Senate President Spilka's April 2020 Remarks to the Boston Chamber of Commerce
Senate President Karen E. Spilka addresses the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce for the first-ever virtual forum. Video courtesy: Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. I’d like to especially thank Jim Rooney and Board Chair Paul Ayoub, and thank all of you for your ongoing efforts to engage and guide business and political leadership during this challenging time.
As we all know, the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, and with it the declaration of a state of emergency in Massachusetts, has created a situation unlike we have ever seen here.
At the state leadership level, Governor Baker, Speaker DeLeo and I have been united in our belief that our first priority is the health and safety of our residents—and in saying that I would like to thank all of the front line health care workers who are caring for those who are sick, whether with covid-19 or other illnesses, and also applaud the health care infrastructure we have here in Massachusetts, which was able to be mobilized to meet the demand, especially now that we are in the surge.
I’d also like to thank Governor Baker and Secretary Sudders for their response to this crisis and their communication with the legislature throughout this process.
I’d like to thank Speaker DeLeo for his partnership—we are getting bills done and on the Governor’s desk in an expedient manner that will help our residents, communities and businesses respond to COVID-19.
And also, I really want to thank everyone in the Senate—Senators and staff—for their hard work, which is allowing us to have an inclusive, thorough, yet thoughtful process to still pass great bills.
Our immediate concern is the public health crisis and doing what is necessary to keep people safe, but our long-term goal—and challenge—is to address the economic fallout of this unprecedented situation. This work has already begun in the Senate and will continue for quite some time.
The Senate has adapted to our “new normal” by being as nimble, proactive and communicative as a chamber designed hundreds of years ago to be a deliberative body can be.
Starting on day one of this crisis, I formed a comprehensive Senate communication and involvement plan, including a robust COVID-19 Senate Working Group, led by the Senate Chair of Public Health, Jo Comerford. The Senate Working Group is tasked with identifying, prioritizing, and making recommendations on how to respond to immediate issues related to the COVID-19 outbreak.
It functions as a communications structure that allows Senators to raise issues of concern from their communities, which can either be passed to subgroups for possible legislative action or raised to me to bring to the Administration. Thanks to this structure, Senators can then quickly disseminate information about our work at the state level back to their respective communities.
Communication among the members of the Senate is of paramount importance to me, so the Working Group sends out a daily bulletin summarizing their work and the important news of the day to all Senators. The Working Group also offers briefings to the entire Senate on issues of importance, such as preparations for the surge, a discussion with medical experts to explore our path forward out of our immediate crisis—happening as we speak—and a recent discussion with AIM on economic issues facing our small businesses.
The Senators have continued to meet weekly or twice a week, either as a democratic caucus or as a whole Senate, to discuss legislation and other issues of importance, and we have instituted a call network so that we are all in frequent communication and involved. It has been my priority to ensure that Senators and staff have up-to-date information, resources and the support they feel they need to be helpful to their constituents—and that all Senators have the same information.
Since early March, the Senate has:
Provided $15m in funds to deal with the COVID-19 crisis
Waived the one-week waiting period for unemployment benefits for those directly impacted by the COVID-19 emergency
Postponed municipal and special elections and expanded early voting and vote-by-mail options for those elections
Passed a bill to halt evictions and foreclosures—the strongest moratorium in the nation, which helps renters, homeowners, small businesses and non-profits
Passed a bill to expand scope of practice for health care providers during the COVID-19 emergency
Passed a number of measures allowing for flexibility on the municipal level
Waived the MCAS requirement for this school year and allowed for the adjustment of the competency determination process
Extended the personal income tax deadline to July 15th
Addressed the need for changes to the nomination signature threshold
Provided medical liability protections
Continued to address issues related to unemployment, including making sure employers’ experience ratings are not affected by the current crisis
And just last week, passed bills allowing for virtual notaries, strengthening local and regional public health systems, and providing assistance for vulnerable populations
In addition, Speaker DeLeo and I released a statement addressing the disparate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color in Massachusetts—and we continue to work on this issue.
So as you can see, we are continuing to work very diligently to address this crisis. Obviously, the most pressing question for all of us is, “What comes next?” And the honest answer is that we don’t exactly know yet.
But, as I have stated many times before, periods of change and uncertainty provide us with opportunities—and I can tell you that the Senate plans to take those opportunities to be intentional about how we move forward.
When it comes to ‘opening up the state’ and deciding when it is safe for all of us to leave our houses, let me be clear—we will rely solely on the advice of health care and public health experts to ensure we are acting in the best interest of our residents. But we will also be working with economic experts, business leaders like you, and our partners in local, state and the federal government to support our economy as we move beyond the immediate public health crisis toward what will probably be a ‘phased-in’ reopening.
We began this work a few weeks ago, when Senate Ways & Means Chair Mike Rodrigues, House Ways & Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz and A&F Secretary Mike Heffernan convened an Economic Roundtable, where we learned that experts are predicting a $4-6B revenue drop. And although I remain extremely proud of the $3+B Rainy Day Fund we have built up in recent years, it’s clear that there is no going back to “the old normal” at this point.
I was Chair of Economic Development during the last big recession, and the bill that we passed in 2010 to help kick start the economy was the result of listening to what businesses, workers and those looking for work felt they needed—and I plan to take that approach again.
