 Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm James Milan and this is a talk of the town legislative update with our state representative, Dave Rogers, who covers a good portion of Arlington and Belmont and a little bit of Cambridge in his district. And we had the privilege of being able to talk to Dave regularly several times a year to get an update. Dave, first of all, thank you for joining us and happy New Year. Thanks. It's great to be here and happy New Year to you. I hope you're doing well despite these very unusual times we're living for. Yeah. Well, obviously doing well, like so many other things is, is, is, you know, just feels different in, in, in context, in the current context than it usually does. But we are here and happy to talk to you and hopeful still about what 2021 will bring for all of us. But let's ask you to kind of just briefly revisit 2020 or at least these last months since we last spoke to you, because there's been a lot going on in the legislature in our state house, despite the constraints that COVID has imposed on the way that you guys do business, you have been very productive. So if I can just ask you, you know, start wherever you want, and just bring us up to date on what you see as, you know, the most significant steps that have been taken by the legislature in the last little while. Sure. Well, thanks for the opportunity. And yes, despite these kind of challenging times, the legislature has adopted and adjusted to those times we've adopted emergency rules. So we can vote. It's a skeleton crew in the state house of legislators in the House and Senate running the sessions. And then most of us are at home voting from home. And so that's very unusual because legislating is very much a type of work that involves coordination and acting in concert with others. And so it's been challenging to do so from home. But we've adopted and adjusted and so adapted, I should say. So I think some of the big things we've been able to do, one, I would say is the voting wall we passed because of social distancing protocols, obviously highly concerned about bunching at the polls, the potential for the spread of the virus. So we had to on the fly pretty quickly pass a new voting law. And we did. And it was really well thought out. It had a number of provisions for mail in ballot, which people really took advantage of prove to be very popular. We also expanded early voting both in the primary and the general election, a full 14 days of early voting, two weeks of early voting in the general election. And one thing that I push for I working with the chair of the election laws is that our town clerks could begin to tabulate the votes ahead of time before now couldn't reveal which way an election result was going for fear of creating bias in those who chose to vote on election day because we preserved election day voting. But they could begin to tabulate them. Well, why is that important? Because as we all sat on pens and needles waiting for Pennsylvania and some other states because in those states, they didn't tabulate votes early. They didn't start counting the votes until the polls closed election day. And so the whole country waited. Again, you know, with bated breath for what would be the results of the election. And we didn't do that in Massachusetts. Again, something I push for that our town clerk could tabulate votes early. Anyway, long and short of it is we had record shattering turnout in Massachusetts. I think it broke all records. So in the midst of a pandemic, we had more participatory democracy than ever before. I would say that was a resounding victory in that new law we passed. We passed sweeping police reform. Sorry, I was going to interrupt you before you move on. I did want to just say the what you just described about some of the changes to the voting procedures that were kind of pandemic imposed in a sense. And you guys were pivoted quickly. That early tabulation to me, you know, I'll just know it doesn't make any sense for me to me that we do it any other way. You know, why not get ahead at least of the count as best we can, you know, that counts started. As you said, as long as the results themselves are not, you know, or preliminary results are not at all, you know, broadcast, then, you know, that's just making the clerk's job. I'm not sure if it's easier, but the expedites the process on the other side of the official election day. So hopefully, you know, those states that don't operate that way may reconsider, you know, in the future. And kudos to you guys for for doing it here. No, it's a great point point well taken. And I'm originally my native home state is Pennsylvania. And I knew following the election closely, as I imagined many were, that Pennsylvania was going to be truly a key this year. So I went down to Pennsylvania, the final five days before the election, and campaign for Biden Harris, the Biden Harris ticket, you know, wearing a mask, going door to door, handing out literature, all sorts of things. And then on election day, I was what's called election protection, where I received a very lengthy training was like a three hour training session, and be at a poll location to. And