the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., august 27, 2024. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable brian e. schatz, a senator from the state of hawaii, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 11:00 a.m., friday, august 30, 2024. >> lawmakers are currently in

recess, and they'll continue at the senate hart office building because renovations are ongoing in the senate chamber. monday september 9th, watch live coverage of the u.s. senate on c-span2. and now we'll return. we're going to get to it right now and the first contribute to the commonwealth of massachusetts as a three-term governor. governor dukakis was over

unprecedented growth and period for massachusetts hailed as a national model and here today are a number of former members what was caused a massachusetts miracle. starting this off is our first moderator for the panel and he is northeastern's own ted lansmark, ted and i talked, a civil rights planner, higher administrator, arts and culture, social activist in boston and nationally as well. i'm going to walk over here, ted and talk to you for just a minute. you're in charge of the center, dukakis center. tell us a little about what you're doing and what the headline is today. >> well, we're in the midst of doing ongoing research on economic development, transportation policy, and

gentrification, reparations. we're working on heart and communities, open spaces and strong focus on resilience and sustainability. >> this sounds wonderful and i know the university is in a global environment these days. bring us there. tell us what the headline will be tomorrow and what you're planning on doing. >> well, i can't predict tomorrow's headline. it's hard to know what's going on at this moment, but it's clear that this university, as it has become significantly more global, is addressing issues of population migrations, of artificial intelligence, of planning and how planning helps to improve the lives of people and communities. of community engagement and the ways in which we think about people who are dispossessed, the ways in which they can

become more directly involved in policy making. so, i am excited and pleased to be part of a policy school that is addressing those kinds of issues within the context of a global university. >> wonderful. some exciting things going on. ladies and gentlemen, ted landsmark is going to continue with our panel and we look forward to listening to you. thank you, ted. thank you so much. >> so as some folks know mike was actually my first boss in boston. i came to work at a law firm where he oversaw the training of emerging legal professionals and among us were folks named bill weld and deval patrick. and i think at the time we were almost certainly the only law firm in boston that was about to produce three governors for

the commonwealth. it was extraordinary and he certainly gave us guidance in terms of how we developed our technical skills, but i think more importantly, his contribution to us was to give us a very clear sense of what it meant to be an ethical, legal practitioner, an individual who understood the needs of clients, but also understood the needs of the profession and of the responsibility that we all had to make important contributions in terms of public service. and so, the time that he had spent subsequently within the academy, i think, has inspired thousands and thousands of students to think of themselves as ethical public servants, as individuals who are committed to a level and quality of service that distinguishes this

university from any others. i'm pleased that we have, as panelists, individuals who worked with mike within his administration and can speak to those kinds of ways in which policies are developed ethically, responsibly, and accountably in terms of producing real outcomes, measurable jut outcomes. and i want to start with jim stone and maybe tell us a little bit how it is you came to be a part of the administration, what your work was and what some of take aways are that you can look back on at this point. >> i'm jim stone and i was the insurance commissioner. and at times we thought that there was a better way to communicate-- sorry.

is this on now? >> i think so it's in his lap. >> oh, oh, the thing fell off. here. how is that? >> much better. >> okay. sorry about that. so rather than talking about the specifics, if you'll indulge me, i thought really hard to put my relationship with governor in the context of what i took away about him. so what i tried to do is to come up with a few descriptive words, kind of like a free association test that represent what i think of my former boss and so the first and probably

the most obvious one is integrity. this is probably the thing that most starkly distinguishes him from every other politician. you had to have been around before his administration to know that massachusetts deservedly had the reputation of a corrupt state. he changed that culture and it has stayed change and that's just an enormous contribution for a whole generation of all of the things that i could mention about insurance or whatever, the thing i'm most proud of is being part of an administration that did that. but second, second word that comes to mind, trailblazer. when he was serving in the house in '62, most people just accepted as a truism that only an irish or italian middle-aged male could be the governor of massachusetts. greek, never.

