BOSTON (SHNS) – While the Legislature takes a mid-week break from formal periods, the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday unanimously superior laws reshaping the State Action for Public Health Excellence (SAPHE) grant program, and addressing electrical bicycles and roadway security.
The committee gave a good report Wednesday morning to the SAPHE 2.0 invoice (H 4328) that’s meant to speed up enhancements to local and regional public health techniques to handle disparities in public health providers by requiring the Department of Public Health to enshrine a set of requirements for “foundational public health services” throughout Massachusetts and to “promote and provide adequate resources for boards of health.”
The Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management reported final month that the state’s 351 municipalities “have widely varying abilities to provide public health protections to residents” at the least in half as a result of Massachusetts is one in all a handful of states that doesn’t dedicate annual baseline or components funding to local public health departments. While some cities or cities have skilled and sturdy public health departments, others are staffed completely by volunteers.
“This is always dangerous for public health, and during the pandemic the consequences were severe,” the committee mentioned in its report. The joint committee advisable that Massachusetts “must enact legislation that would set statewide standards and provide funds to ensure that everyone has access to a core set of public health protections and that there are sufficient funds for robust capacity building and data collection.”
The invoice requires the state to offer “annual non-competitive funding to ensure that all residents of the commonwealth are provided with foundational public health services that meet or exceed the standards set” in addition to aggressive grants for regional or shared public health providers, and grants and technical help for particular person municipalities “that demonstrate limited operational capacity to meet local public health responsibilities.”
The House Ways and Means Committee additionally favorably reported a invoice (H 3549) that will require giant vans purchased or leased by the state after Jan. 1., 2023 to have convex mirrors, cross-over mirrors, backup cameras, and a protecting gadget between the entrance and rear wheels meant to stop accidents to pedestrians and bicyclists. The invoice additionally consists of the institution of recent guidelines for passing “vulnerable users” like bikes, the implementation of 25 miles per hour pace limits on state highways and parkways in cities and cities which have opted to undertake a uniform 25 mph pace restrict on municipal roads, and to require the Department of Transportation to develop “a standardized form to report crashes and incidents involving a motor vehicle” and susceptible highway customers like cyclists and pedestrians.
An analogous invoice in search of adjustments supposed to make Massachusetts roads safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, law enforcement officials and development employees handed the Senate in 2019 but it surely didn’t emerge for consideration in the House by the point final session ended.
The third invoice that the House Ways and Means Committee added onto the end-of-session pile (H 4676) would give electrical bikes and their operators the identical rights and privileges — and topic them to the identical obligations — as common pedal bikes and their riders, and would set up particular guidelines for electrical bikes, that are presently lumped in with mopeds beneath state regulation.
Rep. Steven Owens, who filed e-bike laws this session, mentioned earlier this 12 months that 46 different states and the federal authorities have already got related classifications that regulate using electrical bicycles. The Watertown Democrat mentioned a authorized framework would permit bicycle sharing corporations like Bluebikes to start out providing electrical bicycles at their rental areas in Massachusetts.