Gov. Charlie Baker says he tries hard not to have regrets, preferring to think of them as “future opportunities.”
With Baker’s eight years in office coming to a close next week, those opportunities will soon be in the hands of Gov.-elect Maura Healey. Baker, in a wide-ranging interview with GBH News reflecting on his tenure, cited one area where he hopes Healey “succeeds where we failed.”
“I wish we'd been able to figure out a way to convince the Legislature that it was important to invest in clean energy innovation,” Baker said.
Lawmakers this session rejected the Republican governor's proposal to put $750 million in federal stimulus money into a clean energy innovation fund. Baker said he was glad to hear Healey, a Democrat, say she wants to create a “climate corridor” and invest in climate technology.
“I think we're going to need innovation as much as we need rules, regulations and coercion to get to where we need to go to deal with the climate crisis,” Baker said.
Baker offered a theatrical shrug when asked why his pitch didn’t catch on with lawmakers.
“For some reason, it was just never really part of their vision for the way we should go about dealing with our fossil fuel problems,” he said. “And like I said, I wish the governor-elect a lot of success on that one because I really do think it could be the next big thing in terms of our ability to put our brains and our institutions to work on one of the most pressing challenges we face as a country and as a world.”
Baker has signed several landmark bills in his time in office, including laws steering the state toward more clean energy, rewriting the school finance formula, and instituting reforms to criminal justice and policing.
His idea to reform the health care system by spurring more investment in primary, geriatric and behavioral health care, though, twice sputtered out in the Legislature. Baker said that might be an issue that needs to be tackled at the federal level, rather than trying to forge a new path as a state.
“It's hard to tell sometimes why certain things don't seem to make any progress,” he said. “We did get a bunch of the elements around addiction support and recovery support and mental health services and I'm very bullish that those will be beneficial — and have been — going forward.”
What he’s proud of
Baker sees efforts to improve access to behavioral health and increased spending on addiction and recovery services as key accomplishments in the health care realm.
His first example, when asked what he’s most proud of, is a project that’s spanned years: extending broadband internet access to 53 western and central Massachusetts communities that lacked the infrastructure either entirely or across large areas.
The Baker administration relaunched the broadband program in 2016, and earlier this month visited Ashfield to celebrate achieving fully operational high-speed connections in 46 of the 53 towns. Projects remain underway in the other communities.
“When you hear people tell stories about the difference it made in their lives, it’s a pretty compelling example of how government can make a big difference for people,” Baker said.
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What he didn’t expect
In his 2016 State of the Commonwealth speech, Baker said he could sum up his first year in office with the phrase: "Don't be surprised when you get surprised." His big early surprise was the record snowfall of 2015 that battered the MBTA, and in time he'd have to grapple with other unexpected crises, from the Merrimack Valley natural gas explosions in 2018 to the tornadoes that hit Cape Cod in 2019 to the various ways the COVID-19 pandemic upended public life.
Baker said not all the surprises were negative.
"I also think the chance we had to sort of lead the way on offshore wind is something that I certainly wouldn't have expected to be able to be part of," he said. "That one is going to take a while, but it's like almost any kind of major change, and when you talk about energy, you are talking major change. I think we've put enough stakes in the ground on that one that we really will create a certain amount of momentum and it will be a good thing.”
What his administration's legacy is
Though the T continues to face challenges, Baker named a couple expansions in public transit as items he hopes will be considered part of his legacy: the opening of the T’s long-awaited Green Line Extension into Somerville and Medford, and advancements in the effort to bring commuter rail service to the South Coast.
Other issues Baker sees as part of his legacy include the creation of the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission to certify police officers in Massachusetts, and the way the state handled the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging from the brunt of it “in better shape than a lot of other places.”
As someone who’s consistently stressed his beliefs in bipartisanship and collaboration, Baker said he also wants his administration to be remembered by its tone.
“We try pretty hard to be about the work and not about the noise at a point in time when a lot of public life and politics is more about the noise than it is about to work,” he said.
