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First-term Mass. state legislator reflects on marathon end to legislative session

Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
State Rep. Orlando Ramos, Democrat of Springfield.

Facing a deadline, they accomplished a lot, said State Rep. Orlando Ramos

Like students staying up all night to finish a term paper on deadline, the Massachusetts legislature this week held a marathon 22-hour final formal session.

It has become routine now for legislators to procrastinate over major bills that have been in the works for months or even years, strike deals, and then race to hold final votes in the wee hours of the night.

State Rep. Orlando Ramos – a Springfield Democrat elected in 2020 – got to experience it first-hand for the first time. He spoke with WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.