In July, as the Legislature was gearing up to steamroll Gov. Charlie Baker by restoring almost all of the $265 million in budget vetoes he handed down, the governor’s team announced a hiring freeze across the executive branch. The goal was to hit a $100 million “efficiency savings” target in a state budget Baker had just signed, but one that he warned was vulnerable to spending pressures due to underfunded accounts.
“We are implementing a hiring freeze for all Executive Branch agencies,” former chief human resources officer Paul Dietl wrote in a July 15 memo.
Six months later, and a month after Baker angered state lawmakers by slashing nearly $100 million in spending unilaterally, it’s unclear whether the hiring freeze is still in place.
The status of the freeze is relevant since the bulk of state costs are wrapped up in personnel and many of the initiatives in the $39.25 billion budget, as well as directives authorized under other state laws, are dependent on state workers to implement.
Questions on the hiring freeze arose after the hiring of a deputy communications director at an annual salary of $65,000.
When the freeze was announced in July, Baker’s team said the freeze would continue through the secretariat’s “spending plan process.”
Pressed to say whether the freeze was still in place or if it had been lifted, Administration and Finance communications director Garrett Quinn emailed a second statement. “Hiring controls are still in place. We are managing hiring and personnel costs to stay within spending targets.”
Massachusetts cannabis cultivators, recently legitimized by the legalization of marijuana, could soon find themselves having to cut back on the size of their home grow operations.
The Legislature — which along with Gov. Charlie Baker has already delayed full implementation of the legalization law by six months — is expected to amend the law approved by voters in November, with a higher tax rate on marijuana sales at or near the top of the list of likely alterations.
But Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, during an interview on the Merrimack Valley’s WCAP radio Tuesday morning, suggested the Legislature will consider reducing the current home growing limit of six marijuana plants per adult or a maximum of 12 per household.
“It’s legal now to have 12 plants in your home, but the advocates understand that this is likely to be debated in the process,” Rosenberg said. “According to the people who know a lot more about this than I do, they say that for someone who knows how to truly grow these plants and once you master it — which is not all that hard — 12 plants would produce about 30 marijuana cigarettes a day.” He added, “I mean it’s just it’s a very large quantity to have in your home at any given time.”
Peter Bernard, president of the Mass. Growers Advocacy Council, said Rosenberg’s estimates do not jibe with his own experiences as a medical marijuana grower.
“The reality of it is that the average single home-grown plant is going to yield one to two ounces. A talented grower could maybe get four or five ounces out of one plant, but we don’t have a lot of those in the commonwealth,” Bernard said. “Most of the people who are going to try this are going to try and fail. Those who do succeed will average about two ounces a plant, and it takes about six months to grow beginning to end.”
Jim Borghesani, a spokesman for the Yes on 4 coalition, told the News Service that the groups that worked to legalize marijuana “adamantly disagree with any attempts to reduce” the number of cannabis plants a resident can legally grow.
“That would be a huge mistake and I think it would clearly disrespect the will of the voters. The voters were well aware of the at-home grow limit that was in the initiative and they voted for it by a very solid margin,” Borghesani said. “Our home-grow limit is more restrictive than Colorado’s and the Legislature should not take any action based on no data that I can see, whatsoever, to justify such a move.”
As the Legislature’s work this session ramps up, Rosenberg said any changes to the marijuana law will be made with the input of a full complement of the law’s supporters and detractors.
Republican Rick Green, the wealthy owner of a Pepperell-based auto parts company and founder of the conservative nonprofit Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, may challenge U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren for re-election in 2018, according to two sources with knowledge of his thinking.
Green, who once came up two votes shy of becoming chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, is “thinking about it,” according to a close associate, but feels no rush make a decision despite Warren sounding the starting gun last week when she formally declared her intention to seek a second term.
Warren, a Democrat, was widely expected to seek a second six-year term in 2018, but the timing of her announcement just after the new year dawned came as a surprise to some who expected her to bide her time as the incumbent before launching into a campaign.
Since the election of President-elect Donald Trump, Warren has been one of the loudest national critics of the incoming president and the administration he has been assembling since November. This weekend Warren plans to lead a rally at Faneuil Hall to protest Trump and the Republican Congress for their plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which the GOP blames for rising health care premiums.
Green, while probably not well-known to the electorate, is no stranger to Massachusetts politics. In 2012, he founded MassFiscal and quickly became a thorn in the side of legislative Democrats. His group emerged as a player in electoral politics at the state level, spending freely on mailers and advertisements that targeted the voting records of Democrats on issues like taxes and immigration.
Green and Michael Kane, the owner of 126 Self Storage in Ashland, have sued the state over its ban on corporations making donations to political candidates.
According to an associate, Green feels that while other candidates might have to start fundraising soon to be able to build an organization to compete with Warren, he could self-finance a campaign to get it off the ground before turning to donors.
MassFiscal generally supports lower taxes and fewer regulations on business, the expansion of charter schools and welfare reform. The group’s website also says its opposes mandatory paid leave for workers, higher tax rates for the wealthy in Massachusetts and the Affordable Care Act (in particular the medical device tax).