 Hello everyone and welcome to Talk of the Town. This is James Milan and we are with a familiar guest, our state rep or one of the two state reps who share Arlington. Dave Rogers is joining us from his home like everybody is, right? And welcome Dave, thanks for joining us today. Let's start just by asking the question that we are really interested in first off with all of our guests and that is how are you doing? How are things going in your household and for you personally? Well thank you. It's good to be here. I'm doing fine. Knock on wood. It's been a trying time for all of us but I have a big extended family, three brothers, three sisters, lots of nieces and nephews, just a bunch of folks but so far at least in my own family. We've been lucky that everyone is healthy and thanks for asking. How about you? How are you doing? Very well thank you. Yeah happily just just before all this hit moved my my 84 year old mom down here from Western Canada where she was for four decades so the timing was was perfect to get her into moved into our house back in January and much better for her to be with us and us to be with her and then worrying about her welfare so thanks for asking as well and yeah we're all we're all good we're feeling lucky within within this very very peculiar context that we find ourselves. Speaking of which let's let's get to it. I think a lot of people are curious about this. You are as we know a state legislator. There is a lot of stuff that needs to happen that needs to come out of this of the State House for the benefit of Massachusetts residents right now. You are likely as busy as you have ever been I would imagine. How are you getting your work done? Well great question and it is a busy time and it's sort of all-consuming because normally we have any you know dozens of different public policy questions in front of us. Now really the main thing is this pandemic the public health emergency that we all find ourselves in and the legislature has already done a lot and we will do more. To give a couple examples one is directly applicable to Arlington is town elections were supposed to take place in early April but the law is such that if a town wanted to change its election date would have to go to the judicial branch of government would have to go to court but we promptly passed a law that would empower municipal governments to change their election date without the need to go to court and so Arlington did that the select board moved the election date. Another example is obviously Arlington has representative town meeting. Representative town meeting does a lot of things but perhaps the biggest thing it does is approve the town budget to be done by June 30th where representative town meeting town meeting votes on the town budget. Well there is even the community distancing that we're all living with there was no way it would seem to convene a town meeting and there is no provision or there was no provision in the law for Arlington to approve its town budget so literally come the end of the fiscal year there was no legal mechanism for Arlington to continue to spend money. So what we did is we passed the law in the state legislature that empowers towns to do a so-called 112th budget a monthly month-to-month budget where you just sort of level fund services where they were in the previous fiscal year. We got that through and it's been signed so those are two examples of the town elections. Town meeting and approving the town budget where we needed to pass legislation quickly to address those things and we have a number of other pieces of legislation we just passed a bill that will postpone MCATs that she heard from a lot of educators teachers parents school administrators that right now say school is able to return on May the 4th and I think that's an open question let's say hypothetically for the purposes of our conversation school could return. A lot of the learning that's taking place right now is pretty uneven. Kids with good technology at home who don't have English as a second language you don't have any developmental disabilities who maybe have folks who can pitch in and help them who aren't themselves frontline workers who can be home with the students those students you're probably gonna do okay even even given this enormous disruption but what about all the other students who are having an uneven learning process and I think even for the students who do have all the advantages it's still pretty uneven so ask them to come back and take this important test this year would have been I think unfair and unwise so we just passed a law to eliminate the MCATs requirement so those are some things we've done and there's a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline. Absolutely I mean one of the things that we are curious about though is just a purely procedural question which is you were just mentioning several pieces of legislation that have been passed how does that happen do you just convene enough people via zoom to have a quorum to be able to do to pass those votes is that how that's happening yeah it's such a great question it's an astute question because that is very much the challenge we face and what we have done is the legislature meets primarily in two ways the informal session and a formal session a formal session is where all members are present that is from the far Western reaches the state near the New York border all the way from the Cape and the islands legislators from all around the state are required to be physically present on the floor of the house and voting and that's a more formal process amendments are offered and introduced and debated and there's just a whole it's a whole pretty rigorous process we go through but the legislature also meets in what's called an informal session and in formal sessions you know it could be we're going to name a bridge we're going to establish what's called a sick bank which is when somebody a state employee is ill and his his or her co-workers want to donate some of their sick time create a sick bank for all sorts of things like this that are more routine we can do them in an informal session well what we're doing now is passing some of these significant bills I just