Baker liking the 'banter of the business' in first 100 days
He's played the role of meteorologist and transit engineer. He's been to the White House and survived his first St. Patrick's Day breakfast as an officeholder.
He even got a buzz cut for charity.
With Gov. Charlie Baker's first 100 days in office set to come to an end on Saturday, the start of his tenure as governor has been anything but predictable, and yet in Baker's estimation, "Net-net I think we're of to a pretty good start."
While there have been hiccups, Baker, a Republican, has largely managed to avoid the early stumbles, both of substance and perception, that dogged the early days of his predecessor Deval Patrick's administration.
The new governor's relationship with legislative Democrats appears strong, and he has managed to push through a major budget-balancing bill to close an inherited $760 million deficit and recently signed legislation sending $200 million back to cities and towns to help with road repairs.
"I like the back and forth. I like the sort of banter of the business, whatever the terminology is," Baker said.
Snow that started falling at the end of January and barely let up until the end of February may have hijacked the governor's near-term agenda as he dealt with snow removal and a crippled MBTA transit system while trying to craft his first state budget.
But Baker says that what may have been delayed won't get lost in the shuffle.
"I think about all those Main Street businesses that depend on foot traffic. They lost the month of February. I mean, it's never coming back. I feel a lot worse for them than I do for us. All we lost was time," he said during an interview in his office.
Much of his focus to date has been on managing through the winter and getting his arms around the state's budget and finances. Baker said voters who bought into his campaign message of making Massachusetts "great" will soon start to see what he meant.
The governor expects to file legislation to start to repair the management and financial structure of the MBTA based on the recent recommendations of his task force, and said a broader legislative agenda will follow.
"We'll have a proposal on education and a proposal on economic development," Baker said.
The troubles that winter brought also delayed interviewing and hiring, 100-day agency reviews and his efforts to address opioid addiction and workforce development. All those efforts will bear fruit soon, he said.
"There's a lot of things that kind of got pushed out, but I wouldn't say anything got pushed off," Baker said.
The governor declined to hint at what new he's discovered as his team has gone about setting goals and reviewing the activities of agencies throughout the executive branch, but said the well-known problems at the state Health Connector with its website and its impact on MassHealth and the budget have been "disturbing."
So far, Baker has hired a new executive director and replaced several members of the Health Connector board.
"People forget the rest of the country is basically now two years ahead of us," said Baker, who called during his campaign for a waiver from the Affordable Care Act that has been denied by the federal government. "They've had two cycles in which their system worked. Massachusetts is still doing development work for a system that doesn't work even though we spent as a Commonwealth with the federal government $250 million on this thing. It's a lost opportunity and the cost of that lost opportunity is just unbelievable."
While Baker said he was prepared for the nuts-and-bolts of governing, having already worked in state government and watched his political mentors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci do the job, the public stature that comes with being governor has been an adjustment.
Even with a new haircut, Baker said activities like going to the gym or the dry cleaner or a restaurant means being recognized and traveling with security.
"Would I like to be able to go out and get an ice cream cone without a detail? Yeah. But that's just part of the life I'm living now I guess," he said.
At age 58, Baker said he's glad he waited until later in life when his children were older to run for governor. Baker's eldest son Charlie works in Virginia, his middle son A.J. is away at Union College in New York and his daughter Caroline just decided she would be attending Miami University of Ohio in the fall.
"I just think that's better for them. It's certainly a little easier on my bride," he said.
Though he campaigned on restoring two-party governance to Beacon Hill, Baker has made a concerted effort early on to assemble a bipartisan team of advisors and Cabinet officials and, in many ways, his relationship with House and Senate leaders — all Democrats — is better than their relationships with each other so far this year.
He also faced criticism from some of the more conservative elements of his party when he decided to sign on to a legal brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court standing up for gay marriage.
But Baker said Republicans, including those in office and those who may need his help in the next election, have plenty to be proud of so far from his administration.
"No new taxes, no new fees. Structural balance," Baker said, adding that Republicans, as well as Democrats and independents, also care about his efforts to rein in government with a hiring freeze and top-to-bottom regulatory review.
"Doubling down on the earned income tax credit so that you make work pay for low-income families? That's a Republican idea," added Baker, referring to his pending proposal to double the income tax break for low-income families.
"And I think generally speaking our ideas with the respect to the fact that, yes, we should do what we can to reduce our carbon footprint but we've got to be cognizant of the fact that we can't continue to be the most expensive place in the country when it comes to energy."
Baker plans to meet next week with other governors from New England to discuss regional solutions to the energy supply and cost conundrum.
"Campaigns are contests but governing is about getting stuff done," he said.
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