News Blog

SouthCoast Today: OUR VIEW: Baker voters beware

2010-02-16T17:18:14Z

SouthCoast Today EDITORIAL

February 14, 2010

Charlie Baker is going to be asking the voters of Southeastern Massachusetts to turn from Gov. Deval Patrick and the Democrats in the November election.

He will be counting on convincing voters here that he is the savvy business leader who can dig the state out of a frightening financial and economic mess.

That might be a tough sell all by itself for the former head of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which was placed in receivership by the state's insurance commissioner shortly after he became its chief executive officer and which needed nearly $250 million in a state-sponsored bond issue to remain afloat. He also was the state's secretary of administration and finance during part of the Big Dig project.
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What voters need to know now is that if the Patrick/Murray administration loses, New Bedford and Fall River lose their last, best hope for commuter rail to Boston.

Despite the painful fiscal crisis that has gripped the state for two years, no governor has been a better advocate for Southeastern Massachusetts -- New Bedford in particular -- than this one. He has been here more often and listened more closely to the region's elected leaders, economic development officers and fishing industry representatives in three years than his Republican predecessors did in the prior 16.

And Baker's at best lukewarm support for the region's commuter rail project offers few of us comfort that this most vital economic development initiative will go anywhere under his administration.

For too long, Southeastern Massachusetts has been forced to accept the scraps that fall from the only table that really has mattered to Beacon Hill: Boston and the wealthy suburbs nearby.

The Republicans' real constituency is in those wealthy suburbs, so none of us should be surprised that Baker doesn't much like the preferred rail route that would send trains along the so-called Stoughton route and through the wealthy communities that line it.

Nine months must pass before voters will elect the next governor, and much will happen between now and then. But one thing has been clear for two decades and is clear now: The Republicans will not do much, if anything, on South Coast Rail if they can help it. They would rather talk about other things, but the other things that GOP governors have talked about haven't helped much in old mill towns like Fall River and New Bedford, where unemployment and underemployment are chronic.

It is up to us in Southeastern Massachusetts, therefore, to force the conversation.

South Coast Rail and the future of historic old cities like New Bedford and Fall River must not be left out of the discussion during the 2010 election season. We must force statewide candidates to take positions on issues that are central to our future.

If we do not, we should not expect them to pay attention to us after Election Day.

Baker Opposes SouthCoast Rail

2010-02-11T14:48:34Z

New Bedford Standard-Times: Republican gubernatorial candidate Baker cool to rail expansion
February 11, 2010
Contact Jack Spillane at jspillane@s-t.com

Charlie Baker brought his Republican gubernatorial campaign to New Bedford and Fall River Wednesday but he did not come bringing good news for the two-decade-long local effort to bring commuter rail to the region.
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Commuter rail, especially the preferred Stoughton route through the Hockomock Swamp, is unlikely to happen, in his opinion, Baker said. He called the swamp one of the most important wetland areas in Southeastern Massachusetts.

"I truly don't understand how it could possibly get permitted,environmentally, to run a train through it," he said.

A passenger train ran through the Hockomock Swamp for almost a century but was eliminated in the 1960s; much of the rail bed remains but suburban development has grown up alongside parts of it.

Many residents of the middle-class Boston suburbs of Stoughton, Easton and Raynham - which themselves already have nearby access to nearby commuter rail - have strenuously opposed the re-establishment of passenger train service to SouthCoast.

Baker said his comments last week on a Boston television station (Fox 25) about the Patrick/Murray administration wanting to build "mini-Big Digs all over Massachusetts" were not meant to include the South Coast Rail project, which is estimated to cost some $1.4 billion.

"I wasn't talking about, specifically, about that project," he said, adding he was more worried about the Stoughton route because "the permitting has always struck me as sort of ..." He did not finish his sentence.

Baker did not say which projects he was referring to in the "mini-Big Digs" description in the Fox 25 interview.

Baker, a former cabinet member for both Republican governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci, was skeptical that federal money would ever be available to fund part, or even all, of a SouthCoast rail project.

"The last time I looked, the federal government had the biggest budget deficit in the history of the United States," he said. "If there's one message that came out of the election a couple of weeks ago with that Senate seat, it's that people are terrified about deficit spending at the federal level."

Baker said he would rather spend state money cleaning up industrial brownfield sites in Fall River and New Bedford than on commuter rail.

"Maybe the state should be spending money to help clean up a lot of those (brownfield) sites so that small or big manufacturers would be in a position to make the investment where you could actually use them," he said.

Baker said he believes the waterfronts of both New Bedford and Fall River have "a lot of possibilities" for economic development, "but you have site cleanup issues associated with that that you have to deal with."