described in an informal session and it's made for some challenges for legislators to how do you file an amendment how do you make sure to weigh in and protect the interests of your community as well as the broader public policy interests that you believe are in the best interest of the whole state and so I in a formal session I'm introducing amendments I'm on the floor at times I have literally sent a text to the chairways and means where the bill is sitting in ways of me or an email or a text to a senior staff person in the speaker's office to say hey I think this is important hey I think this should be in the bill and then so I've been able to put my ideas forward but it's it's unorthodox and to compound that the curiosity of timing right now is that April is budget month in the State House the House of Representatives takes up the state budget 40 talk to you about that in the past that's for sure yeah 40 plus billion dollar budget and the parliamentarians the lawyers who need to establish the process have as of yet not done some in other words we still don't know how we're going to meet debate and approve our budget for our entire state that is under discussion under the midnight oil is being burned as as many work to solve that riddle this by the way the same is true for town meeting in Belmont and Arlington I've helped put forward language for remote participation so that Arlingtonians and Belmontians that members of town meeting can participate remotely you know perhaps in some combination of methods including what we're doing right now with the zoom technology yeah I mean clearly obviously goes without saying extraordinary times extraordinary measures are required and a lot of flexibility and a lot of people need to be willing to do something unorthodox in order just to get the business done that needs doing and that is nowhere more true than in the context in which you were that's for sure because there are an awful lot of people depending on you guys being able to get these things done however it is that you devise whatever by whatever method you devise to do so so let's talk about that a little bit obviously we know and this this is first and foremost it remains first and foremost a public health crisis but I'd like to talk about both the public health piece and the economic ramification piece and you know and there are there are many other facets as well and those two clearly overlap in many ways but if you can start off by just describing some of the work that you guys are doing right now some of the programs that you've already or the the legislation you've already rolled out in order to enable us to more effectively address the public health crisis and also what's you know what you're working on currently around that sure well almost right from the outset of this the house quickly passed millions of dollars of aid for our local boards of health and the State Department of Public Health to shore up those finances and inject money into the agencies and local and state agencies that will be helping to coordinate the response a lot of the activity of course I'm sure you've been reading about in your viewers of funnel through the the governor's office on personal protective equipment getting ventilators getting other gear I have had suppliers of people I know through my network reach out to me and I promptly put them in touch with the procurement officials in state government to try to help them provide services and equipment to the state and so it's it's really all hands on deck right now a lot of in a public health emergency you know the legislative processes they deliver in practice each the House and the Senate weighing in the pros and cons of any particular piece of legislation and it really craft sensible law takes time and time is not a luxury you have in a public health emergency so a lot of the key actions designed to contain and overcome the crisis in the public health sector is by necessity must come out of the governor's office they have emergency power to just literally as you've seen issue orders and order closing the school and order closing all non-essential businesses so I think it's important to remember a lot of what I've done is to work with our Attorney General and work with our governor's office to advance ideas that I think will be helpful and give you a specific example I right very beginning of this I went shopping when food shop and I was I got to tell you alarm at how you know they these were essential businesses and one of the few places where keep in mind there's an order saying no more than 10 shall gab but supermarkets are one of the places where that rules is not observed because you have people streaming in to get their groceries more over the grocery stores are limiting their hours so it's one of the few places people can go it's essential they need food and they've limited their hours and availability and what it meant what I noticed the very first time what is crowded I promptly came back from the store and sent messages to the speaker's office to achieve a staff there say you know here's a series of things I recommend we do with the supermarkets and then I saw that Attorney General more he was developing regulations for a supermarket and I've developed a relationship with her where I was literally texting more with ideas of what I thought needed to happen in our supermarkets so a big part of what I'm doing as a legislator now is not traditional legislating it's interacting with the executive branch to push for things that I think could be helpful I'll give you another example I hadn't had many constituents reach out with challenges with getting their unemployment claims fine as you see we have record unemployment and that's suddenly spiked I mean to get 17 million claims of course nation in three weeks and hundreds of thousands here so I'm getting a lot of inquiries about unemployment and I noticed one constituent was asked to print out and sign a form and send it back in and this constituent did not have a print well guess what there are a lot of low-income folks that's technological challenges they don't have a printer and I even did a survey some friends might do you have a good well functioning