Charlie Baker is a Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He will face Mark Fisher in the Sept. 9 primary.
The Editorial Board of MassLive.com and The Republican will meet with Baker. We want to know what questions you have for the candidate. Please file your questions in the comments section below or email us directly at letters@repub.com.
Following is background about him largely taken from his campaign website:
Secretary of Administration and Finance under former governors William Weld and A. Paul Cellucci, and former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Baker helped turn a billion-dollar deficit into a surplus, create a half million jobs, and enact education reforms. He oversaw a number of cost-saving reforms, modernizing state government and making it more efficient. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Governor’s Association in 1998.
He has spent the past three years as an entrepreneur in residence at the venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners.
Raised in Needham, Baker attended public schools and is a graduate of Harvard College. He earned an MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
He has proposed a series of economic initiatives aimed at increasing opportunity for Massachusetts workers with a focus on growing small businesses, especially in regions that are suffering from economic stagnation and high unemployment. The initiatives include increasing the minimum wage and boosting the Commonwealth’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Baker said he will also eliminate burdensome regulations, and provide tax credits for small businesses to offset the impact of raising the minimum wage.
He promises not to raise taxes and to reform the state tax code that he calls “overly complicated – benefiting only special interests while harming workers, families, and small businesses.”
He opposes the automatic gas tax hike, whose repeal will appear on the November ballot as a referendum question.
He is in favor of welfare reform.
On education, he looks to the state’s intervention in the Lawrence School District as a model of how to improve the lowest performing schools and districts. He favors increasing the number of charter schools and removing restrictions on the number of students who can attend them in the lowest performing districts.
He promises to make higher education more affordable and better connect school to employment.
In addition, Baker promises to “protect local aid as his top priority, and will increase it by at least as much as any increase in overall state revenue. Equally important, he will ensure the state never imposes unfunded mandates on cities and towns and that local officials always have a seat at the table on issues affecting them. Charlie will also strive to improve the multi-year budgeting process for aid to municipalities, so that funding is more predictable and aid is never held hostage by Beacon Hill.”
Baker wants to implement “a series of reforms aimed at protecting victims and their children in abusive homes, as well as getting tough on offenders. The plan stiffens penalties for abusers, delivers more support for victims and empowers victims to prevent attacks.”
He favors “a comprehensive solution” to battle the opioid abuse problem that “will involve increasing resources for treatment, as well giving law enforcement, prosecutors and judges more tools to deal with non-violent offenders and get them the help they need.”
Calling the Affordable Care Act a disaster, Baker will pursue a waiver for Massachusetts from it.
In response to the Probation Department hiring scandal, he would request that the inspector general conduct annual audits of hiring practices, rotating among state agencies. He would have the state ethics committee conduct annual in-person training days for public officials and rate agencies based on their compliance with ethics rules. He would "integrate" the probation and parole departments with a memo laying out the responsibilities and goals of each one. He would also require that online job postings remain online after a job is filled with information about the person hired, their experience and whether they were recommended by a state official.