Onward!

The Massachusetts Legislature continues to display its long-running and pervasive dysfunction. Some recent examples tell the story: For an in-depth explanation of how over-centralization of power, lack of professional expertise and resources and other factors have created this high level of dysfunction, including a dearth of transparency and accountability, please see our report The Massachusetts Legislature: Democracy in Decline. The report was released in November 2021 and was prepared by the Legislative Reform Working Group convened by Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. The MA Legislature has kept the State House closed to the public – the only one in the country that remains closed in Jan. 2022 – which is perhaps symbolic of its lack for transparency and accountability. Meanwhile, legislative business continues to ignore deadlines, lack careful execution and be…

The Baker-Polito Administration has failed for years to fix systemic operational issues at its Department of Children and Families (DCF), which serves children who have experienced abuse or neglect. Many of the problems cited by the most recent investigation into a child’s death were the same as those in reports at the start of the Baker-Polito administration in 2015. Massachusetts continues to be very slow in getting DCF involved children into a permanent home, either through reunification with parents or adoption. Children are spending a median of 37 months between home removal and adoption, well beyond the state and federal standard of 15 months. This introduces additional trauma and disruption into the already difficult lives of these children. Racial disparities persist throughout the system, including in removing children from their…

The Baker-Polito Administration’s numerous vacillations on the vaccine rollout reflect a lack of good planning and a failure to follow plans that were in place. Long-standing plans for vaccinations through local public health agencies were scrapped at the last minute. Initial plans for vaccinations through hospitals were abruptly ended after they had begun. Yes, the supply of vaccines has been limited, but that was known in advance. The receipt of vaccines has mostly met the federal government's predictions, with a few minor, short-term glitches, and the current pace is exceeding initial predictions. Other states had well-functioning pre-registration and sign-up websites for vaccinations months before Massachusetts. Constant changes and poor communication by the Baker-Polito Administration have led to confusion, anxiety, frustration, and rancor. Its vaccine rollout has been called unpredictable, shaky,…

Joan Vennochi’s excellent column  in the March 16 Boston Globe describes how the Baker-Polito Administration’s small government mindset, lack of good planning, and support for privatization led to a botched response to the Covid pandemic in multiple ways. She writes that “Baker squandered the opportunity to show leadership” and harmed “his image as a can-do manager.” https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/15/opinion/breaking-news-charlie-baker-is-republican/

The Baker-Polito Administration has announced that it is stopping sending vaccines to hospitals to prioritize mass vaccination sites. This probably further hurts non-white and low-income individuals, who were already lagging in vaccinations. It also led to hospital networks notifying their out-patient populations that they would not be able to provide vaccinations to anyone not already scheduled. In some rural settings, including Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, the local hospital is the only place to get vaccinated. However, these local hospitals are part of larger hospital networks, so their out-patients got the no vaccinations message. This created great consternation in these communities and many phone calls to the local hospitals. It turns out there’s an exception in the Baker-Polito Administration policy for a “rural regional vaccination site.” So, all might be well,…

Some Massachusetts residents haven’t received the unemployment benefits they are owed for six weeks due to mismanagement at the Baker-Polito Administration’s Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA). Frustration is rising over this massive delay, compounded by the DUA’s lack of transparency about what the problems are and reliable information about when benefits will be received. Hundreds of thousands of workers, unemployed due to the pandemic, have navigated an unnecessarily complicated process to file a claim for unemployment benefits. Although the delays are worse now, delays in receiving benefits aren’t new. In December, the Baker-Polito Administration’s DUA was delivering benefits to eligible workers within 14 days only 58% of the time and 10% of eligible workers had to wait over 70 days to receive their benefits. Without their unemployment benefits, many unemployed…

Massachusetts Senator Pat Jehlen’s newsletter does an excellent job of describing the frustrations with the Baker-Polito Administration’s rollout of vaccinations for people 75 and older. I urge you to read it. https://mailchi.mp/electpatjehlen/vaccination-frustration?e=06c0f8c150 Note that although the Administration is trying to blame the problems on the federal government and is claiming that Massachusetts has not received enough vaccine doses, there are hundreds of thousands of doses in Massachusetts that have not been administered. The Globe reported on Thursday, Feb. 4, that the Administration was “redirecting large quantities of unused doses now sitting in freezers.”  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/03/metro/baker-says-reggie-lewis-center-roxbury-will-designate-days-local-residents-get-their-shots/

The Baker-Polito Administration says widespread COVID testing for public school students and staffs is finally coming in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, some parents with the time and financial resources had implemented their own testing. They created the model that the Administration is now going to replicate and expand. Public school parents in Harvard, Wellesley, and Needham implemented their own testing systems run by volunteers and funded with private fundraising in the absence of testing by the state. https://commonwealthmagazine.org/health/state-launching-weekly-school-covid-testing-initiative/ Their testing reassured families and teachers that returning to classrooms is safe; it provided important peace of mind. Identifying people who are carrying and potentially spreading the virus, even if they don’t have symptoms, is critical in building confidence that schools are safe. The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents has…

Despite the Baker-Polito Administration’s promises to make equity for communities of color a centerpiece of the state’s vaccination plan, white residents have been getting vaccinated at rates well over 50% higher than the rates for Black or Latino residents. Access has been part of the problem. In Boston and Suffolk County, only 14% of Blacks and 26% of Latinos live within a mile of a vaccination site, while 46% of white residents do. In suburban Weston, which is 80% white and has a median income of over $200,000, eligible residents can get vaccinated at Town Hall. Two other wealthy, white suburbs, Newton and Needham, have three vaccination sites within three miles of each other. Furthermore, the administration has been slow to roll out a public awareness and education campaign, contributing…

The Baker-Polito Administration’s management failures in implementing COVID  vaccinations are clearly evident in its lack of clear goals, a failure to learn from past mistakes, little apparent sense of urgency, a failure to embrace best practices seen in other states, and a lack of flexibility. With the vaccinations, it has made the same mistake of focusing on hospitals and ignoring long-term care facilities that it made in the spring, which led to MA having one of the worst death rates in long-term care facilities in the country. When hospitals and universities have had extra doses of vaccines available, direction from the administration on how to use them has been confusing and frustrating. (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/28/nation/while-some-struggle-get-vaccine-colleges-hospitals-face-different-problem-what-do-with-surplus-doses) The state’s data and tracking systems are inefficient. The Baker-Polito Administration had promised local health departments an…