POLITICS
CommonWealth Beacon takes the pulse of Massachusetts politics by examining the policies, personalities, and pressing issues shaping moves in local governance, on Beacon Hill, and among the state’s congressional delegation in Washington.
Eleventh-hour Senate move could upend tax rebate ballot question
Democrats in the Senate appear to be coalescing around a late-term push to repeal the law known as Chapter 62F, in the process inviting incendiary anger from groups that want government to control its spending habits.
Marijuana question survives as all nine ballot questions get their numbers
It’s official: voters will face nine statewide ballot questions, tying the record last reached in 1994, and the list will include whether to undo recreational cannabis legalization.
The tricky calculus of designing a ballot with nine questions
While law sets clear patterns for most of the ballot, officials need to lean more on the skills used by magazine or newspaper layout editors when it comes to statewide questions.
Trump DOJ sues Mass. over immigrant tuition law
The Trump administration opened up another front in its campaign to crack down on immigrant communities by asking a federal judge to scrap a Massachusetts law that lets high school graduates without legal status attend public colleges and universities without paying higher, out-of-state tuition.
How the House’s sausage-making put transparency groups in a tough spot
A trio of good-government and transparency organizations backed the House’s proposal to craft a new public records framework for the Legislature, but they’re straining to avoid the riptide of the audit-the-Legislature debate that representatives tied to the same bill.
Mass. primary election overhaul eligible for November ballot, SJC rules
Should Massachusetts run its elections more like California? That question is cleared to appear on the ballot, according to the state’s highest court, possibly teeing up a major shift in our notoriously uncompetitive races.
SJC blocks high-stakes income tax cut question from the November ballot
In a blockbuster ruling just as ballot measure campaigns submit their final signatures, Massachusetts’s highest court cut the fuse of a revenue bomb that was set to blow $5 billion out of the state budget. An initiative aiming to cut income taxes is blocked from the ballot because of errors in the attorney general’s summary.
Transparency fight escalates as House votes to limit its exposure to audit, public records requests
The House’s top Republican described the controversial bill as an “[expletive] sandwich with extra pickles.”
UnitedHealthcare defrauded MassHealth of $100M, AG alleges
The lawsuit alleges that United “falsely manipulated” their health evaluations in order to secure bigger payments.
Political Notebook: A notable absence in the ‘Nature for Massachusetts’ coalition
The Environmental League of Massachusetts, one of the state’s oldest advocacy organizations, is sitting out a ballot campaign backed by some of the bigger names in environmental advocacy.
Senate’s new audit compliance raises more questions than it answers
Another series of twists arrived in the audit-the-Legislature saga as the Senate voted to provide some documents while insisting that their move in no way concedes that Diana DiZoglio has a constitutional right to probe lawmakers.
Yet again, legislative competition in Massachusetts will be woeful
Even as voters prepare for a historic number of ballot questions with enormous stakes, most will have no options other than the incumbent when it comes to picking their representatives and senators.
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