Episode 221: Unsafe Harbors

7/21/2022-- This week is a scorcher! Jenn and Steve start the show chatting about the extreme heat this week and what it could mean in Massachusetts. We may start to see more water restrictions in the Commonwealth within the next few weeks. Ironically enough, President Biden was in Somerset this week to talk about climate change. It also doesn't look like T service will be improving anytime soon. It could stay this way until next year as the MBTA scrambles to hire dispatchers after a safety directive by the FTA.

State legislators passed a $52 billion budget to Governor Baker's desk on Sunday night. Once again Massachusetts is the only state left with a fiscal year that starts on July 1 where a budget has yet to be finalized. Mike Deehan, co-author at Axios Boston, joins the pod to break down the state budget. He also helps break down Taco Bell's brief roll-out of the Cheez-It Tostada.

Later, Boston Globe reporter, Catherine Carlock joins us to discuss what the Supreme Judicial Court concluded last week about Boston’s municipal harbor plan and what it could mean for the rest of the state.

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Full show transcript:

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:19] Today on The Horse Race. We're running through the state budget, which is late as usual. Then we'll dive into the recent ruling on Boston's municipal harbor plan and what that could mean for the rest of the state. It's Thursday, July 21st. [00:00:38][18.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:00:49] Welcome back to The Horse Race. Your weekly looked at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Steve Koczela here this week with Jennifer Smith. And we are missing Lisa Kashinsky because she's off covering President Joe Biden's visit to Somerset today and hopefully finding some way to avoid melting. I guess it is hot out there. [00:01:07][18.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:09] It is. I don't know what our, you know, cursing allowance is on the podcast these days, but it is so bleeping hot out. I had to go outside very briefly at all of ten in the morning and nearly died. And then I remembered that runways are melting in the UK slash formerly UK slash Great Britain slash, also whatever we're calling it, whatever we're calling it now, everything is melting. And Biden is conveniently in Massachusetts to talk about the climate. So as you note, I assume he showed up just to say we've gotten you a Massachusetts sized air conditioner. Don't you worry, folks. [00:01:53][44.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:54] That's certainly a salient issue at the moment and something that I think we're all sort of hoping something happens on soon, because the signs that we're seeing, both in Massachusetts and around the world are troubling. Here in Massachusetts, of course, a good portion of the state is under various levels of drought. And, you know, we could even apparently be looking at some water restrictions sometime in the next few weeks. [00:02:16][22.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:17] Definitely. I mean, doing like a quick pivot over into another bit of infrastructure that is deeply impacted by the weather. And it's not just hot weather, but also, as we recall in 2015, all of the subways were a disaster. They are a disaster right now for staffing reasons, not necessarily 2015 winter reasons. But I don't know if you looked at The Commonwealth story on this, Steve, but apparently the trains are just going to kind of stay not very great for a while now. We're not going to see a return to normal service until probably next year. [00:02:53][35.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:02:54] Yeah. There are various reasons you know, there have been a lot of different stories about problems that the train has had. But the one that's kind of stuck out, both because it's new and because it is something that could impact service for a long time. Is the one about dispatchers and hiring enough dispatchers for the MBTA has been a much bigger problem, I think, than even, I guess, the general public anticipated over the last couple of weeks, though, perhaps insiders kind of knew how big of a deal this was going to be. But this came to a head again this week. What happened? [00:03:26][32.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:27] Yeah. So if everyone recalls, there was a safety directive that came from the Federal Transit Administration that was noting a lot of existing problems with staffing with the MBTA. There were control center workers who were working way too long. They were really tired. And this does, of course, pose a safety risk. And so to address that, if you recall that he basically said it was going to be scaling back service essentially to weekend hours even during the course of the regular week while it tries to hire all these new dispatchers. And so they said in a press conference just recently that they don't expect they're going to be able to kind of meet those hiring goals at Labor Day at least, but probably at least into this next year. So I am really sorry for everyone making the daily commute, waiting for, you know, 15-20 minutes on your way in. It's not likely to get better in the short term. [00:04:23][55.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:04:24] That's a bummer, both for people who have no choice but to use the T. And of course, it adds to the challenges that, you know, the Boston region faces in terms of getting workers who need to or even want to be downtown to actually be there. So it's a problem for traffic. It's a problem for workers. It's a problem for all kinds of different things. And another sign that T, of the kind of serious challenges that the T is facing. So that's the MBTA, which is one of the several things that is it seems like it's later and later. The longer the longer we do this podcast. What's another thing that's late this week? [00:04:58][34.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:58] Jenn It's I love your segue. Steve It's the state budget pause for everyone who follows Massachusetts politics to gasp and shock. So we're going to be rolling through where the state budget is at with Axios Boston coauthor Mike Dillon. And then we're going to be talking about Boston's municipal harbor plan and some implications of a major supreme judicial court ruling with Globe reporter Catherine Carlock. So let's get into it, shall we? [00:05:25][26.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:05:25] Let's go. [00:05:25][0.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:07] Once again, Massachusetts is the only state left with a fiscal year that starts on July 1st, where a budget has yet to be finalized. Insert chant we're number 50 here. On Sunday night, legislators approved a $52.7 billion budget for the 2023 fiscal year. It has been sent over to Governor Baker's desk and he's got ten days to approve it. So we are going to talk about what's in it. Here to walk us through how all of this money will be spent, we are joined by Mike Deehan, co-author of Axios Boston. Welcome, Mike. [00:06:36][29.4]

