Massachusetts Politics

A recent Massachusetts case involving violations of the federal Clean Air Act serves as a reminder of how dependent we all are upon the honesty and diligence of those responsible for monitoring the purity of the water we drink, the quality of the air we breathe, and the wholesomeness of the   foods we eat and beverages we drink.   We worry a lot about terrorists. Yet we barely ever give a thought to the guys testing samples at our municipal water plant or operating the pollution controls at the power plant a few towns away -- unknown persons, laboring in obscurity, who can seriously hurt us through negligence and malfeasance.   The real daily risks we face are more familiar, more ordinary, and closer than we think. On June 9, U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni sentenced Scott Paterson, age 46, of Manchester, CT, to one year of probation for tampering with environmental monitors while working as an instrument and control technician at the Ber...

Last week, the Massachusetts House voted 126-28 to make major revisions to Chapter 334 of the Acts of 2016.   That’s the law allowing recreational use of marijuana, which was enacted via an initiative petition on the November, 2016, statewide ballot. The measure containing those revisions is House Bill 3773, An Act to Ensure the Public Health and Safety of Patient and Consumer Access to Medical and Adult Use of Marijuana in the Commonwealth. On a parallel track, the Massachusetts Senate voted 30-5 to add a bunch of its own amendments to H.B. 3773.  A six-member House-Senate conference committee is now at work on a compromise, final version of the recreational marijuana law.   Its goal is to have a reworked bill before Governor Charlie Baker by the end of this week and signed into law as soon as possible after that. If that timetable is met, Massachusetts will begin the process of regulating the sale of marijuana for adult consumption nex...

When I was 18 and a freshman at Northeastern, my sister-in-law, Sue, was a recent graduate of the Mt. Auburn Hospital school of nursing (Cambridge) and working as an operating room nurse at that hospital.   One day she asked me to promise I would never ride a motorcycle.   I asked why. “Because,” she said, “I’ve already seen too many people in the O.R. who were permanently damaged in motorcycle crashes or did not survive those crashes.   Some of them weren’t much older than you.” She added, “Do you know what some people call motorcycles?”  I did not know. “Donorcycles,” she said.   “They make organ donors.” A recent article in STAT, an online product of Boston Globe Media, brought me back to that conversation with Sue. Headlined, “Pro-helmet activists are notching wins against motorcyclists shouting ‘freedom,’ ” it said: “Pro-helmet activists have launched aggressive efforts in state legislatures across the nation to fend off motorcyclists demanding the right to...

Except for one judge who made a racially insensitive comment to a colleague and was forced to resign (see previous post), Massachusetts judges, in the judgment of their watchdogs, pretty much behaved themselves in 2016. That’s an obvious take-away from the recently issued 2016 annual report of the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, which has been keeping tabs on judges for nearly 40 years.   The unpaid, nine-member commission has a threefold mission: t o enforce the standards set forth in detail in a written code of conduct; t o promote public confidence in the judicial branch of government; and, t o preserve the integrity of the judicial process In 2016, the commission received a total of 252 complaints; of that number, 62 were “docketed for investigation or preliminary inquiry.” Overall in 2016, the commission officially looked into 75 complaints and disposed of 61 of them.   And 59 of the 61 disposed cases were dismissed with a finding of no misconduct. ...

There’s one intriguing item, and one only, in the latest annual report of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, which fills some 90 pages of text.   (I read these things so you don’t have to.) It concerns a judge who made “insensitive racial comments” to another judge.   The second judge filed a complaint with the commission, after which the first judge retired, citing “family health reasons.” Here’s the item, excerpted in its entirety from the report: “A judge was alleged to have made insensitive racial comments to another judge while in the judges’ lobby of the court in which he served, in violation of Rules 1.2, 2.2, 2.3(A), 2.3(B), and 2.8(B) of the Code of Judicial Conduct.   Because of this complaint and for family health reasons, the judge retired as a judge and agreed not to seek appointment as a recall justice.”   Editor’s Note: Above-cited rules may be found at bottom of this post. The names of both the offending and offended judge are omitted f...