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CAMPAIGN FINANCE: State Rep. Chynah Tyler of Boston will pay a $6,000 civil forfeiture to the state and submit to greater campaign-finance scrutiny for the next six months, after Uber Eats, audiobooks, and thousands of dollars in unexplained spending landed the Roxbury pol in hot water with state political finance regulators. Chris Lisinski has more.
January 8, 2026
By JENNIFER SMITH
Just as an end-of-year lawsuit launched a broadside against a decades-old policy to boost affordable development, state lawmakers moved to make it easier for cities and towns to roll out their version of that same policy.
A Cambridge developer is arguing that the city’s so-called inclusionary zoning program, which requires developers to set aside a number of units for lower- and middle-income people, is unconstitutional at its core. The suit aims to crack the foundations of inclusionary zoning in Massachusetts, adopted by communities like Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville.
Meanwhile, senators struggling to make headway on a housing crunch across affordability levels are looking to pull all the levers they can, including lowering the difficulty of implementing inclusionary zoning locally.
The legal and legislative moves set up a clash over rules governing housing development at a time when there’s broad consensus that the state needs to build more units across communities.
Inclusionary zoning rules condition getting permits to build residential projects of a certain size on making a percentage of the units affordable. Cambridge credits its inclusionary zoning policy with creating over 1,600 units of affordable housing, and Somerville in 2023 described its policy as the “primary pipeline adding to the City’s permanent affordable housing stock.”
But a lawsuit filed last month in Land Court by Cambridge zoning attorney and developer Patrick Barrett and the conservative Pioneer Legal Foundation claims that the Cambridge policy is unconstitutionally forcing developers to “surrender fundamental property rights” by selling their units at lower than market rate.
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FLU: Public health officials announced two Boston children younger than two years old died from flu-related illnesses, bringing the statewide total to four this season, Sam Drysdale reports for State House News Service.
OPINION: Springfield middle school teacher and state representative candidate Johnnie McKnight argues that policymakers need to set guardrails around the use of AI to prevent swaths of workers from being left behind by the quickly developing technology.
What We’re Reading
LAW ENFORCEMENT: State Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro is probing a broad set of financial data, communications with top Beacon Hill officials, and “non-law enforcement” activities as part of his investigation of Massachusetts sheriffs. (WBUR)
POLITICS: Many Venezuelans in New England are anxious about what comes after the US military operation that suddenly removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, looking at the history of other American attacks in Latin America or even the Bush administration’s invasion into Iraq. (GBH News)
HEALTH: New data show vaccination rates for kindergartners in three Western Massachusetts counties – Hampden County, Franklin County, and Berkshire County – have dropped below what is necessary to secure herd immunity against measles. (MassLive – paywall)
FOREIGN POLICY: A group of a dozen Democratic veteran members of the House of Representatives, including US Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, on Wednesday called for Congress to reassert its power to authorize war amid US intervention in Venezuela and possibly beyond. (The Lowell Sun – paywall)
ECONOMY: Gov. Maura Healey is reviving the Seaport Economic Council, bringing in 15 state and local leaders to coordinate coastal planning and investment across Massachusetts’ 78 coastal communities. (Boston Business Journal – paywall)
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