not only did he smash that barrier, but he chose a lt. governor, first woman to be this that office and you don't have to be told how that seed has flowered today, right? i mean, we have a black governor, we have a woman governor, i'm a bostonian, we have an asian woman mayor, he deserves a lot of credit for that and that's kind of a second thing i want to thank you for. the third word that comes to mind is intelligence. some wag once told me and i've always remembered it that a-students become professors, b-students can get rich, but c-students run the world. well, here is the a-student and anyone who served in his cabinet or commissioner like me, knows no matter what expertise you develop in a specific field when you talked to him he already knew more about the field than you did and he never stopped working.

he just has a competence in public affairs that almost no one else has. it just amazing to this day. next work, resilience. people get knocked down in life, especially in politics, some bow out. this is the most resilient fighter you can imagine who never lost a -- [applause] >> and at loses races. he ran for attorney general, ran for lt. governor, he ran for renewal term as governor, ran for president. it never changed him and his sense of mission to be honest, progressive, and just never flagged. when his political career ended he applied exactly the same to his teaching career and he put the same effort and the same enthusiasm into teaching and correcting papers, teaming up

with kitty to help refugees and never tried to make a penny to do this. he could have been a high-paid lobbyist, it wasn't in his dna, never, on the hard work of the causes that he believed in. second to the last word was frugality, it would be an incomplete portrait if i didn't paint the man in full. michael dukakis is anything, but quirky, but he did have one quirk and maybe just this one and that is that he's incurebly frugal. i remember having lunch with him in his office and he knew the cost of a tuna fish sandwich from the concession cart to the penny and reimbursed me to the penny and he complained and knew the cost of every jersey barrier as he

drove around the state and one vivid memory i have in my first year working for him, he asked me advice what to do with the vast salary he was now receiving which might have been $50,000. his frugality saved an underfunded commonwealth from bankruptcy in a few years. it's not just a quirk, it turned out well for the commonwealth. that brings in to my last free association and i'll turn it back to ted and that's not a word exactly, but a name, and that is cincinnati. for those who are students of history know lucas cincinnais, global civic duty, a roman statesman granted power on the

time of crisis and insisted to return to chores on his modest farm as soon as the crisis was over. that's michael dukakis. that guy was really, really powerful, but when he wasn't in governor anymore he could have been seen scrubbing graffiti from the walls of school walls and no chore was too small for hip. he always cared for that than his own. and he's matched his own, the ultimate citizen statesman. [applause] >> well put. it's not hard if we're not talking about insurance, but i really wanted to say that. >> well, that's a tough act to follow.

[laughter]. >> but let me take that springboard from jim and i was the secretary of environmental affairs and secretary of economic affairs and then lt. governor and so i started thinking about, what are the lessons that mike taught all of us about how to work in state government. and he brought into-- when i first started environmental affairs, what i saw was he encouraged us to work together and that that came from the legislature because in the legislature, you have to work with other legislators to get anything done and so, he took that lesson and brought it into state government. a way that was extraordinary and supported all of us as we did it. the one story i'll tell you has to do with fred, as the environmental affairs secretary, i was reviewing an impact report, an environmental

impact report to build a huge hotel right across from the public garden. that environmental impact report showed that it would cast a shadow on the public garden forever. not just the summer, not just the winter, but yearround and that the wind tunnels at the front of that entrance would be horrific. if you look at that public garden and look close to it, you'll find the transportation building. and when you thank anybody for not having shade on the public garden, thank mike dukakis and fred, he was the one who thought about and brought forward the alternative to that hotel. it took a lot for mike to say, no to the developer, a prominent, prestigious

developer, but to go with our solution because fred had worked so hard to get that to be a good replacement. so this day every time i go by the public garden, i smile. i think of fred, i think of mike. but it's a great contribution that comes from working together with another cabinet secretary and with the commissioners. the other lesson i would tell you is about the mike dukakis who takes on the tough stances and can say no. in the late 1970's jimmy carter had just been elected and the opec oil embargo was hitting us in the stomach. what we found was that everybody -- the pressure was on to drill in the georgia, the pressure was to find some

