Gov. Healey takes stock midway through term

Gov. Maura Healey sits for a 2024 end-of-year interview with the State House News Service. STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE/SAM DRYSDALE
Published: 12-26-2024 4:37 PM |
BOSTON — At the midway point of her term in office, Gov. Maura Healey said last week she’s comfortable with what she’s gotten done and is more focused on implementing what she sees as “transformational” accomplishments than on pondering her next move.
Healey told the News Service she “didn’t expect time to fly by as quickly as it has” since she took office in January 2023, but ticked through what her administration sees as its accomplishments of 2024: implementation of last year’s tax cuts; signing housing, climate and economic development policies she had a hand in shaping into law; making good on the MBTA’s pledge to eliminate subway system slow zones by the end of this year; and Massachusetts securing favorable perches in various “best state for” rankings.
“I guess as I reflect on the last two years, I feel good about making good on the commitments made when I stood at that inauguration,” the governor said as she sat in her holiday-decorated ceremonial office last week. She said her first full legislative session as governor “was really remarkable for what we got done, some transformational legislation.”
“A lot got done. There is a lot to do,” Healey said. “And I think, if anything, it’s like, my focus now is on the implementation, right? How do we get the money out the door? How do we get these programs up and running? How do we now deliver on these transformational pieces of legislation that were priorities, and how do we do that as quickly as we can?”
In the second year of her term, Massachusetts faced a series of crises that tested the leadership of Healey’s administration. The Steward Health Care hospital system’s bankruptcy and the closure of two for-profit hospitals – one in a health care desert – exacerbated the state’s health care access issues. Meanwhile, the homelessness crisis deepened as families (almost evenly split between migrants and longer-standing residents) continued to overwhelm the state’s-already strained shelter system, prompting the governor to implement further restrictions on Massachusetts’ right-to-shelter policy. And the cost of living continued to rise, placing additional financial strain on Bay Staters who were already feeling the pain of lighter wallets.
In a 20-minute interview with the News Service, the governor acknowledged that she wishes July’s chaotic burst of limited lawmaking had gone differently, that many residents are closely guarding their pocketbooks while the state has grand spending ambitions, and that the incoming Republican-controlled federal government could make her job more difficult for the second half of her term — and she says she has not even begun to consider the idea of reelection less than two years from now.
“No, I’m not. I’m not making any announcements or decisions about that right now,” the governor said when asked if she was at the point yet of considering reelection in 2026. “I feel like we just got through an election. And my focus really is, my laser focus, is on implementing Mass Leads, Affordable Homes, and all the great policy pieces that we got done.”
She said she would start to think about reelection “sometime over the course of the next year.”
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After the governor took stock of her tenure in office to date and touched upon things that could find their way into a reelection speech should she opt for that, the interview turned to the cost-of-living storm clouds that hover over Massachusetts. Here is an excerpt of the interview, condensed slightly and edited lightly for clarity.
Sam Drysdale: You talked about making things affordable. That’s been a priority for your administration since day one — cost of living, addressing the cost of living crisis — but a lot of that is outside of your control, right? What’s your message to voters who are placing the cost of living crisis at your feet? How do you reconcile what you can control as the governor of Massachusetts versus what you can’t control with cost of living?
Gov. Healey: It’s a great question, and I think it’s sometimes the case that you see people looking at cost and blaming a politician for it, when it really does come down to things that are outside of someone’s control. I think what I try to do is: in the areas where I do have control and can make a difference, let’s take that on. The tax cuts, right? Free school lunch and breakfast, taking some additional strain off of parents. Getting the housing law done, that’s going to get more money out the door to [incentivize] development, and thereby, hopefully bring down the cost of rent, cost of housing. [There are] programs for first-time home buyers that we’ve done. In talking to people and explaining, this is your government in Massachusetts, and I’m your governor, and this is what I can control, this is what I can do, right, and here’s what we’re delivering for your family.
