The Senator Pat Jehlen Newsletter

 

Dear Neighbors, First, I want to wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving.  It seems strange that the best way to show love to family and friends this year is to avoid seeing them in person.  The news about vaccines may give us hope that we can be together again.   Meanwhile, too many people can only provide food and shelter for their families by working at jobs at nursing homes, or grocery stores or other dangerous environments.  And they then put their families at risk: the most common site of transmission is within households.  That's why we've worked so hard in the past few weeks to prevent evictions, which can cause people to have to double up even more, increasing the spread. Senate passes FY2021 budget Last week, the Senate passed its budget for the rest of FY21, several months late because of so much uncertainty about revenue and federal aid.  The chart to the right is from MassBudget, which is always the best source of information on the budget process.  I will just mention a few issues people wrote about and that I worked on. The process this year was very fast because it was so late, and the Senate and House Ways and Means committees tried to ensure there would not be big differences to resolve.  The conference committee is trying to finalize the budget next week, resolving any of those differences. They also tried to avoid "outside sections" of policy for the same reason, but there were a couple of big exceptions. Most of the hundreds of people who wrote to us about the budget were writing about policy issues, since there was little room to add funding for programs in a very tight budget. Many people wrote in favor, and others in opposition, of the ROE Act amendment.  It would allow abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases with a diagnosed fatal fetal anomaly and lower the age above which a woman can seek the procedure without parental or court approval from 18 to 16.  Both House and Senate passed versions of the ROE Act as part of the budget, in both cases by veto-proof margins.  Many also wrote opposing increased funding for the Department of Corrections and urging support for a amendment (325) that was adopted, requiring COVID testing of inmates and requiring the Department using tools like home confinement and medical parole to release inmates when it's safe to do so.  One woman offered to house an inmate if he were released.  A week ago, WBUR reported that MCI Norfolk had 178 COVID cases.  The state has reported 12 current clusters with 401 cases in prisons.  Many people asked us to cancel MCAS for the school year.  I agree: learning time is even more precious this year than usual, and spending it on testing and test prep wastes that resource, especially if students are required to take tests in person.  The tests will be even less meaningful than usual, and even more than usual will mostly measure students' family resources.  This amendment was among those not taken up because it was a policy issue, but I expect it will be filed again as a bill next session, and I expect to support it. Another popular issue was Emergency Sick Leave, which would  provide ten additional work-days of job-protected paid sick time during the COVID-19 outbreak to workers not covered by federal paid sick time protections.   I cosponsored the amendment, and had previously worked to report the bill favorably from the Labor and Workforce Development Committee and it's now before the Ways and Means Committee.  But along with other policy proposals, it was not taken up in the budget debate. Sports Gambling was also not taken up, though many people wrote in support. It was important to take up some policy issues because of the pandemic and its consequences.  During the weeks since the eviction/foreclosure moratorium expired on October 17, my staff and I have focused on ways prevent people becoming homeless in the midst of a pandemic surge and the middle of winter, at a time when many have lost their jobs and income and their unemployment benefits are about to expire. Many of you wrote about the problem, and - while we hoped for more - I was pleased that the Senate adopted some important improvements.  I will write more about that next week.  (You can see previous newsletters about it here, here and here.) The Senate adopted my amendment to allow payment extensions to the unemployment trust fund for nonprofits who have had layoffs because of Covid19. This language is critical to the stability of nonprofits that have never experienced this level of unemployment. The Senate also adopted my amendment to protect restaurants from predatory practices of delivery companies that use restaurants' logos and menus without permission.  More on that next week too. Till then, Stay safe, stay in touch, and have the best possible Thanksgiving.