Massachusetts

Flavor ban, education, hands-free bills sent to Baker for signing

BOSTON — Massachusetts lawmakers wrapped up work Wednesday on bills calling for long-term K-12 education investments, requiring motorists to use only hands-free technology while driving, and banning flavored tobacco products.

Legislators tried to come up with a late-night deal allocating a more than $1 billion fiscal 2019 surplus, but House and Senate Democrats couldn't find common ground even though tardiness with that bill has cost the state $30,000 a day in forgone interest since Nov. 1. House Minority Leader Brad Jones called it a "complete failure of the House and Senate Democratic leadership to get this done."

Gov. Charlie Baker, due back in Massachusetts Wednesday night after meetings in Florida with Republican governors, also has on his desk a bill requiring state representatives, senators, mayors and candidates for those offices to use a depository system to report campaign finance information, a change proponents said will lead to more frequent and accurate reporting. If the bill becomes law, Massachusetts will become the first state to have independent third-party verified disclosure for all state-level candidates, Rep. John Lawn said.

The education bill was years in the making and is designed to boost student achievement in low-income communities. Lawmakers anticipate the legislation will help to more fully account for expenses that school districts are incurring and settle battles over charter school funding. They plan to cover the bill's significant costs with existing revenue sources, which could put pressure on other state spending priorities, especially if recent tax revenue growth rates slow down.

The distracted driving bill, a version of which was sponsored this year by Gov. Baker, comes after years of experimentation with a largely ineffective law banning texting while driving. The bill's supporters hope it counters public safety hazards on the roads by finally forcing more drivers to put their devices aside, or face fines and potentially, insurance surcharges.

Related: Lawmakers approve ban on drivers using hand-held cellphones

The branches also made significant progress in the last week or so on legislation banning flavored tobacco and imposing a new tax on vaping products. That legislation cleared the Senate Wednesday and the branches quickly reconciled differences and sent a bill to Baker, put the current temporary ban on sales of vaping products in place in response to vape-related lung injuries and deaths.

The bill would ban flavored e-cigarettes immediately upon the governor's signing of the legislation, while a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes would take effect on June 1, 2020.

Related: Massachusetts likely to become the first state to ban flavored tobacco

In their flurry of legislating, lawmakers also sent Baker a bill designed to improve access to behavioral and mental health services for children, guaranteeing health insurance coverage for foster children until they turn 26, and requiring insurance companies to offer customers accurate online care provider directories.

While much of the focus was on getting significant bills to the governor's desk before the recess, the House and Senate also took initial steps requiring schools with large low-income student populations to provide breakfast during the instructional day and banning single-use plastic bags, respectively.

The Senate passed a bag ban bill 36-4 that would require stores to charge a 10-cent fee for recyclable paper or reusable bags, while the House unanimously passed a "breakfast after the bell" bill, which has also been a priority of Assistant Senate Majority Leader Sal DiDomenico.

The final week before the mid-session recess was robbed of the some of the drama that had been expected when House Speaker Robert DeLeo last week said his promised fall debate over new revenue streams to pay for transportation infrastructure would be pushed off until January.

The Senate is also signaling a desire to address climate change when the Legislature returns in 2020 after Sen. Marc Pacheco repeatedly chastised his colleagues in recent weeks for not acting with more urgency. In addition to setting more aggressive carbon emission reduction requirements, the Senate could consider bills passed by the House or proposed by Gov. Baker to invest over $1 billion in climate adaptation strategies.

"We talk a lot about climate change and climate resiliency and the like, but it was the House who put one billion dollars into the Green Works program," DeLeo said Wednesday, ticking through a list of accomplishments over the first 11 months of the two year session.

The so-called closeout supplemental budget wrapping up work on fiscal 2019, which ended June 30, remains a work in progress, pretty much exclusively behind the scenes, even though state finance officials missed a statutory reporting deadline and have repeatedly asked over the years for that bill to be passed earlier.

"The House looks forward to working with those willing to compromise in the days ahead," DeLeo said in a statement released hours after the bill was assigned to a conference committee for resolution.

"I have no idea what he means," Senate President Karen Spilka said after the Senate adjourned at about 12:50 a.m. "Clearly we sent over many versions. We produced a new bill today to try to move things forward so we will continue to work with the House to try to resolve it."

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said he wasn't ready to blame Democratic leaders, but questioned the priorities of the Senate in the final day of formal session.

"I think what we had was a systemic failure. I'm not willing to assign partisan blame but clearly we didn't reach the goal that we should have and its disappointing," Tarr said.

"There were a lot of factors in play, but I think it's very interesting that we took up two pieces of legislation that really up until quite recently weren't on anybody's radar screen and we weren't able to accomplish the one thing we knew we had a mandate to do," he continued, referring to bans on flavored nicotine products and single-use plastic bags.