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Politics

Immigrant license law takes center stage in WBZ debate

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Is Massachusetts’ new law to allow immigrants living here without legal status in the country to apply for state driver’s licenses a matter of public safety or a statement of lax immigration policy? It depends who you ask.

The lines were pretty clearly drawn this weekend in a WBZ-TV debate between Democratic state Sen. Lydia Edwards and Republican nominee for attorney general Jay McMahon.

Edwards, advocating for a “yes” vote when the question of whether to keep the law in place appears on the November statewide ballot, repeatedly argued that the measure is nothing more than making sure that more people driving on Massachusetts roads are “licensed, tested and insured.”

McMahon, urging voters to say “no” to the law and repeal it, said it unduly rewards people who did not enter the United States “the right way” and makes Massachusetts a “magnet” for illegal immigration.

The Legislature passed the law over Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto and opponents easily gathered more than enough signatures to give voters the opportunity to repeal the policy on the November ballot. The Republican Party and some of its statewide candidates like McMahon expect that the repeal effort will gin up enthusiasm for their campaigns.

Under the new law effective July 1, 2023, all Massachusetts residents who are old enough will be eligible to apply for standard driver’s licenses, regardless of their immigration status. Immigrants who do not have legal status in the U.S. will need to submit other documents — including either a valid, unexpired foreign passport or a valid, unexpired consular identification document — to prove their identity, date of birth and current residency.

“This is not doing anything besides assuring that a person is able and has the permission to drive. And that just makes sense. That’s the safest possible thing we can do. At the end of the day, I don’t think we should be enacting policy that is about legitimizing or not legitimizing individuals and their decisions and how they got here; I genuinely don’t care,” Edwards said in the debate moderated by Jon Keller. “I need to know that someone is driving and knows how to drive, that they’ve been tested, that they have insurance. That’s the safest thing for me and my family. And that, at the end of the day, is all I think most people care about: their families and making sure that they’re safe.”

McMahon responded to that, “To be honest, I do care how they got here.”

“I care because it’s a public safety concern. We want to know who’s crossing our borders, and why they’re coming here. And when they come here illegally, we want to know why are they coming here illegally? Why don’t they go through the proper points of entry? Why would they sneak into the country? Now somebody would say, ‘Well, they’re just looking for a job.’ Well, if they come in the right way, if they fill out the correct paperwork and go to the proper ports of entry, they can get that,” McMahon, a Bourne attorney and former law enforcement officer, said. “Millions of people do it the right way. So I’m always suspect when someone, in their first act of coming into this country, and it’s an illegal act.”

Between the license law repeal effort that’s underway and Martha’s Vineyard’s role in what has become an ongoing national news story about the immigration policies and practices of some Republican governors like Ron DeSantis in Florida, immigration policy has been thrust into the Bay State conversation weeks out from the Nov. 8 statewide elections. A couple of times during the 25-minute debate, Edwards said she would be happy to debate immigration policy with McMahon another time but that Question 4 is not about immigration policy.

“It’s about whether people should be vetted, whether they should be tested and whether they should be able to prove and earn a driver’s license in this state,” she said.

Though the notion that the new law would be a threat to public safety was a central theme to McMahon’s argument, he also acknowledged that there is support for the law from major police organizations, like the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police Association, and offered an explanation for law enforcement’s support.

“When you arrest someone, especially if they’re illegal aliens and they have no documentation, you cannot do a background check on them. So what the police departments are looking at is maybe there’s some identification so that they don’t have to arrest the person. … the departments don’t want to keep arresting these people and have them walk out the door of the courthouse paying a $100 fine,” McMahon said. He later added, “They’re gonna have to arrest otherwise, and they’d rather write a citation.”

Supporters of the law have repeatedly noted that more than a dozen other states already have similar policies in place.

Sunday Notebook: Pieces of a busy week in Massachusetts politics

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Picked-up pieces while bracing for the “soft-ish landing” that the new president and CEO of the Boston Fed thinks is a possibility as nagging inflation nears (or has just passed) its peak:

• The two local reporters waiting for Maura Healey after her speech to the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Millbury on Thursday had basically the same question for the Boston Democrat who has been leading in gubernatorial race polling: What do you say to people around here who have gotten used to having one of our own representing us in the corner office and now face a choice between two Eastern Mass.-heavy tickets? Will they have the same kind of representation?”They absolutely will. You know, I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire and I have long said, both as attorney general and hopefully if given the privilege of being governor, that I will be a governor for the entire state, supporting Central Mass., supporting Western Mass., supporting all the regions,” Healey said. “I think that there are a lot of wonderful things underway and we’re going to continue to support Central Massachusetts.”