then they had a central place with election lawyers, where if I saw any irregularities, any problems to report them in. And so the reason I mentioned that is I sort of was talking with other activists, Pennsylvania activists in the Democratic Party. And they passed their election law last year. And so the pandemic hadn't hit yet. I mean, I shouldn't say last year, 2019, now that we're in a new year, 2019, that we passed ours in 2020, Pennsylvania did theirs in 2019. And there was kind of I don't know if we want to get into all the details of that now, but they explained sort of the political tradeoffs that were going in the Pennsylvania State House and State Senate that led to the law being written the way it was. Democrats did push for early tabulation, Democratic state legislators in Pennsylvania. And so I think it's really important and hasn't been said often enough that, you know, Republicans have complained G, because, you know, there was the so-called mirage where Trump was up in Pennsylvania. But then as the mail in, I mean, excuse me, yes, as the votes were tabulated in places with heavy mail and voting, you know, Biden took the lead and the Republicans were complaining like how could this be? Well, it's because your Republican controlled state legislature set it up that way. So they're complaining. And it was both the House and Senate in Pennsylvania are controlled by Republicans. So I don't mean to go off too much on that, but I'm actually glad I was there. I'm glad I asked you the follow up question because we wouldn't have heard that about your experience going down to Pennsylvania. And I think that that's that is of interest to me, for sure. And I think to our audience as well. Yeah, it was a little fraught. I mean, you know, I mean, there was predictions. I mean, we saw what happened tragically on January 6th, the rioting at the Capitol. But I have to tell you, you know, following the news, there were concerns, there might be violence around the election itself. And going to a swing state in like Pennsylvania, where James Carville once described as Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other and Alabama in between. You know, and they have a lot of militia groups. And to be honest, doing election protection work down there caused me, you know, I wasn't too worried about it. But it gave me a little pause. But in the end, Well, I mean, certainly, Pennsylvania was a front line, an absolute front line in for this particular election, both in terms of, you know, it's decisive impact on that election, but also just what you've just describing the fraught situation that we were all aware of, leading into the election, and obviously, on the other side of it as well. So just really interesting to get your perspective as somebody who is right there. Yeah, it's happy to play my part. And obviously, we got a big win. And happy to see my original home state of Pennsylvania come through. And, and obviously, you know, I know this is taped to be broadcast later, but you were here on January 19. And tomorrow we'll have a new president and it can't come soon enough. I wish there was a fast forward button I could push, but we'll have to wait till tomorrow at noon. And feeling that yes, feeling that many of us, you know, would have or or a, you know, a mechanism many of us would have long for, for March on fast forward police. Well, I would have, yeah, for four years, but you know, at any rate, all right, anyway, let's let us get you know, I interrupted let us move on. No, that's fine. So another big piece we did is police reform. Obviously, the Black Lives Matter movement, very powerful, the killing of George Floyd and many others and a pattern of systemic racism that's going on for a very, very long time. And we took it up. It was controversial. The to give you a sense of how controversial, I will tell you that 34 Democrats in the Massachusetts House voted against doing police reform. So it's interesting, I frequently try to explain to constituents in my more progressive district, the interplay and the dynamics politically in the Massachusetts House. And at times I kind of struggle to articulate and fully explain the different districts around the state, how the Merrimack Valley or the South Shore may send a Democrat, but a much more moderate Democrat than would come from Cambridge or Arlington or Belmont or frankly, out in Western Mass, the college areas, you know, right? It's not quite what you were saying about Pennsylvania with Alabama being between, you know, these various liberal polls. But, but, you know, what what I hear you saying, and what I've noticed myself is that that Democratic majority in our legislature in general, does span quite a bit of, you know, of the political spectrum. It really does. And that's been eyeopening to me in my time in service in the House is, you know, sort of go there. And I come from a certain part of the state and you can mistakenly assume why you've got a D after your name, you're a Democrat. So I imagine you and I probably square up on almost all the issues are, and then you get to know some of your colleagues, and you find out that they are Democrats and do vote with the