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QUABBIN: Gov. Maura Healey is calling on Greater Boston’s water provider to offer more robust support for struggling rural towns near the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts, writing in a new letter Wednesday that the agency should “more fully recognize” those communities. Jordan Wolman has more.
WEALTH: Massachusetts families held a median net wealth of more than $370,000 last year, according to a new study that found this metric varies dramatically across key factors like race, age, educational attainment, homeownership, and place of residence. Just over a third of families also said they would be unable to cover a $400 emergency expense. Alison Kuznitz of State House News Service has more.
ZONING QUIRK: Beacon Hill has taken repeated swings at getting cities and towns to build more housing over the last five years. None of those apply to Boston, which is covered by its own state-authorized zoning code, not the code directly changed by legislation, which covers every other municipality. Jennifer Smith has more.
OPINION: Cambridge resident Jia-Jing Lee says a recent fight there over whether to install artificial turf on a neighborhood playing field offers broader lessons on ensuring a voice for communities in local decisions.
August 13, 2026
By HALLIE CLAFLIN
It’s no secret that Massachusetts suffers from an abundance of red tape, outdated laws, and obsolete regulations. One law still on the books requires at least three bells to be attached to horses drawing sleighs or sleds.
So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that even fortune telling is a licensed job in the Bay State, right along with barbering, teaching, and nursing.
State law says no person shall “tell fortunes for money” unless they have been issued a license by a local licensing authority. The law also states that a fortune teller must reside continuously in the city or town in which they wish to practice for at least 12 months before they can receive a license. The licensing fee, set by the municipality, must cost at least $2 but not more than $50.
The statute dates back to 1963 and was likely established to prevent grifters from passing from town to town. But lawmakers haven’t forgotten about it – or at least some of them haven’t.
State Rep. Susannah Whipps of Athol introduced legislation in 2025 for the second time that would repeal the 12-month residency requirement for fortune tellers. A previous version of the bill passed out of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure but never made it to the House floor for a vote. The current version sits in legislative limbo and is likely to face the same fate.
“To be honest, there is not a very active or powerful fortune-teller lobby in the state that I know of, so there hasn’t been a big push to get this over the finish line,” Whipps said. “My interest is just to remove an outdated law.”
There have been numerous attempts to repeal the residency requirement over the years, yet none have been successful. In 2000, for example, then-state Sen. Stan Rosenberg filed the legislation after being asked by the city of Northampton to challenge the law. An applicant there had been denied a license because of the rule. Whipps said she was similarly asked by a former Greenfield city employee to file the legislation after someone reached out to the city wanting to provide fortune-telling services.
It would be easy to assume that most psychics, tarot card readers, and mediums want to do away with the red tape, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Nowhere do people have more opinions on the topic than in Salem, which licenses more fortune tellers than any other community in the state. Many say although the archaic statute may have originally been rooted in distrust and prejudice toward marginalized communities like the Romani people, there are tangible benefits of the law today.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to regulate and monitor to make sure that there aren’t fraudulent people,” said Leanne Marrama, co-owner of Pentagram, a psychic shop in Salem. “A lot of people have a certain amount of fear in regard to this industry. The world, unfortunately, is filled with jerks, and this is supposed to weed out the jerks.”
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JUVENILE JUSTICE: Senators once again want to use the biennial economic development legislation as the vehicle to increase the age of juvenile jurisdiction, a change that would allow many 18-year-olds accused of lower-level crimes to be tried in Juvenile Court instead of in the adult system. Chris Lisinski has more.
OPINION: Massachusetts should grapple with whether expanding the data center industry serves the public interest at all, write Cynthia Mendes, Massachusetts director of Clean Water Action, and Mireille Bejjani, co-executive director of Slingshot. Before communities are asked to shoulder higher energy costs, increased pollution, and new environmental burdens, they deserve a meaningful voice in deciding whether these projects belong there and align with environmental justice principles.
What We’re Reading
FEDERAL: The federal government recently changed the rules governing grants that have long supported nonprofit fair housing organizations. The money would be redirected from hundreds of local community-based groups toward just five much larger organizations. (GBH News)
LOCAL: When displaced tenants of a condemned Holyoke apartment building return to court Thursday seeking contempt findings against their landlords, they’ll do so after more than a year of warnings from city inspectors of housing problems. (MassLive – paywall)
WORLD CUP: In a relief to concerned public health officials, the World Cup matches that brought millions of visitors to Massachusetts did not inundate hospital emergency departments. But there was a “noticeable” jump in alcohol-related visits around games that landed on weekends. (State House News Service – paywall)
DOJ: New Bedford city officials are not providing the US Department of Justice with a list of the city’s registered voters, questioning the department’s motives for requesting the data. (The New Bedford Light)
HOUSING: Like Boston, San Francisco has spent years deep in a housing crisis. As the city claws its way out of an “urban doom loop” under a new mayor, it is drastically lowering the share of affordable housing that developers must build as part of their market-rate projects, in the hope that more housing will be built overall. (The Boston Globe – paywall)
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