The Saturday Send
A climate chief in an era of Trump and energy affordability: Does Melissa Hoffer still get a say?
By Jordan Wolman
Given how dramatically the landscape has changed around climate change since Hoffer took office, an obvious question emerges: What exactly is her job? And what kind of influence does she hold within the Healey administration?
How did some of Massachusetts’s buzziest ballot campaigns get tripped up in court?
By Jennifer Smith
Three ballot measures are dead because they ran afoul of Article 48 — the part of the state Constitution that governs the ballot process. A bad summary, a forbidden subject, and an attempt to direct the Legislature kept them from voters.
How the House’s sausage-making put transparency groups in a tough spot
By Chris Lisinski
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.
Senate energy bill seeks to end contentious gas pipe replacement program
By Jordan Wolman
The bill reveals just how deep a chasm has formed between the Legislature’s two Democratic-controlled branches over energy policy after the House passed its version in February
Mass. high court strikes rent control question from ballot
By Chris Lisinski and Jennifer Smith
The decision averts a months-long season of aggressive campaigning that seemed sure to generate tens of millions of dollars in spending on attack ads and dire warnings about economic upheaval.
Can Mass. hit its housing goals? New housing secretary says yes.
Gov. Maura Healey’s administration estimates that the state will need 222,000 by 2035 to deal withe existing need and population growth. Her new housing secretary, Juana Matias, says we can meet that goal, and joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith to talk about chipping away at decades of sluggish housing production. Matias, who was a state representative and regional administrator at HUD, talks about what she’d like to see come from the end-of-session rush and how the state can weather federal pullbacks on fair housing an public housing.
Published by MassINC