Bill H.4441 would create new oversight for two state run nursing facilities for veterans. State Senator Bruce Tarr spoke with Heather Atwood about why he supports the bill and thinks the changes are long overdue. Nearly 80 veterans lost their lives to Covid-19 at the Holyoke Soldiers Home and over 40 veterans died at the Chelsea Soldiers Home.
Heather Atwood:
So I am with Bruce Tarr, our state Senator, as I am often, usually once a week. Hi, Senator Tarr. How are you today?
Bruce Tarr:
Hi, I’m doing great, thanks. How are you, Heather?
Heather Atwood:
I’m good. I’m very well. So you were busy this week in the state Senate with the Soldiers’ Home, which has been an ongoing store since the tragedy happened in COVID.
Bruce Tarr:
No, it has. And it should be, Heather, because of what happened there with nearly 80 veterans losing their lives to COVID-19. And as I said yesterday on the floor of the Senate, losing their lives in a facility with our name on it, that said Commonwealth of Massachusetts with our lag flying out in front of it. And we need to continue to talk about this. And it needs to continue to be a story until we resolve some of the issues that led to that tragedy. But before we even talk about that, Heather, I also want to point out yesterday was a very significant day in the Senate, because it was the first day that senators were allowed to debate and be on the floor of the Senate without masks.
And it’s something that we hadn’t really thought about a lot, but now the time has come. And there was a certain feeling of liberation in the Senate not to be wearing masks. And, of course, as you and I have talked about, the statehouse is now open after almost two years of closure. And so there’s a changing environment at the statehouse. And that was a good environment to have a vigorous debate about the Soldiers’ Homes.
Heather Atwood:
Exactly. And I think people feel both liberated and a little exposed, maybe. It’s kind of-
Bruce Tarr:
Well, there’s no doubt. I think we’ve learned, time and again, with COVID-19 that often when we think we are done with it, something new will arise. And so our vulnerability is certainly not completely gone. And we have to approach this incrementally. But certainly, I think we all feel a little bit better about what we’ve seen with caseloads and infections and the rate of death that we’ve seen in the last several weeks, certainly. So I think we all feel like we’re moving in the right direction. But there’s always that little part in the back of our mind that says, “We don’t know what the future’s going to hold, because this virus has been so unpredictable, particularly with regard to variants.” So it was a good feeling, but I agree with you, we’re still thinking about, how exposed are we and to what?
Heather Atwood:
Right. Right. Well, so tell us about this legislation with the Soldiers’ Home.
Bruce Tarr:
So as we’ve talked about in the past, quite a while ago, we actually did a bill to provide money to build a new Holyoke Soldiers’ Home in the city of Holyoke. And that was about 400 million dollars. And in that bill, the Senate actually added another 200 million dollars to begin the process of maybe building some additional homes around the state. And the feeling that we’ve had is that we have two major facilities in Massachusetts, the home in Chelsea and the home in Holyoke. But all across the state, there are veterans who are eligible for this type of housing and this type of care. And we ought to be looking at how to meet their needs more closer to where they live. And so that bill was all about facilities. It was about saying, “Okay, let’s build a state-of-the-art new facility in Holyoke, which will be compartmentalized to prevent the spread of infection.” So dealing with what we just saw with COVID-19.
But also something else that’s very important. And that is trying to embrace what the Veterans Administration calls, the small housing concept, the idea that we have clusters of rooms and not massive warehouse-like facilities, so that there’s a sense of community among the residents. And that home in Holyoke will be built with that concept. There’ll be different communities on each floor so that it won’t be just one massive facility without segmentation. That bill is done. And the funding is on the table. And we’re working through the process again, of building a new Holyoke, but also looking at other facilities around the state, particularly here, by the way, in Essex County, where we have a significant number of veterans who could be eligible for this type of care.
But what the bill was about that we debated yesterday is equally if not more important. And it’s really about the governance of these homes. And without getting into too much detail, let me touch on just a couple of the important aspects of it. Number one is chain of command. It’s trying to make sure that we have a clear chain of command that begins with a newly-created, in this bill, secretary of Veteran Services, a cabinet-level position. And one of the things I’m most proud of the things that happened yesterday, and there are many, is that I amended the bill to require that that person be a veteran so that when someone is sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, veterans have a direct representative and a direct voice who is someone who has lived their experience. And I’m very pleased that my amendment on that front was adopted unanimously on a roll call vote.
But it starts there with the secretary-level position and then goes down to other positions in the chain of command, including having an Executive Director of veterans housing and medical care, someone with expertise that can help with those functions. So under this bill, we wouldn’t just rely on folks that are in the chain of command that may not have the experience or expertise with this kind of care, even though they care very much about veterans. So we set up an Executive Director and then two superintendents, one for each home, with those superintendents having to be licensed as nursing home operators, so that we’re confirming that they have the skill to run these kind of facilities. Advising them would be regional councils, which would provide input not only from the residents, but from the community.
