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Posted inCommonWealth Voices

House climate bill is a huge step backward  

by CommonWealth Beacon staff

Massachusetts is known as a leader in clean energy and climate action. Our policies have lowered emissions, created jobs, and helped families save money on energy. But a bill currently under consideration in the House of Representatives on Beacon Hill threatens to undo that progress and would be a damaging mistake for our state.  

This bill, proposed by Rep. Mark Cusack, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, is essentially a fossil fuel industry wish list. It rolls back the Commonwealth’s enforceable 2030 climate targets, weakens the Mass Save energy efficiency program, eliminates efforts designed to make energy efficiency more affordable for working families, and even resurrects the disastrous “pipeline tax” that would allow utilities to charge residents for unnecessary gas infrastructure. In short, it hands fossil fuel companies a gift while leaving Massachusetts households to foot the bill.

Posted inThe Saturday Send

House pivots on climate change and four more stories

by CommonWealth Beacon staff

After breaking the news that the House was considering a sweeping energy bill that would weaken the state’s 2030 climate goals, Jordan Wolman spent much of this week digging into the process and personalities behind this major policy change. Plus: the outlook for the state’s health care system continues to darken, a Springfield medical center announces a temporarily halt in maternity services, and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio donates $150k to the ballot campaign that would subject both the Legislature and the governor’s office to the state public records law.

Posted inCommonWealth Voices

The Red-Blue Connector: A half-mile of subway that benefits an entire region 

Headshot of Michael Jonas, Executive Editor at CommonWealth Beacon. by Michael Jonas

How long is too long to wait for all subway lines on the MBTA to be connected?  

100 years?  

This December, it will be 101 years since the Boston Globe first reported on the idea to connect the MBTA’s Red and Blue lines, noting that riders “using either the East Boston Tunnel [the Blue Line] or the Cambridge Subway [the Red Line] could change cars at Charles St, instead of transferring at Scollay Square and Park Street, the most congested parts of the whole system … This would have a distinct tendency to remove this congestion and would therefore be a highly desirable end in itself.” 

A century later, the Globe’s description remains accurate: the Red and Blue lines remain the only two subway lines on the T that do not connect. Riders must make two zigzag transfers, using the Green or Orange lines, to travel between them. Not only is it inconvenient for riders, it also increases congestion and decreases capacity at Park Street and Government Center. These pressures on system capacity will only worsen with time.

Posted inThe Saturday Send

Healey floats buyout program and four more stories

by CommonWealth Beacon staff

The Healey administration began buyout talks that could affect thousands of public sector employees while the state’s top court heard arguments about charter school compliance with public records laws. Plus: towns and cities run into state caps on solar energy, incumbent mayors get ousted in Gloucester and Everett, and House leaders consider pulling back on the state’s ambitious climate goals.

Posted inCommonWealth Voices

Colleges need an experiential learning revolution

by CommonWealth Beacon staff

America is falling out of love with college, and it’s not hard to see why. 

First, colleges are not doing enough to build purpose, confidence, agency, and maturity. Colleges are not the cause of growing anxiety and a declining sense of purpose among young people; but, faced with the reality of these trends, colleges have not changed their models nearly enough to help students build purpose, confidence, agency, and maturity. 

Second, colleges are not doing enough to build “durable” or “transferable” skills and the networks and experiences students need to transition successfully from high school to 21st century careers that pay good wages.

Posted inCommonWealth Voices

Gov. Healey’s mixed message on housing for those most in need

by CommonWealth Beacon staff

As a family medicine physician at Boston Medical Center, I have cared for hundreds of individuals and families experiencing homelessness over the last 20 years. The landscape of housing services that I can offer them continues to change, sometimes leaving me with a great sense of hope and possibility and, at other times, more hopeless than ever for my patients’ restoration to health.  

Recently, this seesaw from hope to hopelessness has become more extreme, as decisions by our state leaders seem to be simultaneously pulling in opposite directions when it comes to housing help for those most in need. Two families for whom I provide medical care illustrate the mixed messages of our state’s recent housing policies affecting the state’s most vulnerable residents.

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