Central Mass. has had a pretty good run of influence in the corner office recently, but it comes to an end in January. There have been blips without any direct pull, like the four-year Romney administration and the two years after Tim Murray resigned, but the region has sent someone to the governor’s or lieutenant governor’s office for about 30 years.

Let’s stipulate here that we’re counting Hudson as part of central Mass. for the purposes of this exercise. Yes, it’s just inside of Interstate 495, and yes, it’s Middlesex County. But it’s pretty much right on the line, and it allows us to count Paul Cellucci, who was lieutenant governor or governor from 1991 until April 2001.

The next roughly six years were dimmer days for the middle part of the state. While Jane Swift brought a western Mass. perspective to her years as governor, the next four years of Mitt Romney and Kerry Healey were absent of central Mass. influence. That all changed when Worcester’s boy mayor, Tim Murray, was sworn in as lieutenant governor in early 2007. The year-and-a-half vacancy Murray’s resignation left has been filled since 2015 by Shrewsbury’s Karyn Polito.

• Staying outside of the Beacon Hill bubble for a while, let’s head down to the South Coast and check in on Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Rodrigues. The Ways and Means posts are always busy jobs, but Rodrigues and his House counterpart, Aaron Michlewitz, are right in the thick of pretty much every major issue at the State House right now.The Westport Democrat is leading the Senate’s negotiations on the long-stalled economic development bill that was left unfinished when legislative Democrats were stunned by the late July revelation that about $3 billion of the state’s massive surplus was due to be returned to taxpayers. With that statutorily-required tax relief on track to go out the door, Rodrigues answered the big question since late July: will the House and Senate still follow through on the separate tax rebate plan that was agreed to as the Legislature’s way of responding to inflation and high gas prices?

“That’s still yet to be determined; probably not,” Rodrigues told WBSM’s SouthCoast Tonight. “Because $3 billion worth of checks are going out.”

He continued: “After the $3 billion gets returned to the taxpayers, we are still going to have a fiscal year 22 surplus of over $2 billion. The economic development bill totaled over $4 billion and a little over $3 billion in cash spent.”

Instead, Rodrigues told WBSM that he expects “we will able to pass an economic development bill in the neighborhood of maybe $2.5 billion.”

The Mass. Taxpayers Foundation agreed with Rodrigues to a degree when it put out its latest analysis of the state’s surplus situation. After the Chapter 62F money goes out, MTF said the state will still have a surplus of $2.39 billion. But MTF thinks that the Legislature can move forward with plenty more spending than Rodrigues projected this week.

“After accounting for 62F payments, the House and Senate can easily accommodate more than $3 billion in economic development spending if they adopt the Governor’s [closeout supplemental budget] plan and $4 billion if they do not move forward with several major spending initiatives included in Governor Baker’s closeout,” the organization that the Legislature relies upon for tax revenue forecasts and more wrote in its latest paper.

• The state’s health care system, its costs and the increasing stress that puts on Massachusetts residents were in the spotlight this week as the Health Policy Commission published its annual health care cost trends report and also approved a first-of-its-kind plan to rein in spending at Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest hospital system.Over the next 18 months, MGB will work to reduce its prices, adjust rates, reduce utilization, and shift care to lower-cost sites all in an attempt to cut its annual spending by $127 million and then to sustain the cost savings. MGB, which had more commercial spending in excess of the state’s health care cost growth benchmark than any other provider between 2014 and 2019, said it welcomes the HPC’s oversight as it adjusts to the new realities of its industry.

“The pandemic has profoundly changed our lives, our economy, and it has permanently changed health care. Hospitals and healthcare systems across the state, including Mass General Brigham, continue to operate over capacity, seeing more patients than they have beds for,” MGB President and CEO Anne Klibanski said in a statement. “Patients are sicker from delayed care, and we have no choice but to care for people in the hallways of our Emergency Departments. Combined with labor and supply chain shortages, this can make it difficult to provide the right care, at the right time.”