And those two advisory councils in this case, because there’d be one for each facility, would also provide feedback to a statewide council. So the theme here is trying to get much more involvement and responsiveness to the people that are involved in these homes. And I keep referring to homes. Historically, we referred to them as the Soldiers’ Home or the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home. This bill would change that terminology so that it’s not gender-biased and biased in any other way, and just call them Veterans’ Homes, because that’s what they are. And so another important aspect of the bills or this bill is to create an ombudsman, somebody who you can call when something’s going wrong and get an answer about how it can be addressed. That’s something that was sorely lacking in what we saw in the situation with COVID-19 in Holyoke. And, Heather, I sense you want to ask a question so I’m going to stop.
Heather Atwood:
No, I don’t. Just the only question I have, or actually, it’s a comment is all of this is in response to the clear lack of leadership that was the result of the 80 lost lives.
Bruce Tarr:
Well, yes and no. It was clearly prompted by that. But many of the things that I’m discussing have needed to happen for a very long time. And so like many things, COVID-19 was a stress test for this particular system. And the system didn’t pass the test. But the things that I’m talking about are things that many of us have been talking about for quite a while about needing to happen. So yes, the prompting here, the sense of urgency, was created by COVID-19. But a lot of these have been issues that have been ongoing for quite a while. And the benchmark that I use, the metric is we should want these facilities to be a place where we would want our loved ones. And that means we should have the very best quality of care. That means we should have the best quality of life.
And I also amended the bill to make sure that regulations are promulgated for both of those things, but particularly quality of life and social and emotional wellbeing, because for the folks that live there, this is their home. And we need to make sure that it’s a comfortable environment that gives them the kind of high quality of life that we would want for our own loved ones, if they weren’t in the military or whether they were. So that’s an important part of it.
Something else that’s important, and I won’t go on too long about this, is we require in the bill these facilities to be licensed as nursing homes. So again, we’re not going to have them be in this very odd place of not belonging in one silo or another. We are clearly saying, “They must be licensed as nursing homes and the Department of Public Health under the bill is required to inspect these facilities twice a year.” So that again, we have a close amount of supervision and oversight, and we have transparency. And one of the other amendments that was added to the bill yesterday, not by me, but by one of my colleagues, was to make sure that the reports that are done to comply with the bill are actually posted on the internet so that the public can see them.
Heather Atwood:
Well, I think I asked you this question when the first piece of legislation was passed, where is the intersection of the state and the U.S. military? It sounds as if the state is 100% responsible for these facilities now.
Bruce Tarr:
Well, it’s a great question, because the facilities actually involve the partnership of the U.S. Veterans Administration and the state. So the Veterans Administration pays for a lot of the expenses of these facilities. And in order to receive that financial support, we have to meet certain criteria, some eligibility criteria. And so for instance, there are rules about siting and about how close the facilities can be to each other or preventing them from being too close to each other and making sure that the right kind of services are offered.
Just a moment ago, I spoke about the small home concept. That is something that originated at the Veterans Administration and is devolving down to the various states. As we build these facilities, we want to try to comply with that so that we can maximize our federal reimbursement. So it is very much a partnership, where we’re using state tax dollars, paid state resources, but we’re partnering with the Veterans Administration and federal dollars to go into them as well.
Heather Atwood:
Well, now I’m going to ask you the uncomfortable question, and it’s probably a big answer, but you can answer as much of this question as you like. Without blaming anyone, can you historically go back and see where things began to fall apart in these Soldiers’ Homes? Veterans’ Homes, now called Veterans’ Homes and formally, Soldiers’ Homes.
Bruce Tarr:
So that is a very large question and which would get an expansive answer. And one thing I would point out is that there has been an exhaustive study done of what happened in Holyoke. It was led by a former United States Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mark Pearlstein, who actually I know. And it outlined a whole series of things. But what I would say is that we weren’t giving these homes in the past enough attention in terms of modernization, of understanding that we need to deal with infection control. They can’t just be big buildings where we warehouse people without regard to having proper compartmentalization or air conditioning and air treatment, HVAC. On the physical side, those are part of the problems.
But in addition to that, there hasn’t been a clear chain of command. And so when something starts to go wrong, the question is, who does the problem go to next until it gets resolved? And in an escalation up the hierarchy, we haven’t had that. And we haven’t had the kind of transparency that these facilities deserve. So I would say, number one, we have not paid attention to modernizing these facilities. And that is now happening actually in Chelsea as we speak and is about to begin in Holyoke. Number two, we haven’t focused on having a clear chain of command. And number three, we’ve been very unclear about the necessity of having proper professional medical staff and folks that are competent in running nursing homes, in addition to just providing housing, we haven’t had enough of their expertise. So there are just a couple of answers to what we could speak about for a long time.
Heather Atwood:
No, that fills out a lot of the history that I was asking about. So thank you.
Bruce Tarr:
You’re welcome. And I would say that it’s important for folks to understand that part of the goal of all of this, again, is not just to create two facilities for the entire state. And another place where I amended the bill was to make sure that every veteran has access to those two facilities so that we create an outreach program to let our veterans know about the availability of these two facilities. But that can’t be the end of the story. We have to make sure we look at building other facilities around the state to meet the needs of people as they exist. And that also in part responds to your last question, that’s where there’s been a divergence. We’ve never thought about this enough.
