State Rep. Daniel E. Bosley (D-North Adams) compared his wide-ranging discussion with The Advocate April 21 to his average day as a legislator.
    "That's sort of how my day is. I'll get up in the morning and ... start to work on an issue and then you get a phone call on another issue and then the speaker calls on something else and then committee members will come in."
    Bosley has been the representative for Northern Berkshire for nearly 14 years; as things stand right now, at the start of next year he'll be 25th in seniority out of 160 members.
    "So, I'm one of the old veterans now. So when you get in the budget debates, a lot of people come to see you and say 'how should we do this,' 'can you help me craft an amendment to do that.' So, the day just kind of flies by because there's a million things that need to be done."
    Bosley is the house chairman of the powerful Committee on Government Regulations - "everything that we regulate in state government comes before my committee."
The 2001 budget
    Bosley is pleased with the House version of the FY 2001 state budget, which the Senate will take up at the beginning of May.
    "There's a lot of things in the budget that impact us out here that weren't Berkshire-specific. We fully lifted the cap off the lottery, which brings more money back to cities and towns," he said. "We funded another year's increase in regional school transportation and payment in lieu of taxes in our school budgets, and all of that impacts us and comes back here."
    The budget has more money for a program for the mentally retarded, more for legal assistance, $25 million for community hospitals.
    "We did a lot of good things in this budget. We put another $5 million into adult basic education, which is sort of my top priority every year," Bosley said.
    Bosley said he was able to get $50,000 for the smoking cessation program at North Adams Regional Hospital, money for community policing in North Adams, $50,000 for the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, and $25,000 for the Turner House Living Center for Veterans, located in Williamstown."
    "So everything that I put in - with the exception for full funding for the jail - was accepted, so it was a pretty good budget for this area," he said.
The Big Dig
    Bosley called the Big Dig a "big mess." The Big Dig is the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project - about which a $1.4 billion overrun not disclosed by officials involved recently came to light. As a result the project head, Turnpike Authority Chairman James Kerasiotes, was forced to resign. Replacing him is former Secretary for Administration and Finance Andrew S. Natsios.
    "It's a big mess. I just find it mind-boggling - a billion-four. This isn't like we forgot to put culverts on that side of the street," Bosley said. "This is $1.4 billion. After 14 years in the legislature, that's still a lot of money to me.
    "I don't know how in the world an administration can allow this thing to get so far our of whack" and then blame and fire Kerasiotes, Bosley said. "It's like firing the manager of a baseball team when the baseball team doesn't do well. You know the manager's partly at fault, but somebody else should have picked up the fact that you didn't have any pitching."
    Bosley also said people in the know have told him this project is at least two years behind, so instead of being completed in 2004, it will be 2006.
    "I'm not sure that Andy Natsios understands what a construction job is like, but I do like the fact that he's ... shut down any additional spending and he's going to take a look at where money's gone," Bosley said. "And I think he's very fiscally tight-fisted, and hopefully he'll get us back on track."
    The House and Senate are working out plans to pay for the project, anticipating that the deficit will grow even further. One thing Bosley likes about both the House and Senate plans is that they also allocate money for other road projects.
    "Because as [Berkshire State Sen.] Andy Nuciforo puts this, 'This job is the tail that's wagging the dog.' The project shouldn't be the focal point. The 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts should be the focal point and that's just one project, albeit a big project. So we need to kind of adjust how we look at this whole project."
    Bosley said he thinks the Big Dig is having a detrimental effect in the Berkshires.
    "The highway department will dispute that, and they'll roll out a list of things that have been done," Bosley said. "If you talk to the regional planning commissions, they'll tell you we're getting nowhere near the amount of money that we have in the past and also that jobs are postponed.
    "So, we have a good working relationship out here with District Highway Director Ross Dindio ... but he only gets as much money as his bosses in Boston give him," Bosley said. "And the Big Dig has definitely impacted our ability to go out - not just on road projects, but on other projects around the state. So we need to always be very careful that we don't suck all of our money into the Big Dig."
Against COG
    Bosley said that whatever money is left when county government goes out of existence in the Berkshires on June 1 either will be spent for what the county has appropriated for or use it to help cover the county's unfunded pension liability. The money might also go back to the cities and towns that appropriated it.