solution to the oil solution that we could contribute to in new england. if you looked at that impact report done by the federal government. there was really about a five day to one week supply of natural gas and no oil. the federal agencies had done that analysis. the fishermen and the fishermen's wives were coming in to talk about the importance of the food supply on the georges bank for the world and that it's not just us enjoying the fishing, but it's also europe. so it fell to me to try to figure out how to have it both ways if we could because mike said, work it out. make this work, if you possibly can. and find the ground, if you can. the lessons in the legislature, don't take the extremes here,

find a way to have it all. so we did that and we tried to find the ways in which you could do lateral drilling and all kinds of things. and ultimately the oil industry stopped every decent, thoughtful proposal we could possibly put forth and so, i went back in to him to say, governor, we've got to sue the federal government and he says back to me, that's really tough. we'll be suing my favorite president and he's calling me his favorite governor. but nonetheless, this man stood up and pursued this lawsuit and supported it because it was the only way through that. that took real courage. it took believing in what we had done every single effort we could make, but also believing that in the best interest of

massachusetts and in the best interest of the quality of life, that that's what we had to do and we won that lawsuit. so to me, that was the mike dukakis who stands tall when it comes to a matter of principle and decency to the public interest. there's nobody stronger than i've ever seen than him and that's been all the way through the 12 years i've had the great opportunity to work with him. i admire him, i respect him. he is a tough task master, but this man stands as tall and as strong as any political leader that i've ever seen in the country. thank you. [applause] >> well, it's hard to follow these wonderful speakers, i mean, i totally degree with everything jim said and i'm really proud to have been part of the two administrations.

and i'm going to say some little lighter things. i think, as i said, i think he's a wonderful human being, i think we did-- he's done great work. well, speaking about frugality, i remember i was going to go talk to the governor about the fact that the credit card companies were not going to stay in our state if they couldn't raise their rates and it was going to be hard to tell him that this was pro consumer and when i went and started speaking with him, he said, i don't think that people should borrow money and i said, we're a lot of fun, don't borrow money, we stopped the happy hours. [laughter] >> and that's one memory. and then another was when i first started in the

administration, you said to me, i was secretary of affairs and i wanted to change the name to secretary of consumer affairs and business regulations because the regulations in the industry were in the secretary. and he said i only want to deal with you. i do not want to deal directly with the administrators. i did that in my first administration. anyway, so you can pick or at least recommend for all of the agencies in your secretariat people except for the racing commission and the alcoholic beverage commission because that's where you could find the corruption and i thought that was very smart, actually. and he picked both of those commissioners. so, anyway, it was always a pleasure to work with him and learn from him and i wish you the best and sorry i missed your classes, but--

(laughter) (applause) >> well, all of these provide a tough act to follow. i would say that very inspiring comments in relating, really, to just -- governor dukakis was inspirational in so many ways and, jim car articulating those words and applying to the governor in spades, so to speak. and evelyn talking about his willingness to take on the tough fights and we're still fighting about georges bank when i became secretary of federal affairs, funding with the federal government. but i wanted to just say a few things about some of the issues that popped up during my tenure

and how the government supported me, how the governor supported me and to my left is the secretary and historically, pinch points between the environmental secretary and the transportation secretary because, he was overseeing building things and the environmental community was not necessarily supportive about some of those efforts. so we needed-- one of the things that governor dukakis did is establish a development cabinet and you know, helped us sort of sort out, if you will, these issues before we could be real public. but i do want to say that like the chair. i can go way back to, as a

student, inspiration from governor dukakis. i had a work study job with an agency, nonprofit called citizens housing and planning association and the governor in the '60s was leading the charge to try to get a bill passed for affordable housing in massachusetts and actually, it was a kind of just a member of a task force with its citizens, housing and planning, to try to come up with that and that was an inspiration to me. i was a first year law student and you know, and it gave me some feel, first of all, how legislation is made and you know, both the dedication and

