Charlie Baker to attend Legislature’s oversight committee hearing on vaccine rollout

Gov. Charlie Baker is expected to attend the Legislature’s COVID-19 oversight committee hearing next week on the state’s rocky vaccine rollout, the House chairman told the Herald.

“I’m happy that the governor will be there and I hope we have a productive hearing,” said state Rep. William Driscoll, D-Milton, the House chairman of the new Joint COVID-19 and Emergency Management and Preparedness Committee.

Baker is expected to participate in the committee’s Feb. 25 hearing, though the exact timing is not yet clear.

Lawmakers are also seeking testimony from Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders, though it was not immediately clear Friday evening whether she would appear at the hearing.

Members of the COVID-19 oversight committee cited their constituents’ growing anger and frustration with the state’s rocky vaccine rollout when they announced the Feb. 25 hearing — putting out their statement the day before website failures plagued the opening of the next round of appointment signups.

Driscoll said he plainly wants to know “why it seems like Massachusetts is so unprepared for the vaccine rollout” and plans to ask the governor about his administration’s planning processes.

“There’s just been so many pivots and many of them seemed to happen kind of overnight or with very little notice to the public, to the organizations involved in terms of allocation and administering the vaccine,” Driscoll said. “We want to make sure things to a lot smoother from here on out, and understand in terms of what the administration might be dealing with that might not be as obvious to the Legislature or the public.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3dpc7nI