He also talked about developing local high-tech manufacturing in niche markets.

"I would much rather figure out some way to grow the local economy down here, and to create jobs down here, and create economic opportunity down here. Now," he said, "as opposed to spending another four, five, six, seven, eight years waiting for the federal government to fund the construction of the rail or waiting for the permitting process to get through."

Baker said a good state investment might be to expand Bristol Community College, a proposal that has been suggested locally in both downtown New Bedford and Taunton.

"Maybe we should be thinking about how to expand Bristol Community's footprint down here in a pretty serious way so the kids who either drop out of high school or graduate, but still need a lot of remedial education, can actually perform at a high school grad level," he said.

Baker's potential opponents in the gubernatorial race both on the Republican and Democratic side differed with his assessment of the need for SouthCoast's commuter rail and its connection to local economic development.

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray said it was Baker's "mismanagement" of the Big Dig as the administration and finance secretary for Weld and Cellucci that resulted in transportation infrastructure such as the local commuter rail project never being built. (Weld, when he was a gubernatorial candidate, guaranteed that he could re-establish the local commuter rail line.)

"(Baker's) mismanagement of the Big Dig, and their lack of honesty with the citizens of the state of the cost, and how we were going to pay for it, starved transportation projects in every region of the state," Murray said.

When the federal government refused to pay any more of the cost overruns at the $15 billion Boston Big Dig (central artery) project, state transportation funds were diverted to it.

Baker, however, in his Fox 25 interview, said that during his tenure as A&F secretary, the cost of the Big Dig remained at $11 billion.

Murray said commuter rail would not just help SouthCoast residents get to jobs in Greater Boston but Boston companies to migrate to SouthCoast where real estate is more affordable.

"For (Baker) to suggest now, that his economic plan for the SouthCoast is solely about cleaning up the brownfield sites, then he just doesn't fully understand what it takes in terms of economic development," he said.

Christy Mihos, a former state turnpike authority board member who is opposing Baker in the Republican primary, said he "absolutely, positively" supports SouthCoast commuter rail as an "economic development engine."

But Mihos said the federal government would have to pay for it because the state could not afford it, given the current budget crisis.

"These would be stimulus funds that really would be for good use,"Mihos said, stating that they would create construction jobs for the purpose of rebuilding the transportation infrastructure.

"This is the poster child of what federal stimulus funds should have been, and could have been used for, instead of being diverted the way
they have been," he said.

Significant portions of the federal stimulus money have been spent on preserving jobs in the government sector, including teaching and public safety (police and fire) jobs in New Bedford.

Like Baker, Mihos said he opposes building a rail line through the Stoughton route. He said that as a resident of Cohasset, he watched the South Shore lawsuits add millions to that commuter line to address environmental suits, and he thinks the Stoughton route would face similar problems.

"I see huge issues at the local level that would make it unaffordable," he said.

State Treasurer Tim Cahill, an independent gubernatorial candidate who opposes SouthCoast commuter rail construction and planning at the present time, declined comment for this column.

Tim Talks with Fox25 at the 5 & Diner in Worcester

2010-02-04T03:42:08Z

Response to House Republican Attacks on Behalf of Charlie Baker:

2010-02-03T13:47:36Z

The following is a statement from Communications Director Alec Loftus in response to House Republican attacks on behalf of Charlie Baker:

"In an attempt to deflect attention from Charlie Baker's responsibility for the Big Dig and crushing debt, House Republicans used their state computers to mail in a political attack that was as tedious as it was false.

"Republicans are desperately attempting to hide the truth about Charlie Baker, who was a leader in multiple administrations responsible for running up debt in Massachusetts to unconscionable levels.

"In stark contrast, three separate bond-rating agencies, Moody's, Fitch, and Standard & Poor's have affirmed the Patrick- Murray Administration's strong fiscal leadership with a AA bond rating.

"Baker and his Republican surrogates in the State House are now trying to re-write history about his role as chief architect of the Big Dig financing scheme. Just ask former Big Dig Chief Matt Amorello, who was right at Baker's side during his latest campaign kickoff."

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Worcester Telegram & Gazette: The Race for Governor

2010-02-03T03:54:36Z

By Robert Z. Nemeth

Now that the historic contest for the U.S. Senate seat is behind us, attention is turning to the next major political battle of the year: the gubernatorial election. The three-way race is between the incumbent Democrat, Deval Patrick, state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, who left the Democratic Party to run as an independent, and a Republican, Charles Baker. Christy Mihos, a Cape Cod businessman, who unsuccessfully ran for the job in 2006, is also in the race. ...

