Beacon Hill slow zone

It’s been six months since Maura Healey was sworn in as governor, a milestone that often lends itself to a performance evaluation. But any critique of Healey’s tenure would be incomplete without a look at her governing partners.

To borrow the term used most often to describe the travails of the MBTA, the Massachusetts Legislature is a slow zone. Six months and one day since the General Court was seated, the pace of its activity makes a round trip on the Red Line seem positively supersonic.

The Massachusetts House last met in a formal session on April 26, when it passed its version of the fiscal 2024 budget. Since then they’ve fulfilled their constitutional obligation to meet by holding informal sessions, usually attended by a handful of members from each party, where no roll call votes are held and any one objection stops action.

The Senate has acted in a seemingly whirlwind pace, approving its budget in May and a tax cut proposal in June. Yet, in what has become an annual tradition since 2016, lawmakers have blown past the July 1 deadline for adopting a formal spending plan.

House and Senate committees have proven sclerotic in adopted joint rules — and in the case of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, the impasse is so great the panels meet separately.

To date, 19 pieces of legislation have made it to Healey’s desk, only three of any major significance.

In sum, lawmakers are on pace for a July 31, 2024 to match the chaos of the end of the 192nd Legislature last year, when lawmakers worked well into the morning of August 1, 2022.

So why should anyone care?

We’re constantly hearing from Healey, legislators and advocates that Massachusetts has become unaffordable and residents are leaving for cheaper locations. High taxes and the cost to rent or own a home — not to mention the aforementioned nightmare known as public transit — are cited as the principal causes.

What’s being done about it? Residents naturally look to the top elected official, whether mayor, governor or president and expect them to fix the things they promosed to do if they were elected.

But that ignores the truism that while the executive branch proposes, the legislative branch disposes. And when the legislature doesn’t meet, or meets beind closed doors, voters tend to vent their frustration on the chief executive.

Search the legislative website and you will find scores of measures addressing housing, transportation and child care, another frequently cited unaffordable obligation for working parents.

Committee hearings generate interest from advocates if not the media, partly a function of the reduced size of the press corps and the fact “news” can be hard to come by during what can be hours of testimony.

To be fair, the lawmakers have made most hearings accessible online, although rules surrounding how members vote on whether to advance measures to the respective branches for debate frequrently reward secrecy.

And the important work — conference committees to resolve differences between House and Senate versions of the budget, taxes and other major measures — are closed to the public.

Healey has slowly ramped up her pace. She missed her self-imposed deadlines for appointing a new MBTA general manager and safety chief. She created a separate cabinet-level agency to deal with housing, although the Legislature declined to give final approval, allowing it to become a reality 30 days later than if they had signed off.

The reality is she (and taxpayers) are at the mercy of House and Senate leaders who prefer to work at their own pace — and not share a lot. It’s too simplistic to heap all the praise or blame on Healey.

I worked as a communications staffer for the Senate and learned there is democracy, but it takes place behind closed doors. And that means the Massachusetts Legislature is broken.