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End of Session Review: William 'Smitty' Pignatelli
By Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
03:47AM / Monday, September 26, 2016
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State Rep. William 'Smitty' Pignatelli speaks on some of the successes of this past legislative session.

LENOX, Mass. — State Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli said despite a slow start to a short session, the Legislature was able to make some progress on big issues.

"It was an interesting session. We have two-year legislative sessions and it was a slow start to the session mainly because of the change in leadership in the Senate and we had a lengthy discord that is still going on about the rules and the joint rules of the Legislature," Pignatelli said. "That slowed our process down a little bit. ...

"But the second year was productive. There were a lot of things we left on the table because it was a short session."

The Lenox Democrat says his focus is mostly on district-oriented work and particularly boasted of the state's investment in MassWorks grant funding, which translated to multiple projects in Southern Berkshire County, and a new bridge replacement program.

"I love being in the district and what we can do in the district. My district did extremely well with MassWorks grants, bridges are being refurbished, roads are being rebuilt, infrastructure is being rebuilt," Pignatelli said.

The bridge program earmarked some state funds for small bridges throughout the state in the $800 million transportation bond bill. The competitive program allows towns access to $50 million set aside to replace bridges that are less than 20 feet long, but which can also be expensive. There are 74 such bridges in Pignatelli's district.

"While I even thought about filing an amendment to increase from 20 to 30 or 40 feet to be more reflective of the bridges that we have here, I realized we have an awful lot of bridges that are 20 feet or smaller and those bridges aren't eligible for federal dollars. So I think it is a good program," Pignatelli said.

On the larger scale, Pignatelli said a lot of progress is being made to tackle the opioid epidemic. The state strengthened the prescription monitoring program by making it easier for doctors to input information and allows them to be compared peer-to-peer on the amount of painkillers they are prescribing.

"I think it is somewhat reflective with the decrease in the Berkshires and statewide. But we still have a very serious problem with illegal drugs on the street that go beyond the prescriptions and medicine cabinets. Heroin is a very serious problem. Heroin is cheaper than a six-pack of beer," Pignatelli said.

The bill also gives patients the right to ask for non-opiate-based drugs and to ask pharmacists to fill prescriptions with fewer pills to avoid having to dispose of extras; sets a stewardship program for drug companies to pay for easy ways to get rid of the unused pills; calls for education in public schools about addiction; limits first-time prescriptions to seven days; and requires anyone admitted to the emergency room for an overdose to be evaluated within 24 hours.

Pignatelli says the state still needs to do more for people suffering from addiction and that starts with a recognition that it is a "societal problem." Otherwise, he said there tends to be a lot of denial and a stigma against those with addiction issues.

"I think we need to pay more attention and I think we need to recognize it, in my opinion, as a mental health issue. We need to break down those barriers of the stigma that is still very strongly there in society and we need to treat it as a mental health issue. We need to treat an addiction like this as we would treat breast cancer or a broken arm. Let's treat it fairly. Let's not stigmatize people and let's get them the treatment they need," Pignatelli said.

The state also passed an omnibus energy bill, which Pignatelli hoped would have gone even further in promoting renewable energy than it ultimately did. He was the co-sponsor of a failed bill that would have raised the solar cap even more that what was approved.

"I advocated for having no cap at all, just blow it off. That was a challenge. We passed an energy bill but we have so many applications in the pipeline that it is already getting maxed out. I always get disappointed with the utility companies. They are in the energy business but yet they are so narrow focused on where their energy comes from. I think all things should be on the table with a utility company, I would think they should be ahead of this," Pignatelli said. "They should be driving this agenda more so than the Legislature ...

"But since they are not doing it, we have to do it."

The cap was raised and the bill also calls for off-shore wind — while Pignatelli doesn't like wind projects in the Berkshires, he does like it off shore — and starts to look at more hydroelectricity. He also argued against language in the bill that would allow energy companies to charge ratepayers for the construction of a natural gas pipeline and he filed an amendment to grandfather reimbursements rates for existing solar projects for 20 years instead of 15.

Pignatelli sits on the Ways and Means Committee, which reviews every bill for its financial impact. While unemployment may have dropped to 3.9 percent, Pignatelli says underneath that the economy is still "fragile." State revenue figures have been coming in below expectations through most of the year and poses a challenge to the budget; another round of mid-year cuts is expected.

"It has become a delicate time in tracking revenues. As we sit here now in September, the governor and the Legislature is looking to see the September revenues. The last three or four months have dropped dramatically. We had to make adjustments just from April to July, when the house did their budget to when the Senate did their budget to July 1 when it started, because revenues started to drop," Pignatelli said.

"If they continue to drop and don't rebound, the governor is going to be making some 9C cuts. A lot of things we talked about in the budget may get cut in September, October, November."