Democrats on a lot of things. They're solid Democrats. But, you know, they're they're not liberal Democrats. They're not progressive Democrats. They're not. And so 34 Democrats, there's 160 of us. So all the Republicans and 34 Democrats voted against the police reform. And so what have we got it through? And it was really a landmark piece in that it for the first time establishes a truly independent certification process, a licensure, licensure process for police, they can be decertified. That agency, that new agency has sweeping powers, subpoena powers, investigatory powers. So that was a pretty dramatic piece. We put significant limitations on the use of force, chokeholds, rubber bullets, tear gas, all sorts of limitations on the way police can use force. We put limitations on so called no knock warrants. And we put in place a whole series of additional training measures. And to be fair to our police, the truth is, often now police are going on calls that involve mental health issues. And it's funny, I just did a zoom meeting, a forum with the chief of police in Belmont, another part of my district. We're really a very strong and good thoughtful police chief, Jamie MacIsaac. He put out a very strong statement after George Floyd was killed. He's very progressive in his thinking. But he made the point, you know, our officers are frequently going to homes where maybe a person is experiencing significant mental health problems, bipolar, depression, anxiety, the full range of issues. And as a consequence, that's a very challenging environment for a police officer. What he wants to do is hire social workers. I think Arlington has social workers. That's right. Police department, Belmont doesn't have him. And so he made the point that, look, we want to address these challenges. But so anyway, the police bill that we did, we'll have training on for officers on how to deal with these very difficult situations. So there really, I'm leaving out 15 other things. I mean, one piece was a part that I wrote on facial recognition to limit the use of facial recognition software. We know that it's biased against people of color and women. The police here in our state were using it by going to the RMB, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, without a warrant, and sort of rifling through their system to do facial recognition, facial recognition searches. And so we wrote a strong bill that actually originally required a full warrant. Governor Baker amended the bill. This is part of the problem. The 34 Democrats who didn't vote with us, we didn't have a veto proof majority that gave Governor Baker our Republican governor more power authority to amend the bill, unlike a US president who can only sign or veto. In most states, including ours, our governors have a third option, other than signing a veto, which is to amend. So Baker sent it back with amendments and made it very clear that if we didn't go along with substantially with his amendments, he would be telling. And then we didn't have the majority. So we agreed to sign this amendment, including one that kind of, right, exactly, including one that watered down the piece that I had brought forward on facial recognition. It's still good. There is now some limitation on how law enforcement can use the software. And it brings up both civil libertarian concerns of Fourth Amendment search and seizure without warrant, but it also brings up bias free policing or systemic racism issues in that the algorithms that the program was used to develop this software was later revealed, I think we're mostly based on Caucasian features. And so now even Amazon and big tech that helped design the software have admitted that it's flawed, that it needs to be revisited. I think Amazon announced it for it would put a moratorium on even selling their facial recognition software to law enforcement out of concern. So anyway, so the police reform bill has Yeah, so let me really, really strong bill. Yeah, before we move on. Well, I guess you just said it. I wanted, you know, with the understanding that that there was some modification of it as a result of the governor's input, etc. That as you say, 34 of your Democratic colleagues did not vote for it. In the aggregate, it does sound like you agree would agree that it is a good bill, a strong bill, one that you stand behind. Absolutely. I mean, it makes truly sweeping changes to the way law enforcement does its work. And as I said, I think some of it, I think as law enforcement gets to know the bill and what's in it, they'll like a lot of it. For instance, better training on how to deal with difficult situations. I mean, it really was I thought thoughtful, and pretty well structured. You know, the police will still be able to do their work in public safety. But it puts new teeth in sort of regulation and licensing and the ability with problematic officers to decertify them so they can't police here, or frankly, anywhere else. And so we could devote a whole hour for them to the I've left off quite a few provisions that are in there. We have, I guess, want to cover a fair amount of ground. But it is truly, I you know, choose your word landmark breakthrough whatever pretty