THE AWKWARD TRANSITION from Senate President Harriette Chandler to Senate president-elect Karen Spilka makes for great copy, but it doesn’t seem to be having a huge impact on the chamber’s legislative output.
Senators are still processing legislation. (Criminal justice reform emerged from a conference committee a little over a week ago.) Votes are being taken. (The Senate passed a civics education requirement and a housing bond bill last week.) The legislative output on Beacon Hill has never been that great, but it’s hard to see how the Senate is doing any worse than the House, which isn’t grappling with any leadership issues.
Yet to read some of the recent press coverage you’d think the Senate is paralyzed by a lack of leadership.
Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker called the Senate “an institution on the edge.” A Globe news story last week said “chaos” has consumed the Senate. “The result, as senators lurch from one bombshell to the next, is that the time for official business is being sidelined by salacious disclosures and internal politics,” the Globe reported.
Hardly.
Meet the Author
Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
There have been plenty of distractions, from the
felony charges lodged against
Bryon Hefner, Sen.
Stanley Rosenberg’s husband, to the
drunk driving charges against Sen.
Michael Brady of Brockton.
But the larger and perhaps more serious problem is the enormous turnover in the Senate. Despite the big pay raise at the start of 2017, five senators left for other jobs during this session. A sixth is running for Congress and a seventh is considering a run for Suffolk County district attorney. One senator announced her retirement and another died in office. Toss in Sen. Michael Barrett’s struggle with cancer and Brady’s struggle with alcohol and you get the picture — nearly a quarter of the state’s senators are either new to the job or distracted by personal matters. That’s the real chaos in the Senate.
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