It’s also important, though, to articulate and talk about, particularly as we face a new administration, why tariffs are potentially really devastating to Massachusetts and to our New England economy. As somebody who’s trying to grow housing in the state, the last thing I need is tariffs on the lumber coming from Canada, right? Or all the things that we need for our growing robotics, advanced manufacturing, AI, life sciences industries here in Massachusetts — the last thing that we need are tariffs on Asia. So you try to explain sort of the context of things, and just keep laser-focused on what you actually can control.
Colin Young: You mentioned universal school meals with other things that you’ve done to try to address cost of living pressures that a lot of people are feeling. That’s one of them for families with kids in the schools; that’s one that I hear from people a bunch. They say, ‘why is the state paying for these universal school meals?’ So some people see that as an added government cost. When there’s a lot of sort of sore feelings around what government is spending, what government is paying for, who’s getting what from government, how do you make the case to the public at large that something like that — universal school meals, free community college — is a broader public benefit?
Gov. Healey: Look at our economy. All of our employers across industry — talk to any one of them, they are looking for workforce. Workforce is such a need, and we need to have people educated, especially in STEM but [also] in other areas to supply that workforce right now. Look at the shortage that we’re seeing in various fields. And so cost-free college, community college, is a really important thing to do to support our economy, to support our workforce and our businesses. So, that’s good. And by the way, if you’ve got a degree out of a community college, out of a program, you’ve got yourself a ticket, and you’ve got your family a ticket to economic mobility. It means that you’re going to be earning more and you’re going to be better able to take care of your family, and therefore it is less likely that you or your family or your kids are going to end up in the social safety net, which is where the taxpayers will get hit. So it just makes a lot of sense economically to make that kind of investment.
Universal breakfast and lunch — there are some kids certainly who need it; their parents cannot afford breakfast and lunch. We have these programs because, my view is, and I think it’s a Massachusetts value, no child in this state should go hungry. No child in this state should go hungry. More than that, it gives parents back time, right? They can do other things. Maybe they get a workout in. Maybe they get on the road earlier to work because they’re not having to prepare breakfast and lunch. Giving people back more time in their lives to do other things, including to get to work, actually benefits all of us. So that’s my position on that.
Young: Is that message harder to get across to people in the political and media environment we’re in now, where on almost every issue it seems like people sort of are very quick to take a side?
Gov. Healey: I’ll say something else about the school breakfast-lunch thing. Look at health care costs, right? Who do you think is paying for emergency room visits? We’re all paying through our health insurance premiums, right, the cost of health care. How many diseases or medical issues are preventable with proper nutrition, for example, proper housing? So you make these investments in the short term, and in the long term, it just pays off and everyone wins. The environment right now is challenging, for sure, but I just have to, and I think we just have to, continue to press forward and talk to people.
Take housing. We’ve got a housing crisis. It hurts everyone, even you who has a home. You may have paid your mortgage, but the cost of housing right now means that young people can’t afford to come back from college and live in Massachusetts, work in Massachusetts. It means that people who’ve grown up here can’t afford to stay here. It means that grandparents can’t be near grandkids because they can’t afford to downsize and get into a home that would work for them because the costs are so high. Companies can’t expand here or come here because the talent, their workers, can’t afford to live here. These are the things, the bad things, that are a consequence of not having enough housing. Everyone benefits from having more housing. Our economy benefits and it’s something that we need to do, and that’s why we’ve really pushed hard on this, including around the implementation of MBTA Communities Act, where, by the way, over 100 communities have already signed up and done the work that they need to do. But so much more than that — through the Affordable Homes Act and through the work that we’re doing, educating communities, providing technical assistance, working with everyone. It’s not one-size-fits-all, but every community and every resident will benefit in the state with more housing.
Drysdale: Speaking of housing, I wanted to touch on the shelter system. It’s been two years since it really began to surge and considered a crisis. At what point is it not considered a crisis and just considered normal, the way things are?