Mike Deehan: [00:06:37] Hey, good to be here. [00:06:38][0.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:38] So we're going to go through a bunch of highlights. So we're actually going to start narrow, your colleague Steph Solis has been covering the budget shenanigans, but Lord knows you haven't left the statehouse beat. So what budget item or fight have you been watching the most closely and how is that panning out? [00:06:53][14.2]

Mike Deehan: [00:06:53] Yeah, it's like you were saying in the intro, it really is the age old story of them taking their time. And I always try to make a point of why this happens, you know, kind of in the overall scheme of things, you know, our lawmakers are not there's not a lot of urgency to get this budget passed. Other states have different rules in place and really other incentives to get it done early. Those don't exist in Massachusetts. So, you know, lawmakers really do take the time to perfect it going into the end of this legislative session because, of course, you know, the next few weeks, the post-budget few weeks before July 31st is going to be when all the other work gets done more or less or at least finalized. So it really kind of is important to state why it is late. And it is because the House and Senate basically wait until the last minute. And those negotiations, the leverage they use against each other kind of becomes more and more potent the longer they go on. And the other side of it is that no one cares that it's late. You know, the media points out once in a while, oh, where the 50th, you know, we're the last. So that's delayed it's this it's that, not a single voter in Massachusetts goes into the voting booth and says, I'm going to vote against, you know, Jimmy Representative because, you know, leadership made the budget late. That doesn't happen. It's not politically realistic. And so, you know, those two factors mean that this is going to get stretched out over and over again. If you're looking at actual pieces of policy in the budget, there's a lot there and that actually could explain or help explain why this has taken so long to get done. I mean, there's not only those, you know, $500 million in tax breaks which are coming in a separate bill but are a part of this kind of budget push budget effort. This year there was kind of random $266 million for the MBTA. Just because it's going to take more than that to deal with some of the safety issues that the T is facing right now. So definitely those are the themes that I've been looking at. I mean, there's everything from child care to early education. Higher education gets a bit of a bump in this this year. If you want to go down the list of smaller policy items, there's things like probation and parole fees being eliminated. That's pretty huge in a year where the legislature isn't necessarily taking on too many criminal justice issues. So, you know, you can go down the list. You can pick apart everything from local aid to Chapter ninety funding. The big zoom out question here is Massachusetts is doing great tax wise. These tax revenues are coming in. We got oodles to spend from state revenues and from federal income. And it's really maybe that's why it took so damn long because there really is adding more and more and more to this budget. And it will, you know, the $55 billion takes a while to spend. [00:09:41][167.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:09:42] So zooming in on the time question, just for a second, sometimes in past years there's been this this sort of weird timing artifact where the legislators don't leave themselves enough time to deal with anything that Governor Baker might veto. He has a certain amount of time to pass that or veto various parts. And then the legislature can come back and, you know, override some of his vetoes. How did that end up this year? Does the legislature still have enough time? [00:10:05][23.0]

