Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told GBH News Tuesday that there should be zero tolerance in Massachusetts’ overburdened shelter system for behavior that puts other residents at risk, especially women and children.
“Not only as governor, but somebody who is a former prosecutor and attorney general, I have no tolerance for criminal activity in our shelters or anywhere, for that matter,” Healey said in an interview on GBH’s Boston Public Radio.
Healey ordered safety inspections of all state shelters Monday, after a resident at a shelter in Revere was arrested for allegedly possessing an assault rifle and a million dollars worth of fentanyl. She says that in that case — which involves a man from the Dominican Republic — it was appropriate for local law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities.
“This person was immediately charged, he was arrested,” Healey said. “He was arraigned. He was appropriately detained by [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], which is important — we had conversations with ICE about that.”
Healey has previously stressed that Massachusetts is not a so-called sanctuary state, while also vowing that she won’t use state police to assist in the mass deportations President-elect Donald Trump has said will begin as soon as he takes office.
Healey added that this particular case shows the need for a bipartisan congressional agreement to strengthen U.S. border security.
“We’ve housed thousands of people through our emergency shelter system over the last several years, and in just the last two years of my administration, where we did see an increase in numbers to the shelters because of Congress’s failure to fix the border, right?” Healey said.
“Donald Trump killed that [bipartisan border agreement] a year ago. He promised — he ran on fixing the border. He has the opportunity now, with [Republican control of] the House and the Senate and being in charge of the administration. I hope he does.”
Healey’s discussion of the Revere case did not include past incidents that raised questions about the safety of the state’s emergency shelter, including two alleged instances of child rape.
The governor also took vigorous issue, as she has previously, with a recent Boston Globe report that suggested she missed warning signs about the impending implosion of Steward Health Care as both attorney general and governor, along with other officials including former Gov. Charlie Baker.
Among other things, Healey said that as attorney general, she filed suit to force Steward to release financial information it claimed it could keep under wraps as a for-profit health-care operator.
“We went to court over it,” Healey said. “It’s still pending: we won the first round, but it’s still on appeal. So I disagree with any assertion the state didn’t do all that it could to pursue Steward.”
In the Globe story, Nancy Kane, a Harvard-affiliated health care expert hired to do a report on Steward’s finances when Healey was attorney general, described her findings being softened during the editing process with Healey’s office so her conclusions about Steward’s precarity were rendered “happier.”
In her Boston Public Radio interview, though, Healey called that a mischaracterization.
“Nancy’s wonderful, did wonderful work over the years,” Healey said. “The reports come in, then the lawyers have to look at them: they have to decide: ‘What are we actually going to present in terms of some of this information?’
“And I think what happened there, and ... Nancy Kane may have disagreed with it, was, I think the lawyers’ job is to present the facts and the financial numbers, and you know, maybe leave to others to evaluate some of the editorializing. There’s nothing nefarious about it.”
However, Healey also said she won’t push for any corrections to the Globe story because, as governor, “I’ve got to move on ... I can’t relitigate stuff.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Healey backed the idea of eliminating renter-paid broker fees. The idea roared back onto the scene in Massachusetts after New York City banned forcing tenants to pay such fees last month — a practice can increase the cost of obtaining new rental housing by thousands of dollars in the Boston area. The idea of eliminating those fees has support in the state Senate but not in the House.
“I think they should be abolished,” Healey said. “I think they should go away. I totally support that, and support taking action to make that happen.
“Anybody who’s out there listening to constituents knows that this is a real issue for people — affordability, right?” she added. “That’s a real issue for a lot of people. ... This is an easy way to at least address an aspect of that.”
