Published December 28, 2022Next week, Charlie Baker will take his lone walk out of the executive office suite where he has worked as governor for the last eight years, through a State House that he has roamed for much of the last three-plus decades in various capacities, and back into civilian life.
Baker's two terms as governor saw the state budget shift from a structural deficit to a surplus so large that the state by law had to give nearly $3 billion back to taxpayers. He managed the state through the first pandemic in a century, holding nearly-daily briefings on a virus that few people understood and promoting vaccinations that have helped the economy rebound.
"I mean, we tried twice to get the Legislature to do something significant in this space. I personally believe that to get to where we need to go by 2030 and 2050, it's going to be as much about innovation as it is about coercion. And I believe that we have the brainpower and the skill set to play a huge role in the next act on all things clean energy," Baker said."And I'm sorry I wasn't able to make the sale on that. I deeply regret that.
"The Weld and Cellucci folks were pretty good about letting their Cabinet secretaries just go talk to the Legislature. Paul came out of the Senate, so he had a certain trust in the institution to begin with, and Governor Weld was kind of the same way just by virtue of who he was," Baker said. "We're one of the few states that actually did something significant. Part of the reason we did something significant in the aftermath of all the horrors of the summer 2020 was we had been discussing and debating this issue with the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus for a while. We had a bill that was almost ready to go when the pandemic started; we filed it in June with their support. The House and the Senate were both interested in moving on it.