Mike Deehan: [00:10:06] This is something that I like to keep an eye on every year that the 21st of July, ten days away from the 31st, the end of July is the day that Democrats give up their supermajority when it comes to overriding Governor Baker's vetoes. And it's the last time because, you know, Governor Baker is outgoing, there will likely be a Democrat, you know, if things don't change radically along the answers electorate between now and then, there will be a Democrat in office. And so this is really the last time they do it. And this has happened more and more lately. Baker has the last few years, I should say. Baker has kind of taken his red pen to a number of things that then they don't have time to override and they have to come back the next year and make it a priority. Only a very slim, slim portion of those vetoes become that January priority. They did it last time with a climate bill. And there's been some minor things around, you know, abortion and some child care things, I think. And that is a kind of a rare instance where they come back and make a priority out of it. But, you know, you have supermajorities in the House and the Senate and they just let this go away so that they can have more time to screw around between the chambers and get things done that way. [00:11:19][72.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:11:19] And then getting into a few of the top lines that you mentioned before, we talked a little bit in exasperated detail at the top of this podcast about the MBTA question. There's $266 million heading to the beleaguered MBTA. What is that supposed to actually be addressing? And does anyone think it's enough or are we just kind of stemming holes again? [00:11:44][25.2]

Mike Deehan: [00:11:46] Steve Poftack, the general manager of the MBTA told oversight lawmakers at a hearing just this past week that it's going to take about $300 million at least to fix what the T the safety problems at the T. And a lot of these problems are not just necessarily fixing things that are broken or fixing things that are dangerous. It's not necessarily an infrastructure problem. It's a people problem. It's recruiting dispatchers. It's recruiting people that work for the T that are highly trained. And to recruit highly trained people requires paying them fairly high salaries. That's where a lot of this money is going to come to, and it's certainly going to be ramping up the process of recruitment, salary, training, etc. to get more people to run the T competently and safely so that we can go back to more regular service. [00:12:30][44.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:31] You mentioned that the state's coffers are flush this year, that tax revenues have been extremely robust. And one of the ways that the state legislature is addressing that, of course, is tax breaks. Charlie Baker proposed some earlier on in the year. The state legislature has taken some similar tax, some different. Walk us through what's been done there. [00:12:48][16.7]

Mike Deehan: [00:12:49] Well, so this is about a $500 million tax package that we're going to get through, through the economic development bills that the chambers are passing through. And it seems like everyone's really on the same page when it comes to spending this fairly massive budget and, you know, revenue surplus on tax breaks for pretty much everyone across the board, you know, to go down the list quickly, you know, lower earning people are going to benefit from, you know, different bonuses and tax breaks, including, you know, the family and children based tax breaks. Senior homeowners are going to get their tax break expanded. Let's see, what were the others? The estate tax on the higher end was probably the most controversial and the one that progressives and some of the more liberal Democrats had the most, you know, issues with when the chambers were debating these. And that was to essentially double the estate tax from 1 million to $2 million and to do away with the so-called cliff effect, which would mean that, you know, when it hits that $1 million, you don't pay for that tax on the entire state. It's going to be on just everything that's over that million dollar mark. So now the $2 million mark, and that's really that's a housing story more than anything. Plenty of middle class people in Massachusetts have one and a half million dollar homes or assets that total pretty much over $1,000,000. And, you know, they're not upper upper class in the way that we may have thought of a millionaire a generation ago. This is important for keeping them from going to Florida, more or less so in order to keep that estate tax in the state coffers. Make sure that tax is paid to Massachusetts and not to Florida, where they don't have one. This was kind of seen as a necessary update, like I said, the far left in the House and Senate. They weren't thrilled with it and they wanted to make some tweaks, but they understand the necessity of it and why this has to go forward. [00:14:47][117.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:14:48] So when we talk about the budget every single year, we kind of talk about it as just a dollars and cents issue. But it's also a way that a lot of other policies kind of get shoehorned in in this kind of big bulk effort. Were there any policies that were included in this year's budget that might not have made it through a standalone legislation that were particularly interesting to you? [00:15:09][20.7]

