I am a gay Irish Catholic Dorchester Democrat. I am the co-chair of the Ward 15 Democratic Party Committee. Nothing was more consistent and natural to me then supporting Maura Healey for attorney general and then for governor. And now comes the “But:”

Maura, are you really a Democrat or just a Charlie Baker clone?

To the self-described “Education Governor:” Why are we feeding the parasitic charter schools, as reported in the Globe (“State seeks ways to bolster charter school offerings,” 9/25). Charter schools are a Republican “reform” added to the Education Reform Act of 1993 so that Gov. Bill Weld would sign the bill. Your responsibility is to the state’s public schools not to charter schools that are private corporations (paid for with public money) that compete with each other and with the public schools.

The Globe reports that your administration “Over the next five years … expects to work with up to a dozen charter school developers per year.” You are using federal grant money to hire an outside consultant to serve private companies applying for charters. This is money that would otherwise go to public schools. The public understands these parasites and overwhelmingly rejected the 2016 ballot measure to raise the cap on charter schools. As AG, you opposed the increase in the charter school cap. Get back to that place.

On another topic: Fixing the MBTA. At the beginning of his first term as governor, Charlie Baker announced that he would bring his CEO-style of management to the T and asked us to judge his governorship by the results. Done: Failure! He left you a bag of dung, Maura, and you made a point to never criticize him so as not to offend his admirers. But now you own that bag.

True, there is plenty of blame to go around. The House and Senate let Baker slide for 8 years without even a whimper. They denied Gov. Patrick his plan to improve transportation, especially with regard to the T. But now you and the Legislature plan to return $1 billion back to taxpayers, which is very Republicanesque. This plan turns logic on its head after we just voted to enact a millionaire’s tax to aid transportation — and education! You know that the cost to bring the T out of the hole that Baker left it in is enormous, leaving alone what it will cost to expand the T. If you put that cost in front of the voters, they will forgive you and the Legislature if instead of returning the money to them, you applied it to upgrading the T.

Maura, you have an enormous job, and you are off to a great start in many directions. But I fear that you are unwilling to make some tough decisions regarding charter schools and, especially, the MBTA. You won a landslide victory to become governor, and not just because of the low quality of your opponent. The voters believed in you enough to give you a mandate added to the mandates from the charter school cap rejection in 2016 and the mandate to create the millionaire’s tax. Please use that power to live up to our expectations before your honeymoon is over.

Ed Cook’s column appears regularly in The Reporter.