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Senator Moore proposes economic stimulus and jobs package

February 7, 2005 - The state unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent for the fourth consecutive month, but the state lost 3,300 payroll jobs and employers remained cautious about adding workers, according to a January report by the Labor Department. The report noted that Massachusetts ended the year with a jobless rate well below the 5.9 percent reported during the peak of the national recession in December 2003, and lower than the current national figure of 5.4 percent.

The slow rate of recovery has caused some legislators to look for ways to further stimulate economic growth. Senator Richard T. Moore (D-Uxbridge), this week sent a letter to Senator John A. Hart, Senate Chairman of the Economic Development and Emerging Technology Committee proposing an economic stimulus and jobs package designed to boost the state’s economy and create new jobs with good salaries and benefits. “My proposals will encourage jobs in construction and technology that are good jobs for workers and that have been proven to stimulate the economy along with the investment in materials and equipment,” the Senator explained. 

One of the major components of Moore’s bill is the Advanced Technologies in Health Care Trust Fund. This trust fund will allocate $50 million to the growth of health care technologies that create good paying jobs in high technology fields and simultaneously lower health care costs and improve patient outcomes. In particular, $30 million is devoted to establishing computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems in our hospitals. CPOE systems can improve patient outcomes and lower the costs of health care for everyone.

The Trust Fund will be administered by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC). "Our analysis shows that by implementing advanced technologies we can dramatically improve the quality of care patients receive while saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually that can be redeployed in the Massachusetts health care system," said MTC Executive Director Mitchell Adams. "Working together with Senator Moore and other leaders in the Senate, we have a tremendous opportunity to enhance both access to and affordability of top quality health care for citizens across Massachusetts." 

Among the other key features of Moore’s bill are:

• Investing in Historic Preservation. The historic preservation tax credit is used to encourage the restoration and re-use of historic properties. By increasing the tax credit from $10 million to $50 million, and allowing more people to restore their properties, hundreds of construction projects will be created that will employ local construction firms. 

• Special Purpose Municipal or Regional Districts. Special districts are legal and financial entities that are created among neighboring communities. With their combined organizational and purchasing power, the districts are better able to initiate and support infrastructure projects. The increase in such infrastructure projects will create jobs in the local construction industry.

• Mobile Life Science Labs. Creating an Academy of Life Sciences at UMass Medical. The Academy will fund the creation of so-called "Mobile Life Science labs" which travel to area schools to teach advanced biology classes. The mobile labs stimulate interest in the study of biology by offering the latest life science equipment and technology and are far less expensive than building state of the art biology labs in every classroom. A solid foundation in biology will give our students access to the best biotechnology jobs over the next generation and help students pass the MCAS science requirement as it is phased in over the next few years.

• Nurse Career Coach Progam. This program will fund 12 individual nurse career coaches to develop trainings, manuals and other services to support and encourage nurses working in direct care positions.

• Nursing Workforce Development Trust Fund. Establishes the Massachusetts Nursing and Allied Health Workforce Development Trust Fund. The fund would be administered by the Chancellor of Higher Education for the twin purposes of meeting near term shortages of nurses and addressing the long-term need to increase the capacity of public higher education to educate nurses, and especially to enlarge the nursing faculty.

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