Mike Deehan: [00:15:10] Yeah, to go back to those the parole and probation fees, that was one thing. Also in criminal justice, there's the end to fees for calls home from sheriff's departments. There's a big increase in the sheriff's budget for medically assisted treatment for opioids. That's something that's been fairly controversial for years as different, you know, sheriffs within the system kind of come along to the idea that medically assisted treatment is necessary for treating addicts as they come into the into their systems. You know, there's a plethora of different policy items that always get baked into the budget like this. And that's why it's such an important document and why it really why it comes so late in the session. It is where a lot of priorities get baked in things that aren't just numbers and, you know, dollars and cents. They're real changes in how the government works and what it pays for. So, you know, we see things that could look like. Workers seem like they might be irrelevant to the budget in general and they maybe should be their own standalone bills. But the budget is always going to pass. So if you can get your stuff into the budget, that's way better than it being a standalone bill. Somebody could kill a standalone bill or some leader somewhere could have, you know, a cast, its cast and I had it and kill it for a session. Whereas if you can get it into the budget and the Ways and Means people, you know, get it in there for you, then you're pretty much golden. [00:16:34][83.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:16:35] Speaking of things that are baked in, Axios had what I think is an era defining scoop, which is that the big tostada, the thing where they were basically going to have this gigantic cheese it at Taco Bell, which was going to act in place of a tostada, is not going to happen or it's dead. So Mike Deehan and you're from Axios. We need to ask you about this. What happened? [00:16:55][20.4]

Mike Deehan: [00:16:57] Yeah. My colleague Jessica Boehm discovered her real disappointment that the big Cheez-It tostada now available at one and only a California Taco Bell location is terrible and tastes like heartburn trash. It is a cheese it base for a tostada which I start out typically has a fried tortilla as its base. And then there's beef, lettuce, cheese. Your typical, you know Taco Bell certainly typical to Taco Bell ingredients this in place of it has a 16 times larger than normal Cheez-It which should in and of itself be wonderful. But when she had it a recent trip to Disney, she stopped by the Taco Bell. She's a huge Taco Bell fan, she says, and apparently it was really, really terrible. I think the takeaway here, though, Steve, and please push back if you disagree here is that it wasn't the Cheez-Its fault on this whole thing. [00:17:59][62.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:17:59] Nothing is Cheez-It's fault. Cheez-It's are faultless. [00:18:02][2.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:18:02] This in this house, we support Cheez-It's. [00:18:04][2.6]

Mike Deehan: [00:18:05] It's even wild, different sized cheese. That's like this one. It was, you know, it's giant. She said the cheddar taste clashed with some of the the other ingredients. When you really are expecting more of a baseline, you know, corn tortilla kind of a flavor, that was really it. However, she does say that you can order the tostada without anything else on it. Just get the plain giant Cheez-It and go about your day. It's probably not worth the like, you know, five or six. I have no idea how much it costs, but probably more than you'd want for what's essentially 16 Cheez-It's. But, you know, it's an option. [00:18:40][35.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:18:41] Thank you so much, Mike Deehan of Axios, for I am trying not to look too pained as I do this outro, but thank you so much, Mike Deehan and of Axios for both the critical state budget coverage and also the equally lengthy and equally important Cheez-It Tostada coverage. [00:18:59][18.0]

Mike Deehan: [00:19:01] You're very welcome. Just remember, it's not the Cheez-Its fault. [00:19:03][2.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:19:12] Last week, the back and forth over a Boston municipal waterfront development plan came to a head at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Here to help us understand the implications of this ruling, we're joined for the very first time by Boston Globe reporter Catherine Carlock. Welcome to The Horse Race, Catherine. [00:19:27][15.5]

Catherine Carlock: [00:19:28] Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. [00:19:30][1.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:19:31] So I'm sort of appalled that we've never had you on before, but very glad that we do today. But let's start with the basics for those who are not familiar, who haven't been following along with this issue. What is a municipal harbor plan and how did it apply to Boston? [00:19:44][13.0]

Catherine Carlock: [00:19:45] A municipal harbor plan is basically a document that's approved by the state that each municipality that has a waterfront will say, this is how we want to plan for development and public access to that waterfront. There are at least 17 major piece across across the Commonwealth and how it applies to Boston, there are several and in Boston the the MHP in question is the downtown Boston municipal harbor plan. [00:20:18][33.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:20:20] So the MHP in downtown Boston has been particularly controversial over recent years. Why is that? [00:20:26][6.2]

