what kind of Commonwealth we will be.
HIghly disappointed in Decker, Walz, and Walsh. Happy my rep Hecht and the other area reps Provost and Garbelly did the right thing. Still a disappointment though. They got some splainin’ to do.
Why doesn’t Deval put his political neck on the line, and run for re-election if his tax proposal passes. Why should he avoid the verdict of the voters, yet everyone else would need to face the music in 2014. It’s not Patrick who will implement this idea of rail expansion and the inevitable cost overruns, it’s DeLeo and Murray and their members. Deval plans to be in Iowa by Jan of 2015, while we are left holding the bag, or IMO, waking up and electing more people like Leah Cole.
I am glad to report my rep in Waltham sided with DeLeo and his plan, over Deval’s $2 Trillion tax hike.
And I think he would win in a landslide.
As an aside, the Globes coverage of this sucks, do we really need 20 different front page articles about Boston sports? I love the Red Sox and Fenway as much as the next bloke, but really?
For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a lengthy article about a number (seventeen, I think) of new papers announcing breakthroughs in cancer genomics — and NO citations of any of the papers. None.
I am dreadfully weary of what my wife and I call “Dark and stormy night” pieces, that begin with some interminable and inevitably cheesy sentimental pap that has no news value whatsoever. I am weary of onslaught of sports stories. At least the similarly relentless flood of Pope-stories seems so have subsided.
I miss spending my first cup of coffee with my morning paper. My wife is Austrian, and has sensitized me to how frustrating it is to leave in a major US city and have such difficulty obtaining decent bread. Sadly, obtaining a tolerable print newspaper is worse. At least in the online version, I can click past the rubbish.
You are totally right about the Globe. My dad would always give me five bucks on a Sunday, $3 for the collection plate and $2 for the Sunday Globe. Sunday Globe magazine fell off when they replace Dave Barry and Charlie Pierce with this obnoxious ‘coupling’ column, and then I started reading the Times in middle school and high school and realized the columnists and reporting was infinitely better. To be honest the Herald covers local news and sports much better than the Globe. Like the Post, it isn’t sure if it wants to be national or local and in trying to be both fails to be either.
You realize SomervilleTom that you live in Somerville right? There are a ton of great bakeries form Lyndells to La Ronga. Granted mostly Italian, but they are still good. Also High Street on the Medford/Somerville line has a ton of great Italian bakeries and delicatessens that are still humming along, and East Cambridge has Casal and Central and some great Portuguese bakeries. If you are hitting up the Porter Square Shaws I can concede my point, but go up Somerville ave, hit up Union, take the right into Inman, hit up Ball and High Street and the world opens up.
Is the closest thing to a true European butcher not only in the Boston area but maybe in the United States. Still haven’t found the Chicago equivalent.
But still? You mean like, they’re good despite being Eyetalian? C’mere, I wanna tell you sometin. A little closer. Closer.
SMACK!
Whats a matter wit you?
I know those places because my Italian ma and granma brought me there as a kid and still get stuff from there. I was just pointing out they are Italian so they might not be what the Austrian Mrs. STom was looking for. But I miss ma’s gravy and meatballs on a daily basis. And they go great in a nicely sliced La Ronga roll. No matter the season whenever I come home I make sure she makes some sauce.
Lyndells is about desserts and pastry far more than bread, though two of their bread offerings are adequate. We still have to try La Ronga, we’ve only been here a few years. We make do with bread from When Pigs Fly, Russo’s, Hi Rise, and occasionally Clear Flour. I think what my wife means is that she grew up in a culture where you walk a half-block down the street, pick up some bread in one of dozens of local bakeries, and you’re done. It’s the soft squishy cakey stuff from grocery stores that we really just can’t abide.
Sadly, with all sensitivity to stomv, we are not fans of Italian-style breads. We seek dense dark bread with substance. The best bread in the area used to be at the the Russian Store in Coolidge Corner — a dark whole wheat loaf made with buckwheat flour. Sadly, that baker retired.
Does everything right, my brother still goes out of his way to get there. I’d say check out Bobs in Medford and the other bakeries around there, and Casal in Inman. Also the Somerville Ave DeMoulas’ has a lot the local breads in one convenient sawdust covered location.
is always a mob scene and kinda pricy.
Personally I like lighter, softer breads. I haven’t found anything close to a decent baguette around here. Makes me pine for Paris, or even New York, some mornings.
of Leah Cole, that winner by 73 votes. My state rep was re-elected in November with 14,321 votes in a contested race. Last month Leah Cole got 1,878 votes, a whopping 35% in a three-way race with under 20% turnout. By my math that means Leah Cole got under 7% of the registered voters in the district to vote for her.
Anyway, 25 more of her and the Democrats will be down to a 2/3 House majority.
Here’s some of what we are hearing about why the progressives voted the wrong way. We would welcome hearing from the community – and especially from some of those progressive legislators on their rationale.
Pressure/threats from Leadership (not just the speaker but from leaders in the caucus like Byron Rushing
and Ellen Story)Under this category – leadership threatened to take away…(my line items in the budget, my committee chair, my ability to influence this and other debates).
Befriending Leadership and Building Influence
The rationale here is that if I vote “yes”, leadership will be grateful to progressives, will remember our support, will see us as welcome allies??? and going forward we will have more of a voice.
This was all we could get – $500M or nothing
The implication here is that if and when the Governor vetoes, there will be no more discussion of revenue. Just massive cuts. People who voted “yes” did the best they could.
What do you make of these arguments? It may feel like this inside the building but how does it feel out here in the grassroots?