profound shift in how our law enforcement will do its work in our state. Well, as you said, we are expecting or asking you to cover quite a bit of ground in this half hour. And we do understand that that means that unfortunately, we're not going to be able to delve as much into as much detail as we would like. Yeah, and I have a constituent newsletter I send out once a month and a website and with links where people can drill deeper if they really want to understand in a little more detail. And, you know, my personal cell phone is published, people call me and I'm always happy to talk in more depth and people do reach out. So but I think for the purposes of our discussion, we've covered a lot of the big things that are in it. You know, another major thing we did was a climate change bill. Again, really a breakthrough, a pretty sweeping bill that would get the Commonwealth to net zero emissions by 2050. And the previous bill that was in law that was in place was the Global Warming Solutions Act, GWSA. And that set a benchmark of 1990 emission levels and said that we would get bring our emissions down to a certain percentage of that below that. And so this is sort of the next generation climate legislation that goes beyond even the Global Warming Solutions Act to get us to net zero emissions. It will spur renewable energy. It has expands wind energy. For the first time ever, it has an environmental justice piece, so that low income and minority communities are not disproportionately harmed by environmental degradation and the siting of plants. And so again, another bill, it makes municipal light plants, there are 41 municipal utilities throughout the Commonwealth. They're different than the IOUs, the investor owned utilities like Eversource. And we mandated that those 41 municipal utilities meet the same standards on renewable energy that the IOUs. We increased what's called the RPS, the Renewable Portfolio Standard percentage of clean energy, renewable energy that the big utilities now all the utilities need to have as part of their energy mix. I mean, this was a huge bill. And again, I could there's 12 other provisions in that as well as a comprehensive bill. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, you may have read the Governor vetoed it. And the way that worked is the conference committee between the House and the Senate negotiated a final agreement. That took time. It's a complicated bill. Energy policy is inordinately complex. But they got it done, got it to the governor, but he was at the end of the session. And now we've started a new session. So by law, the governor has 10 days to review it. He waited till the 10th day. And he vetoed it. So the House and Senate promptly came out and said, and we couldn't override it to finish the circle of how that works, because a new session it's done. And can you write it in the new session? Well, no, that is the end of the session. Any legislation from the previous reintroduce we have to do it. Oh, but we will. Both the House and Senate leadership came out and said, right away, we will take this up. I think we'll take it up very early. I think we'll put it on his desk again. And this time, if he vetoes it, we'll be the beginning of the session, we'll override his veto. So it will happen. Right. Great. We're able to speak about it as if, you know, it's not yet passed, but you're you've outlined why we can be quite confident that highly confident that Can I can I ask you something about this, Dave? The the soundbite that all of us would have heard already, and that you have repeated is this idea of net zero by 2050. Right. That is a shorthand for a whole lot of work and a whole lot of content in that bill, I understand. Right. Can I ask you, when that is the case, when you have legislation that comes out, and that is the goal, are what's what is the point of something like that? Is it literally that we are going to marshal all our forces to getting to net zero by 2050? Or is that more an aspiration that then drives a lot of specific kind of policies that come? No, it's not aspirational. It's the law. It's a binding law. And every five years, the way the law is written, what will become the law is that there'll be measuring points. I'll let folks know if you didn't, we're lucky in Arlington and that we have the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs lives right here in Arlington. Secretary Kathleen Theoharides is actually my constituent lives in the part of Arlington I represent. She's Charlie Baker's Secretary of. Yeah. Her Twitter handle, if you want to check it out is climate cave. So she's really forward thinking about climate change and environmental issues. And they've already began to map and model emissions throughout the state from all sources in anticipation of then implementing the new law. So I think we can be hopeful and confident that we're going to have a law that strong teeth to it is binding. One of the big debates that goes on in the environmental community, and it's an honest, legitimate debate is net zero versus 100% renewable energy. And by the way, there's some overlap because to get to net zero, you are obviously going to have to ramp up