Catherine Carlock: [00:20:28] The downtown Boston I may be controversial is a great word there. It's been, you know, many, many years of debate and discussion about the downtown Boston image. A lot of it has focused on the pushback or proponents for this one big tower called Pinnacle at Central Wharf, more than $1 billion tower proposed by developer Don Chiofaro. You know the site, it's at the site of the Boston Harbor Garage. The big block C concrete block right in front of the New England Aquarium. It the downtown MHP is separate from the city of Boston's own planning process. But when Don Chiofaro and his and his compatriots at the Chiofaro Company filed with the city of Boston to say, we are officially we want to build this tower here. The Conservation Law Foundation, which is an environmental advocacy group, along with residents of the Harbor Towers, which are a pair of two 400-foot concrete condominium towers next door to the aquarium and the harbor garage both filed suit and the grounds that they used to file suit. Both said the state improperly approved the municipal harbor plan that allows for this garage. And so that's really the gestation of all of this. [00:21:51][82.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:21:52] And that seems like a really fine point. You know, they weren't necessarily suing over the things that the public is, you know, up in arms about about the towers themselves or what they might look like or the impacts they might have. It was a very sort of narrow technical thing that they were suing on. So dig in more on that. What was the actual source of that or that actual contention in the lawsuit? [00:22:11][19.6]

Catherine Carlock: [00:22:12] Well, they did they did sue or at least both. The Harbor Tower's residents had a number of complaints in their initial suit, including one in permanent parking, complaining that the tower would block public access to the waterfront, things like that. What happened last year was a Suffolk Superior Court judge, Brian Davis said, you know, he dismissed some of those claims but said, hey, this point about the improper approval of the municipal harbor plan, you're onto something here. That was a really big bombshell decision. That was really pretty unexpected by a lot in the real estate development community. And so what happened this last week, most recently, was the it hinges on basically who has signed a document that says the MHP is approved and what the Supreme Judicial Court, which is the highest court in Massachusetts, what they said was that, yes, it should have been someone from the Department of Environmental Protection signing that approval and not someone from the State Energy and Environmental Affairs Agency. And. And that's been, again, like you said, Steve, it's a pretty fine detail. And but as a result of this lawsuit and as a result of this decision, it now throws kind of the future of not just the downtown Boston Municipal Harbor Plan, but every municipal harbor plan into question. [00:23:43][90.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:23:45] So kind of digging in a little bit into what the back and forth, but also the response has been. You mentioned, of course, the Conservation Law Foundation was opposed to the MHP, so they're pretty happy about this outcome. What was NAIOPs position? The developers seem like they're a little bit confused by what the implications could be. [00:24:05][20.6]

Catherine Carlock: [00:24:06] There's a lot of confusion out there. I've spent the past couple of days on the phone with folks, attorneys, developers, advocates trying to say, so what does this mean? The and what I'm told is that the justification that the Supreme Judicial Court used to invalidate the downtown Boston Municipal Harbor Plan applies to all of the municipal harbor plans. However, there is a footnote in the ruling that has some language about statutes of limitations. That's it's really confusing. There's not a lot of agreement. And as a result, there's a lot of waterfront development, a lot of MHPs that are in limbo. And I think it's important to recognize it's not just this one downtown Boston tower. This and this impacts a lot of municipal hybrid plans have allowed for billions of dollars worth of real estate and economic development throughout the Commonwealth. And it's not just well-heeled developers in downtown Boston, it's industrial property. And when a New Bedford and folks really trying to get a lot of economic development going in cities that have not had a lot of economic development that Boston has seen. And so this type of decision that, yes, was on something incredibly narrow and focused, really a lot on one project has these incredibly broad implications for economic development and real estate development throughout the state. [00:25:46][99.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:47] So when all is said and done, does the footnotes save the other ones, or are all of the municipal harbor plans now kind of up in the air? [00:25:54][7.0]

Catherine Carlock: [00:25:55] Steve. That's still a really big question. A lot of it is still not very clear. The state, the state's position is that all of the MHPs are invalidated. And they last year with with the judge Davis decision had put out some draft regulations as to saying. Given this decision, this is how we may move forward. Those are not finalized yet. So the state is still assessing that situation. So it may very well be that there's a regulatory fix, but there's still a lot that's just in limbo in question and comes at a time when the city of Boston in particular is looking at how it's going to overhaul its entire planning process. And so that is just pushing forward again. And just another delay in what's already been a pretty delayed process for waterfront development in Boston. [00:26:52][56.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:26:53] I am so glad you brought up the Boston specific angle to this one, because the city council has yeah, we talk about this all the time. The Boston City Council has wanted to replace basically this plan for a while. You know, you reported on this back in 2021 that they wanted to submit a new plan. You know, there is the question right now of the way that the Wu administration kind of wants to engage in a citywide planning process versus, you know, a region specific planning process. So where do things stand right now with what Mayor Michelle Wu had said about pivoting from this downtown Boston area to focus on East Boston? And does that conflict with what the council is doing? [00:27:38][44.7]

