Rebuilding our Commonwealth in the wake of COVID-19
On July 29, 2020, Sen. Eric Lesser presented to his colleagues in the Massachusetts Senate, “An Act to encourage new development and usher in a recovering economy,” the ENDURE Act.
The onset of a crisis
This spring, simple assumptions we all made about life, that our children would wake up and head off to school, that hugging a grandparent was safe, that Fenway Park would be filled with fans, were shattered for what feels like forever.
A contagious virus flew across the globe, and it landed with ferocity here in Massachusetts. Months later, we remain one of the hardest-hit states. Over 8,000 dead, over 100,000 infected. We remember the refrigerated morgue trucks, the bodies piled up in our nursing homes, the nurses begging for gloves and protective glasses. The body count day, after day, after day. And it’s not over. Hotspots continue to emerge. Testing capacity is strained. We’ve made great strides and our transmission rate is now among the lowest in the country, but colder weather is around the corner and doctors warn us a resurgence is likely.
We all know this virus has created the worst public health crisis in a century. But there is a second crisis, side by side the health crisis. An economic catastrophe unmatched since the Great Depression.
Hyper-charging inequality
When the Governor filed his Economic Development Bill, in early March, Massachusetts had an unemployment rate under 3%. Today, it is 17.4%. In June, 640,000 people were out of work. Since this crisis started, more than 1 million people have applied for unemployment assistance.
Our economy was put into a coma to stop the coronavirus. And yes, everyone has been asked to sacrifice. But let’s be frank, we know who is bearing the greatest burden.
While main street was ordered to shut down, Walmart and Home Depot posted record profits.
As Wall Street boasts of a V-shaped recovery, 3,600 restaurants in Massachusetts may never reopen again.
Small business revenue plummeted 42%, while Amazon’s stock price skyrockets more than 60%.
This virus has been hard on everyone, no doubt, everyone is at their wit's end. But many professionals can continue working from home through their laptops. Meanwhile, half of low-income workers at our small businesses have lost their jobs, maybe forever.
The challenges are even more pronounced in our black and brown communities. In our Gateway Cities. In our immigrant communities, where the COVID19 infection rates are the highest. We’ve seen the lines at our food pantries. Income for tipped workers has declined as much as 80%. And as many as 95% of black and brown owned businesses didn’t have access to federal PPP loans.
This virus will be remembered for a lot of things, that’s for sure. But perhaps it’s longest-lasting legacy will be hyper-charging the greatest concentration of wealth in American history.
A plan to navigate the future
Some say our economy was doing great before the crisis, that if we flatten the curve and get back to normal, all will be ok. But we know otherwise. There were deeply unfair and unjust trends in our economy long before COVID19. The virus hyper-charged those trends, it didn’t create them. So just getting back to normal cannot be our goal.
We need to rebuild our economy from the bottom up, and from the middle out. We need bold solutions that meet this moment and chart a path for a brighter, more inclusive future.
We’ve done it before. This body paved the way for universal healthcare. For gay marriage. For civil rights. We built the first subway and our scientists now lead the fight for a COVID19 vaccine. Ever since John Winthrop imagined our ‘shining city on a hill,’ we have overcome and we have charted a course for a brighter future.
The ENDURE Act will be one modest step toward that new future.
We re-authorize $15 million for Mass Development’s Site Readiness Program, to prepare locations for the construction of new factories and industrial parks.
We authorize $35 million in matching grants for our community development financial institutions, so they can invest in our hardest-hit small businesses, especially those owned by minorities, immigrants, women and veterans. We also ensure Federal PPP loans do not face state income-tax, so our small businesses can maximize this vital benefit
We know the “Homework Gap” is real, in 2020, Massachusetts still has too many towns without access to high-speed internet. How are you supposed to attend school from home without internet? We authorize $5 million for the Broadband Incentive Fund.
We authorize $10 million in matching grants to expand the M2I2 advanced manufacturing program, putting people to work as precision machinists, tool and die makers, and CNC operators, making the components for high-performance batteries and solar panels and wind turbines.
We authorize $50 million for a new Technology Research & Development Fund at the Mass Tech Collaborative, to build-out regional clusters of excellence in BlueTech, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Advanced Manufacturing, and FinTech. Just as we’ve done for life-sciences, we can be world leaders in these emerging fields, and put tens of thousands of people to work at high-paying, high-quality jobs in the process.
