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INBOX: Mass. House & Senate to create three special joint committees including one on COVID that will serve as "an oversight and advisory committee to monitor and investigate issues related to Covid-19 emergency response and recovery." Oversight hearings are explicitly mentioned.
This seems like a huge deal. Either @MassGovernor has lost a huge amount of legislators' confidence (not without reason) or they're preparing to up criticism of Baker more generally.
A lot will depend on who @KarenSpilka & @RonMariano appoint to the committee, but some serious chairs could uncover a lot about Bakerland the governor would rather keep quiet.
Today, @MassGovernor seemed somewhat defensive. I wonder if he saw this coming. He said a good leader steps back and retools. This is true, but Baker's problem is he entered this crisis with a wild amount of resources compared to other states...
...but compared to our regional peers, we often seemed like we were behind the 8 ball. In #WesternMA this felt especially true.
The press has been better lately, but a recent @BeatthePress segment, while VERY good, also illustrated how journalists overinterpret Baker's polling & take for granted how good a job he's done. He wasn't especially good at governor-ing. Rather, nothing really bad ever happened.
Anyway, things could change. Baker could suddenly distribute vaccine at light speed or people will forget this debacle after the plague passed. Or maybe the oversight cmte will be too cordial for its own good. Still, I can't see this as anything other than overdue escalation.