Catherine Carlock: [00:27:39] The city council says it wants to have a hearing on a comprehensive, district wide waterfront plan. I don't really know through what mechanism at the BPDA there would be for that type of plan. I have asked the city that question and I hope they have some response. And, you know, one of the first steps that Mayor Wu took when back when she took office was to say, we are going to pump the brakes on planning for downtown Boston and we are going to shift our focus to East Boston. And that was something that a lot of folks had asked, well, why can't you do both at the same time? And and there's. So I think that maybe this is just me speculating that maybe where some of the city council is coming from to say, we can look at this comprehensively, it doesn't necessarily need to be one neighborhood versus the other. But when it comes to the municipal harbor plans, again, those are separate from the Boston Planning and Development Agencies, Article 80 plan, which is what allows for public input and other types of commentary on these large real estate development projects. That Article 80 process has been, again, extremely delayed. The BPDA has been bleeding employees. Michelle Wu very famously campaigned on abolishing the BPDA. Mayor Wu has since hired Arthur Jamieson as chief planner and director of the BPDA, and he has said, we need to hire people, we need to get the ball rolling again. When it comes to development approval processes, where the confusion regarding the MHPs come in. It just adds another layer of uncertainty to what's already been a pretty uncertain process since Marty Walsh went to Washington, essentially. [00:29:35][115.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:29:36] I should just also quickly note that we have done some polling on this issue for a group called Boston Harbor Now. So just full disclosure there, but just what it found was that, you know, you're in kind of a classic spot in Boston where people want open space, but you also have, of course, housing being one of the things that's just a huge issue on everybody's mind. And of course, open space and housing are often, you know, sort of go toe to toe when there is open space and when people are and groups are trying to decide what to do with that space. So from your perspective, what are the things to watch for, for those interested in kind of how this process is going to move forward and what might end up getting built down the road? [00:30:17][41.1]

Catherine Carlock: [00:30:19] Mmhmm. Well, I think that's Steve. That's really the most important thing. And I think and Boston Harbor Now have done a really admirable job of trying to pull back from kind of the nitty gritty of some of that of some of the, you know, who signed what in this state approved document and saying this is about the waterfront and public access to the waterfront and who gets to have that access. Not in Boston for Boston Harbor Now, but across the Commonwealth. And it's important to not lose sight of the fact that municipal harbor plans were created to allow each municipality to plan for its own waterfront, to plan what makes sense for its own space. Because what makes sense in New Bedford doesn't make sense in Barnstable, it doesn't make sense in Boston. And it's easy to get wrapped up into the nitty gritty details of these plans and not pull back and say, let's focus on what really matters pushing forward economic development and making the waterfront a place for everybody. And as for where we go from here, I really don't know. This has really been surprising. It's been quite a saga, and I think it will continue to be. And it's got all the markers of a good story. And so it's one they'll definitely be following in the years to come. [00:31:47][88.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:31:48] Perfect. Well, we will be watching that with rapt attention. Catherine Carlock of The Boston Globe, thank you so much for being on The Horse Race with us. [00:31:55][7.6]

Catherine Carlock: [00:31:56] Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. [00:31:58][2.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:01] And that brings us to our final question, which is this week's Pony Express mailbag. And the question is, in keeping with Mike Deehan's just stunning presentation of the Axios scoop on the death of the gigantic Taco Bell Cheez-It. What is the strangest Cheez-It dish recipe preparation that you use? Send it to us. Tweet it to us. Email it to us however you want to send it. And we will read it next week on the air. [00:32:25][23.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:26] And I will be doing my best not to gag, depending on how creative all of these particular suggestions are. We trust you. Don't send us anything too gross. [00:32:36][10.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:36] You can people can send us, like, bring us food. [00:32:39][2.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:41] I mean, yeah, if you wanna send us like seven blocks of Cheez-Its okay, then go for it. But that is all the time we have for today. Cheez-It News notwithstanding, I am Jennifer Smith signing off with Steve Koczela. Our producer is Libby Gormley. Our intern is Elena Eberwein. Don't forget to give The Horse Race a review wherever you're hearing us now to help other people find us and Cheez-It related Tostada News. Subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico Playbook and reach out to the MassINC Polling Group if you need any polls done. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. [00:32:41][0.0]

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