State Senator Paul Mark spent over a decade in the Massachusetts House before making the leap to the upper chamber after November’s election. The Democrat succeeds Adam Hinds in representing the commonwealth’s four westernmost counties: Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire. A union member from the Berkshire hill town of Peru, Mark has long prioritized increased investment in public education. Now, the governor and Senate president have dueling plans to expand access to community college in Massachusetts. Mark spoke with WAMC about his take on the rival initiatives and settling in to his new role.
MARK: It's been an extremely busy first two weeks. So, you start off with the first three days, which is a short week starting on a Wednesday, and you got the swearing-in of the Senate, the swearing-in of the House, the swearing-in of the governor, the swearing-in of lieutenant governor. So, a lot of ceremony, a lot of formality, and a lot of opportunity to kind of celebrate, you know, what has changed? What's different? What's going to be the new agenda, hearing the message from the Senate President, the Speaker, and now Governor Healey. And then you move immediately into the bill filing period. So, we have to- for a timely bill, all bills have to be filed by this coming Friday, January 20th. And so, you have people that are shopping bills to you that they're interested in, whether it's an organization like the Sierra Club or the AFL-CIO, and then for me coming over from the House, well, I have a lot of bills that I'm carrying over with me that you care about. And then I'm also looking through, so, what did former Senator [Adam] Hinds file, what did former Senator [Eric] Lesser file. So, we're trying to do all of that, and then at the same time, you're also- I had my staff ready to go, but you're not sworn in until the day you're sworn in. So, until you are actually officially a senator, you can't make the official hire. And that includes staff members that came over from the House with me and staff members that I kept on from former Senator Hinds. So, then now you're trying to organize all of that. We're trying to get all the district office hours up and running the permanent fixed district office ready to go and it's- yeah, it's been a whirlwind. But so far, so good.
WAMC: Now, when it comes to that legislation that you're hearing from – and when it comes to your own plans for legislation for this session – give us a taste. What are you hearing? And what are you trying to get across the desk of your fellow lawmakers?
Yeah, something that I'm really excited about that I heard both from Senate President [Karen] Spilka in her opening address and from Governor [Maura] Healey is this idea of funding for college, funding for higher education. And so, you have them both mention some form of either free community college or community college available to people that maybe are trying to come back and seek new job opportunities, something that's extremely important to me. And anyone that knows my background, my story, a major point in my life was my father got laid off from his job, his warehouse closed down. And then you have a man in his 40s who has been working at a warehouse for 20 years, and the job skills that are transferable from that weren't necessarily adaptable as easy for him. And so, the ability for him to get training like that would have been probably life changing for our family. And so, making sure that other people have that ability through this kind of a program is exciting, and it lines up perfectly with bills that I've been filing on student debt, on student education access. So, I'm really excited about that. And then there's some good environmental bills that are coming back. I've been filing this bill on the Green Bank, which is kind of a revolving loan to try to help renewable energy and green job projects get going. And Governor [Charlie] Baker before he left, he created the agency in the administration, in the [Massachusetts Clean Energy Center] department to try to take advantage of some federal funding that's coming in the $29 billion range for the country. And so, trying to codify what that will look like and make sure that it hits all the goals we wanted it to hit is another priority I'm working on and getting ready to have have in place by this Friday.
Now, we've heard you just support Governor Maura Healey’s plan for a free community college model that also has been shared by Senate President Karen Spilka. What about her tax policies? The governor has talked about the expanded Child Tax Credit, she's talked about tax relief and reform. Talk to me about that- What are you hearing from the corner office about taxes heading into this session?