printer at home right now I'm surprised the number of people who don't so I got in touch with the governor's office and I said you know in the business world now electronic signatures and you know you attest under penalties of perjury that the information provided is true and act you do all over the computer we have electronic signatures electronics submission so I said if it's not in the system already you should have your software program which just code in a simple electronic signature and so that idea I just sent that to them within the last couple days but I plan to follow up later today to see you know if that's an idea yeah listening listening to you just describe how those things are unfolding in the current environment makes me wonder you know we've talked to others in other fields about the fact that they are pretty sure they don't know exactly what form it will take but they're pretty sure that business as usual in whatever it is that they do will be fundamentally different on the other side of this partly because of just the general changes that this is going to make to how we see the way that we do things but also because changes that they've had to make in this current situation seem like they should be incorporated into how they proceed once we return to normal I'm wondering you know if you have any examples that you would that you would offer up for the work that you and your fellow legislators do that you're finding oh this could work quite well and maybe we should do do things this way or at least incorporate this as we move forward well one is an example I just gave you even when we pull out of the crisis I think there's no reason those applying for unemployment for instance shouldn't be able to do simple electronic signals they're accepted in the business world for transactions in the hundreds of millions of dollars it's called the uniform electronic transactions act I think all 50 states have adopted it you don't need a hard copy signature on most there are a few documents you might but very few that you do so that that's one example and I think others will be revealed over time in terms of specific techniques but your question also touches on a broader thing not so much specific yeah right in pointed procedural items but this crisis has laid bare some deep fissures in our healthcare system in our society with large and we're still in the midst of the crisis we haven't even reached our peak as we're told here in massachusetts the epidemiologists and public health experts are graphing out what they believe is the likely trajectory of the virus but it's still not too soon to at least begin to think about what changes we need to see in our society as a whole that have been revealed by this crisis because here in what is still even with the rise of China the wealthiest country in the world I think many of us if we weren't before are really awakened to the fact of some of the inequities and inefficiencies in our systems and so yeah that's that is true words cannot be spoken really at this time everything about this pandemic in many ways is we have found through our own experience and and reading and also talking to others it is exacerbating the existing inequities and the systemic issues as you say have been laid bare the systemic changes that need to take place in order for this to be a truly fairer and more equitable society for more of its members again this has been this has brought that a bright light to that I'm I'm wondering how you feel about the prospect of that leading to real change on the other side of all of this given the human tendency and Americans tendency yeah I feel a lot better about the prospect of that if we defeat Donald Trump in November sorry for being so blunt no I really see and I realize this is a community program I don't want to make this too political but you know I took a class in college called news of the day it was a history class you might say to yourself well if it's news of today the news of the day how could it be about history but what we did is we took the headlines of today and then traced back decades back to draw an arc between what is in the headline of the newspaper reading online today and and what has happened in the past and I have to say one recurring thought I've had and I thought this a lot during this crisis is we are seeing laid bare the manifestation of a decades-long philosophy by one group of folks in our country one party that thinks government would screw up a two-car parade and what they've done well that's kind of funny right but what they've done is systematically denigrating and criticized and underfunded government and I think in a crisis who's coming to everyone's rescue right the government a 2.2 trillion dollar bailout for struggling people for unemployment for those desperately need where out of the US Congress out of the government well why has the Center for Disease Control not been adequately funded why has the National Institutes of Health not been adequately funded and cut meanwhile we're cutting taxes on the wealthiest folks in the country that don't begrudge well-law folks their money but when you have critical public health care infrastructure underfunded you have countless needs of the society underfunded and a lack of investment in these critical needs I think this crisis has revealed the manifestation of that ideology of that philosophy which we could go back decades you know and I really I really hope that among other things that come out of this is look government doesn't have every answer for every solution I mean every solution for every problem we need a thriving vibrant private sector the innovation the dynamism the entrepreneurialism that creates new technologies and that's important you must have a thriving bustling private sector but that same thriving bustling energy has to animate our public institution and we have to attract the best and the brightest and invest deeply in innovating in the public sector too and that is where I think we're seeing right now that hasn't happened adequately in our society and it's leading to calamitous outcomes and I I really hope as we look forward three five seven ten fifteen twenty years that this is awakened Americans