    "The money won't be lost. It would then just go back to the cities or towns or would be spent to write down the pension. Either way it would take some pressure off the cities and towns in Berkshire County," he said.
    One place he doesn't see the money going is to a successor form of county government.
    "Originally the County Commissioners wanted us to just push that money forward, pack that money forward so that they could use it for the Council of Governments, the COG," he said. "But I've been asking them for three years what the COG is going to do other than complain about things that they have no statutory power over, and I haven't been given a satisfactory answer.
    "So, I think to a person, the Berkshire delegation is not interested in giving them money so that they can try to decide how to spend it," Bosley said. "Money's too precious for us."
    Bosley said the Council of Governments effort first has to justify its existence.
    State Rep. "Shaun Kelly said government is something that has some powers; they can either pass statutes or they can tax, but they have some powers that are given to them. State government has that; the federal government has that; the Council of Governments will have none of those powers," Bosley said. "They will only have what the members have given to them. And as we've seen in the past, once something impacts a particular town, they don't want the Council of Governments. They want to be able to handle that themselves. So they have no power."
    "To say that they're closer to people, that really doesn't matter - they have no power to do anything. They can't impact people's lives."
The local economy
    How does he think the economy is going for Northern Berkshire?
    "I think we're in pretty good shape. We're in a lot better shape than we were 14 years ago when I first got into office," Bosley said. "Between 1984 and 1987 we had 13 plant closings or serious downsizings."
    He and North Adams Mayor John Barrett III decided then that they did not want to bring in one big company with 10,000 jobs because they would be beholden to that one company.
    "We needed to grow the economy. We needed to replace the 3,000 jobs that we lost [at the Sprague Electric Co.] and the like, but we needed to replace them maybe [with] 30 jobs in 100 companies," he said. "So, we needed to replace the jobs; we needed to do it differently."
    This scenario has developed because of the new high-tech, Internet economy.
    "And we're creating a critical mass of skilled workers, of support companies here in the Berkshires, here in North Berkshire, that is going to allow us to continue to expand these high-tech firms.
    "And I think we need to work to solidify the base of those companies, because I for one don't think that NASDAQ will continue to grow by leaps and bounds," Bosley said of the high-tech-oriented stock price index. "And companies will have to have something that can be collateralized in the future, rather than just knowledge. I think that we'll see some companies will rise above and they will be so good, so well run, or they will have an idea that is so intriguing that they will continue to work without any physical assets.
    "But the stock market will, I think, snap back on a lot of these companies, and I think we've got to be prepared for that, and we've just got to continue this critical mass to bring these companies in," he said. "And that was the genesis of Berkshire Connect - [it] was coming to the realization that all of these companies that are here are crying our for better services and in order for us to continue to stimulate the market up here for these companies we need to continue to stay on top of our high-speed connections."
    In February, the Berkshire Connect Task Force signed a contract with two nationally known companies to establish a countywide network of high-speed, reliable, affordable telecommunications lines to meet the needs of the burgeoning high-tech industry that is leading the region's economic growth.
    How is this effort going?
    The companies "have been talking to people, they've been trying to roll out what equipment that they can, find out what's needed. They're still working on it. We knew that after the announcement it would take us a while to get there," he said. "And sort of the bad news is it's still going to take us a while.
    "The good news is that the other companies that were competitors, Bell Atlantic and PaeTec, are committed to staying in the area," he said. "So ... rather than one company, we actually have three companies that are now working to try to better our telecommunications industry up here."
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Berkshire Food Project Closed for Power Issues
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Berkshire Food Project is closed Monday because of a power outage early in the morning.
"We are unable to get proper electricity and heat to the building," according to Executive Director Matthew Alcombright. "We hope that this can be resolved and be open tomorrow."
The project does have some sandwiches and frozen meals that will be distributed at the entry.
The city has lifted a boil water order — with several exceptions — that was issued late Monday morning following several water line breaks over the weekend. click for more
The bridge had been closed to all vehicle traffic since March 2023 after being deemed structurally deficient by the state Department of Transportation. click for more
