STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE A PAIR OF TOP legislators on Friday urged the Baker administration to halt pursuing overpaid unemployment benefits for the next five-plus months, calling for more time to untangle a complicated financial situation. Rep. Josh Cutler and Sen. Patricia Jehlen, the co-chairs of the Labor and Workforce Development Committee, said they believe […]
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COVID spending bill grows to $101m, passes within hours
A $55 MILLION COVID-related spending bill ballooned into a $101 million bill under an agreement reached between House and Senate negotiators, which lawmakers sent to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk just hours after the compromise was announced. Initially, the House had proposed spending $55 million on expanding COVID testing sites, increasing vaccination rates among children, and […]
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Municipal officials slam Polito local aid projection
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH STATE TAX REVENUES continuing to blow past projections, municipal leaders said Friday they are disappointed in Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito’s forecast that cities and towns would share a collective $31.5 million hike in the pot of unrestricted local aid they receive from Beacon Hill. Polito, who has developed an annual […]
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Report slams sheriffs over campaign money from contractors, employees
A NEW NATIONAL report says campaign contributions to county sheriffs, including in Massachusetts, are rife with potential conflicts of interest from donors who stand to benefit from contracts or other decisions by sheriffs. The report, issued jointly by the reform group Common Cause and a coalition called Communities for Sheriff Accountability, looked at campaign donations […]
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988 state employees left jobs due to vaccine mandate
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE JUST FEWER than 1,000 executive branch employees have left their jobs because they did not or would not comply with Gov. Charlie Baker’s vaccine mandate for public employees, including 656 people whose departures were “involuntary,” the governor’s office said Thursday. The update on state worker compliance with the requirement comes as […]
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CommonWealth’s 10 most-read news stories of 2021
AS COVID-19 continued to dominate society in 2021, a story about the virus also topped CommonWealth’s most-read stories of the year. In early September, as the Delta variant was causing COVID cases to rise, companies were struggling to manufacture enough at-home rapid tests to meet the demand. CommonWealth’s most-read story in 2021 looked at the […]
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Spilka discloses she suffered ‘mild stroke’
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE SENATE PRESIDENT Karen Spilka had what she said was “a mild stroke” in mid-November and was told by her doctors to get some rest, she said Monday in a television interview that explained her weekslong absence from the State House. “I’m fine. In fact, I’m feeling great now. But I wanted […]
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About that I-90 throat section along the Charles
I SPENT A GOOD portion of my professional life, nearly 30 years, working hard to rescue the Charles River. When I started the job directing Charles River Watershed Association in 1990, the Charles was still very much an open sewer, certainly unfit for swimming and even mostly unfit for boating, though crews still plied its […]
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Survey finds low use of facial recognition tech
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AS A LEGISLATIVE commission works toward recommendations to regulate government use of facial recognition technology in Massachusetts, more than 20 law enforcement agencies that submitted information to the panel say they are currently using the technology in some capacity or plan to bring it online in the future. The commission, created […]
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Mass. rainy day fund hits highest level ever
Lots of attention has been paid to Massachusetts’ unprecedented spending, made possible by once-in-a-lifetime federal largesse to pay for COVID-19-related needs. Behind the scenes, Massachusetts has also been saving. The comptroller’s annual report for fiscal 2021, which ended June 30, reveals that Massachusetts’ stabilization fund is the largest it has ever been since the fund […]