#2022-26 December 16, 2022

Governor-Elect Healey Names Four Top Aides

About three weeks from her swearing-in, Governor-elect Maura Healey has begun assembling her senior staff this week, naming her chief of staff, first two Cabinet secretariats and a senior adviser.

First Assistant Attorney General Kate Cook was named chief of staff, Matt Gorzkowicz secretary of administration and finance and Patrick Tutwiler as the state’s next education secretary.  Healey also appointed Gabrielle Viator, chief deputy attorney general, as her senior advisor.

Cook, Gorzkowicz and Tutwiler all have built long careers in government, with both Cook and Gorkowicz having worked for former Governor Deval Patrick, while Tutwiler is a former principal and Lynn Public Schools superintendent having served 18 years in public schools in Boston, Wayland, and Westford.

Gorzkowicz has worked for more than a decade at UMass, where he is associate vice president for administration and finance.  He previously worked as budget director in the Senate Ways and Means Committee (2001-2004), the state Department of Mental Health, as CFO at the Massachusetts School Building Authority, and as assistant secretary for budget in the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, a secretariat he will now lead.

Tutwiler is the first Black person appointed to the Healey’s cabinet and will serve as Healey’s top advisor on education to help shape the state’s education agenda.  Tutwiler is an alum of The College of the Holy Cross and has received both a master’s degree in education from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a PhD in curriculum and instruction from the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

Cook, a graduate of Harvard University and Brown University, previously worked for seven years at Sugarman Rogers, chairing its government law and election law practice groups.  In Patrick’s administration, she worked as chief legal counsel, and she has also worked as general counsel to the Senate Ways and Means Committee (2010) and assistant corporation counsel to the City of Boston from 2003 until early 2007.

Viator also has ties to Beacon Hill in her own right having served as a top aide to Tom McGee of Lynn in both the House and Senate

Governor Baker Tapped to Run The NCAA

On Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that it has picked outgoing Governor Charlie Baker, who in three weeks will wrap up an eight-year tenure as governor, as its next leader, a role where NCAA officials hope that his political chops and policymaking experience will make an impact amid a period of tumult and transformation.

Baker - who played basketball for Harvard University in the 1970s - will not officially start his new job until March, after the 2023 NCAA Convention in San Antonio, but he said he does plan to attend the mid-January event and begin putting in the face time and listening to the people with whom he will need to work to succeed in his new role.

Baker also does not plan to move to Indianapolis, where the NCAA has its headquarters, according to sources.  Instead, Baker said he envisions that he will be able to do the job through a mix of virtual and in-person relationship building, including in Washington.  He heads to the NCAA with a clear assignment out of the gate: help the organization achieve nationwide policy reform at a time when, in a reversal of longstanding precedent, many college athletes are now able to earn money from endorsements and other arrangements.

Massachusetts Nearly Back to Pre-Pandemic Job Levels

On Friday, labor officials announced that Massachusetts employers added 17,300 jobs in putting the state within striking distance of returning to a pre-pandemic level of employment.

Last month’s gains build on a revised increase of 10,000 positions in October, according to the latest monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Following those increases, total nonfarm employment in Massachusetts stood at 3,728,100 in November, only 12,000 jobs below total nonfarm employment in February 2020.  Massachusetts employers slashed nearly 690,000 jobs between February 2020 and April 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the state has now nearly achieved a full recovery of all jobs lost.

The biggest job gains in November occurred in leisure & hospitality (5,700), education & health services (3,700), government (3,000), and trade, transportation & utilities (2,900).  Financial activities lost 300 jobs and manufacturing shed 1,000 positions last month.  Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked downward from 3.5 percent in October to 3.4 percent in November, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said.  That’s slightly lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.7 percent in November.