We know our rural communities, in particular, have been hard hit by the recession and have faced significant challenges before coronavirus: aging populations, decline job prospects, the cruelty of a raging opioid epidemic. We authorize $10 million for a new rural community development and infrastructure grant fund, to support recovery in our smallest towns.
We authorize $20 million for grants to our smallest businesses. Recognizing that many were left out of Federal PPP aid, we give priority to micro-businesses in low income areas, from socially disadvantaged groups, and those disproportionally impacted by COVID19.
We also change our licensing laws to make them more equitable, so that hair braiders no longer need a cosmetology license, an onerous and unnecessary obstacle for many black women and immigrant women who own small hair braiding businesses or utilize these services.
Our tourism industry, one of the great job engines of our Commonwealth, is on life support. We know it’s not safe, yet, to promote out of state travel. But we can encourage in-state, socially distanced visits that are COVID19 safe. I live in Longmeadow and can safely travel to the Southcoast to check out the Cranberry Bogs. And I can pickup takeout and eat a meal outside along the way. We authorize $10 million for a competitive grant program to provide tourism and marketing for in-state, COVID-safe tourism, with $4 million reserved for Regional Tourism Councils.
We authorize an additional $40 million to redevelop blighted buildings, and a brand-new $50 million Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative to help return blighted or vacant housing stock back to productive use. We will put hundreds, if not thousands, of people to work on these projects and we will relieve our housing crisis in the process.
We authorize a new, $25 million fund to support grants for nonprofits driving social enterprise employment, specifically targeting low-income communities working to employ the most at-risk populations, including the recently incarcerated or homeless. Again, our Commonwealth must recover by lifting all communities, and that must begin with the most vulnerable.
As I said earlier, our restaurants have faced calamity, a sector that employs 300,000 people in our state risks being wiped out, up to a quarter may never reopen again. We authorize a new $20 million fund to provide emergency relief and help make the transition to our new, socially distanced world.
Our cultural organizations also face crisis. Thousands of job losses from the Berkshires to Cape Cod. Tanglewood, for example, closed for the first time since World War II. Performing arts venues, street festivals, museums and cultural sites closed their doors. We authorize $20 million in grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to provide emergency support for the neediest organizations.
We authorize $25 million in new grants and loans for transit-oriented development, and require the funds are spent to support middle-income housing. We also authorize $10 million for climate-resilient improvements at affordable housing developments, putting hundreds of people to work insulating roofs, installing solar panels, replacing HVAC systems and reducing our state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
And we know training will be the key, because certain industries like travel and hospitality, for example, are going to face long-term job losses, while others, like biomedical research, will be growing fast. Someone in the travel industry, for example, may need to switch to advanced manufacturing. Or someone transitioning to remote work may need to be retrained. This makes our vocational schools even more important, which is why we are authorizing $15 million for grants to our voch-tech schools to purchase equipment and expand capacity, and $15 million for our community colleges to expand training programs.
Our Commonwealth’s residents face a doomsday scenario around student loans. Over a decade ago, Massachusetts led the way on protections from predatory mortgages, which saved us from the worst of the Great Recession. In Massachusetts, more than 855,000 people collectively owe $33 billion in student loans. The average loan debt is over $30,000 per person. What happens to all this debt in an era of mass unemployment? Student loans cannot be excused in bankruptcy. Our families face financial calamity without common-sense consumer protections.
One of the great engines of our Commonwealth’s job growth, both now and in the future, is our startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem. We need Massachusetts to remain a place where the next big invention, the next cure, the next new idea is conceived, developed, and brought to market. We can’t do that if our startups aren’t protected, which is why we include protection from bad faith patent trolling.
And finally, we know the way we work is changing. As COVID19 crashed our economy, many gig workers, Uber and Lyft drivers, musicians, and independent contractors, for example, faced a future with no unemployment insurance or workplace protections. The nature of work itself has changed in the 21st Century, but we still operate off a regulatory policy from the 19th Century. Which is why we set up a Commission on the Future of Work, to convene the leaders of our state in a dialogue about the future, to begin charting the path for a new era.
Flattening a second curve
When coronavirus first appeared, we thought we had to flatten just one curve to tamper what was a public health epidemic. But now we must come to realize that if we ever want to make Massachusetts what it ought to be, we must flatten a second curve — a curve that represents a pandemic of surging economic and social inequality.
State Senator Eric P. Lesser is the Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development & Senate Vice-Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation. Previously, he served as an aide in the Obama White House during the response to the Great Recession.