significantly your renewable energy. And one of the challenges that many experts and there's vigorous and honest debate about this I, you know, I want to make that clear that those who have some qualms or concerns about 100% renewable is that one, our current grid is not able to handle 100% renewable energy platform. And then two, that we don't have sufficient energy storage capacity yet to get us to 100% renewable. I'm sure you've heard this, you know, you only get solar energy when the sun is shining, you always get when you only get wind energy when the wind is blowing. And but what if what if you could store that energy? There's pioneering work going on throughout the country throughout the world. Even we all see the Tesla the cars what people may not know about Tesla is they're very deeply involved in studying and developing energy storage technology right here in Massachusetts. We have a lot of companies looking at matter of fact, another constituent of mine in Arlington, Emily Riker, who's an outstanding leader of Green Town Labs, that is the largest clean energy incubator for tech companies, small tech companies in the entirety of North America. So including Canada and Mexico. And I visited several times. It's where Ed Markey went to announce the Green New Deal. He announced it in Washington DC with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then came to Massachusetts to do a launch. I was there with him when he did so at Green Town Labs in Somerville, again, which is led by an Arlington resident. And so but to get to 100% renewable energy, we have we face technological challenges. And that's why there are many ardent passionate advocates for for tackling climate change who think net zero is an equally effective if not more effective way to go. But again, that is a real debate in the environmental community. My point is, with the net zero approach that we took in the legislature, it's not like never the twain shall meet. I mean, again, to get to net zero, you're going to see renewable energy go way up. And we have a new incoming speaker of the House just took office. And he gave sort of a maiden speech where he set out his priorities and like number one was wind energy. Where he said there's no reason that we shouldn't try to lead the whole country on wind energy. We have many megawatts have already been authorized. So I think we're going to see a huge ramping up of wind energy in our state. That's great. You know what? We have about three minutes left. Is there anything that you can touch on in that time? And we'll we'll forgo for the moment kind of looking forward. And we'll just we'll we'll cover that next time we get to talk to you. But let me shut up and give you the last couple of minutes. Well, you know, I guess one other thing I mentioned is we did pass something called the row act, obviously with Trump appointing three of the nine Supreme Court justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. It's unusual for a one term president to get three picks. Jimmy Carter was a one term president. I don't think he got any picks. You'll see two term presidents will get two, three, maybe four. Very unusual just the way, of course, one of them is a stolen seat from Mary Garland. Right. Looks to be coming in as our new attorney general. But what's my point? There are many advocates in Planned Parenthood and they were all people who study law and policy in this area. Believe that the new Supreme Court majority is poised to either overturn Roe versus Wade or or or limit it in traumatic ways. That's actually what I think is more likely. But whether it's overturned completely or limited severely. What the public may not know is that wouldn't automatically ban choice or abortion around the entire it would devolve it to the states. And so in anticipation of that and with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the House passed the Roe Act, which will codify the right to choose and expand it here in Massachusetts. In a couple key ways, for instance, the fatal fetal anomaly. If a woman and gets the tragic news that the child cannot survive outside the womb, she can terminate the pregnancy. And also the age at which younger people need to get consent from their parents has been lowered to 16. Below 16, they would still need either judicial bypass or consent. So that was a big breakthrough. And again, that that's a hard bill to move. Obviously choice and abortion is controversial issue, but we got it done. The governor vetoed it. But we did have the votes to override the governor on that. So that was big. And then of course, we have the coronavirus and we have done a lot in the legislature to help. A lot of the powers to address a public health emergency are with the governor. Matter of fact, as a lawyer, one thing that has struck me, and it's pretty remarkable the power the governor does have it's under the Civil Defense Act. It's been litigated. It's been tested because as you know, there are essential and non essential businesses. Some of the businesses and business groups representing businesses that were deemed non essential litigated the matter. How can the governor in a free country with free market