The frustration that many people feel whenever they have to interact with the health care system was illustrated vividly this week by Fred Toettcher, co-host of 98.5 The Sports Hub’s popular “Toucher and Rich” morning show who has been having problems with one of his feet and went to an area hospital this week at the urging of his general practitioner.

Over half an hour on Wednesday, Toettcher regaled listeners with every detail of his 10-plus hours at the hospital, accompanied by his elderly father. He doesn’t name the hospital, but describes hours of waiting for limited care, rude staffers who questioned why he was at their facility at all, and the uncomfortable and awkward situations that present themselves in shared hospital rooms.

“For the privilege of going there, it’s $350,” Toettcher, who said he had been to the hospital a handful of times recently, said.

The last straw for the morning yakker was when, after about 10 hours and getting no treatment beyond 5 mg of a painkiller, Toettcher was told that he wouldn’t be getting an IV antibiotic as had helped him previously. He said he stood up and began tearing EKG electrodes off his chest.

“So I rip it all out. And then the doctor comes in and he’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ I go, ‘I’m getting the hell out of here … There’s no point in — why am I here?’ And he’s like, ‘Um, well, we’re gonna give you a steroid.’ And I go, ‘I got the steroids at home!’ And he goes, ‘Well, I guess we could observe you’,” Toettcher said. He added, “And I go, ‘I’m not paying for this’ and he goes, ‘You don’t have insurance?’ Well done, sir! You really get the game, because of course, insurance is gonna cover all of this. I won’t get any bills from the hospital at all. Well done, I love your understanding of the medical industry, you jackass.”

• Days after a Boston Herald column called for her resignation or firing for her ties to a cannabis company, new Cannabis Control Commission Chairwoman Shannon O’Brien addresses the issue and the reasons her work in the industry she now oversees was not broadly disclosed in an appearance on WCVB-TV’s “On The Record” set to air this Sunday morning.”This past year, I signed an attestation. I basically gave up all ownership, equity and control in that company. That attestation is to be filed with the Cannabis [Control] Commission. I disclosed all this to the treasurer, I talked to the folks at Ethics [Commission] because I have no ownership and control,” the former state treasurer tells co-hosts Janet Wu and Ed Harding. “I have no conflict. But out of an abundance of caution, anything to do with any group that I’ve worked with, I will recuse myself in the future.”

• A tip of the cap to Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, the master of this “picked-up pieces” format. I wonder if the “The Curse of the Bambino” author has considered a sequel, “The Curse of the Attorney General.”In a great column in Sports Illustrated after Scott Brown upset Martha Coakley in the 2010 special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Shaughnessy wrote, “Welcome to Massachusetts, where it’s always about sports, politics and revenge. … In our town sports and politics are intertwined like strands on a double helix. You rarely see one without the other.”

The references in the column are gold: Coakley claiming that Red Sox hero (this was 2010…) Curt Schilling was a Yankees fan, Michael Dukakis’ 1978 re-election loss and its roots in the Red Sox late-season slide and one-game playoff loss to the Yanks, Auditor Joe DeNucci’s pro boxing career, and one prediction that certainly reads differently in 2022 than it did in 2010.

“Tom Brady for President,” Shaughnessy wrote. “Someday.”

• As another disappointing Boston Red Sox season mercifully approaches its end, so too does the last full season of any of our professional sports teams under Gov. Charlie Baker. Baker will leave office in January just behind Gov. John Volpe, who served as governor from 1961 to 1963 and again 1965 to 1969, on the list of governors who presided over the most Boston region team championships in the big four men’s sports.Volpe was in the corner office for five Boston Celtics victories in the 1960s — championships in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1968. Baker was in office for the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl victories following the 2014, 2016 and 2018 seasons, and the Boston Red Sox last World Series championship, in 2018.

Also tied with four pro championships are Govs. Francis Sargent (Celtics 1969, Bruins 1970, Bruins 1972 and Celtics 1974) and Deval Patrick (Red Sox 2007, Celtics 2008, Bruins 2011 and Red Sox 2013).

The New England Whalers, playing their final season in Boston before moving to Hartford, won the defunct World Hockey Association’s playoff championship in 1973. If you want to count that, Sargent would be bumped up to a tie with Volpe at five championships. And counting the Boston Pride women’s hockey team’s three championships since 2016 would put Baker in the lead.

