2015 was the first year of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s four-year term, after edging out then-Attorney General Martha Coakley in the 2014 election. WAMC takes a look back at the Republican’s year.Charlie Baker’s first real challenge as Massachusetts governor came in the form of snow…lots of it. Boston saw record breaking totals of the white stuff in the early part of 2015. The region’s transit system suffered massive delays with service completely shutting down at times. In April, Baker talked about his first 100 days in office during an event at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. He talked about setting up an MBTA financial control board which the legislature eventually enacted.
“It was a pretty good way to introduce ourselves and how we wanted to operate to a lot of other folks around the commonwealth at a point and time when they were really paying attention,” said Baker.
After his first 100 days, a Western New England University poll found Baker enjoyed a 63 percent job approval rating with just 10 percent of voters disapproving. At the time, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg – a Democrat – said Baker was off to a strong start handling a $765 million deficit inherited from Democratic Governor Deval Patrick’s administration. Rosenberg credited Baker’s team for digging deep and finding another $1.8 billion deficit in the state budget.
“So he said it’s time to bite the bullet on these and he put forward a budget that reflected an effort to put the budget back into balance,” said Rosenberg.
After a swing through the western part of the state shortly after taking office in January, Baker’s public appearances in the region were sparse toward the middle of the year, although Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito made a number of area stops. However, in the last month of 2015 the Republican governor was in Springfield and Berkshire County. Democratic State Representative Smitty Pignatelli of Lenox praised Baker during an event in Great Barrington.
“He sees the issues,” Pignatelli said. “He’s been proactive. He’s an outside-the-box thinker. I keep saying that because that is what I’m seeing consistently through every commissioner and secretariat in this administration. They don’t think that government is the answer to everything. They want us to control our own destiny.”
Baker’s top focuses have been the opioid crisis, expanding the cap on charter schools and reforming the embattled Department of Children and Families. He’s taken flack for saying he wanted to get more information on the refugee screening process after it was speculated that a refugee fleeing Syria had been behind terrorist attacks in Paris.
A survey in November by a Washington, D.C.-based polling group found that with 74 percent, Baker enjoyed the highest approval rating of any sitting governor in the country. But, former Governor Michael Dukakis is likely not among those giving Baker the thumbs up.
“I think he’s first trying to get the place squared away, although quite frankly, despite a lot of talk at the beginning of the administration, Deval Patrick left him with a state in pretty darn good shape,” said Dukakis.
Dukakis, a Democrat, made those comments to WAMC during an event in North Adams in December. In response, the MassGOP called Dukakis’s claim faulty, pointing to the budget deficits left by Governor Patrick. A report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation in December warned of a budget gap of roughly $1 billion.
