Top stories GBH News is following this week

Every week, GBH News assignment editor Matt Baskin joins GBH’s All Things Considered to look at stories the newsroom is following. This week, tune in for updates on Gov. Maura Healey's soon-to-be-released budget, a local sheriff's plan to hire 19-year-olds as correctional officers and the state of Salem's mayoral race. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Baskin and host Arun Rath.

Arun Rath: So tomorrow is the first day of March and Gov. Healey is expected to release her proposal for the state’s budget. We had some teasers last week, but do we have any sense of what else we might be looking for?

Matt Baskin: A bunch of things, both within the budget plan itself and in the process surrounding it. I was talking about this with our State House reporter Katie Lannan earlier. We’re expecting Healey to devote some attention to, no surprise, the T. I won’t list all the disasters the T has dealt with this past year — there was one just this morning that caused power to go out across the whole system — but one big overarching issue that’s been the source of a lot of other problems is lack of staffing. Healey has said she wants to put money towards hiring 1,000 new workers for the T.

Solving the staffing problem could be a real step in the right direction, but if Healey does indeed put a big chunk of money into hiring, there’s still the issue of actually attracting workers. The T has been running its own major hiring campaign the past several months, but the staffing shortage still persists. So we’ll see if more money can help solve it.

Something else to look for is whether Healey keeps her pledge to put 1% of her budget to environmental agencies. And we’ll also find out if Healey holds true to the promise she made in her inaugural address to make community college free for folks 25 and older who don’t yet have a degree.

Beyond just the numbers, the line items, we’ll see if there’s significant policy written into this spending plan. That would be a way for Healey to say, “This is a priority for me.”

And then outside the budget itself and looking at the process, this is going to be an opportunity to really see how the new governor works with the Legislature. This is Healey’s first budget season. In the weeks ahead, the state Senate and the Massachusetts House will be coming out with their own proposed budgets, and leaders from both of those chambers and the governor will have to hammer out some sort of compromise. It’s yet to be seen whether that’ll be easy or hard, acrimonious or drama-free, but it’ll help set the tone for what Healey’s relationship with the Legislature is gonna be like for the next four years and how our state government is going to function.

Rath: You mentioned staffing shortages with the T. Staffing shortages are also apparently behind the Essex County sheriff’s plan to drop the minimum hiring age for corrections officers — that’s jail guards — from 21 to 19. We heard a little bit about that yesterday, but we’re doing some follow-up reporting on that, right?

Baskin: Yeah, you know, it's in process. Diego Lopez, senior producer for GBH's All Things Considered, spoke with Essex County sheriff Kevin Coppinger about this yesterday. Coppinger says that his office — like you mentioned, like the T, like so many businesses — is dealing with staffing issues, and lowering the hiring age is meant to deal with that.

And he made the point that this isn’t necessarily unprecedented. He says his office has hired 19-year-olds in decades past, and that other county sheriffs in Massachusetts and across the country have too.

I think the idea of 19-year-olds working a job like this doesn’t sit well with some people. These are still technically teenagers. A two-year difference might feel arbitrary to some, but corrections officers do a difficult job and they wield a lot of power over other people’s lives.

So right now we’re checking in with other county sheriffs’ offices around the commonwealth — as well as the Massachusetts Department of Correction, which handles state-level prisons — to see what their minimum hiring age is. And we’re trying to speak with other professionals in law enforcement and with advocacy groups to get their take on whether this is a reasonable way to deal with staffing problems.

Rath: Before you go, we’re still feeling some of the effects of the new government that's in place now. With Maura Healey taking office last month, we’ve recently had state Rep. Jon Santiago leave his seat in the House to serve in Healey’s cabinet. And, of course, Kim Driscoll left a void in Salem when she resigned as that city’s mayor to become lieutenant governor. What’s the state of things in Salem now?

Baskin: I know we’re short on time, so real quick: there are five candidates in the running. I won’t name all of them, but the field includes the Salem city councilor who’s right now serving as acting mayor. There’s also Kim Driscoll’s chief of staff from when she ran the city. And there’s a former mayor of Salem who preceded Driscoll in office, back in the ’90s, and three decades later is coming back for more.

The candidates are taking part in a mayoral forum this evening, which we’ll be covering, and Salem voters will narrow the field of five down to two in a preliminary election that’s scheduled for March 28, a month from today. And then there'll be a final election that’s scheduled for May 16.

Rath: I guess we just can't get enough elctions. Matt, thank you.

Baskin: Thank you Arun.