AS MOTHERS who have both lost a child, we often say we’re in a club that we want no one else to ever join. We started our individual foundations and the Meningitis B Action Project after we each lost our young, healthy daughters too soon to a now vaccine-preventable disease, Meningitis B. Kimberly (Patti’s daughter), […]
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Boston’s new voice on MBTA board knows the ‘pain points’
MAYOR MICHELLE WU, who has pushed for a Boston seat on the MBTA board since she was a city councilor, finally got her chance to appoint a member through a provision in this year’s state budget. After years of leavening transit policy arguments with first-hand accounts of her own trials as a regular T commuter, […]
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Feds downshift, say right to repair law can be implemented
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE AND FEDERAL regulators appear to have made a breakthrough to move forward with a voter-approved vehicle repair data law after legal battles and safety concerns stalled its implementation. A bit more than two months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that a 2020 Massachusetts “right to repair” update […]
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Greg Torres: A most interesting man
IN 2016, MassINC and CommonWealth hosted Serious Fun, a humorous spoof on politicians and the Massachusetts political scene held at the John F. Kennedy Library. Greg Torres, the CEO of MassINC and the publisher of CommonWealth, appeared in one of the video skits as “the most interesting man in the world” – a funny take on the […]
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Lawmakers, Healey push budget deadline back another month
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. MAURA HEALEY bought top legislative Democrats up to another month to reach a long-overdue budget deal Thursday when she handed them a get-out-of-missed-deadline-free card, but it’s not clear if they will actually take full advantage of it. With the list of House-Senate feuds growing longer and a compromise state budget […]
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Iselin of Blue Cross raises red flag on rising health care costs
SARAH ISELIN, the president and CEO of the state’s largest health insurer, says the rising cost of health care may be another reason why Massachusetts is in danger of losing its competitive edge. Iselin, who returned to nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts in January after a decade working elsewhere, noticed a change. She […]
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A letter to Bill McKibben: Do the math
Dear Bill McKibben, Thanks for coming home to Concord/Lexington on April 2 and reminding us how we have wasted precious time since you sounded the alarm in 1989 with “The End of Nature” book. We shrugged our shoulders then and went on to build McMansions in your old neighborhood and ignore the far-flung receding Arctic […]
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New Census numbers underscore competitiveness issues
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE POPULATION of Massachusetts shrunk by nearly 8,000 people between July 2021 and July 2022, a drop of about 0.1 percent, but the newest estimate released in fresh data from the US Census Bureau puts the state’s population ahead of its revised 2020 Census level. The bureau’s “Vintage 2022 estimates of […]
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Should Massachusetts legalize teachers’ strikes?
WHEN EDUCATORS IN four Massachusetts school districts went on strike over the past year, walking out of the building meant walking into hot water with the state. Public employee strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but they tend to be effective – teachers in Brookline, Malden, Haverhill, and Woburn walked back into their schools with new […]
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T says low-income fare ramp-up would be year
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE MBTA OFFICIALS estimated Thursday they would need at least a year and about $5 million to get a widespread low-income fare option off the ground, plus tens of millions of dollars per year to cover its recurring costs. The startup price — which would effectively mirror money Gov. Maura Healey proposed […]