Gov. Healey: Well, I think the emergency shelter system was not working optimally for a long time, well before our administration. Then you had more burden placed on it by the arrival of migrants from other countries. That started before I took office, and then those numbers grew — because the federal government didn’t act, because Congress refused, once again, to deal with the border. There was a deal that would have provided enforcement on the border — something I strongly support — would have provided a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and other taxpaying and working folks who have been here for a number of years, and Congress didn’t get it done. That’s really unfortunate. In the wake of that, the states have had to bear the burden. So we need them to act on the border, and I hope that that’s something that President Trump and Congress does day one. This is his problem to fix right now. He ran on this issue, and he’s got the House and the Senate, and they need to fix this. They need to fix this. In the meantime, we’ve seen our numbers go down here. It’s why I put the cap on last year. It’s why I implemented new policy reforms to try to improve the system generally. Hotels are no place to put people or to to raise a family. Emergency shelter was intended to be short and I think the the reforms are necessary, but we really need Congress to act.
Drysdale: So you see those reforms as permanent reforms to the system that should have been made a long time ago, and not as an immediate response just to this surge?
Gov. Healey: Yes. I think we’ve been trying to do two things at once: manage what has been a crisis not of our making, the situation on the border and migrants coming in; and two, [address] the way emergency shelter has operated for a number of years now, really try to make sensible reforms that are better for families, better for preventing homelessness, and better for the taxpayer too, because they’re going to be more effectively run and operated. It also is why we need the Affordable Homes Act now implemented quickly, because we need more housing in the state. We need lower rents. We need costs to go down. We need prices to go down, right? Bringing a greater supply online will help that. That’s why I ordered the inventory of state-owned properties. It’s why we’re looking at current properties that are dilapidated or in a state of disrepair that could be rehabilitated into something else. It’s why we want to give money to developers who are going to look at that old mill and imagine a number of affordable housing units there. That’s the work we’ve got to do.
Young: We wanted to touch on the Steward crisis as well. And that was one where, sort of in contrast to the shelter situation, the state, in some ways, scaled back how much it was going to do. The state really extended itself to provide some financial aid and some regulatory easing to transfer those former Steward hospitals to new operators. What are you going to be looking for in 2025 that will show us whether that’s a good deal for Massachusetts?
Gov. Healey: Well, my philosophy, my goal, when we got word that Steward was going to be filing for bankruptcy was to recognize that this was a huge issue for patients, hundreds of thousands of patients. It was a huge issue for the workforce — 13,000 jobs [were] at stake. It was a huge issue for the stability of our health care system and the fragility of that. So we set about, very quickly, working to do what we could to protect jobs, protect patients and protect the stability of the market. I am proud of and grateful to my team for what they were able to accomplish, working with hospital systems, working with the unions on this, working with communities to save those jobs, save hospitals and protect the stability of the market. Health care is in a very challenging space right now, and it has been for a long, long time. We need to work to assess what needs to be done, what needs to happen in this space. But you know, I’m proud of the work that my team did working with others on this because in other states, Steward hospitals just closed. They went away. And in Massachusetts, we were able to save six of the eight hospitals. We have committed to a plan to look at the other two locations and how can we work with those communities to support a new version of care to meet the needs of residents.
Closing the interview, Healey pointed to the Boston Celtics “Banner 18” championship as a highlight of her year, as well as “getting into communities.”
She didn’t have a specific answer to whether she made any new discoveries within Massachusetts, or was surprised or taken with any city or town she wasn’t wasn’t overly familiar with before her time as governor.
“I’ve been around, I was AG for eight years,” she said, before saying that her administration has made a point to spend time in central and western Massachusetts.
She concluded with a statement of her “Team Massachusetts” philosophy.
“It’s a wonderful state full of a lot of wonderful people, both in the private sector, nonprofit sector and public sector, who, you know, if you can bring people together and get them working together, really great things could happen,” Healey said. “And that’s a little bit of what we’ve tried to promote with the Team Massachusetts vibe, you know, that we are all in this together, and like our successful sports teams, like the Celtics, you know, if everybody plays as a team we can really do some great things.”