The Berkshire Youth Development Program was one initiative Pignatelli successfully argued for to received double the amount of funding, from $100,000 to $200,000. But he now fears that may be on the chopping block with another round of 9C cuts, discretionary spending cuts made by the governor. He also supports an educational program specifically eyed for parents and teens when it comes to marijuana usage. That coincides with the ballot question looking to legalize marijuana for recreational use. While towns are raising the age of tobacco to 21, Pignatelli says teens are still getting access to cigarettes and he doesn't want the same to happen with marijuana.

"We have to be prepared for it. If it doesn't [pass] then it doesn't. But it doesn't take away the need to understand what marijuana is all about. It is decriminalized. We have medicinal marijuana, that is still evolving, and now we are voting to have recreational use of marijuana. I think people need to understand it and understand the consequences and that you don't want your 12-year-old smoking marijuana," Pignatelli said.

That, too, many be on the chopping block. He also co-sponsored a bill to create a progressive income tax that did not pass. But bills he sponsored to increase the earned income tax credit did pass and were signed into law in August 2015.

He was also vice chairman of the Cultural Development Committee, whose major highlight was overturning Gov. Charlie Baker's proposed funding cuts to the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

"The governor really whacked the Mass Cultural Council this year to the tune of nearly $8 million cut from what the Legislature put in. I took the lead, the Mass Cultural Council asked me to take the lead, to override that. We got an overwhelming response. While I took the lead, 130 of my colleagues said this is important," Pignatelli said.

Pignatelli says the creative economy has a return of every dollar spent, 10 is given back to the economy.

"We have to invest in the areas that pay dividends to us," Pignatelli said.

That includes hotels and meals taxes, which have proven to be huge benefits for Lenox; all its capital projects are funded by the hotel tax income stream. Pignatelli tried to usher in a home-rule petition that would give the town of Lee the ability to have a local option tax on gasoline.

"Let's let each town decide what is their best benefit and give them the tools," Pignatelli said.

Pignatelli also sat on the Higher Education Committee and says there the state has recently funded multiple infrastructure projects on state campuses. Now the focus will switch to lowering student debt. In previous years, the Legislature reached a deal to provide additional funds for what is known as the "50-50" agreement with the University of Massachusetts to balance fees and tuition.

That wasn't included this year and Pignatelli says in the future that needs to be reinstated and expanded.

"We need to get back to that and we need to expand it beyond the UMass system," Pignatelli said.

Maybe Pignatelli's most notable effort in the last two years is promoting shared services among the towns. Currently, he is looking to pass a bill with language to eliminate any conflict-of-interest concern cited by the Ethics Commission about sharing town administrators. Lee, Lenox, and Stockbridge have been discussing the possibility of sharing such a manager but can't because of ethics concerns.

"Between these three towns, we are talking $400,000 salaries and benefits. The mayor in the city of Pittsfield makes $90,000. The governor of Massachusetts makes $150,000 with a $40 billion budget," Pignatelli said.

Already Lee and and Lenox have agreed to share a building inspector. Sheffield and New Marlborough made a joint purchase for equipment. Pignatelli says sharing such services in small towns is going to be the key to sustainability, especially in the wake of dropping populations.

"I think shared services is our sustainable future. What I have always advocated for is that it maintains each community's identify, it streamlines and enhances services, it saves taxpayer money. That's how I look at it," Pignatelli said.

The governor's Community Compact program includes tools for towns to start looking at those types of shared opportunities and 17 of Pignatelli's towns signed on. There was a group signing with the governor and all of those towns last year to celebrate the accomplishments.

"It takes leadership at the local level. It takes an acknowledgement that we can't keep going the way we are going. We have to embrace new ideas and we not only need to think differently about how our services are being delivered, we need to act differently. That is what we've been doing in the Southern Berkshires for over a year now," Pignatelli said.

He is currently unopposed for the next election and he is preparing for the next session. He is looking to refile a bill that creates a mid-level practitioner for dental work to improve access in the Berkshires for oral care. The new position would be able to do more than a dental hygienist but less than the dentist.

"It certainly is a problem here in the Berkshires. Hillcrest Dental has done a good job accepting MassHealth but 50 percent of the dentist in Berkshire County right now are either at or close to retirement age," Pignatelli said.

He is also putting up a bill to manage insurance coverage of acupuncture, which he says has been effective in treating pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. He says a strong painkiller pill should be the last thing to be prescribed and would like there to be more holistic approaches to health care.

Bills he got passed included requiring insurance companies to cover long-term antibiotic treatment for those suffering from Lyme disease. Another one recognizes Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange but died years later. The bill extends eligibility for property abatements for Gold Star spouses of that veteran group.

On local bills, he passed one that allows Mount Washington to install broadband without the needed municipal light plant. In Tyringham, he passed a local bill allowing the town to only pay health insurance on employees working 20 hours or more. Health insurance costs have posed a challenge for small towns with "very part-time" workers.

The next big issue, Pignatelli says, is "a lot of our infrastructure is coming of age at the same time at 70 to 80 years old. The town of Lee, just as an example, can't afford $1, $2, $4 million for a bridge when they know they have 13 other bridges they have to deal with. I think the state has to recognize that," he said.

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