Govs. Mitt Romney (Patriots 2004, Red Sox 2004 and Patriots 2005), Michael Dukakis (Celtics 1976, 1984 and 1986) and Foster Furcolo (Celtics 1957, 1959 and 1960) each were in office for three championships. No governor has presided over a championship victory of each of the four major Boston area teams and only Patrick has been governor for championships in three of the four sports.

STORY OF THE WEEK: It’s the economy (and pandemic), stupid. All roads led to those destinations this week: The MBTA might have to wait even longer for its new Orange and Red Line train cars, Gov. Baker and his New England counterparts are trying to get ahead of high home heating costs this winter with an ask for federal help, and the effects of remote learning are still showing up in standardized test results.

SONG OF THE WEEK: Opening up to the people of the Blackstone Valley about how much the region reminds her of her childhood days hopping a stone wall to pilfer apples from a nearby orchard, one of Maura Healey’s messages was, “I am everyday people.”

Former Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong named chair of Baby Bonds Task Force

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FITCHBURG – Former Mayor Lisa Wong will be the next chair of the Baby Bonds Task Force.

State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg named Wong, who served as mayor of Fitchburg from 2007 to 2015 and was the state’s first Asian-American mayor, as the new chair on Wednesday. Wong is set to take over for Shannon O’Brien, who was appointed Chair of the Cannabis Control Commission earlier this month.

“I’m eager to take over as Chair of the Baby Bonds Task Force and work with a diverse group of Massachusetts leaders to research a potential Baby Bonds program in the state,” Wong said in a press release announcing the move. “Establishing Baby Bonds will help ensure the economic security for future generations of Massachusetts residents, and I look forward to providing the Task Force’s recommendations to Treasurer Goldberg.”

Baby Bonds are being looked at across the country as a way to develop government-supported trust funds for children, providing resources that will address the income inequality gap. When participants reach adulthood, they can access these funds that grow over time to use towards asset-building activities such as higher education, buying a home, or starting a business. Baby Bonds aim to close the racial wealth gap by giving children of low-income families financial opportunities when they turn 18.

Convened in June, the task force is responsible for developing a comprehensive plan on how to create an at-birth, publicly funded trust fund program for Massachusetts residents. The task force intends to deliver its final recommendations by November, before the legislative filing deadline, according to the press release.

Goldberg said Wong’s previous experience would be an “asset” to the task force.

“I am confident that (Wong’s) background in fiscal management and knowledge of the economic issues our residents face will be an asset to the Task Force,” Goldberg said. “Massachusetts is home to one of the largest racial wealth gaps in the country. Lisa’s experience and knowledge will support the development of strategies and ideas to narrow the gap, and support the financial stability of our entire state.”

For more information on Baby Bonds or the Baby Bonds Task Force, visit www.mass.gov/babybonds

Sunday Notebook: As a cold wind blows, prepare for this winter’s heating bills to hurt

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Snap poll: when you woke up Friday to find a crisp morning with the temp hovering somewhere south of 50 degrees, did you fire up the heat?

Some of our hardier readers probably scoffed at the question — it’s not even October, and this is New England, where a higher tolerance for cold weather is a badge of pride. Just put on a sweater, they might say. And as the calendar flips forward, that resistance might be more potent than in years past.

Many Bay State families will face significant strain to keep their homes warm this winter amid projections that energy bills will soar, the latest blow in months of relentless inflation. Utility giant National Grid attributed the looming challenges to spiking natural gas prices amid “global conflict, inflation and high demand.”

Massachusetts officials did not roll out the same kind of sugar-coat spin they often use. “At best,” Baker administration Undersecretary of Energy and Climate Solutions Judy Chang said, it will be “a very high-cost energy winter.” Attorney General Maura Healey’s press secretary cautioned the rate hike will be “devastating for hundreds of thousands of customers in Massachusetts who simply cannot afford it.”

The example National Grid provided for a basic service customer forecasts a $114 increase in a monthly electric bill. If that holds true, only a couple of months of chilly temperatures at the higher energy rates will effectively wipe out any one-time relief Bay State taxpayers can expect from state government.

