Keller @ Large: Gov. Maura Healey's vision could amount to billions in new spending
BOSTON - "We will match our ambitions with our investments," said Gov. Maura Healey during her inaugural address.
And by the time her speech was over, the last canape had been scarfed at her Garden bash, and the final basketball metaphor had swished through the basket, any doubts about that intention had been erased.
No dollar amounts were attached to the Healey vision. But between "free community college to students over 25 who don't have a college degree," massive subsidies for child care, full funding of the Student Opportunity Act, doing more for mental health care and food security, hiring 1,000 new MBTA workers, a pledge to "double our offshore wind and solar targets and quadruple our energy storage deployment," electrification of the public vehicle fleet, commitment of "at least one percent of the state budget to environmental and energy agencies," tripling the Clean Energy Center budget and more - cue the late Sen. Everett Dirksen's immortal line about government spending: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
And the new bureaucracy to administer it all won't come cheap. Healey wants "a standalone secretary of housing" (with no apparent plans to trim the bloated MassHousing roster), a new safety chief at the T, "an interagency task force dedicated to competing for federal infrastructure money," and the worst nightmare of government skeptics everywhere, a "green bank to invest in resilient infrastructure and to attract new businesses to Massachusetts." (Google "Evergreen Solar" if you want to know how this kind of winner-picking can go wrong.)
But none of this should surprise or necessarily alarm anyone.
While Healey ran a cautious, deliberate campaign that worked hard to embrace the moderate atmospherics of the Baker era, her progressive agenda was never concealed. And for now, the state is flush with cash to pay for it. "We have untold wealth in Massachusetts," Healey said in her speech. "But record public revenue does little good when families can't pay the rent, or buy a house, or heat their homes, or hire childcare."
Tough to argue with that, unless paradise for the rich while everyone else packs up the U-Haul is your vision for our future.
As a long string of formidable folks - from Warren Tolman (her 2014 Democratic primary victim) to Donald Trump and the Sacklers (her biggest targets as AG) to the Massachusetts Democratic left (easily shrugged off by the Healey gubernatorial juggernaut) - have learned over the years, Maura Healey can and will spin a basketball on one finger and quaff a brew with the other hand while kicking your butt with alternating feet.
She will need every bit of her smarts and toughness to navigate from here. Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano will not roll over like golden retrievers at Healey's command. And when the inevitable unexpected catastrophe hits (think: Dukakis and the economic downturn, Romney and the Big Dig tunnel collapse, Baker and the pandemic), it will be the first time we've seen Healey deal with one.
But for now, there's no reason to think Healey won't be up to it, if her talent matches her ambition.
