INTRO TEXT For workers at Kids Korner Childcare, a Mansfield day care center, the state’s Insurance Partnership program has been a godsend. “It’s been more than helpful,” says Keith Hayes, […]
Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas works with Laura in overseeing CommonWealth Beacon coverage and editing the work of reporters. His own reporting has a particular focus on politics, education, and criminal justice reform.
Posted inPolitics
A campaign to take redistricting away from lawmakers
A SYSTEM THAT has “turned democracy on its head”—that’s what Pam Wilmot, leader of the Massachusetts chapter of Common Cause, calls the redistricting process: politicians huddling behind closed doors, drawing district […]
Posted inPolitics
Hitting the Jackpot
IT’S A SAFE BET that Al Rezendes isn’t giving a lot of thought to the Belchertown fire truck he helped buy, or to the new police cruiser protecting the residents […]
Posted inPolitics
Great expectations
Just over two years ago, soon after he secured the votes to become the new president of the Massachusetts state Senate, Robert Travaglini began talking to colleagues about what roles […]
Posted inEconomy
Romney downplays job turnover and jousts with legislators over economic development
INTRO TEXT Mitt Romney swept into office with a vow to put his business know-how to work for the Massachusetts economy. Nearly two years after his arrival, however, employment growth […]
Posted inPolitics
Democrats and Republicans try to set the bar for this fall’s legislative elections
INTRO TEXT It has been billed as the biggest challenge to Democratic dominance on Beacon Hill in more than a decade. But after rolling out a field of 131 Republican […]
Posted inPolitics
The connectors
WHEN 250 CHILDREN joined together to sing at the dedication of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge two years ago, it marked the first performance of what would go […]
Posted inHealth Care
The state gets a drug benefit
INTRO TEXT While many senior citizens are still trying to figure out whether they’ll come out ahead under the complicated Medicare prescription drug benefit passed by Congress, the new law […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Springfield discovers that bailout comes at a high price
INTRO TEXT In the drama that was the city of Springfield’s attempt to avoid going broke this spring, the theme on Beacon Hill turned out to be less helping hand […]
Posted inPolitics, Transportation
Lawmakers trade Sagamore flyover for Fall River-New Bedford commuter rail
INTRO TEXT When Gov. Mitt Romney laid out a policy for better coordination of transportation projects across the state, this was not what he had in mind. This spring, a […]
Posted inEconomy
Offshore leave
The 4th Congressional District, represented by 12-term Democrat Barney Frank, snakes its way from the pricey Boston suburbs of Newton and Wellesley more than 50 miles south to the blue-collar […]
Posted inHealth Care
On racial disparities, biggest gap is between talk and accountability
INTRO TEXT That there are big racial disparities in health care no one disputes. Blacks are less likely than whites to undergo bypass surgery. The time between an abnormal mammogram […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics
Boston’s Tom Menino walks the walk on health policy
INTRO TEXT When John Auerbach was in charge of the state Department of Public Health’s AIDS program in the 1980s, Larry Kessler, the director of the nonprofit AIDS Action Committee, […]
Posted inHealth Care
Unmanaged care
LAST SUMMER, AFTER 17 years as CEO of Tufts Health Plan, Harris Berman traded in the rough-and-tumble life of an HMO executive for the quieter confines of academia. But as […]
Posted inPolitics
Charles Euchner leaves big shoes to fill at the Rappaport Institute
It may have been a native son of Cambridge who proclaimed all politics is local, but that has not always seemed the guiding principle at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. […]
Posted inEconomy
The state considers carrots for smart growth
With Massachusetts home prices continuing to soar, the housing crisis has begun to sound like the old Mark Twain saw about the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody does […]
Posted inEconomy
Moving In-or Moving On?
TENY GROSS has never felt better about his work with urban youth. As executive director of the two-year-old Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, Gross is building on […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Down but not out
SPRINGFIELD, THE STATE’S third largest city and the metropolitan anchor of western Massachusetts, is in the soup. To say it is on the brink of disaster might be going too […]
Posted inEconomy
Moving in — or moving on?
TENY GROSS has never felt better about his work with urban youth. As executive director of the two-year-old Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, Gross is building on […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Tim Cahill targets pols pensions
INTRO TEXT Nobody likes getting fired. Well, almost nobody. For long-time state workers, getting the heave-ho or having their position eliminated can be a pension bonanza under a controversial provision […]
Posted inPolitics
Women try to find some traction in Bay State politics
INTRO TEXT At one point, 2002 was shaping up as a banner year for women in Massachusetts politics. With Acting Gov. Jane Swift poised to run for the office she […]
Posted inUncategorized
Whistleblowers get cover from an environmental group
INTRO TEXT When a federal subpoena seeking thousands of documents on the state’s automobile emissions testing program landed in the offices of the Department of Environmental Protection over the summer, […]
Posted inUncategorized
The state Senate goes under the budget knife
INTRO TEXT Staking their ground as defenders of an already frayed social safety net, Beacon Hill lawmakers voted over the summer to override hundreds of Gov. Mitt Romney’s budget vetoes, […]
Posted inPolitics
Black power
THE BALLROOM on the top floor of the Parker House hotel in downtown Boston was overflowing, and it seemed that the world of Boston politics was being turned […]