Lawmakers approved but never finalized rebates of $250 for single middle-income earners and $500 for married middle-income earners, a plan legislative leaders pitched at the time as a more targeted way to address inflation and prices at the pump than suspending the state’s gas tax. The Baker administration predicts tax refunds under Chapter 62F will cover about 13 percent of what a taxpayer paid the state last year; the average middle-quintile earner in 2019 owed $1,642 in state income taxes, which would translate to a check of about $213, though the final amount will vary based on other credits.

Top Democrats either tacitly or explicitly signaled they are mostly on board with the plan Gov. Charlie Baker rolled out a week ago to return nearly $3 billion to taxpayers using checks and direct deposits this fall. It seems less and less likely they have the appetite to intervene and change the proportional formula that will direct most of the money to higher earners who paid most of the taxes.

While House budget chief state Rep. Aaron Michlewitz called complaints that millionaires who probably do not need the money will get tens of thousands of dollars “a legitimate gripe,” he made clear House Democrats are not currently planning to change the voter-approved law “midstream.” That’s a conversation for the future, he said, maybe next session.

Even though the final amount of money due back to taxpayers ($2.941 billion) is within a single percentage point of the Baker administration’s estimate from late July ($2.965 billion), Michlewitz maintained this week that he and fellow lead negotiator state Sen. Michael Rodrigues still need more time to figure out if the state has enough money to cover both the mandatory relief and the roughly $4 billion economic development and tax relief bill the branches approved this summer and then shelved.

His uncertainty extends to the aforementioned one-time relief checks.

“We’re still looking at all of that. Everything is still on the table,” Michlewitz said, nearly two months after Baker made public the impending impact of 62F. “The challenge that we faced was with 62F being triggered and those rebates going out, we do have to reanalyze what we can and can’t afford. That’s currently what we’re working on right now.”

In the meantime, the House has signaled it’s closer to a conclusion on allowing a new local tax to take effect.

The chamber quietly gave initial approval to a home rule petition from Boston that would authorize the city to impose a charge of up to 2 percent on real estate transactions worth more than $2 million, designed to generate revenue — up to $100 million, in Mayor Michelle Wu’s estimation — for affordable housing.

It’s not clear how far the measure will make it during the informal sessions, where a single lawmaker’s objection can stall a bill, on tap for the remainder of the term.

Lawmakers also need to wrangle during informal sessions with Baker’s proposed changes to a road safety bill, which emerged as the most significant item of business so far during an otherwise quiet, vacation-filled stretch for the Legislature.

The Republican governor sent back a wide-ranging bill seeking to pare down the minimum “safe passing distance” requirement to a more consistent and less confusing measurement, and he also warned that allowing municipalities to set a 25 miles per hour speed limit on state roads in densely populated areas could imperil federal funds for road and bridge construction.

There might not be a Massachusetts bridge construction project more high-profile than the planned replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges — well, unless you’re former Republican congressional candidate Rick Green, who in 2018 swam across the Merrimack River in a campaign ad highlighting the nightmarish traffic on Lowell’s Rourke Bridge — but that effort is not off to a flying start.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struck out on the first of several applications for federal grants to help foot the bill for demolishing the pair of 87-year-old bridges and building new spans connecting Cape Cod to the rest of Massachusetts.

We wish we could say exactly how much of a blow that represents, but both the Army Corps and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation are staying tight-lipped about exactly how much funding their unsuccessful bid for an INFRA grant sought.

The federal government only awarded $1.5 billion in this round, with the largest grant totaling $150 million, so maybe it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference to a Cape Cod bridges project that could spiral to as much as $4 billion in costs.

There are other grant program options still in play for the federally-owned bridges, so it could wind up being nothing more than an early hurdle, but the Cape residents and millions of tourists who cross the canal every year will need to continue their wait for a funding plan.

Off the coast of the cape, fallout continues from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s move to fly immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard using taxpayer dollars. DeSantis now faces a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of the immigrants, who allege they were subject to a “ruse to exploit them for political purposes.”

One matter that will not get decided in federal court is the case of Newton District Court Judge Shelley Joseph, who was indicted more than three years ago on allegations that she helped an undocumented immigrant facing drug possession charges evade an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer seeking to detain him at the courthouse.

