The Massachusetts Politics class by Professor Maurice Cunningham hosted the Speaker of the House, Richard A. DeLeo on Wednesday morning, October 28. 
Richard DeLeo, who became a speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2009, has led two economic development packages, made significant progress in creation of jobs throughout the state, and currently is working on addressing transportation issues.
At Umass Boston, DeLeo explained why Boston will no longer be hosting the Olympics and how the Massachusetts transit is preparing for winter. Being a speaker of the house, DeLeo explained the importance of effectively tackling problems at the state level, “Dealing with the problems that people have at the local level can prepare me well for what I am dealing with now, as the speaker of the house.”
However, the speaker also shared a story of his direct involvement in the national politics, that was exceptionally fascinating to him,
“There was the debate about the national healthcare, that President Obama had written. I don’t know if you remember at the time, when they didn’t have the votes to get it passed, they needed one vote. Ted Kennedy died, that was the vote that they had needed to get it passed.
It was Labor day weekend. Anybody hear of the David Axelrod? President’s right hand person. I had picked up the phone and they told me that, ‘The White house is calling and David Axelrod would like to see you.’ And he came on and he said that ‘The president wants to have lunch with you.’”
DeLeo continued with explaining that it came as a surprise to him, since at the time he was not a Speaker for too long. “I did get a chance to talk to the speaker one-on-one actually, but he had a problem and I was the only person who could solve that problem. He needed to get a democratic senator from Massachusetts to go in, to vote for healthcare. And the way our law read it at the time, ‘we provided especial election’ So, what I had to do was to change the law so that the elected officials, the members of the house of the senate would elect a person, because we are overwhelmingly democratic and quite frankly that’s what we did.”
That was one of the most memorable experience for the Massachusetts Speaker, DeLeo, “It was a fascinating experience to be just a newly admitted speaker and to be involved in nationals affairs like that.”
Another national issue that Boston has been involved in was the question of Olympics. DeLeo’s political history shows that he is concerned with Massachusetts, as a whole state, not just with metropolitan cities like Boston. So, when it came to deciding whether to host the international Olympics in Boston, DeLeo wanted to consider all the beneficial and disadvantageous impacts of it on the state. “I wanted to see a wider use of the various cities and towns in the commonwealth for the events. Right now when I visit Boston and Cambridge I hear about how great things are, but then I’ll go to a place called Greenfield and I hear different stories, higher unemployment rates, salaries are about 30,000 less than what goes on here, in
Boston.” DeLeo wanted to see if it was possible to use Olympics to develop the whole commonwealth area, “I think this is an opportunity for us to bring the Olympics to some of those places as well and that could help their economy.”
However, in the end it was concluded that the Olympics would only harm the economic situation in Boston and the state of Massachusetts as a whole, “Fiscally it was not in our best interest, as a state, to get this done. And our state would’ve to take money from other programs just to pay for the Olympics.”
DeLeo continued with addressing the transportation issue, that especially hurt people’s businesses, education, and careers last winter. The Speaker explained that last winter when transportation problem became increasingly damaging, they took a careful look at how the system was functioning, “I learned that people that we have in there were just almost operating day to day.” He emphasized that public transportation, being one of the main means of transit in Boston on which many people rely, needs to have a plan for many years ahead instead of “operating on day-to-day basis.” DeLeo expressed hopes in the better MBTA experience for Bostonians for this winter and explained that there were many changes made in expenses and planning of the system, “Hopefully the T is going to operate a lot better this winter, that’s something I pray for every day.”
The Speaker concluded his visit to Umass Boston by telling the students that there is a lot of work put into making Massachusetts, the state where people would want to live and raise their family and that encouraged them to be those people, “You are the leaders here in terms of Massachusetts. My goal is to make sure that all of you live here, you can visit Florida cause it’s warmer once in a while, just visit though or buy that home for the winter when you get older and rich, that you stay here and raise your families here, so I just want to make sure that you think about it and stay in Massachusetts.