Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | June 13, 2022 | Worcester Business Journal 9 What would you do to make sure there's plenty of housing for people who want to come and work in Massachusetts? Diehl: Worcester is certainly known for being a college town, and we want to retain as many of those students as we can. It's great they all come to Massachusetts for their education, but we want to keep them. Facebook was started at Harvard University, but it ended up moving out west. We could have maybe kept them if we'd been more aware of what we could do to make sure the overall business environment was good and that housing options were there. Central and Western Massachusetts have a lot of post-industrial cities with some buildings that could be renovated and created for more affordable housing. I know in Ludlow and Essex, they have a lot of these old paper mills they're taking and turning into apartments and condos. If we can rehabilitate them into affordable housing units, that takes some of the pressure off. Doughty: We need to open up the pathway for students and people to get into the trades: electricity, plumbing, carpentry. I would like to put a strong emphasis on workforce development, creating pathways that are quick and easy and well-developed for people to move into those trades that we need to build more homes. I run a manufacturing company that has suffered from not having enough workforce, and there are collaborations that the state, the business community, and education can do together to increase the supply of workers to those trades to help the bottlenecks in the supply of housing. Two is, again, regulations. We have created so many regulations that make it difficult to build workforce housing. I was talking to one developer who said it can take a year to get through all zoning and all the permitting to build something. We call this bottlenecks in manufacturing. Nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester went on strike for more than 300 days, starting last year, protesting staffing ratios amid an ongoing pandemic. This seems to speak to a deeper issue with the workforce, but for health care especially because nurses are putting themselves directly at risk. How do we address this systemic issue within the healthcare industry? Doughty: Here's a case where there is a great demand as a result of COVID for nurses and inadequate supply as a result, which led to the burnout. Whenever you have supply-and-demand problems, you have to look at, "Is the government getting in the way of the free market?" I'm a big believer in letting the free market do what it wants to do. Increasing the supply is about simplifying things, reducing regulations, reducing government interference, making it easier for nurses to get their certification. On the demand side, there are some things we can do, like reducing some of the things that make it complicated. For example, things like Medicaid billing are so complex. If we focus on training and simplification, that will allow nurses to do their job, that'll move the supply curve. It's a lot of small things that can be done. Diehl: I was traveling and having breakfast at a hotel, and I was talking to some traveling nurses. I asked what hospital they were from, and they said they were fired because they weren't taking the COVID-19 vaccine. Some of the situations with the hospitals are very frustrating, because what ended up happening is the remaining nurses had tremendous pressure on them in order to fill shifts and deal with the workload. I was in the legislature back when we had to incentivize doctors to move out of the Boston area to Central and Western Massachusetts, because there were less doctors than needed for per-capita population. Part of it was because they couldn't recoup the cost of going to medical school to live out in Western Mass. That's one short-term way to help direct the flow into the workforce in areas like health care. This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ correspondent Laura Finaldi. Democratic Q&A WBJ conducted a separate Q&A with the two Democratic primary candidates for Massachusetts governor – Maura Healey and Sonia Chang-Díaz – ahead of the political party's June 3 convention at the DCU Center in Worcester. That story appeared in the May 30 edition of WBJ and can be found at WBJournal.com. BY COLIN YOUNG State House News Service M assachusetts Democrats on June 4 endorsed Maura Healey's quest to move from the attorney general's office to the governor's suite but also put Sonia Chang-Díaz on the September primary ballot, ensuring that Healey will have some intraparty competition before she could turn her full attention to any Republican opponents. Healey, serving her eighth year as attorney general and who has long been viewed as a gubernatorial candidate in waiting, took more than 71% of the votes cast by party delegates at their nominating convention at the DCU Center in Worcester. Chang-Díaz, a state senator of more than a decade, got about 29% of the delegate vote, almost double the 15% required to make it onto the Sept. 6 primary ballot. Healey was the favorite coming into the gathering -- a fact that Chang-Díaz used in her speech to highlight her independence from the political establishment -- and she mostly played it safe as she addressed the receptive crowd. ough she ticked off a list of things she'd do as governor -- cutting the costs of housing, energy, and health care, creating more housing, making East-West rail a reality, and passing same-day voter registration -- Healey did not use her remarks to dive into detail specifics. "We are in a moment of great challenge, but also, great opportunity. We've seen loss, heartache, hardship, and problems made worse during this pandemic. But we've also seen it bring out the best in us. You see, I believe in our state and I believe in our people. I believe in our promise and our potential," Healey said. "And I believe this is our moment -- right now -- to tear down the barriers that hold people back, to come together, to li people up, and to bring opportunity to every person in every region in this state." Aer the results were announced, Healey told reporters, "I wanted to come in and do well at this convention, and we did extremely well; and I'm really excited and can't wait to move forward with this campaign." e field of candidates vying to be either Healey's or Chang-Díaz's lieutenant governor was trimmed by delegates from five to three with Sen. Adam Hinds and businessman Bret Bero falling short of the support needed to make it onto the September ballot. e LG campaigns of Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, Rep. Tami Gouveia, and Sen. Eric Lesser rallied enough delegate support to stay active and Driscoll claimed the party's endorsement. While the party insiders at the convention and their endorsement matter (they represent just one- third of 1% of all Bay State Democrats; these are the hardcore party loyalists), there is no convention for the voters who will have the greatest say when it comes time to pick the state's next governor in November: unenrolled voters. As of February 2021, there were 4,731,940 registered voters in Massachusetts -- 31.6% were registered as Democrats and 9.7% were registered as Republicans, but 57.4% of Massachusetts voters were unenrolled in any party, according to the secretary of state's office. And winning the convention has never been a reliable predictor of success in the September primary or November general election. Steve Grossman took the party's convention endorsement in 2014 but then lost the primary election to Martha Coakley, for example. In Worcester, Democrats endorse Healey, qualify Chang-Díaz for governor primary Maura Healey Sonia Chang-Díaz W W

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