Joseph and U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island Zachary Cunha struck an agreement that will drop the federal charges and instead shift her case to a state judicial disciplinary review.

It’s a sign of the changing times: a Trump-appointed prosecutor filed the indictment against Joseph, and now a Biden-appointed prosecutor dropped the charges.

STORY OF THE WEEK: The checks flowing back to taxpayers this fall might not make much of a difference if projections about exploding energy prices hold true.

SONG OF THE WEEK: They may not span troubled water, but an early grant application failure poses a headache for officials planning to replace the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges. (Thanks to our friends at Bloomberg Baystate Business for the inspiration.)

Sunday Notebook: Oh what a (tax) relief it is

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That great whooshing noise you heard Friday was the sound of millions of Bay Staters trying to dig out their 2021 tax return to calculate just how much money the state could be sending them later this fall.

The prospect of tax relief under an obscure and largely-forgotten voter law called Chapter 62F first emerged in late July like a mirage in the inflation desert, but two significant announcements this week have it looking like it’s actually a real oasis.

First, Auditor Suzanne Bump certified that state tax collections last budget year surpassed the limit established by 62F by more than $2.94 billion, confirming that the state is required to return that amount in proportion to what each taxpayer paid in income tax. Within about 24 hours, Gov. Charlie Baker’s office announced that about 3.6 million Bay State taxpayers can expect to get “a credit in the form of a refund” worth roughly 13% of their income tax liability last year. The credit/refunds will start going out in November either by mail or via direct deposit.

The median income for Massachusetts households from 2016 through 2020 was $84,385, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That amount of income (not factoring in credits or deductions and filed as the head of the household) would result in a state income tax liability of $3,999, according to a Forbes income tax calculator. Thirteen percent of the tax liability for the median household income — in other words, the credit that the median household could expect — would be about $520.

Or think of it this way: For every $1,000 paid in state income tax, about $130 will be refunded. (You can also use the state’s own refund calculator.)

With the fate of the Chapter 62F tax relief mostly settled — some Democrats are miffed that Baker plan to issue refunds rather than credits on next year’s taxes and others are still talking about trying to alter the law to make the distribution of the excess tax revenue more equitable — the big question now is what will become of the $1 billion in tax refunds and reforms that legislative Democrats had already agreed to before they realized that 62F would come into play.

“With the certification of 62F, it is my hope that we may now expeditiously pass an economic development bill that provides additional and equitable tax relief to residents and that invests in communities, small businesses, human service workers and industries,” Senate President Karen Spilka said this week.

Problem is, House Speaker Ron Mariano doesn’t seem to see things the same way. While Baker and Spilka have repeatedly said they think there is enough left over from the fiscal year 2022 surplus (about $2.3 billion after the 62F money is returned) to move ahead with the tax relief and investments in the economic development bill that’s been stalled since late July, Mariano still has not been convinced.

“Now that the Auditor has officially certified the final revenue numbers, and with the knowledge of the exact amount that will be given back to taxpayers under 62F, conferees currently negotiating an economic development package will continue their ongoing talks,” Mariano said without explicitly voicing the same kind of support for additional tax relief as Spilka.

If anything is going to get done before the legislative session officially ends the first week of January, coordination between Spilka and Mariano will have to sync up. Now that formal sessions have ended under the House and Senate rules, the objection of any one representative or senator can grind all work to a halt. So both leaders will have to work to get their members on board with whatever plan they come up with.

The House and Senate leaders of the Transportation Committee were on the same page Wednesday as they grilled the head of the Department of Public Utilities and others about the MBTA’s flunking grade for safety. The DPU is supposed to be responsible for oversight of the T and has been chastised by the Federal Transit Administration for not overseeing the system “adequately.”

“We have a series of events I outlined in my opening remarks, really a five-alarm fire here, yet you never rang the alarm,” co-chair state Sen. Brendan Crighton said to DPU Chair Matthew Nelson during Wednesday’s oversight hearing. “You have not been there when safety incidents have occurred, and I need to know why, frankly.”

Nelson, a former Eversource executive tapped by Baker for the DPU job, said that his agency had done the bare minimum, but also acknowledged that more is required of it given the persistent — and in at least one case, fatal — safety problems at the T.