commitment, but also the hard work that's required to pull something out of a hat, so to speak, particularly in a tough, always tough legislature which wasn't necessarily excited about, and at the time. so, anyway, but that was inspiration, gave me a feeling that, you know, policy is a thing and you can make a contribution and the governor, i have to thank for that and i sort of went off and finished school. and then i had another involvement with the governor, not-- excuse me before environmental affairs. i worked for four years at mass port and one of the things that governor dukakis did was to get mass port on the right track, if you will, after-- seemed kind of a haven for

patriotism, patronage, not patriotism. and a haven for, really, when i got that job and started gubernatorial appointment, but in line with the idea that important agencies like that are to-- ought to be under the umbrella of policy and so as a matter of fact, i'll always remember this. when i first heard about the job, they told me to talk to fred. i thought, wait a minute, dave davis is the head of mass port, why do i need to talk to -- and with the assistant secretary of fred and fred, i guess he passed my approval and sent me over to dave, dave was the person that -- he had a

wonderful, a wonderful time there and until-- (laughter) >> and came back in '78 on a leave of absence, i'll never forget and my boss there called me up when he saw the globe that after the governor's-- my governor's defeat and he said, jamie, don't you think you better come back from your leave of absence because said, i'm going to get rid of those guys at mass port, anyway, that was an experience and then of course, the crowning opportunity that i had is when the governor appointed me secretary of environmental affairs and i tell just one story in relation to that and it shows his incredible insight. we were launching what, you know, midway through my tenure, the massachusetts water resource authority which was a difficult thing at the outset.

and the board, people tended to think that the governor controlled the board because the secretary was the chair. the governor didn't control the board there were three members appointed, and three members appointed by the city of boston and two other members who nominated by watershed groups because we're concerned at the time about the water from being diverted. but anyway, so we went out with a -- you know, a national search to find an executive director and came back and then a couple of my colleagues from the board said we've got to have an engineer. and none of this, you know, policy wonk stuff, none of

this, you know, any of that. we've got to have an engineer. and the majority of the board is saying that so we went down and we got a guy that we ended up hiring and a guy who -- and i took his resume' to the governor to let him know, and he took one look and said, jamie, this guy would get slaughtered in the legislature. 's got to be able to deal with people up in the massachusetts legislature and he's not going to be able to. i don't know him, but looking at his resume', because he had been chief engineer. so, well, my colleagues on the board who had, you know, insisted they were going to resign, you know if we got somebody from the-- that the governor had

recommended, and, well, within six months a delegation from my board members came up to my office on cambridge street. jamie you've got to fire that guy, you've got to fire that guy, he's a disaster. well, my point is that governor dukakis saw right away that this was not-- because he didn't want -- in fact, he did not want the director, did not want to talk to the legislature. he wanted some governmental affairs person. let him go there up and i don't know -- and, but i mean, he just took, you know, just took like five minutes and said, my gosh, he'll get eaten alive. i'm glad we got back on, one of my big, i feel, honors and important achievements while there is establishing mwra. one other thing i'll say to it,

you know, we had determined that we knew that the water and sewer rates were going to go skyrocketing, secondary treatment plan and we kept hammering away, this is the dirtiest harbor in america, we've got to clean it up, it's the dirtiest harbor in america, i'm sad to say that turned that in 1988 turned it against the governor in the presidential election saying he presided over, quoting my speeches that it was the dirtiest harbor in america. but, and you know, i don't know that people were happy with the water and sewer rates after that, but we did get a cleaned up and i think it's a tremendous achievement of getting the mwra in place, governor dukakis and should be part of many, many things that you are leaving as a legacy.