to how important the functions of the public sector are well let us let us hope so let us hope that there are lessons there and in other areas that people will draw on to actually make things better not just to survive what we're dealing with here but to somehow be able again to address what we have always thought of as normal life in a way that's better serves more sectors of the population you know I think we well I think all of us attending to this program probably are in agreement around that let me ask you a couple more mundane questions now one is describe a little bit about what your day-to-day life is as a legislator here are you maintaining office hours for instance how is it that again you yourself uh Dave Rogers you are conducting business you've explained how the body the collective bodies you know connective business how about you yeah so i'm getting a lot of emails from constituents i'm responding personally to each and every one of them i'm getting phone calls and texts from constituents i'm responding personally to all of them we have people and i have a staff at the state house and i've instructed them as i always do but even more so now what rockets to the top of my list is an individual or a family indeed now no matter what bigger picture things i'm working on like climate change legislation or criminal justice reform legislation what zooms to the top right now if i get a phone call if somebody says i'm legitimately entitled to unemployment assisted i've been laid off i filed a claim i haven't heard back from dga the department of unemployment assistance i drop everything and that's first so human need in a crisis comes first and that's where a lot of my time is gone uh beyond that uh staying in touch with constituents by again answering emails phone calls calling people to address their concerns i am uh with our older residents who you know maybe are in a more high-risk group kind of just trying to set aside a little time every other day just to call some folks and check in on them good i'm you know volunteering in arlington belmont on various local community things to deliver meals to deliver other services i am working on legislation some of this legislation i described at the top of the program and i'm doing the communications i was just on a zoom call earlier today with arlingtonians who are a part of the uu unitarian universalist activist group that is keenly interested in a lot of different social justice issues they wanted to talk to me about what state government's doing to respond so i just had a half hour zoom call earlier with some arlingtonian activists i'm doing a tell the town hall um uh thursday with uh the other part of my district uh belmont senator burger and i are hosting a tell the town hall where we'll be taking question and and lots of other things like i mentioned like what i saw a need supermarkets and and more social distancing regulations to kind of create a safer space so i'm texting other state leaders with ideas suggestions so i can help we have a vulnerable populations in our prisons right now i've been working on that issue can we get folks who aren't dangerous obviously you're not going to be dangerous individuals but folks who are wrapping their sentence folks who are um uh not a threat get them out to prevent overcrowding and we don't want uh new jowl breaks in our prisons so um that gives you a flavor or a sense of what i'm the it's pretty non-stop um it's demanding but as i've said to someone else just the other day as terrible as this is and it's traumatic and stressful it gives those of us who have a calling to do this work who are called to public service an opportunity to step up and really try to deliver services and deliver results so um it is it is an opportunity for me to to really help people and as bad as this situation is that is rewarding to have that change to have that opportunity and i believe that i've been able to do so especially because we've often talked to you in the past uh in past conversations the a lot of the themes that you've touched on here are ones and your and commitments that you have espoused in the past or ones that you've consistently followed through on over the years but i know that you also have uh you know alluded at various times in previous conversations to the fact that the work that you're doing it is not only deliberative um and takes time etc but it is at a step removed or sometimes more than that from the people who ultimately will be served by it um and you're not always dealing so directly uh you always deal i know with your constituents etc but not always in in such a i don't know again i would imagine fulfilling for you a way uh in which you are meeting needs and providing services and things like that yes that's right it's a price and if you can uh help someone uh who's on the frankly on the knife's edge of survival in terms of financial survival if you can get them uh the coverage they need to help they need whether it's mass health or soft moment nutrition assistance or unemployment that is rewarding and it's um you know a big part of the reason i do this work it's called public service for a reason you want to serve the public and you want to help people particularly at times like these on on that note um just i'm sure that it is not hard at all for people to contact you as you're saying that that your constituents do each day but let's go ahead and ask you uh you know what is the phone number for for your office what is the email through which they they can most easily x s u excuse me sure well ever since uh i've been doing this job i um list my personal cell phone and so why don't we start with that and that's six one seven eight one seven nine three nine five matter of fact if you have the ability to scroll um on your show uh we will be able to add that in yeah my cell phone six one seven eight one seven nine three nine five and the number of the state house which is programmed now to ring back out either me or a member of my staff is six one seven seven two two six three seven i hope you can scroll that along the bottom the screen or wherever as well and then email excuse me is d d a b e dot rogers r o g b r s m a house m a h o u s