From bonhomie to bickering on health bill

HOW LONG did it take for the bipartisan bonhomie to break down after Wednesday's signing of the state's new healthcare law?

About as long as it took for House Speaker Sal DiMasi to discover that Governor Mitt Romney had already outlined his vetoes. Those included nixing the $295-per-employee assessment the legislation levies on companies of 11 or more that don't provide healthcare.

Just before the event started, Romney's aides released a press package including those vetoes. In his remarks, the speaker had urged Romney not to cast such a veto.

''Governor, this bill was crafted after long and difficult negotiations," DiMasi said. ''It is the result of compromise and concession among legislative leaders. To change anything will disturb the balance that made this law possible."

Romney watched with a slight smile frozen on his face as DiMasi spoke. Suffice it to say DiMasi wasn't smiling when he talked to the press afterward.

''I'm not happy about what he did," the speaker told me. ''I thought he would give us the courtesy of at least letting us know what he would do in advance."

Did the speaker mean that Romney hadn't told him he would be vetoing the assessment?

''Nope," said DiMasi said. ''He didn't tell us."

In an interview yesterday, Romney brushed those criticisms aside.

''I don't recall in my entire 3 1/2-year tenure that I've ever told the speaker what items of his budget or other measures were going to be vetoed until I vetoed them," he said.

Which might well be a legitimate point, except that in this case Romney had invited DiMasi, Senate President Robert Travaglini, and other key legislators to be part of the signing ceremony -- a ceremony Romney's team carefully filmed for future political use.

Here's a good bet: If and when Romney launches a national campaign, the Faneuil Hall affair will find itself prominently featured in his TV ads.

In casting that veto, Romney essentially rejected one of the core principles that DiMasi brought to the healthcare bill -- the notion that companies that didn't provide health insurance should make some contribution.

The effect won't be long lasting, of course, because the Legislature will override the veto. Still, it obviously put DiMasi in an odd position on Wednesday.

Romney, however, claims his basic stance on such an assessment has been clear all along. ''I have made it very clear, from the day I filed my bill, a full nine months before the House bill came forward, that a fee or a tax was not part of my plan," said Romney, who added that he also ''communicated very clearly to the leadership through this process" that he did not think a fee of that size was in order, but that he would reserve judgment until he saw how it was written. ''As I read the provisions related to the $295 fee, I felt that it was unnecessary and inappropriately crafted," the governor said.

That's not what Romney said shortly before the bill passed, however.

''It's not a tax hike. It is a fee, it's an assessment," Romney said, adding that some sort of fee on businesses that don't offer insurance ''makes sense."

Indeed, the first real indication Beacon Hill got that he might well veto the assessment came on Tuesday, in a guest column he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.

Now, one might be temped to dismiss all this as so much inside baseball.

The new law, after all, is being hailed as a historic accomplishment, one that could prove a model. Yes, real questions about affordability and funding remain, and much more work will have to be done before it can be called a success.

Still, it marks a bold experiment.

There are plenty of plaudits to go around, but Romney can legitimately claim a large share of the credit. He proposed many of its important components and he and his staff worked hard on this one, staying involved, offering creative ideas, analysis, and support.

The result: 3 1/3 years into his term, the governor now has a signal legislative achievement, one that should serve him well on the presidential campaign trail.

And yet, if Romney's signing-ceremony rhetoric about bipartisan cooperation was lofty, the way he acted toward DiMasi told a very different story.

Yesterday DiMasi labeled Romney's conduct ''disingenuous."

Certainly the governor owed his legislative partners more respect than he paid them on Wednesday.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.