This failed under Bulger and Finneran and it will fail now. I say don’t buy the rationale, end the endorsement and financial help of these candidates and threaten to run primary challengers. 44 voting as a bloc could have made a much bigger difference than the Magnificent 7 taking the fall with the remaining PINOs (bad acronym but its true) waffling on their principles. 44 as a bloc would’ve made news, would’ve been noticed, and could’ve been unstoppable. Power respects power, power does not respect capitulation.
It’s time to retire Mr. Rushing, along with Mr. DeLeo. I know him personally, he’s done much good work and he has a good heart. Sadly, his “leadership” against the governor’s proposal demonstrates to me that his spirit has been broken. Nobody who understands the impact of not funding the MBTA on working-class and minority neighborhoods could oppose the Governor’s bill.
The whining about “influence” is a euphemism for plain old selling out. These “progressives” have been “building influence” for decades while the things that matter crumble around us — this vote shows just how much value that “influence” has.
The next step should be to shut down the MBTA and commuter rail. Declare them insolvent, stop operations, and shut them down. It’s time to bring the city to a screaming halt until adequate funding is provided.
Similarly, it’s time to take the total amount dedicated to highway maintenance, divide it by the total number of miles of highway in the state, and allocate it based on the resulting number. As the bridges continue to crumble, close them. The metropolitan Boston area has been subsidizing highways for the rest of the state long enough.
The right-wing started irresponsibly slashing taxes three decades ago with Proposition 2 1/2. We progressives have made the mistake of working feverishly to somehow keep things going, because we care. The effect has been to simply enable more irresponsible cuts.
It’s time to stop being enablers.
This is a game of chicken, and it reminds me of the sequester and the hostage takers.
I’m not really comfortable killing the prisoner in order to show we’re serious. But then again, maybe that’s the only real card we have with influence /shrug. I’m mixing my metaphors. I hear you. Not sure I’m 100% with you on the “let it fall apart.”
However, I CAN say, I totally agree with this analysis:
I’m pretty new to insider politics and I allow that I’m probably quite naive about “how things really work, kid,” but simply as a citizen/voter, I want to see RESULTS and if the power-consolidating isn’t yielding anything meaningful to progressive priorities, I can’t see the value in that power to begin with. You want to protect it? First USE it!
I hope that this will be what happens in the next few days: that the progressive friends in whom we are disappointed and surprised will rally and start building a BETTER PROPOSAL.
Not the Governor’s if they hate it. Not The Act To Invest if that’s flawed. Not even the Jackalope if that’s too freaky. But something that:
1) Raises substantial new revenue
2) Does so progressively
3) Invests in ALL our many needs, including education, innovation, human services. Not just Transportation.
DeLeo’s $500 million Satan sandwich meets exactly Zero of these goals.
This is insulting. Do they think Governor Deval Patrick is an idiot? Are they under the impression that his $1.9B budget is just kids play? This is as much an admission of their refusal to take the Governor seriously and thus is a rank insult to the position and the person of the Governor and to the remainder of the CommonWealth.
Do they seriously have this low of an opinion of the Executive and, indeed, anybody outside the State House?
And again, I’m reminded of the sequester/hostage takers. I appreciate that this is a sticky situation for Reps who want to do the right thing and fear being a place where it all falls apart. But I don’t actually buy it as a compelling reason.
I look at the list of progressive legislators, the majority of whom voted with leadership, and I think, if they just hung together, it’s actually a pretty big voting bloc.
Maybe they could run a rebellion against the Soup Nazi who would not let them have Any if they aren’t happy with the Little They Were Offered. And the emperor would be shown to be naked. #MoreMixedMetaphors
like the sequester and hostage takers. In that case the House GOP was threatening to provoke the first-ever default of U.S. Treasury bonds if they didn’t get their cuts. There was some defense for voting “yes” on that shit sandwich, much like there was some defense for voting for TARP and not letting our entire financial system collapse. A “no” vote really could bring dire consequences. I’ve noticed that Lynch and Markey have each used this argument to justify their respective “yes” votes (Lynch for sequester, and Markey for TARP).
There is no reason for this vote except political cowardice, fear of the right wing and the Speaker.
But it seems to be the defense. “If I don’t go along with this TERRIBLE thing, a MORE TERRIBLE THING will happen!” …which was what some commentators were saying about Obama/Democrats’ need to cave to Republicans’ demands for radical (and unnecessary) safety net cuts (but no Military cuts!)
I just received a call from Representative Story’s office pointing out that she was not involved in pressuring or urging progressives to vote in any particular way. We appreciate her correcting the record on her own involvement and apologize if we got it wrong. The larger point still remains – members reported that leadership was pressuring them to vote “yes”.
from the Mass. Democratic Party urging me to contact my Senator and urge her to vote against the leadership’s bill.
Let’s back them up by pushing that message out to our own grassroots networks, too
She voted no, though made comments to me I interpreted as support, usually goes along with leadership, and hardly a progressive.
I suspect Ms. Garry voted “No” because she felt the $500M increase was too much. I’m under the perhaps incorrect impression that Ms. Garry seldom if ever supports tax increases for any reason.
…though she has been supportive of local campaigns to override or debt exclude Prop 2 1/2 in order to get more revenue. She definitely seems to be in the camp that forgets that the district is on THIS side of the NH line. I also wish she would lead sometimes rather than her usual MO of saying that’s what the district wants.
WE got your back
1) I no longer live in her district.
2) Having once been her intern and supporting her all along it would be awkward to say the least.
3) I’m having a hard time imagining a scernario in which I would defeat her. I must admit she is a good match for the district.
Its hard for some of us to admit, but there are still a lot of ‘Reagan Democrats’ in Massachusetts. That may or may not be the case for Garry, but as Carl Sciortino found out when he ousted a nearly 30 year incumbent, sometimes the best fit the district is the challenger people were waiting for.