LEE — Former state Sen. Ben Downing has a lot of ground to cover if he wants to become the next governor of Massachusetts. But the Pittsfield native, who represented the Berkshires for 10 years, is traveling the state to become a familiar face.
Downing, a Democrat originally from Pittsfield, was the first to announce his candidacy to succeed Republican Gov. Charlie Baker in February. He has four key issues he wants to focus on in his campaign for the Corner Office: climate change, fighting poverty, childcare, and transportation.
Last night, at the Morgan House in Lee, he emphasized the latter. In an event sponsored by The Train Campaign, Downing expounded, both in person and via Zoom, on his eight-point transportation plan.
See Edge video below of Ben Downing, Democratic candidate for governor, talking about the state’s transportation future on Sept. 8, 2021, at the Morgan House in Lee, Mass:
Downing served Berkshire County and portions of neighboring counties as state senator from 2007–2017. During his 5th term, he announced he would not stand for reelection and would take a job as a vice president of the Boston-based Nexamp, a clean energy company based in Boston. Downing now lives in East Boston with his wife Micaelah Morrill and their two young sons, Eamon and Mac. Since leaving the Senate, Downing has styled himself as “a clean energy business leader.”
“I’m running because I was tired of watching a governor with all the popularity, and a legislature with all the power, refuse to use either,” Downing told the small but enthusiastic gathering. “Meanwhile, the communities that I grew up in, that I represented, that I live in now, saw jobs leave and saw rents rise, saw trains run off the track where we had them, or not come nearly often enough in places where we had them.”
Indeed, it looks like rebuilding, expanding and increasing funding for the state’s transportation infrastructure will be his signature issue in his quixotic quest to lead this state of some 7 million people.
Downing wants to go one step further and make all mass transit in the state “fare-free.” He said studies have consistently shown that ridership rises significantly when users don’t have to pay a fare to hop on a train or bus.
Politicians can talk all they want about increasing funding for transportation and making the infrastructure cleaner and more efficient, but the nagging question always remains how to pay for it if the state is unwilling to adequately fund the needs.
“One of the reasons is we don’t have what almost every other part of the country has, which is regional revenue to meet regional needs,” Downing said. “In many other parts of the country, you have a regional commission or county government that will propose, every year, a plan for transportation in that region and then a revenue stream to fund it,” he explained.
Indeed, as The Edge reported four years ago, there are only two other states in the nation that have no county government at all: Connecticut and Rhode Island. Massachusetts abolished Berkshire County’s government and those in seven other counties across the state in 2000.
Even now, “county” government agencies across Massachusetts are funded entirely by the state, with the exception of Cape Cod’s Barnstable County and Dukes County (a.k.a. Martha’s Vineyard), both of which still have county commissioners who collects taxes from towns within county borders borders.
Downing did not explicitly call for a return to county government at the session in Lee, but suggested a “network of regional transportation commissions” that would administer regional ballot initiatives to “allow voters in regions across the state to fund their own transportation needs (RTAs, roads, bike infrastructure, etc.) with locally-assessed taxes.”
“People are willing to pay for the improvements they see in their region, and they know when it’s controlled locally, they’re going to get a regional transportation plan that meets their region’s needs,” Downing said. “It cannot be a one-size-fits-all statewide solution for our transportation challenges. The answers for western Massachusetts are going to be different from Boston’s.”
Downing also wants to double the funding for the state’s 15 regional transit authorities, which provide fixed-route and paratransit service in communities across Massachusetts, including the Pittsfield-based Berkshire Regional Transit Authority.
And Downing would like to see electrification of the state’s largely diesel-powered passenger rail fleet, the completion of an east-west rail system between Boston and Albany by 2030, and a “climate-resilient MBTA.”
If Downing is elected, he will also seek to establish “robust revenue streams,” including not only those from regional transportation commissions but through the Fair Share Amendment, a 2022 statewide ballot initiative to amend the state constitution that would clear the way for a proposed 4% surcharge on annual income beyond the $1 million mark. That income threshold will be subject to upward adjustment for inflation. The extra money would go toward education and infrastructure.
“If it does not pass, I will roll out a comprehensive tax reform plan,” Downing said.
Before leaving, Downing took a few questions, one of which had little to do with transportation. A questioner asked him if he had taken a position on the approved plan of General Electric to site a toxic dump in Lee.
At issue is what to do with contaminated soil to be removed from the Housatonic River. GE, which had dumped carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) legally into the river from its sprawling Pittsfield plant until the practice was banned in 1979, had reached an agreement with the EPA in 2020 to clean up the river with the five towns affected by the pollution downstream from the plant: Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and Sheffield, known collectively as the Rest of River Municipal Committee. As part of the settlement allowing the dump in Lee, GE will be obligated to pay $25 million to the town.
The decision sparked widespread unrest in Lee, with residents calling out the Lee Selectboard for agreeing to the deal and the nonprofit Housatonic River Initiative (HRI) appealing the agreement before EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board in Washington, D.C. If unsuccessful, the HRI has said it will seek relief in the federal court system.
Downing said he has followed the story in the news media and, “like just about everyone, I wouldn’t want the dump in my community. I don’t think any of us want the dump.”
“I want to learn more about what the options are, especially now that we’re in litigation before the EPA,” Downing explained. “I have not talked to any of the local officials who negotiated the agreement, so I have followed it and have committed to having a long meeting on it. I am not yet in a position to render a judgement on it.”
Downing, 39, will attempt to challenge Baker, who has not yet said if he will seek a third term in 2022. Harvard professor Danielle S. Allen, a political theorist, also has declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, as has state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz. Attorney General Maura Healey has not yet announced whether she is running, though she would be considered a favorite to win the nomination if she entered the race.
