STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH THE COVID-19 pandemic’s two-year anniversary approaching, legislative leaders lifted the mask mandate and proof-of-vaccination-or-negative-test requirement for entry into the State House, starting on Monday. House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka cited a “steady decline in COVID-19 positivity rates and hospitalizations” in making their announcement. “While some individuals […]
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Masks no longer mandated on school buses
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE A DAY AFTER K-12 students returned to classrooms with a statewide mask mandate no longer in place, the Baker administration announced that children no longer need to mask up while riding in school buses or vans. The state Department of Public Health published an updated advisory on Tuesday that does not […]
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Wu proposes restricting ‘targeted residential picketing’
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE BOSTON MAYOR Michelle Wu, who has regularly encountered protesters outside her home, filed a proposed ordinance Monday to put new rules in place restricting demonstrations that target a particular residence. The proposal would address what the mayor’s office describes as targeted residential picketing, or “picketing, protesting, or demonstrating, with or without […]
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Unemployment system shifting away from facial recognition tech
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE STATE’S UNEMPLOYMENT assistance agency will in the “coming weeks” stop utilizing facial recognition technology to verify the identities of benefit applicants after senior members of Congress, including US Sen. Elizabeth Warren, criticized the process and the Internal Revenue Service announced it would transition to a new verification process by next […]
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State seeks OK to forgive UI overpayments
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE BAKER ADMINISTRATION on Thursday asked US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to intervene and grant Massachusetts permission to forgive wide swaths of overpaid unemployment benefits, warning that state workers will need to process hundreds of thousands of individual applications without federal action. In the latest step to untangle a messy financial […]
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Getting social mobility done during a pandemic
THIS ISN’T ANOTHER COVID think piece written by a college president. This is a story about upward mobility in the face of the most significant public health crisis of our lifetime. COVID has changed the landscape of higher education in ways I couldn’t have predicted back in the spring of 2020. We have seen countless […]
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New link to improve access to SNAP benefits
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AN IMPENDING CHANGE to link MassHealth applicants to a food assistance program will serve as an “important step” toward removing barriers that limit hundreds of thousands of Bay Staters from accessing available benefits, advocates said Thursday as they renewed calls to take the effort even further. A top Baker administration official […]
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Baker seeks to dole out extra state cash
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH TAX COLLECTIONS running nearly $1.5 billion ahead of expectations, Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday filed a spending bill that seeks to spend $1.6 billion in state funds to keep COVID-19 response efforts going and to invest in stressed sectors, like child care and human services. The supplemental budget would allocate $2.4 billion […]
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Fall River to offer free menstrual products in schools
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AS FALL RIVER plans to use a state grant to provide free menstrual products in the city’s middle and high schools, bills that similarly look to expand statewide access to such products have advanced to various stages in the legislative process this session. Baker administration officials this month announced the award […]
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State eases indoor face-mask guidance
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT of Public Health on Tuesday relaxed its face-covering advisory, publishing an updated version that no longer recommends vaccinated individuals mask up in all indoor spaces. Instead, the latest iteration of an advisory that has been in place since Gov. Charlie Baker in May 2021 lifted the state’s universal […]