The money expanding child care access this year comes from one-time surplus funds. Maintaining long-term funding will mean finding a permanent home for it in next year’s state budget.
Surtax fueling early ed expansion, but will it last?
Posted inOpinion
I co-authored the Commonwealth’s report on school segregation. Two years later, it’s time for Massachusetts to act.
We need a two-pronged approach: generational investments in urban and Gateway districts to modernize facilities and develop appealing and effective community schools alongside policies and investments designed to make public school district boundaries more porous, including the expansion of inter-district school choice and programs like Metco, as well as the creation of regional magnet schools.
Posted inEnergy
Two-week pause of Canadian hydropower exposes frailty of Mass. plan to wean off natural gas
The two setbacks signal the continued challenges ahead for how to bring on new clean energy sources to move off fossil fuels and meet growing power needs while maintaining reliability.
Posted inState Government
Shortsleeve would tie legislative funding to audit compliance
Angered by the Legislature’s tactics to curtail the scope of the voter-backed audit law, Republican Brian Shortsleeve said Monday that if he were governor, he would veto the budget appropriations […]
Posted inThe Codcast
The World Cup has arrived, but how are the vibes?
Matches in the world’s biggest sports spectacle will kick off this week across North America. With Boston as one of the host cities — seven matches will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, which will be renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup tournament — Massachusetts will be in the spotlight as it hosts thousands of international fans and will need to safely move people between the city and a stadium some 22 miles away by rail. Are we ready? And is hosting these sorts of mega-events even worth it? This week on The Codcast, Chris Dempsey, the former co-chair of “No Boston Olympics” joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman to discuss whether this time is any different from more than a decade ago when Dempsey successfully fought against Boston’s bid to play home base for the 2024 Olympics.
Posted inOpinion
The House’s anti-transparency bill
This bill is not transparency. It is a legislative workaround dressed up as reform.
Posted inOpinion
When it comes to CVS MinuteClinic plan, Massachusetts needs more primary care – but without Mass General Brigham prices
Massachusetts should not have to choose between expanding primary care and protecting affordability.
Posted inState Government
House approves later last call bill that would run through July
If it clears the Senate and is signed into law, the bill would take effect Monday, June 8 and expire Friday, July 31, and enable bars to push last call to 3 a.m. “subject to approval of the local licensing authority.”
Posted inState Government
House wades in on data privacy: ‘Your data belongs to you.’
“Without exaggeration, we are living through the largest unregulated extraction of information in the history of civilization,” said Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, of Pittsfield, on the House floor.
Posted inTransportation
Lawmakers preserve 20-cent rideshare fee in surtax deal
The per-ride fee established in a 2016 law regulating transportation network companies is set to sunset in January 2027. The Senate quietly voted in April to extend the fee tacked onto all rideshares in its version of the surtax bill, and that language survived into the bill released Tuesday.
Posted inState Government
Transparency fight escalates as House votes to limit its exposure to audit, public records requests
The House’s top Republican described the controversial bill as an “[expletive] sandwich with extra pickles.”
Posted inEducation
Senate ready to give teachers second shot at retirement program
The Senate plans to take up a bill to enhance retirement benefit programs for teachers after resisting for years, following the House’s approval of a similar policy through a state budget amendment.
Posted inOpinion
Ending the requirement that legal ads be published by news outlets would harm democracy and journalism
Legal ads are one leg of a three-legged stool — along with public-records laws and open meetings — ensuring government transparency.
Posted inEnvironment
Massachusetts’s slow adoption of EV chargers through federal program is ‘mystifying’ to transit advocates
While Massachusetts ranks fourth in the country for charging ports per capita after a sharp increase in installments over the past few years, the state is still about 2,000 charging ports short of what it estimates it needs.
Posted inOpinion
Lack of contested legislative races and overflow of ballot questions reflect democracy in decline
The many ballot questions but few contested legislative races is less a study in contrasts than a snapshot of correlates.
Posted inHousing
Rent control backers scrambling to find legislative road away from the ballot
Organizers then went public Tuesday afternoon with what they touted as a compromise: limiting rent increases to no more than 10 percent per year, only in cities and towns that opt in.
Posted inGovernment
Healey backs later last call for ‘once-in-a-generation summer’
The proposed bill would allow Massachusetts restaurants and bars to stay open later from June 1 through Aug. 31, during the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 250th American Revolution celebrations.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Mass. inspector general faults sheriffs for using private bank accounts
Punctuating a months-long political feud, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said lawmakers, the executive branch, and sheriffs alike need to make changes to leave behind the “chaos” that consumed budgeting at the county law enforcement offices.
Posted inPolitics
UnitedHealthcare defrauded MassHealth of $100M, AG alleges
The lawsuit alleges that United “falsely manipulated” their health evaluations in order to secure bigger payments.
Posted inOpinion
SJC should let tax-cut question stay on the ballot
The court’s role is only to determine whether the ballot summary fairly explains the proposal. Under both common sense and longstanding court precedent, it plainly does.
Posted inThe Codcast
Lessons from Boston on Mass. school segregation lawsuit
Massachusetts has been busing students between neighborhoods and school districts for 60 years, but segregation within the school system persists – and in some places it’s actually gotten worse over recent decades. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Dan O’Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University, about a new lawsuit brought against the state. Students and civil rights organizations want the state to step in to address segregation across school districts, and Boston’s long and fraught history of attempted desegregation may offer some lessons.
Posted inOpinion
Congress must act now on AI
No federal agency has clear authority to step in when something goes wrong. While some have argued there is still plenty of time for Congress to act, I would say, look around.
Posted inPolitics
Political Notebook: A notable absence in the ‘Nature for Massachusetts’ coalition
The Environmental League of Massachusetts, one of the state’s oldest advocacy organizations, is sitting out a ballot campaign backed by some of the bigger names in environmental advocacy.
Posted inState Government
Senate’s new audit compliance raises more questions than it answers
Another series of twists arrived in the audit-the-Legislature saga as the Senate voted to provide some documents while insisting that their move in no way concedes that Diana DiZoglio has a constitutional right to probe lawmakers.