dot gov that's dot g o v perfect someone will get back to you very quickly and i i should say whether it's you a family member a friend a neighbor anyone in need you have any questions you have concerns you have ideas that you want to get to the governor you have an idea that you like to share with you've seen something that you think could be done better during this christ text me calm email will will will will funnel your idea up to the governor staff whatever it may be i'm here to help my staff is here to help and we're ready willing and either to be helpful you know we are very mindful of your time and even more so after you describe what your what your days are looking like looking like and filled with but i do want to ask you just a a series about a series of different issues and just get some short responses number one the a lot of what you are needing to do is not only ease procedures and requirements and things like that to be able to bring more you know just more resources to bear on this but also money right money is is is huge in this in this whole thing is the state is the state tapping into the rainy day fund where is money coming from to provide some of the programs and assistance that you guys are are are crafting sure well revenues last month actually were it was before the the impact of the virus and so they were actually relatively stable but starting now and going forward each month receipts are expected to plummet and probably rather precipitously it's funny in a way town governments are more insulated than state government because town governments like arlington and belmont two of the towns that represent are dependent largely on property taxes well the properties and in a recession the property tax essentially remains the same but state government our budget is very much dependent on revenues that fluctuate significantly during economic downturn the income tax the sales tax and so forth so state government and state government unlike the federal government which you're seeing these rescue packages which are put on a credit card basically they're allowed to deficit spend issued those treasury bonds state government can't do that we have to balance our budget so we're going to be seeing declining revenue and we must have a balanced budget so as a consequence you know we're going to be fighting just a level fund programs and some number of programs will be cut so the rainy but to get to your question about the rainy day fund it's sometimes called the stabilization fund that has about three and a half to 3.6 billion dollars we have the third largest rainy day fund of any state in the country alaska's first because of oil revenue alaska always has the biggest one matter of fact i think alaskans get a dividend that's right i do remember hearing that yeah but even though we have the third largest it really is not nearly adequate to meet the need because the state budget is 40 plus billion dollars and our rainy day fund is only about three and a half so you know that's maybe one of the one 12th of the state budget enough to fund the month of state government so now we can and will use the state government stabilization fund the rainy day fund to meet critical needs it's good that we have it but that's why you really need to see some of these federal rescue packages and there's been legislation filed to kind of do similar things at the state level of direct cash payments to families and and look if the money is there i'm off for doing everything we can possibly do but i think there's one bill that would give 500 dollars or a thousand dollars to every family well you don't have to take long to pull out a calculator and you know we have 6.7 6.8 million people in the state and a thousand dollars you know per family you're talking about billions of dollars that one bill alone would probably chew up the entire rainy day fund so i've gotten calls will you support this bill look i want to support it i will fight for it but i gotta tell you we don't have the resources at the state level which is why so much of this has to be done by the federal government one of the great untold stories of the great recession of 2028 29 and what made that recession much deeper is that state governments had to lay off a lot of work with state governments and the federal rescue packages didn't do nearly enough to shore up the finances of the states and that's a big part of what exacerbated the great recession of over a decade ago and certainly the signs are that that's that that is you know the federal government's not going to be doing i assume any more for the states in this case than they did at that time i don't know i don't have a good understanding of what this 2.2 trillion for instance excuse me this 2.2 trillion how much of that is actually going to states as states to decide how to then you know pass that money on to their citizenry or what not nearly enough a lot of that was for unemployment which is so important and expanded unemployment a lot of that was for loans to business to help out businesses that are struggling both good things aid to hospitals you know our healthcare system in massachusetts is hemorrhaging money because hospitals to clear out the capacity to meet the needs of a potential surge in coronavirus patients have canceled full elective surgery and we think of these huge institutions that they they must be so wealthy and the partners hospitals vet israel or gregom mass general but in fact what we found is the minute they canceled elective surgery they're hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars a month and they are really in some trouble hard to think of these venerable these you know venerated institutions that are world famous for sort of the most elite medicine maybe in the world kind of buckling under the financial pressure but it's a real problem in our our safe safety net hospitals and community hospitals are having similar challenges although not maybe quite as much as the bigger ones because they don't have as many of these elective surgery right um so you know it is a difficult financial predicament for the state to be in and that's ways of means and the members write the budget this year is going to be some