By Shira Schoenberg
BOSTON — On Nov. 15, the Massachusetts Legislature will go on break until January. During that time, the only bills likely to be passed are non-controversial items that do not face opposition.
Lawmakers have some major bills still pending as they approach the recess.
Here’s a look at what they are.
The Senate recently released a 159-section bill aimed at lowering health care costs.
The bill deals with a huge range of topics, from lowering hospital readmissions to increasing state oversight of drug pricing.
A legislative committee held an hours-long public hearing on the bill Monday, and the bill is expected to be debated by the Senate before lawmakers leave in November.
The bill will then go the House, which is likely to spend time on its own rewrite, pushing the issue into the new year.
Gov. Charlie Baker also introduced a series of potential reforms to MassHealth during the summer budget process, which are still before the Legislature. They could be debated as part of the larger cost containment bill.
“I recognize and appreciate it’s complicated,” Baker said, adding that he hopes action will be taken on health care when the Legislature returns next year.
There are two bills pending right now on criminal justice.
One is based on a review by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and focuses primarily on inmate education and post-release supervision.
That bill is pending in the House and has support from leaders in the House and Senate, leaders in the judiciary and the governor.
A second bill pending in the Senate would go much further and include myriad recommendations, including provisions related to sentencing reform and bail reform.
House leaders have voiced support for passing a criminal justice bill that goes further than the Council of State Governments bill, but they have not yet said what that will look like.
If both houses decide to debate their respective bills by mid-November, criminal justice reform would end up in a conference committee, where House and Senate negotiators could spend time over the break trying to hash out their differences.
Restrictions on bump stocks made it through both the House and the Senate as part of a supplemental budget bill, but there are differences between the two versions that need to be hashed out. Bump stocks are devices that can be attached to a semi-automatic weapon to make it shoot as fast as an automatic one.
There is significant support for this in the Legislature, and some urgency, after a mass shooter in Las Vegas use a bump stock to increase the deadliness of his weapon when he shot up a country music concert. Lawmakers will likely take this up before the break.
Regardless of what happens with the attached bump stock ban, the supplemental budget to close out 2017 needs to be passed. The supplemental budget is meant to add approximately $80 million in spending to accounts that remain underfunded for fiscal year 2017, which ended June 30.
Baker said the comptroller’s office has made clear that funding must be allocated by Oct. 31.
“My hope and expectation is we’ll get something in time to close the books on the fiscal year,” Baker said.
Senate President Stan Rosenberg, D-Amherst, said House and Senate leaders are still negotiating the final bill. He declined to say what the sticking points are.
The Baker administration has asked for authority to bond money for capital projects through two separate bills — one focused on housing and the other for general state building projects.
Baker said Monday that the bills have funding both for new projects but also for deferred maintenance.
“It would be terrific if those could get done before the break,” Baker said. “I do worry if some roof caves in the middle of the winter on some college campus and we don’t have the authorization (to spend money fixing it).”
Source: JusticeCenter