As vaccine deadline passes, 95% of state employees have complied
Photo | Matt Wright
COVID vaccines have become widely available in Massachusetts.
Millions have gotten it, and more want it, mostly for their children. There are boosters with evolving eligibility standards and the possibility for mixing and matching. Others flat out still refuse to get it.
The COVID-19 vaccine landscape is becoming more complex by the day, but tens of thousands of state employees started their work week on Monday under a simple directive: Prove it (vaccination) or lose it (job).
Deadline day arrived for more than 42,000 state employees who call Gov. Charlie Baker their boss, and the administration reported that 40,462 active employees, or 95.2 percent, complied with Baker's executive order requiring them to show proof of vaccination, request a health or religious exemption or risk losing their job.
That left just over 1,500 public employees who failed comply with the executive order, and it had Baker feeling pretty good about his decision to enforce a vaccine mandate.
"The fact that 95 percent of our employees have attested to either being vaccinated or having to file for an exemption -- and the vast, vast, vast majority have been vaccinated -- I think is an indication from the state workforce that they agree with us," Baker said on Monday, after meeting with legislative leaders.
Although the question of enforcement remains an open one.
Technically, anyone who missed the Sunday deadline to show proof of vaccination should be serving a five-day suspension, but Baker said agencies are reaching out to those employees trying to understand their situations.
The State Police Association of Massachusetts has been among the most vocal opponents of Baker's vaccine mandate, and on Monday union leadership said it had 299 members in limbo, including 200 waiting on decisions about their waiver applications and 99 in plain defiance of the order who had not yet been disciplined.
Baker said remaining exemption requests would be processed in the next two weeks, and in the meantime he was "not concerned" about meeting staffing needs at the State Police, or any other agency.
Senate President Karen Spilka said she wasn't concerned about discipline or staffing either because 100 percent of Senate members and staff responded by her Oct. 15 deadline to get vaccinated, allowing her to think about moving ahead with a hybrid work model for the branch. Not too far behind, the House COVID-19 Working Group finalized its Nov. 1 vaccine deadline and masking rules for the State House.
While boosting vaccination rates among adults remains a goal, the attention of lawmakers and the administration is also drifting toward making sure children have access. With federal approval expected within weeks for 5- to 11-year-olds to get a COVID-19 shot, the House and Senate had an oversight hearing to make sure Massachusetts is ready.
Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said she expects 515,000 children to become eligible by next month, and anticipates 360,000 doses being received and made available at over 700 locations by the first week in November.
Of course, the falling leaves, cooler nights and the impending arrival of November means the clock is really ticking on the Legislature to make some decisions.
Baker signed a $303 million closeout budget on Wednesday that allows for about $1.5 billion in surplus tax revenue from fiscal 2021 to be deposited in an escrow account for legislators to decide at a later date how to spend. The move to temporarily set aside last year's surplus was unique and made, according to Democratic leaders, in order to allow Comptroller William McNamara to balance the books for last year without rushing the Legislature to make decisions on how to spend the extra cash.
Of course, what it looks like to be in a rush in the real world versus on Beacon Hill are two different things.
Gov. Charlie Baker filed a budget to spend the surplus back in August, and even before that he put forward a plan to spend just over half of the state's American Rescue Plan Act funds.
House and Senate leaders are now looking this fall at how to allocate both pots of money, worth around $6.3 billion combined, all while monitoring Washington to try to avoid overlapping with the trillions of dollars Congressional Democrats are looking to throw at infrastructure, child care and Medicaid, if they can only just reach agreement amongst themselves.
Baker said he was optimistic that the Legislature was preparing a "pretty, pretty comprehensive and pretty significant" ARPA spending bill, and he reupped his recommendation that $1 billion from the surplus be used replenish the unemployment insurance system.
That spending bill could very well be the next major item to find itself on the House calendar. But this week it was the decennial redistricting map drawn by Assistant House Majority Leader Michael Moran that was up for a vote.
On the House side, Moran and the Special Committee on Redistricting made some changes before it went to the floor to strengthen two of the 33 majority-minority districts on the map in New Bedford and Framingham.
The final product passed 158-1 with strong bipartisan support.
Things have not been so smooth in the Senate, where Senate President Pro Tempore William Brownsberger's map for the 40 members of that branch has been picked apart and subjected to threats of lawsuits.
Brownsberger heard that feedback and drew a brand new majority-minority district that includes Brockton, Avon and half of Randolph, upending the district currently represented by Sen. Michael Brady and meeting advocates part way.
He also reconsidered initial plans to split Ward 16 in Boston, but did not fundamentally alter plans to controversially split Haverhill between two districts to create a new majority-minority district anchored in Lawrence.
Rather than push for a vote this week, the Senate will consider the revised plan next Thursday as members of Congress and the Governor's Council also continue to wait to see how legislative leaders might alter their constituencies.
Without redistricting to consider, senators passed two other bills, neither of which knocked anything off Democrats' stated agenda for the fall.
One bill, similar to legislation that passed last session, would require middle and high schools to teach students about genocide. The other focused on making it easier and faster for military spouses to transfer professional licenses into Massachusetts when their families are relocated here.
The week also brought news of more delays in the Green Line Extension, though the MBTA project remains on budget, which is saying something.
After pushing back the planned opening of the new Union Square station in Somerville from October to December this summer, T General Manager Steve Poftak said the agency was tacking another three months onto that timeline.
"Excuse me while I go break every object I can find. I understand these things happen, but I don't have to like it," Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone tweeted, reflecting on the fact that the delay means he will no longer be mayor when the first trolleys roll through Union Square.
The Green Line's Lechmere and Union Square stations will now open in March, and Poftak said, "I do have a real high level of confidence that this will be the last delay ... "
Meanwhile, the second branch of the extension into Medford was on a May 2022 opening trajectory, and Poftak is clinging to hope that will remain possible.
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