some some big challenges we have to think yeah so very quickly um we won't touch too much on climate change other than to say uh that if there's any good that's coming from this perhaps we're seeing some signs uh in terms of you know environmental recovery in a short in a short space of time uh from basically shutting you know humans human transport basically and and uh and you know polluting vehicles and and polluting factories etc you know it's it's been there's some remarkable statistics out there about the changes and improvements uh let's hope more than temporary in people's uh environmental conditions um I I invite you to to add to that but I also just want to ask you about one other point uh that is I know of major concern to you from previous conversations and that is what are the ramifications of this for uh efforts at criminal ongoing efforts at criminal justice reform um are all those things kind of being tabled for the moment uh just address those two uh if you can please sure well we had a conference call with all the members all the democratic members in the house about um the situation we're in and a discussion ensued about so many things but one of them is what about yes we're all caught in this crisis now we have to throw everything we have at it and use all the skill and abilities we can bring to bear to help help people at this challenging time but what about all the other priorities of society uh climate change issues criminal justice issues countless issues and there was a consensus including from the folks in leadership on the call that while we want to tackle this crisis full on that we don't want a year and a half of legislative work that stretches back to january of last year to go for naught so there's a real appetite to continue to press forward on some of the biggest challenges that we we face as a society including uh climate specifically came up and i think there's an appetite um to do something this session on climate change to your question about criminal justice reform now we did a massive sweeping criminal justice reform uh last session which was hailed really around the country as a model and touched almost every section of our criminal justice system but there's still more to be done the big criminal justice issue though right now in the crisis is what to do about prison population and our uh district attorney here in middle sex uh mary and ryan had begun to release certain uh people who were held pre-trial and they haven't been convicted of anything right they've been held pre-trial but they're innocent till proven guilty but uh maybe couldn't make bail or held there so she began to release people then it was litigation that went all the way to our state supreme judicial court and the state supreme judicial court ruled that those held pre-trial the coronavirus essentially was a new bail a new issue to be brought up at the bail hearing and that they could go petition the court and say look this is a so-called changed condition and their and i'd be released and many now are getting released the supreme court of our state set out a test where there's a rebuttable presumption that they should be released now the district attorneys can intervene in the hearing and say well this particular individual there's extenuating circumstances but otherwise the presumption is for those held pre-trial except for those accused of really violent crime should be released that brings up the question though of those who are not held pre-trial who've been tried convicted and sentenced to state prison and their efforts now to try to get the one those who are not violent released because we don't want overcrowded prisons and an outbreak in our houses of correction or our prisons that's an issue i've been working on with prisoners legal services a really great organization here in the state and also the aclu partnering with them to work on that issue i feel like wherever we stopped this conversation and we're about to it's going to feel abrupt because there's so much you know more to cover and so much more of your own information and experience that you are working in with every day that we'd like to tap into i guess we're going to need to table that for future conversations though as a last thing i would just invite you if you have something that you would like to say to the community that either is something that we have not yet covered in this conversation or just in your own words something that you would like to to share or a message that you have i'd invite you to to share that with us now sure well i think my main message is we're going to get through this it's a tough difficult challenging time it's been wrenching at times i have had the folks in the community i represent who have who have died from this disease and so i don't for a minute downplay the seriousness of the situation but i also know we're resilient people we have a lot of people working hard on the front lines healthcare professionals who are combating this we in state government i believe are rising in occasion to do everything we can to bring every resource to bear and so i would say to folks hang in there we will get through this and as i stated earlier if i can be helpful in any way to you a friend a family member a neighbor i think james you're going to be displaying my contact information i'll say my cell phone again 617-817-9395 get in touch happy to help and we will persevere and get through this and hopefully come out stronger and with that we will let you get back to what i am sure is a packed schedule for today and every day we appreciate the work that you're doing on behalf of your constituents and all of us and we look forward to talking to you again soon maybe who knows maybe next time we talk it'll be back in our studio again or if not we'll see you right here and and get further updates on on progress made at the state house level uh thank you very much for joining us thank you very much i appreciate the opportunity stay out i'm sorry go ahead today but stay healthy but all right and with that uh for state rep dave rogers i'm james melan this is talk of the town we appreciate you being here stay healthy as dave says stay safe and we'll see you next time