So far, we know we need more support for our small businesses—after pushing our federal delegation in the past two weeks, I’m glad that the recently-passed federal stimulus bill included more funding directed towards minority- and women-owned businesses, as well as rural and small businesses. But there will be more small businesses that will fall through the cracks—and I hope you will all let me know what more can be done to help these businesses as we move through this.
Last week, the Chamber held a panel discussion with CEOs to understand what it will take to get ‘back to work,’ and the point was raised that health care and higher education—pillars of our economy here—are taking a particularly tough hit as a result of this crisis. I agree that we must pay close attention to these two sectors—and use this as an opportunity to reimagine what they will be as we move forward.
This is true of many of the issues facing us, including the big issues we were grappling with before this crisis hit, such as climate change, transportation, health care, mental health and others.
In health care, the Senate has consistently been a leader on expanding access to telemedicine when this crisis hit, and so we were grateful to see it happen. We also were ready to quickly pass expanded scope of practice legislation to address the needs of health professionals during this crisis.
As for transportation, the Senate was looking at policy approaches to our transportation crisis that would influence behavior, with the goal of getting people out of their cars and onto public transportation. As mentioned in a recent Globe article, which included thoughts from Jim, it is likely that people will be slow to return to public transportation until they feel 100% safe.
We should use this time, when it is deemed safe to return to work but before we are back to full capacity, to do the much needed repairs to the T, Commuter Rail and RTAs, so we can get closer to delivering the public transportation experience our residents deserve. To that end, I’ve asked Senate Transportation Chair Joe Boncore to work with his House counterpart to hold a joint oversight hearing so we can hear from our transportation experts on their various plans to ‘open’ our state’s transportation systems, including public transportation, the T, the Commuter Rail and RTAs, and our roads and bridges.
Employers must also continue to encourage working from home, now that we have all learned, sometimes reluctantly, how to hold videoconferencing meetings, and encourage staggered start times, as Jim mentioned. Doing so may help our congestion problem long enough for us to fix some of our major transportation woes and begin updating our transportation system.
I also want to stress that the Senate still plans on passing a transportation bond bill, with the hopes that the Baker Administration can move quickly on important transportation projects once it is safe to do so.
Continuing to allow employees to work from home will also help us meet our emissions goals, which is especially important because we definitely don’t want to go ‘back to the old normal’ when it comes to climate change. I believe this crisis gives us an unexpected opportunity to lay the groundwork for generational change when it comes to climate change, and so I hope the House will take up our next generation climate change bill and get it to the Governor sometime this year.
In addition, I haven’t waivered at all from my belief that the people of Massachusetts deserve to have mental health care be as routine and accessible as regular health care, and so I hope to see momentum on the Mental Health ABC Act also.
When I spoke to you last year, I mentioned that every policy issue we faced this session is also an economic development issue—and that is still true. Since then, an issue that has risen to be a pressing economic development priority due to this crisis—for what i think you’ll agree are obvious reasons—is that of child care.
I think I speak for all parents when I say that any phased-in reopening plan must start with preschools—so that parents with young children can take advantage of this child care option.
I was speaking with Senator Warren two weeks ago, and she framed the issue of childcare in this way: if you think of the concept of ‘infrastructure’ as what is needed to get people to work, you must consider child care part of our infrastructure—as important as roads, bridges and public transportation.
We’ve all read the stories, including a Globe article this weekend and an editorial in the BBJ last week, of how difficult it is for two parents to be working full time from home while caring for their children. The COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, to be sure, partly because the workforce has steadily shifted to include dual income families for the past 50 years. But those of us who have worked for a long time to help ensure economic opportunity for all of our residents have known that child care is vital, especially for single parent households. And so I’m hoping we can use this moment of increased awareness of the importance of reliable, quality child care to raise it higher on our priority list.
I’m proud of the work that Massachusetts has done on K-12 public education through the Student Opportunity Act—and we have been steadily working on the need for increasing funding public higher ed. But it is clear that it is time for meaningful action when it comes to early education, especially since we know from the research just how important early education is to creating successful students, which become the qualified workforce of the future.
To be clear, the state will not have the capacity to fully fund universal early education and care on our own given our current budget situation, no matter how much we may want to. So, in the same way that we have partnered in the past on issues of importance to all of us, including transportation, climate change and mental health, I am hoping that we can begin a conversation on convening a public-private partnership to address our early education and care needs.
Because, after all, we are all in this together.
As I have said many times, if any state can come out of adversity and be stronger for it, it is Massachusetts. I love this state, and I am so deeply appreciative of our can-do spirit, our willingness to help each other, and how quickly we have come together to tackle the big challenges this crisis has presented.
At the chamber event last week, Micho Spring of Weber Shandwick made a really good point. She said we should be thinking of ‘going forward to work’ rather than going ‘back to work’ because so many things will be different. This ‘new normal’ will be hard in a lot of ways, but it will also be necessary. And as we create this ‘new normal; we must do so through a diversity, equity and inclusion framework in every aspect our economy and civic life.
Thank you again for all that you do, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you today. I look forward to working with you all as we ‘go forward to work.’