Will Brownsberger -- State Representative, Democrat, 24th Middlesex District

The two year formal legislative session, now ended, has been a mixed bag. Perhaps the best news about the session is that we got through it.

I attended an information session on health care reform ran by Representative Hogan, Jessica Constantino of AARP and Deb Thompson of the PASS Group (Public Advocacy and Support Strategies) a couple of weeks ago. The material that was handed out and the presentation given were very informative, and I thought what I learned could be useful to constituents, especially for senior citizens and those on Medicare.

In 2008, Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting gifts by drug and device companies to doctors. I voted for the ban then. After revisiting the issue, I continue to support the ban. I will listen carefully to the arguments on the floor, but I expect to vote against repeal.

In April, the House, with leadership support, passed two big steps in the right direction on financial transparency. The Senate, during budget debate, approved roughly the same measures, making their final passage highly likely.

The disappointing news last week was the response of some leaders that political influence is OK in probation. Probationary supervision is an important strategy for cost-effectively controlling crime and it is centrally important that we do probation well.

This from a lifelong Democrat and continuing true believer in government spending: The heart of our problem is a sense of entitlement to spend the taxpayers’ money.

There is a deep and passionate conversation going among legislators right now around the issue of transparency. There is a growing group of legislators who feel that the legislature needs to change the way it manages its own business.

This post relates to a fairly technical question that has been the subject of some confusion on the House floor: Exactly what information is available to the public about spending on legislative operations?

I found myself voting in the minority — with the Republicans and a small group of Democrats — on three financial integrity issues this week.

The Ethics reform bill that we passed earlier this year imposes a number of new disclosure and procedural requirements.

Members of the house grew uneasy last week as they voted a routine final “deficiency” budget — a set of appropriations to cover a short list of cost overruns from the last fiscal year.

Gambling, health care cost control, further pension reform – these are the major issues that the legislature is likely to address this fall after we resolve the Kennedy succession. The theme? Continued financial pressure.

Speaker Deleo published today this summary of the legislature’s work this season.   The focus for the whole spring and early summer was on reform — ethics, pension and transportation — and the budget.  See also, my series of posts on the reform and budget issues.

One of the sleeper stories in this year’s season of reform is the consolidation of the remaining seven independent Sheriff’s into the state budget. The main cost benefit of this change is that the employees of the sheriffs will purchase their health insurance through the Group Insurance Commission now as state employees.

There is a lot more to reform, but by any fair reckoning, the last four months of legislative activity have been extraordinarily productive. It didn’t have to turn out that way.

The House voted unanimously in support of far-reaching ethics reform today. The bill included not only core ethics reforms (enhanced penalties for all forms of inappropriate gifts and self-dealing), but also enhanced regulation of lobbying and campaign political finance.

House and Senate conferees released the text of the final ethics bill that they have agreed on. The initial read from informed observers is that it is a very strong bill that more or less takes the strongest ideas from the House bill, the Senate bill and the recommendations of the Governor’s task force.

In Belmont Town Hall, on Wednesday night, June 24, from 7PM to 9PM, two speakers who have been centrally involved in crafting the ethics reform legislation will lead a public discussion about the reforms.

I voted this afternoon for the FY2010 budget which passed with 110 votes in the House and 31 in the Senate, in both branches more than the 2/3 needed to override a possible veto.

Final passage of a landmark transportation reform bill, with a bipartisan vote of 130 to 25 in the  House today, signals an end to decades of costly balkanization of our transportation infrastructure.  I voted in favor –  nothing so controversial and complex can be perfect, but it is a very good bill.