Governor Charlie Baker is amping up the government's response to COVID-19 as Massachusetts buckles down for another surge following the Thanksgiving holiday. The governor is telling hospitals to suspend elective surgeries beginning this Friday in order to focus resources on the coronavirus, and that follows the reopening of a field hospital in Worcester earlier this week. GBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with GBH News State House reporter Mike Deehan about some of the pressure Governor Baker is facing on top of some of the legislation making its way to his desk. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: The governor hinted at more business restrictions due to COVID. He says cases went up "like a rocket" after Thanksgiving. And we keep hearing that he's under a good deal of pressure from both sides over this.
Mike Deehan: Yeah, he really is. I think the pressure has been mounting from the medical community, and he mentioned yesterday at his press conference that a lot of mayors and municipal officials are also putting pressure on the governor to do something more. Not necessarily just do more business closures or lockdown-type activity, but something to get the message across to people that they should be staying indoors [and] they should not be socializing the way they are. Now, this is something Baker has resisted for some time, but based on what he said yesterday, he definitely hinted that he'll have something to say this week. So I would anticipate Wednesday [is] usually when he makes these kind of pronouncements. What that will be we really don't know. Whether it's further restrictions on indoor dining, which was really the last thing that got curtailed, to maybe some kind of business closures or non-essential type closures like we had back in the spring, we don't really know. But [we] could expect something relatively large to come down from Baker.
Mathieu: Gyms, casinos, restaurants. I'll be very curious to see if there's a list like that. And the governor's feeling a lot of pressure from the business community to stay open, Mike.
Deehan: Exactly. Talk to any restaurant owner and they're going to say that this 9:30 curfew they're already under has hurt their bottom line a bit. Switching back over to take-out mostly [and] indoor dining being as restricted as it is, they certainly don't want to close down, especially when, according to Baker, the data points to it being household transmission — small get-togethers within homes with people that you're familiar with, not necessarily being out at restaurants — that's carrying most of this virus.
Mathieu: Well, let's talk about lawmaking here as well because the governor was asked yesterday about two big pieces of legislation: the bill to certify police and the budget, which contains an expansion, as you've been reporting, to abortion access. This is big stuff, along with limits on the MBTA's ability to cut service.
Deehan: Yeah, and he likes most of that bill. It's fairly similar to a bill on police reform that he himself filed not long ago in consultation with the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus. So that really has the bones and the structure of what we're looking at now, which is a new commission that's going to be able to set training standards and certification standards for police and, more importantly, have the ability to investigate and potentially decertify those police when there are allegations of wrongdoing, abuse of power or really violations of these new higher standards. Baker likes it. He's probably not going to veto it, but he does have the ability to send back amendments, make changes here and there. He can rewrite the whole thing if he wants to. He doesn't necessarily have to veto it. So right now, for instance, the bill calls for the board to be mostly civilians. There are only three out of nine slots that are police or from a background of law enforcement — four, if you count a retired judge that's going to be on the panel. So that's something where police unions, some conservatives, maybe Baker himself want to see more experienced police or former police on that panel when they're doing investigations and standard settings. There are also a number of other issues that Democrats packed in — a lot of other side issues. They're police related, but not necessarily about this certification thing. Something like a ban on no knock warrants. That's something that both the attorney general and the governor have problems with. There's a ban on facial recognition technology that a lot of conservatives and Republicans said has nothing to do with this right now; we don't need to put it in this bill. So Baker might take scissors to it, so to speak, and send it back to Democrats. And they didn't pass that in the House with a veto-proof majority, so a lot of these changes Baker makes might stand.
Mathieu: That's the key. Are we going to get a budget before the end of the year?
Deehan: Yeah, we definitely will get the budget. That's something that's on point. Everyone kind of agrees on the money part. If Baker has any say on that, though, it's about the abortion expansion that went in there. Baker's not a big fan of additional abortions after 24 weeks. And there's some other items in there about kind of handcuffing the MBTA on how they can make changes. So he could send that back as well.
