Shorthanded council forces Healey to bail out new rep
BOSTON (SHNS) – It's a good thing for Rep. Hannah Bowen that Gov. Maura Healey had an open schedule Wednesday.
Not only was the governor needed to administer the oath of office for the newest member of the House, but she was also pressed into action to chair the Governor's Council so that Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll could cast the decisive vote to make Bowen's election official.
Only four of the eight members of the Governor's Council were present for its assembly Wednesday: Councilors Terry Kennedy, Paul DePalo, Tara Jacobs and Mara Dolan. Under the Constitution, five members must be present for the council to act. The assembly was scheduled for 12 p.m., but did not start until 12:30 p.m.
The lieutenant governor chairs most meetings of the council, but can sit as a de facto ninth member of the council if the governor presides over the meeting instead. That happened a few times under Gov. Charlie Baker, when Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito's vote was required to break ties among the eight councilors.
So shortly after calling Wednesday's delayed council meeting to order and going through introductions, Driscoll announced that Healey would take over the duties of the chair 'to certify votes cast in the May 13 special election, and I will take my seat as a member of the council while she does that.'
Healey, whose had no public events on her schedule Wednesday, assumed the council gavel, asked for and got a motion and second to certify the Democrat Bowen as the winner of the special election in the Sixth Essex District, and was then told by Kennedy that the vote should be taken by voice, not by roll call.
With Driscoll sitting alongside the four elected councilors present, Healey called the vote and declared 'the ayes have it' before stepping into the next room over to administer the oath of office to Bowen, of Beverly.
Taking the oath at 12:38 p.m., Bowen was installed as a rep with enough time to allow her to vote Wednesday afternoon as the House considers a $530 million supplemental spending bill.
Bowen fills the House seat left vacant by former Rep. Jerald Parisella, who won reelection in November but was nominated and confirmed to a District Court judgeship before the new term began Jan. 1.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWLP.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
an hour ago
The 911 presidency: Trump flexes emergency powers in his second term
WASHINGTON -- Call it the 911 presidency. Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors. Whether it's leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump's 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors. The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress' authority and advance his agenda. 'What's notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,' said Ilya Somin, who is representing five U.S. businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs. Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it. The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump's strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there's growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the U.S. is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address. 'The temptation is clear,' said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. 'What's remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we're in a different era now.' Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy. 'It's the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,' Bacon said of Congress' power over trade. 'And I get the emergency powers, but I think it's being abused. When you're trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that's policy, not emergency action.' The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority. 'President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden — wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports. The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' from abroad 'to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.' In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the U.S. economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion. Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers — including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited — that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals. Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II. Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump's eventual veto. 'Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges,' said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. 'Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act.' Trump, Yoo said, 'has just elevated it to another level.' Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump's actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy. 'We believe — and we're right — that we are in an emergency,' Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax. 'You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies,' Vance said. 'I'm not talking about toys, plastic toys. I'm talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I'm talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain.' Vance continued, 'These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency.' Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president's emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance. Similar legislation hasn't been introduced since Trump's return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency. 'He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there's oversight and safeguards,' said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a 'path toward autocracy and suppression.'
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Two House Republicans issue megabill threats as Senate ponders changes - Live Updates
Two House Republicans drew firm red lines Friday on changes to the House GOP megabill, threatening to vote 'no' if the Senate made any changes whatsoever to key provisions. Rep. Nick LaLota of New York warned GOP senators against lowering the House's $40,000 cap on the state-and-local-tax deduction, while Rep. Chip Roy of Texas vowed to oppose any attempt to delay or otherwise water down the phaseout of clean-energy tax credits provided for in the House-passed megabill. 'If the Senate waters it down by a dollar, I'm a no,' LaLota posted on X, arguing that the SALT cap as it stands is 'unfair' to his constituents. Roy was equally strict about GOP senators' hesitations on quickly phasing out clean-energy tax credits signed into law under former President Joe Biden — even calling out skeptical Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) by name in a floor speech Friday. Tillis has been critical of the phaseouts, saying the House bill is 'void of any understanding of just how these supply chains work.' 'You backslide one inch on those IRA subsidies and I'm voting against this bill,' Roy said. 'Because those god-forsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom. I'm not going to have it.'
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Healey touts state tuition savings, criticizes federal cuts to Pell Grants
Overall, MASSGrant Plus Expansion program saved more than 34,000 Massachusetts students an estimated $110 million in the 2023-2024 academic year, the statement said. More than 7,730 middle income students saved an average of $3,856 each, according to data from the state Department of Higher Education, the statement said. Advertisement In the same statement, Healey urged the US Senate to reject Pell Grant cuts included in the federal budget reconciliation bill recently passed by Republicans in the U.S. House and supported by President Trump. The proposed cuts and eligibility restrictions would results in 42,000 Massachusetts students at public institutions losing $57 million in funding each year, according to Healey's statement said. 'Massachusetts is home to the best schools in the country, but we need to make sure that they are affordable for all of our students,' Healey's statement said. 'That's why I took action to increase financial aid at our public colleges and universities, which has already lowered costs for tens of thousands of students.' The drastic cuts proposed to the Pell Grant program would 'roll back the progress we have made and increase costs,' Healey said. Advertisement 'This is bad for our students and bad for our economy, as it would hold back our next generation of workers from being able to afford to go to school,' she said. Healey announced $62 million in new state funding to expand the MASSGrant program during a ceremony at Salem State University in November 2023. The new funding covered the full costs of tuition and mandatory instructional fees for Pell Grant-eligible students, and as much as half for middle-income students. Middle-income students are those whose families earn between $73,000 and $100,000 annually in adjusted gross income. The program was retroactive to the start of the fall 2023 semester for Massachusetts students at the states public institutions, including its 15 community colleges, nine state universities, and four University of Massachusetts undergraduate campuses. Funding for the expansion of the program also drew on $84 million Healey and the legislature had set earmarked for financial aid expansion in the FY24 budget, Healey's office said at the time. 'The dramatic enrollment increases our community colleges have seen over the last two years make it clear that free community college and expanded financial aid is a game changer for students in Massachusetts,' Luis Pedraja, chair of the Community College Council of Presidents, and president of Quinsigamond Community College said in the statement. 'The proposed Pell eligibility changes would be devastating to our students' ability to afford higher education and the community college presidents in Massachusetts urge the Senate to reject this ill-advised change,' Pedraja said. Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said he feared the impacts proposed cuts could have on students who struggle to afford college. Advertisement 'Low-income students deserve to go to college just as much as their higher income peers, and these changes are going to take us backwards – increasing dropout rates and leaving students saddled with more debt and no degree," Tutwiler said in the statement. Tonya Alanez can be reached at
