THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION on Tuesday went all-in on its community-by-community approach to COVID-19, allowing lower-risk municipalities to move forward with reopening plans while putting cities and towns considered high risk on hold. Since community-by-community COVID-19 data were broken out in August, the Baker administration has used the information to target testing and other resources where […]
Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl oversees the production of content and edits reports, along with carrying out his own reporting with a particular focus on transportation, energy, and climate issues.
He previously worked at the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper.
Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Posted inHealth Care
COVID-19 crimes may be tough to prove
“UTTERLY BAFFLING” was how Mark Pearlstein, the attorney retained by Gov. Charlie Baker to investigate what went wrong at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, described the decision to combine 42 veterans with dementia – some of them infected with COVID-19 – into a single unit with a capacity to hold 25. Attorney General Maura Healey on […]
Posted inTransportation
T official criticizes CommonWealth story
THE VICE CHAIR of the MBTA’s oversight board tweeted on Thursday that she was “deeply disappointed” with the headline and narrative used in a CommonWealth story dealing with service cuts to address a budget shortfall that could be anywhere from $300 million to $600 million. The headline on the story, which ran on Monday, said […]
Posted inHealth Care
Indoor visits allowed at nursing homes
STARTING FRIDAY, nursing homes can start allowing residents to meet with visitors indoors, to eat in communal dining halls, and to use indoor gyms or exercise spaces. Nursing homes have been ground zero in the fight against COVID-19. There have been 6,011 COVID-19 deaths at the state’s long-term care facilities, nearly 66 percent of the […]
Posted inUncategorized
Nantucket has highest COVID-19 rate in state
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER eased some restrictions on dining out Wednesday as COVID-19 cases on a per capita basis statewide continued to rise and the number of communities at high or moderate risk rose sharply. The number of cases per 100,000 people statewide over the previous two weeks continued to inch up, rising from 4.6 a […]
Posted inPolitics
Baker weighs in on budget, eviction moratorium, Collins
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER on Wednesday said fiscal 2022, which begins in July next year, represents the biggest challenge facing state budget officials as they deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Baker said the state will shortly be able to close the books on fiscal 2020, which ended in June, and approve a budget […]
Posted inHealth Care
Baker’s firing of Walsh voided for now
FORMER HOLYOKE Soldiers Home superintendent Bennett Walsh insisted Gov. Charlie Baker didn’t have the power to fire him, and it turns out he was right. Hampden County Superior Court Judge John Ferrara ruled on Monday that only the board of the Holyoke Soldiers Home can remove Walsh from his position. As a result of the […]
Posted inTransportation
T notes: Bus driver hit, killed at Charlestown garage
AN MBTA DRIVER walking to his vehicle early Monday morning at the Charlestown garage was struck by a bus and killed, according to T and union officials. Bernadin Etienne, an 18-year employee of the T, was hit at around 6 a.m. Monday morning. Few details were available on exactly what happened, but T officials said […]
Posted inTransportation
T targets white, wealthier riders with service cuts
THE MBTA moved cautiously on Monday toward embracing a framework for making budget-balancing service cuts that will fall disproportionately on white, wealthier riders who have more transportation options. Facing a budget shortfall ranging from $300 million to $600 million, T officials won backing from the Fiscal and Management Control Board on a plan to retain […]
Posted inUncategorized
Number of high-risk communities jumps
THE NUMBER of communities considered high risk for COVID-19 increased from 13 to 17, while people younger than 39 led the way in infections, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all cases over the last two weeks. The weekly data released by the Baker administration on Wednesday showed those in the 20-29 age category had 1,207 […]