“MBTA is still the primary and first line of defense on all safety activities. We’re an auditing department,” he said. Nelson added, “I’m trying to say we’ve met our requirements, but given the circumstances, more needs to be done.”

As Nelson and then MBTA Board Chair Betsy Taylor testified, workers along the Orange Line continued to address the kind of safety and infrastructure problems that the FTA called out after its nearly unprecedented safety investigation of the MBTA.

The T is preparing to reactivate the subway line Monday after a 30-day shutdown that, by most accounts, has gone as well as anyone could have hoped and better than almost everyone expected. Sure, the attempt to do five years worth of work in one month made commutes longer and disrupted routines, but none of the most dire predictions from a month ago came to fruition.

Remember the red cloud of doom that Department of Transportation officials overlaid on a map of the Greater Boston region to illustrate the traffic impacts of the subway line’s closure? “It will be chaos,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu predicted in August. MassDOT similarly thought it was going to be pretty bad and suggested that people just avoid the Boston region all together.

Well, the traffic apocalypse didn’t quite pan out and Wu said this week that the Orange Line shutdown actually turned out to be a valuable learning experience for her administration, the T and riders.

“The shuttle bus and all the alternatives, the diversions, have been going so well, relatively speaking,” she said Tuesday on GBH Radio.

The work seems to have been going well, too. As of Friday, the MBTA said it had completed 96% of the work that it set out to get done during the shutdown. T officials are confident the subway line will reopen by Monday as planned.

Some of the Orange Line diversion’s success can surely be attributed to the expectation-setting prowess of MassDOT and the MBTA. Remember the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge replacement project in 2017 and 2018? MassDOT carpeted Red Sox game broadcasts with info about Mass. Turnpike closures and Green Line diversions, and warnings of traffic nightmares.

The whole thing was inconvenient, but it never was as bad as it was made out to be and the Pike even fully reopened 24 hours ahead of schedule. When you’re expecting to take a haymaker to the mouth, a slap across the face doesn’t seem that bad after all.

So what can riders expect Monday morning when they get back on the Orange Line?

“When Orange Line riders return to the line on Sept. 19, they will arrive at deep-cleaned stations and experience a ride that is significantly better than the one that they left,” MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak promised when the shutdown was announced last month.

We’ll see.

STORY OF THE WEEK: National politics made two high-profile visits to Massachusetts this week, arriving by airplane in both instances. First, President Joe Biden flew into Logan on Monday to talk infrastructure and his administration’s goal to dramatically reduce cancer deaths. On Wednesday, the national debate over immigration policy landed here when about 50 Venezuelan migrants sent as part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations” arrived in Martha’s Vineyard unexpectedly.

SONG OF THE WEEK: State government is a far cry from heaven, but millions of Bay Staters could be singing and scatting like Louis Prima when their “pennies” arrive later this fall. (Prima’s one-time drummer, Jimmy Vincent, ran copy between the State House and Newspaper Row as a messenger for the News Service in the 1930s.)

Charlie Baker joins call for federal marriage protections

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Republicans in Massachusetts, including Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, have joined their counterparts from around the nation in calling on the U.S. Senate to approve a bill preserving marriage rights for everyone.

The governor’s communications team on Wednesday morning circulated a list of “Republicans, Libertarians and politically independent conservatives,” who are calling for the adoption of the Respect for Marriage Act.

“Together, we call on the U.S. Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act and reaffirm that marriage for gay and lesbian couples is settled law,” according to an open letter that is also running as a paid advertisement. “Passing the Respect for Marriage Act will remove any uncertainty for the more than one million Americans who are building families, taking on the commitment and responsibilities associated with marriage, and caring for the one they love. Simply put, the Respect for Marriage Act treats all American families as each of us would want to be treated.”

The advertised letter is an effort of Centerline Action, an organization that said it is “focused on forging consensus to advance centrist policy solutions capable of defending core constitutional freedoms and liberties, preserving a free market economy, and limiting the role of government in Americans’ everyday lives.”

Other Bay State-connected Republicans who signed the letter include former Gov. Jane Swift and (briefly) her 2002 running mate Patrick Guerriero, former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, and former Mass. Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei.

Gay marriage supporters are galvanizing to protect marriage rights in the face of a rightward shift on the U.S. Supreme Court and efforts by conservatives to try to revisit and marriage equality.