[applause] >> and we're running a bit behind schedule and so, i'm going to pose a question to you where here is part of a presentation put on by a policy school and we've all been practitioners. i wonder what your takeaways might be for emerging public servants who come through a policy school? what is it that you think one could have learned within the context of the dukakis administration as a public administrator and when is it that you would pass on to the students who are going through a policy school today? >> thanks. limiting the amount of time i speak will require a hook. so, feel free to go in, jamie,

tell me to shut up. but let me pick on-- illuminate some of the points that jim, evelyn, have made. what jim talked about. the day we were sworn in in the 1975 cabinet, governor dukakis swore us in and the governor's council, what became the cabinet room. after the swearing-in ceremony he brought us back into the governor's office and said, look, somehow i was elected governor. i'm a politician, it's my job to get elected and my job to get elected again. you've been hired to give the people of massachusetts the best government they've ever had. that's your only mission, you're not to go anywhere near political fund raising. if i hear that you've been

involved in political fund raising, you'll be fired immediately. i don't know care if you hear from the chief of staff, or hear from kitty, you're hearing from me you're to give the people of massachusetts the best government they can have and not the fund raising business. it was incredible. i didn't know what to expect. secretary was a big jump up. i'd been in a policy position and it was like lifting a thousand tons off of your back to be told, by the top guy, this is what i want. total integrity and i will forever be grateful for the privilege of serving with you, but that that's number one, and advice to students, pick someone honest to work for. working for a crook, there's no

way you can come out okay. pick somebody honest to work for. it's a big country. there are other jobs. but choose who you work for is the first thing. the second thing, the reference to mike cleaning graffiti and picking up pieces of paper on his way to northeastern, the world is made of thousands of little things and so-called little people and when mike had those many lunches where every agency in state government was asked to nominate some worker who had done a great job, a public works, like the poor people that just died in that tragedy in baltimore, someone who was picking up trash on the highway and a couple of them died while i was secretary. recognize the people who are

doing the job every day and they were recognized, i forget how frequently those many lunches was named in memory of manny, who had been a great human service secretary and a colleague with the governor at the kennedy school, but recognizing that it's not all policy, it's the person on the street picking up the trash, making things work every day. and to bounce it back at you, ted, ted landsmark was the first person that mike dukakis appointed to the board after bob kylie back in the '75 period. now, those of you almost as old as me may remember the mbta of that period, the only question who got jobs at the t was which parish in south boston didn't

you come from. if you were italian, you better have blue eyes and be blond and fake it. i had a brother-in-law named mauerazi and he called himself morrissey, that's how he got the job. >> and with bob kylie, and the leadership of the governor we set up the lottery system for the hiring of bus drivers and the entry level positions at the t and within 10 years, you walked onto a bus and you see spanish people, females, blacks, and if you walk onto the t today, nothing against my best friend here is jack corgan, nothing against irish people, but there are a lot of us and your role as mike's appointee is instrumental taking a place that was quintessentially one dimensional in terms of the people who worked there and

sharing those job opportunities. on the frugality. [laughter] >> i have-- my grandmother use today make bread, made a terrific bread and always used king arthur flour and i learned to make it from her. she passed on so i make it every two or three weeks. occasionally i bring some for the governor. he'd like it. gee, this is good, i think i'll do this. he buys himself the bread machine, didn't make it the way i make it. and he's being interviewed and how wonderful the bread machine is. and he's talking about his wonderful bread machine. i get a call a couple of years ago. says, fred, have you been to the supermarket? do you know what they're charging for five pounds of king arthur flour? it's outrageous. do you still buy flour 50 pounds at a time from the

brazilian baker next door. yeah, sure. could you get me some? owe i periodically buy 50 pounds of flour, split it up, 25 for the governor, 25 for me. but the frugality is very real. [laughter] >> and one of the things to go back to evelyn's comment about the park plaza project it was called at the time which i think is an interesting story, and i saw-- she was a major actor in that, and mort zuckerman and now associated with places far from boston was a developer who convinced kevin white that the only way to get development going in the-- when the federal government stopped sending significant money to cities was to give away outrageous amounts of density, so there'd be enough profit that a developer would come in and do something, the

