Murray avoids glitz in chamber appearance

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's monthly breakfast meetings provide a high-profile forum for politicians to say something dramatic, or else, to say it dramatically.

House speaker Thomas M. Finneran once addressed the chamber with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the background. Senate president Robert E. Travaglini kicked off the healthcare debate in a chamber speech. Governor Deval Patrick and House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi took dueling positions on corporate tax code changes in speeches to the chamber earlier this year, triggering months of friction.

But Senate President Therese Murray spurned drama yesterday, in her first appearance before the chamber of commerce. She shrugged off the opportunity to provoke when asked about the governor's frustration with the Legislature. She passed up the chance to forcefully address the hottest topic on the legislative agenda, casino gambling. She unveiled no bold new initiatives.

Instead, she led her audience into a thicket of legislation the Senate is working on to improve the economy, speaking in detail about policy on housing, healthcare, energy, agriculture, fishing, and expanding the film industry, before answering audience questions on transportation, the governor, and the state lottery. Then she took more questions from the press.

"I thought it was chock full of a lot," Senator Michael W. Morrissey, a Quincy Democrat, said after Murray's 30-minute speech.

Seven months into her first term as Senate president, Murray is developing a reputation as the most low-key of the State House's top three power players. While Patrick and the speaker talk to the press corps after their weekly leadership meeting, Murray prefers to slip away down the hall. She has mostly refrained from commenting on tensions between the two men. Though she is known for her bluntness and independent-mindedness, at least in public, Murray seems more wonk than provocateur these days.

Paul Guzzi, the chamber's president and chief executive, said Murray's experience as the Senate's former chief budget writer has shaped her into someone who cares deeply about policy and who knows what she is talking about.

"While she may be quieter in certain ways, I think she is very strong, and I think she is comfortable with who she is," he said. "She is not going to try to emulate anyone, whether it's her predecessor or other leaders."

Yesterday Murray seemed utterly uninterested in making news on the casino front. Dispensing with the most talked-about issue on the State House agenda, she merely reiterated her support for resort casinos, passing on a chance to contrast her views with DiMasi, who opposes gambling, and promising that the Senate would address the issue "when and if" it passes the House.

Asked about Patrick's frustration with the pace of action in the House, which he expressed last week, Murray went straight down the middle.

"We're not sitting around doing nothing," she said. "They take a long time to get through.

"You can't just put something out and expect it to move quickly," Murray said, adding that she understood how the governor, coming from the private sector, would find the process frustrating. She also said she believes that if Patrick files a bill, it should be admitted and debated.

Ralph Martin, a Boston lawyer and Republican who attended the breakfast, praised Murray's tone.

"You might say, given the crescendo of things recently, that her deliberative approach to things could be helpful," he said, referring to the escalation of tension between the speaker and the governor.

Most of Murray's address, as one lawmaker observed, amounted to a kind of "state of the state's economy" speech that sometimes sounded like a laundry list of legislation and incentives.

She stressed the need to provide more affordable housing, saying that the state devoted $25 million to two affordable housing funds earlier this month. Healthcare costs are another economic stumbling block, she said, proposing to increase access to primary care physicians and nurses, require insurers to provide more public information about healthcare costs, and require insurers to publicly explain any premium increases higher than 7 percent.

Citing energy costs as a third major threat to economic development, she said the Senate would vote next month on legislation that would promote renewable energy and efficiency programs.

Then the Plymouth lawmaker, whose district includes many of the state's farming and fishing communities, delved into the problems confronting those industries and outlined proposals to help save them, such as investing in technologies that use farm products, like cranberries, in the "next generation of biofuels."

Some attendees thought it was rather a heavy helping of policy so early in the day.

"I think the stakes were high because it was her first speech before the chamber as Senate president," said one lobbyist in attendance who requested anonymity because he did not want his comments to affect his business. "If her mission was to show opinion leaders she has a full agenda and is on top of having a vision for the Commonwealth, she proved that. But at 8 o'clock in the morning, when people are still waking up, it's difficult to digest the many, many proposals she presented before this crowd."

But others thought Murray got it about right. "I think one of the reasons she became the Senate president is because she has a very methodical and studied approach to things," Martin said, "and I think that was reflected in the way she presented her thoughts today."