capitalism just shut these businesses down? And so it's been litigated. And the judges have cited that during a public health emergency, the governor has these powers. So I'm thinking of that now more with the roll out of the vaccine. And we've seen extremely problematic in the early going of the rolling out of the vaccine. And that has been I've been pushing the governor working with other reps and senators. You know, I think this whole coronavirus pandemic has shown us how important it is how important government is. You know, we need a thriving private sector for innovation and the dynamism of creative, creative innovation in our economy to create jobs. But equally important. Equally important is that we have an outstanding well functioning government. And it's big picture and I know we're getting near the end of our time. And I think about this stuff a lot because I work in public policy and politics. Even laying putting the side of Trump. We have seen for 40 years now, the denigration of government that we need to cut it, we need to limit it. And if you ever needed exhibit a for the importance of a well financed, well managed, thoughtful people, outstanding public administrators, outstanding public leaders. That's I give you COVID-19. And we have seen such an epic failure by a Republican administration. And I see this as a larger story of not just Trump. But the last 40 years of really kind of giving government a bad name, and always wanted to cut it and limit it and limit regulations. And the truth is, we're finding out that having a good center for disease control, having a good National Institute to Health, having good state and local public health departments is so vital, I would say to, to our entire society and our economy. Because if you look at other recessions, I was an economics major and work for an economic consulting company earlier part of my career. Other recessions were caused by out of the financial sector out of Wall Street, or out of housing or go back to the 70s, the oil shock, OPEC, the oil embargo. Whereas they happen in the financial markets are the leading economic indicators are disrupted. Think of this. This is a public health recession, a public health recession. And so I don't mean to go on at too great a length about that. But it's further evidence to me that we need outstanding public leaders. You know, when people talk about what we need to raise, raise progressive revenue to invest in infrastructure and an education and reforming different systems, that's every bit as important as private sector investment. In some ways more so. And as you can tell, I get pretty passionate about that because I really, to meet the challenges of this new century we're in, we're going to we really have to learn lessons from what's happened here this last year. There's so many lessons to be learned. And I'll be trying to incorporate them into my work as a state representative. And I'm so happy a new administration is taking office tomorrow. We're going to have a long difficult road ahead. But I think we can sort of breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. And so I'll look forward to partnering with my constituents. And the road ahead as we meet the challenges to come. I'm looking forward to meeting those challenges and in a new session that's just begun. And I look forward, you know, my, as my cell phones public, my website, there's my email. I look forward to hearing from folks and working. And I apologize, I'm at home and I don't know the angle of the camera. I don't know if it's a little weird. No problem, Dave. In fact, you know, we blew right by the 30 minute limit that I had promised you and, you know, and my producer that we would adhere to. But, you know, the reason, you know, I'll stand by the reasons for doing so, which is you have a discursive style, as I'm sure you're well aware. But through that, we get real insight into a lot, you know, much beyond the, you know, simply what is going on insight into how, you know, your own values, how you are approaching your job, what you think is most important or most dysfunctional, etc., which I think is illuminating for all of us. And also, you know, you have a lot going on in that head of yours. And it's good to hear that in, you know, as it streams out, it really is. So I appreciate you taking this time. We'll get back with you soon enough. And kind of see how these first months of the new administration go. And what effect that has, again, on Massachusetts in terms of public health, in terms of the economy, as you said, this public health recession that we are all dealing with and hopefully moving away from in the coming months. So I look forward to that. But appreciate your time with us today, really. Thank you very much. I enjoyed as always and look forward to continuing to have a dialogue on the issues that we don't care about. Appreciate it very much. I've been speaking to Dave Rogers, our state representative, one of our two state representatives here in Arlington. And this has been a legislative update and part of our Talk of the Town series. So thanks again to Dave Rogers. And thanks to you for joining us. And we will see you next time.