developer being mort. he so he convinces kevin, this is the right thing to do this high density plan with shadows on the common and all kind of bad attributes, but that's what happens when you have a silo government. you ask the economic person what you want, give me more density. that process didn't anticipate the backlash from henry lee, to the friends of the public garden, and all the people in the back boy who organized against it and i just blanked on his name. the fellow that was the head of the back bay association, daniel haern, a good friend of the governor, look, the density thing is a problem, but it's not just up to flynn who was

with the renewal plans and evelyn murphy with the environmental affairs. and tell fred on the federal money and that will make it work better. so the governor pointed a committee of the three of us, doing the diplomacy with the vra, the point person at the time and out of that process emerged the-- we didn't give away density, we imposed very strict height limits along the garden and the common and there had been a couple of fires of suspicious origin and i said, this is the racket. they're going to burn a couple of buildings and come in. and put in a strict height limit and they can't build more than what is there now.

in the urban renewal we put in the height limits. the plan worked, the transportation building which the governor supported, there's another piece to that, but what was a parking lot for what was then the playboy club is now where the four seasons hotel is, respecting the light limit established in the environmental process. so the interaction of different interests which the governor required is like an urban mechanic on balance and not allowing the silos, as jamie said, on having us meet once a week with the development cabinet so that labor issues and development issues, environmental issues, transportation issues got triaged and sorted out and the added thing that he did, and that worked, breaking the silos. and the only governor smart

enough to do an inversion of that-- i'm sorry i'm saying bad things about other cabinet members, is romney who put foy in charge of a-- the great intention of governor dukakis, the development cabinet kind of disappeared, it was a -- and the other piece was that through michael dukakis every six weeks, two months, something like that, the development cabinet would have to go out to outside of boston. and newton is the far west. we're going to worcester? oh, he'd make us go out and interact with people from the local labor council, with the local chamber of commerce, not one-on-one, but in front of each other with the local

elected officials to get another cross-section of it's not just making the silos integrate in boston, it's looking at what these policies mean on the ground. and how is it going to matter to people. it was a brilliant way to structure the government and the governor did all of that and it's the reason, sure, the massachusetts miracle, part of these things is luck and the time is right and things went well, but part of it was extremely competent governance structured to work, structured to not gridlock with fights between-- one last anecdote on the transportation building which was the key to putting 2000 workers in the area who would provide the purchasing power to make the rest of the development work. so i went to the governor -- i

tried the idea on mr. forbes from vra, if you put that in, if the governor-- i said the governor hasn't done this yesterday. i don't know if i can deliver it. if the governor were to support this building does that give agreement to the height limits at the garden. forbes said that's the trick. >> the governor files the legislation and our friend tommy mcgee who didn't like mike, doesn't like me, -- and it it stuck. my coincidence, sometimes it's luck, by coincidence rimso, the head of the local 3 bricklayers, old friend of my father's, was retiring from the boston business agency job in getting promoted to a vice-president in the bricklayers down in washington. so there was a going away party for rimso with every building

tradesman in the city attending. the governor gives his speech and says, there's a building that's going to be a zillion job and it's stuck up in the state house, get up there tomorrow morning. just went right-- everybody who thinks he wasn't, he didn't know how to play those political games, that's what really made it happen, was that integration of different aspects that he put together. he didn't micromanage every detail of these things. he insisted on the process, probably breaking the silos, partly the periodic look at each metropolitan area from their point of view and al, who was a guy who did all of that to break down the silos and pile it up in each metro area, anyway, it was the honor of my

life to work for you, governor, and thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you all very much. ♪♪ >> in 1979 in partnership with the cable industry, c-span has provided complete coverage of the halls of congress, from the house and senate floors to congressional hearings, party briefings and committee meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat of how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruption and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest of nonfiction books and authors.