We’re in the midst of my 17th state budget, which has always been a really rewarding part of this job. Numbers are my forte and knowing where $30 billion of state dollars went was always heady stuff.
Not so much this time.
When I first came to Beacon Hill, budget week was a blast. The Flaherty-Finneran process was (barely) controlled chaos with groups of representatives huddling everywhere in the Chamber. We took up about 600 amendments individually and decisions were made before your eyes. Legislators actually had to cast up or down votes.
About a decade ago, that changed. The budget moved to Room #348 and amendments were “consolidated.” At first, the Finneran-Rogers approach seemed to make some sense: the volume of amendments was skyrocketing and the process was unwieldy. The intent was to streamline the process; the result was to centralize the process. 600 amendments shrank to 60.
Then came DiMasi-DeLeo, DeLeo-Murphy and now DeLeo-Dempsey. This year, we’re doing about 15 super-consolidated amendments, all written behind closed doors.
Right now, I’m in my State House office on the third of four days of budget debate. Eight hours of House session on Monday and thirteen on Tuesday (not to mention the eight hours we’ve been in session today) has only yielded two hours of debate.
A major change in how public unions bargain over health care with municipalities was decided behind closed doors, then brought to the floor, debated, and passed in 30 minutes.
Today, controlled chaos looks pretty good. Yes, it was hard to get budgets done and the final document contained dozens of typos and misprints. But we were all part of the process. We all left the State House exhausted and exhilarated.
Now we leave exhausted and debilitated.