Yeah, I liked in her inaugural address that she brought up the tax ideas that we had actually passed last session. So, doubling that estate tax, making sure that there's child tax cuts, making sure that the people that are in most need of assistance at this moment are getting the benefits. And so, when we talk about the millionaire's tax passed, is now part of the Constitution, is now part of the law, making sure that our tax system is progressive and fair to those who are most in need of help, I think is really important. We have a lot of people out there right now, they're struggling with the prices that are just increasing almost daily, and doing anything we can to try to adjust that is good. So having her revisit the tax policies that I know there's broad support for in the House and Senate, because there was last session, I think is going to be something that's going to be successful and something I look forward to seeing how that that turns out. And Senator Hinds had been the chair of revenue last session, so, he's not going to be there, so we don't know who's going to take the lead on moving forward all of this, but I think it's going to be a great conversation.
Maura Healey’s cabinet has a scant amount of Western Massachusetts representation. Obviously, I'm going to say the million-dollar phrase for Western Massachusetts: regional equity. Is that a concern you have when it comes to voices among Maura Healey’s top advisors when it comes to issues for the western portion of the state?
It's always a concern. Even Deval Patrick, who had the residence out in Richmond and spent a lot of time with us in the Berkshires, you know, you still had to make the case constantly. It's easy for people in the cabinet, people in the administration to kind of lose focus and just focus on where the overwhelming amount of people live. And so, it's always a concern. It's not especially pronounced. And in good news, Maura Healey’s already come out to Western Massachusetts, into the Berkshires, and she's coming again this week I'm hearing, potentially tomorrow. So just making sure that we keep that message going to her that rural is important, Western Mass is important, the Berkshires are important. And then in the Senate specifically- So, I'm having a conversation today with the Senate president about committees, and something she had mentioned to me before was there's a couple of committees that maybe have outlived their usefulness, and she's looking to swap them up. And I'm going to make a suggestion, how about swapping one of them to maybe a rural policy or a rural issues committee, and then I'm also going to ask her today, I've been the speaker's appointee to this Rural Policy Advisory Commission, which operates statewide, partners well with Cape and rural communities even in Eastern Mass and Worcester County, how do I become the senate president appointee to that and keep the work going so that we make sure the Berkshires has a voice on that really important commission.
I want to turn back to the conversation around expanding community college access in the Commonwealth. There's a disparity between senate president Karen Spilka’s proposal and Maura Healey's plan. Healey would open up free community college for older adults looking to get back into emerging industries, while Spilka wants to make things even more accessible and push for community college free for all students, regardless of age. What are your thoughts on the separation between those plans? And how does the legislature split the difference there?
Yeah. What I've learned in my 10 years of experience now at the statehouse is, there's three bodies that make policy. There's the Governor, the House and the Senate. And so, what I really like is that everyone is mentioning, we want to do this, something needs to happen, there's money to do it right now. What's going to be interesting is the details. So you have Senate President, I think, taking the highest negotiation, asking for completely free community college, the Governor talking about it in a more narrow focus, that it's going to be free, but it's going to be for people that are looking for a very certain form of education. So, I think we're going to end up is somewhere in the middle, of course. And what I'm hoping is that, A, it's a shot in the arm to these public institutions of higher education – BCC, GCC, HCC STCC – all extremely important, all extremely valuable to the region. And their ability to have someone come in and take a class, whether it's for workforce training- I graduated from STCC because it was part of a workforce training program. Verizon would send us, one day a week, to learn more about telecommunications. Finding other companies, other businesses, maybe that would be interested in replicating that model- When I talked to both people at Verizon and people at the community college system eight, nine years ago when I was doing a lot of work on student debt, they both said it was extremely easy to interact business and public higher education. The problem just becomes, how do we pay for it? And so, if there were free avenues, the benefits for that in a community like the Berkshires could be limitless. We could pivot instantly to accept a new business that wants to relocate, to help businesses that are trying to gain ground, whether it's at the Berkshire Innovation Center or just anywhere in the county and taking full advantage of that. I mean, that's what community college is about, is getting people on the right track, getting people the skills they need. And so, however it happens, to me that needs to be the emphasis, is that this is something that is going to be useful to as many people as possible.