And one thing that I didn’t get in the bill yesterday, that I’m going to continue to pursue, and have a commitment from the leadership of the Senate to insert in a bill later on, is to require that we have a ongoing five-year revolving plan on what we’re going to do to meet the needs of our veterans, so that we never again get into a position where we do a series of things and then we don’t think about this issue for some period of time, too long, a period of time. So sometimes you don’t get everything you want in a piece of legislation. This is a bill where I got a lot of what I thought needed to be added, but not quite everything. And I’ll be back to try to work on that in the days ahead to make sure that we get that kind of planning.
Heather Atwood:
Well, thank you for all that really good work for our veterans. We also have conversation that we’ve been having a lot, and that is on idling trains in train stations. So this is not your legislation. You’ve been doing a lot of work on this issue, but it’s happening. There’s people talking about it around the statehouse. Do you want to fill us in?
Bruce Tarr:
Yeah. So there was a bill that was in the news this week that I believe was filed by Representative Barrett, who is a former elected official, municipal elected official, out in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. But his idea is that we should have an absolute limit on trains idling at stations of 30 minutes so that they don’t interfere with the quality of life in our neighborhoods and in our communities. And that bill has been heard and it’s getting a lot of attention. But it does have an uphill climb to make it to law, because sometimes trains are required to run more than that, if for no other reason than some of the regulations and the requirements of the FRA, the Federal Rail Administration, which requires them to run to be able to build compression, air compression, in the brake systems so that they can be tested.
Sometimes it’s a necessity to have the train run to maintain a temperature of the coolant in the engines, because as I understand it, antifreeze is not used for whatever reason and so you have to rely on the heat of the engine to keep the coolant warm. So there are a whole host of issues here. But what I think is significant and why I really appreciate your question is that it signifies that people are paying more attention to this issue on Beacon Hill. It isn’t just an isolated situation of the things that are happening in Rockport, or what’s been happening in Bradford, where there’s another facility that’s caused a lot of concern, Bradford being a neighborhood of Haverhill.
Bruce Tarr:
So now this is becoming a broader conversation that is literally stretching from the eastern border of Massachusetts to the western border of Massachusetts. And that’s a positive thing, because we know very soon we are going to have the restoration of train service all the way to Rockport on the Rockport line. That will mean trains will be back at the station overnight. And that will mean, once again, we need to contend with and think seriously about issues related to idling. And as you and I know, Heather, a while ago, I led a delegation up to Maine to look at, in the city of Bath, the overlay facility that they have, or the layover facility. And we actually have given some video to all of you at 1623 Studios about that. And maybe some day-
Heather Atwood:
We hope to play it sometime. We will do that. Yeah.
Bruce Tarr:
Hopefully, we can see that. And that’s one way to address the issue, is to create a containment facility, which seems to be working very well actually, in Bath, in a residential neighborhood. So that’s one way of addressing it. It certainly would be nice if we could legislate just a simple edict that says, “You can’t idle the trains for more than 30 minutes.” For a variety of reasons, I’m not sure that’s workable. I don’t think it is. But it means that we are really giving serious scrutiny and attention to what is an important issue.
Again, not only for the community in Rockport, but we’ve seen it in Gloucester with the temporary accommodations that needed to be made while the bridge over the Annisquam was being repaired, but also in so many other locations. And in public life, sometimes you need the numbers. You need to build a coalition. And I think that coalition is starting to come together. And that bill, that was filed relative to the 30 minutes, is evidence of that starting to take place.
Heather Atwood:
Well, I really hope that we can play the video that you made in Bath, Maine. I know you took Rockport officials with you. I think I went with you.
Bruce Tarr:
We had the Town Administrator, Mitch Vieira. We also had the Chairman of the Select Board, Don Campbell. And we spent a lot of time talking to the people that built that facility about what it was like to get the wheels moving and to get it built. And there were certainly issues of permitting and issues about making sure the neighborhood was protected. There were issues relative to wastewater and water coming from the facility itself and how those needed to be treated. So it isn’t a simple solution, but in that particular case, it’s a very effective solution.
Heather Atwood:
Well, I know all the answers will be in that video and we’re going to find a way to play it for people.
Bruce Tarr:
Well, I don’t know if we want to raise expectations and say that all the answers are in it, but it’s certainly an interesting concept and one that has a lot of relevance, I think, to the situation we’re facing.
Heather Atwood:
Yeah. Well, it might not be winning any awards, but we’ll try to get it played. Okay. Thank you again for being with us. And we’ll see you next week.
Bruce Tarr:
We look forward to that. We’ll see you next week and I hope you have a wonderful Cape Ann afternoon. I always enjoy seeing the background through the windows there at your home/studio. And it always reminds me of how lucky we are to live in the place that we live and how lucky we are to be served by a resource like 1623 Studios. So thank you and have a great day.
Heather Atwood:
Okay. You, too.