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| Shortly after Attorney General Maura Healey said she was investigating whether the Group Insurance Commission violated open-meeting laws when it approved a controversial change in public employees’ health-care plans, the GIC caved. The panel now says it will reconsider its deeply unpopular vote to drop popular private insurers from its list of health-plan options for public employees. The Globe’s Priyanka Dayal McCluskey and SHNS’s Matt Murphy at the BBJ have the details of the retreat.
But the GIC’s about-face isn’t stopping Beacon Hill lawmakers from planning hearings on the matter – and one lawmaker, Sen. Cindy Friedman, has filed legislation that would require notice be given to legislators any time the GIC makes significant changes to government health plans, reports SHNS’s Matt Murphy in a separate story (pay wall). Our three-word analysis of the situation: What a mess. |
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| Linda Dorcena Forry resigns from Senate for job at Suffolk Construction |
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| This comes as a major surprise, considering she was only recently one of four senators vying for the Senate presidency. From the Globe’s Frank Phillips: “Linda Dorcena Forry, the lone black member of the state Senate and the state’s highest-ranking elected black official, is stepping down to take an executive post at the construction firm run by powerbroker John Fish. … ‘I will be leaving the Massachusetts Senate effective Friday and joining an incredible opportunity,’ she said in a statement provided to the Globe. Forry will be the northeast region’s vice president for diversity inclusion and community relations at Fish’s Suffolk Construction.”
SHNS’s Matt Murphy at the Dorchester Reporter has lawmakers’ reactions to Forry’s surprise decision. |
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| Does Forry’s departure signal the return of Stan Rosenberg? |
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| Perhaps Linda Dorcena Forry, who only recently was angling for the coveted Senate presidency job, knows something the rest of us don’t know. The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld speculates that Forry’s surprise resignation signals the likely return to power of former Senate President Stan Rosenberg. Battenfeld writes that City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who lives in Forry’s district, could be vying against Rep. Nick Collins of South Boston for the latest open Senate seat. Fyi: Battenfeld also notes how so many senators are leaving office these days, perhaps a sign serving in the chamber has lost its luster. |
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| Ethics Committee: Only special investigators, and not senators, will know names |
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| Speaking of the Senate, we’ll see if this entices victims and witnesses to step forward. From Mike Deehan at WGBH: “The Senate Ethics Committee has reaffirmed that members of the Senate – including the Ethics Committee – will not know the identities of witnesses in the investigation of former Senate President Stan Rosenberg. The six members of the Ethics Committee adopted an order saying that the special investigators probing Rosenberg shall not disclose to any party the identities of witnesses, victims, or subpoena recipients as they investigate whether Rosenberg broke rules in connection with allegations that his husband tried to trade political influence for sex.” |
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Northern Pass wins huge state clean-energy contract – battle lines form |
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| The headline on the Globe story is brutal: “Eversource wins a huge state contract it helped design.” But it’s accurate. The Globe’s Jon Chesto and CommonWealth magazine’s Bruce Mohl have the details on the Baker administration’s awarding of the largest clean energy contract in the state’s history to a partnership of Hydro-Quebec and Eversource Energy. The selection of the Northern Pass hydroelectricity project is already drawing fire from environmentalists and grumblings from losing bidders about the process that allowed Eversource and other utilities to participate in crafting the original request for proposals, as Mohl points out.
The next step: Northern Pass must now negotiate details of the long-term, multibillion-dollar contract that will be submitted for approval to the Department of Public Utilities, Mohl reports. If the transmission project wins key approvals in New Hampshire, the president of Eversource New Hampshire swears the project can start as soon as this year. But we have a hunch the Conservation Law Foundation and others have a different legal time schedule in mind. |
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| Hail to the chief? Kennedy to deliver Dem response to Trump’s State of Union address |
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| This is going to fuel months, if not years, of speculation about his presidential ambitions, to wit: U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III has been tapped to deliver the Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union address next week. As the Globe’s Victoria McGrane and Annie Linskey note, the choice “thrusts the 37-year-old, three-term congressman from Brookline into the national spotlight more squarely than he has ever been before.” The Washington Post has more. |
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| State probing denial of food and water to high-school hockey players for playing lousy |
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| And we thought hockey parents were bad. Three Andover High School hockey coaches have been put on leave as the Department of Children and Families investigates allegations boys were denied food and water as punishment for losing games, according to reports by the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. A student manager is insisting the punishments never happened, the Herald reports. |
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