... I talked about the upcoming campaign and the governor's chances of winning a second term with Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, whose political future is closely intertwined with that of Mr. Patrick. A consummate loyalist, he dismissed criticism of his boss and expressed optimism about the future. "The last time I checked the polls, we were winning," he told me.

Read Nemeth's full column.

Statement on Charles Baker's Support of Unlimited Spending by Special Interests and Foreign Companies

2010-01-30T16:26:39Z

BOSTON - Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray today released the following statement on Republican Charles Baker's support[1] of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow special interests and even foreign corporations[2] to spend unlimited amounts of money on our elections.

"This week Charles Baker revealed his support for special interests and foreign corporations in their bid to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections right here in Massachusetts, and across the nation.

"Baker wants to open the floodgates to a new wave of campaign ads this November, funded by special interests and companies that aren't even based in America.

"It is becoming more and more clear that Baker is the candidate of special interests and powerful corporations, and will be indebted to them-and not the people of Massachusetts-if elected governor."

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[1] (NECN, 1/26/10, BroadSide with Jim Braude: Charlie Baker on Governor' Race
http://www.necn.com/pages/landing?blockID=169315)

[2] (The Wall Street Journal, 1/29/10, Foreign spending on politics fought
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704194504575031584009869108.html)

New MetroWest Network to End Homelessness

2010-01-28T15:36:10Z

A new network to end homelessness in the MetroWest area has already helped 79 families move from shelters into permanent housing.

Tim visited Framingham Jan. 27 to officially launch the new regional network of the state's Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness for the MetroWest area.

Read the story in the MetroWest Daily News.

2010 State of the Commonwealth

2010-01-22T17:54:35Z

"It's easy to be against things. It takes tough-mindedness and courage to be for something," said Governor Patrick in his State of the Commonwealth address. "In Massachusetts, at our best, we are for each other, we are about seeing our stake in our neighbors' dreams and struggles as well as our own."
2010 speech text
2009 year in review video
Patrick-Murray Administration accomplishments

On MSNBC, Tim Outlines High Stakes of Senate Race

2010-01-19T02:00:12Z

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Do You Qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit?

2010-01-11T21:39:37Z

Watch Tim's PSA and visit to state's EITC Web site to learn more.

Statement on Treasurer Cahill's Running Mate Selection

2010-01-06T20:43:25Z

BOSTON - Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray today released the following statement on Treasurer Tim Cahill's selection of former Republican Representative Paul Loscocco as his running mate:

"I welcome Republican Representative Paul Loscocco to the campaign as Treasurer Cahill's running mate.

"Voters will have a clear choice in this election, with three challengers who want to retreat to the failed policies of the past, and Governor Patrick and I who are working hard to keep Massachusetts moving forward."

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Statement on Baker-Tisei Debt Deceit

2009-12-23T20:48:36Z

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray today released the following statement in response to the Baker-Tisei Campaign's gross distortions about the debt they created in Massachusetts.

"The Baker-Tisei camp must be hitting the eggnog early if they're pointing fingers about debt. After all, these are the same people who created the notorious Big Dig financing scheme.

"Charlie Baker and Richard Tisei helped create, as part of the Republican leadership in the Corner Office and the Legislature, record levels of debt and they tried to hide it.

"Meanwhile, our Administration conducted the first-ever debt affordability analysis, and we have been honest with the citizens of Massachusetts, while engaging in responsible fiscal management. This was recognized by three separate bond rating agencies that recently affirmed our AA bond rating, citing our strong fiscal management."

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Holiday Celebration Slideshow

2009-12-23T17:25:28Z

On Dec. 10, Tim joined friends and supporters at Mechanics Hall in Worcester for his Annual Holiday Celebration.

Tim Speaks with New Mayors Holaday & Lantigua

2009-12-23T16:04:31Z

Tim recently sat down with Mayor-elect Donna Holaday of Newburyport and Mayor-elect Willy Lantigua of Lawrence to talk about the economy and other important issues facing cities and towns. Watch the interviews in the latest episode of The Commonwealth Report:

Boston's Bringing BIO Back

2009-12-16T22:54:18Z

via MassBio News:

In June 2012, Boston will again host the prestigious BIO International Convention, the world's largest gathering of the biotechnology industry. The annual event attracts more than 20,000 attendees from around the world, including more than 500 members of the international press.

"Our ongoing focus on the biotechnology industry is just one of the many reasons the Massachusetts economy is primed for recovery and growth," said Governor Deval L. Patrick.

Read the full story and more bio news in the Winter 2009 edition of MassBio News.