Maura Healey gives back of her hand to the poor provinces

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the closure of Carney Hospital in Dorchester and the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer.

Not because anybody I know is served by the two community hospitals closed on Sept. 1 by Steward Health Care. But because the closure of a hospital in the lowest-income neighborhoods of Boston, and another in a rural area of central Massachusetts, reminds me a lot of the way Gov. Healey treated the decision by UMass Dartmouth last year to abruptly close its arts campus in out-of-the-way New Bedford.

In all three cases, the state of Massachusetts could have chosen to save public services in these struggling places often invisible in the state media universe. But in all three cases, the Healey administration has bought into the argument that it’s only about the money — the state simply could not afford to keep them going, her folks have argued. 

Healey seems to have a penchant for allowing public services to die in low-income and boondock-sort-of-places. Places that have little political power. But I would submit that she is analyzing the problems with the wrong equation.

Poor urban neighborhoods and geographically isolated cities and rural areas are every bit as much in need of quality health care, access to good public education and the related economic development as every place else. These are essential services to have, whether you live in a big metro or a protected suburban enclave. 

So I believe Healey’s equation should never have been based on a perception that state taxpayers can’t afford to fund these hospitals or the UMass campus in an economically struggling city. The equation should have been based on the philosophy that the state cannot afford not to fund them. 

When disenfranchised urban neighborhoods and forgotten rural areas achieve better health care and easier access to higher education benefits, they are likely to create better economies and qualities of life for themselves. It’s a win-win all around.

In the case of Carney Hospital, the closure of the emergency and addiction services in this most isolated part of Boston was especially bittersweet. That’s because the large Catholic population of the Dorchester neighborhood had to watch while Healey’s administration, at the very same moment, was agreeing to bail out another nominally Catholic Hospital, St. Elizabeth’s. That hospital happened to be located in a higher-income section of the city, Brighton. St. E’s was the flagship teaching hospital for Steward, and the Healey administration has used the state’s eminent domain power to seize the property. 

Yes, the physical plants of Carney and Nashoba had been more neglected by Steward than St. Elizabeth’s and would have been a bigger financial lift for the state. But so what? The Healey-ites needed to have put on their thinking caps and come up with a creative way to save them. Without these hospitals, the miles of densely-populated Dorchester neighborhoods and rural towns of north central Mass. have no quick access to an emergency room, and little to psychiatric and addiction services.  

Similarly, the evacuation of UMass Dartmouth from the Star Store last August was especially bittersweet because the struggling residents of downtown New Bedford had to sit by and watch while UMD relocated much of the former downtown campus to a suburban strip mall. The Dartmouth branch of the state university has now spent an untold fortune — never fully accounted for despite requests from The New Bedford Light — rehabilitating that place. That’s money it could have spent rehabbing the Star Store campus in downtown New Bedford to a more beneficial experience for both the art students and the city’s downtown. 

Sure, there was plenty of blame to go around for both the hospitals’ closures and the College of Visual and Performing Arts leaving New Bedford.

The seemingly greed-driven doctor/entrepreneur, Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, evidently funneled millions to himself and his pet projects even as Steward sank hundreds of millions into debt. The seemingly always selfish local developer Paul Downey is suspected of failing to do upkeep and repairs on the Star Store campus even as he raked in tens of millions as UMD’s landlord. At the behest of state Sen. Mark Montigny, the inspector general is investigating what Downey did or didn’t do for maintenance.

De la Torre guaranteed he could make money on Medicaid hospitals that had been underfunded by the federal government for decades. Downey guaranteed he could renovate and operate an aging building that the university now claims is prohibitively expensive to maintain. The Light, of course, has shown that the university’s claims of the maintenance cost are dubious and highly inflated at best. As I said, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

It all goes back to the way politics is practiced in Massachusetts and New Bedford.

The state of Massachusetts (former Attorney General Martha Coakley) never should have approved the 2010 and 2011 sales of eight nonprofit hospitals to a for-profit hospital chain like Steward and its investment arm, the venture capital company Cerberus Capital Management. But Steward had “aggressively” contributed to Coakley’s ill-fated 2010 U.S. Senate campaign. 

And state politics, of course, has long had an adverse effect on the state’s higher education system. 

Massachusetts, lulled by the presence of so many quality private universities, has long walked away from its responsibility to adequately fund higher education for its working-class kids.

Don’t believe me? Compare the amount of support that the state of Connecticut provides its university system with what Massachusetts provides. Connecticut, with just over half Massachusetts’ population (3.6 million vs. 7 million), provides $1.9 billion in state and local funding while Massachusetts provides just a little more, $2.2 billion, for 50,000 more students. 

So yes, the state of Massachusetts has a long track record of underfunding important public services in politically weak places like Dorchester and Ayer and New Bedford.

Montigny, fresh off his re-election to a 17th term, has now all but conceded that he failed to convince the governor and her administration to reopen the New Bedford UMass-Dartmouth campus. Mayor Jon Mitchell has also gone silent about the “discussions” he’s supposedly been having with Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Downey since August 2023.

None of this is surprising. Healey’s administration and finance secretary, Matthew Gorkowicz, used to be UMass President Marty Meehan’s vice president for administration and finance. These government types tend to recycle and recycle.

These are the same folks who, under Gov. Charlie Baker, dismantled previous Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan for the state to fund half of the Massachusetts university system in return for a cap on tuition and fee increases. 

The best and brightest in UMass President Marty Meehan’s office are currently emphasizing funding many university costs through increased research and development grants. But what they actually have done is make the UMass system almost as expensive as many private universities. Yes, Healey’s agreeing this year to fully fund all junior college tuition is a good thing, but it has been done at the same time that UMass Dartmouth enrollment is struggling to recover from freefall.

Seemingly frustrated by the Healey administration’s attitude toward the city, Montigny seems to have gone off on his own.

The latest twist is that our local state senator is now looking to the state college and junior college systems to do in New Bedford what UMass has refused to do. 

In a July 24 press release, the senator said it’s possible that Bridgewater State University or Bristol Community College, together with local nonprofits, could work with the state to establish a new arts presence in the former New Bedford campus at the Star Store. The Fairhaven Neighborhood News published that little gem in mid-summer.

Here’s what the little-noticed press statement said:

“Montigny’s prior $8 million bond authorization is stripped from UMass Dartmouth and will be made available for the building’s needs once ownership is transferred to the Commonwealth. The amendment represents a first and critical step in a lengthy process to revive the building for the public’s benefit.”

Good for the senator. But in reality, he’s also acknowledging he had no political sway over Gov. Healey or her A&F secretary (who actually used to work for him when he chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee).

What’s most disappointing, however, is how little imagination Maura Healey has for places like Dorchester, Ayer and New Bedford. They seem to be out of her world of experience.

Healey is a progressive Democrat who some see as having national potential. But as progressive as she is, she has a blind spot for out-of-the way places and the services they need. 

One would have expected more from her.

Jack Spillane is a New Bedford Light columnist. Email him at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.

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