The last time Boston Mayor Marty Walsh ran up against a deadline for striking a peace deal with the two casino developers sitting just across the city’s borders, Walsh made a call to the governor and bought himself a delay. Now Walsh’s negotiating window is almost up, again, and it doesn’t appear that the mayor has given any ground on the one issue that’s doing the most to hold up settlement talks.

Walsh tells the Herald today that he has has one more round of negotiations scheduled this week with representatives of Wynn Resorts and Mohegan Sun, the developers vying to build a casino in Everett and Revere, respectively. Walsh and the two casino developers are hammering away at the details of a mitigation package, and they’re racing against a June 16 arbitration date. If Boston doesn’t strike a deal by that date, an arbitrator has the right to impose a mitigation deal on the city.

“We really don’t want to head there,” Walsh tells the Herald. “If we do enter into and negotiate a surrounding community agreement, I would rather do it without arbitration, rather do it at the [negotiating] table.”

Representatives from both casino developers tell the Herald that they’re in active talks with the city, which is more than could be said last time Walsh, Wynn, and Mohegan ran up against a dealmaking deadline. When the first deadline arrived early this month, Walsh called Gov. Deval Patrick, saying he was close to striking a mitigation deal, and asking for more time to negotiate. Patrick intervened with state gaming chairman Steve Crosby, who granted Boston an extension. After Crosby granted the extension, Wynn representatives said they weren’t in active talks with Boston negotiators.

The state gambling landscape has shifted significantly since Walsh won his delay. Crosby recused himself from all further decisions surrounding the eastern Massachusetts casino license, and the remaining gaming commissioners ruled that Boston isn’t entitled to claim host community status in the Everett and Revere projects. Even so, Walsh hasn’t yet backed off his claim that Boston deserves to be a host community — entitling it to a richer mitigation package, and a referendum vote — in both cases.

Boston’s insistence on being a host community was the one insurmountable block in the way of a deal with Wynn and Mohegan earlier this spring. Whether it’s a gambit to sink both casinos or a negotiating bluff, Walsh still hasn’t conceded defeat on the issue, telling the Herald a lawsuit over host status is “on the table,” and “still an option.” And as long as a suit over host status is on the table, it’s hard to see how this deadline turns out any differently than the last one.

–PAUL MCMORROW   

BEACON HILL

Two budget amendments filed by Sen. Brian Joyce would subject medical marijuana to the state sales tax and levy a 4 percent surcharge on revenues generated by dispensaries, money he says could be used toward substance abuse treatment.

Lowell and Fitchburg officials say Gov. Deval Patrick‘s economic development bill doesn’t do enough for Gateway Cities, the Sun reports.

Having trouble keeping it all straight? CommonWealth explains the basics of the federal probation trial.

A Hadley man’s 20-year effort to have the Commonwealth post online all state job openings is finally getting a little bit of traction. He says the Probation scandal that has led to a criminal trial in federal court provides a good argument on behalf of the bill.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Boston mayor Marty Walsh says he wants to to see more middle-income home ownership projects developed in the city, a goal that largely eluded his predecessor. CommonWealth‘s Paul McMorrow, in his weekly Globe column,says an aggressive building agenda is the only thing that can temper the Hub’s soaring housing costs.

CASINOS

MGM International and Wynn Resorts want the Legislature to make several changes in the state’s gaming laws. Mohegan Sun is sitting this one out.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

New York has the details on the socialist who’s leading Seattle‘s $15 minimum wage movement.

Vox talks to Colorado‘s top marijuana enforcer about drug legalization in the state.

ELECTIONS

Republicans jump on a ballot question that would repeal a state law indexing the state gasoline tax to inflation, the Associated Press reports.

Republican US Sen. Kelly Ayotte is endorsing Scott Brown for the US Senate. Brown has several opponents in the Granite State’s Republican primary for Senate, NECN reports.

Brent Benson ranks electoral partisanship in all 160 Massachusetts House districts.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

A congressional stalemate over tax policy has left nonprofits and other investors in limbo because of the expiration of a tax credit for investments in low-income areas.

The New York Times editorializes against the planned merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, arguing that the cable and broadband internet markets are already lacking competition.

EDUCATION

Olin College in Needham, acclaimed for its rigorous engineering curriculum, is bleeding red ink, reports Jon Marcus of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in the Globe.

Walking school buses are catching on around the country, the Associated Press reports.

Fall River school officials rehired a middle school teacher and must award her three years back pay after an arbitrator upheld her claim that her termination was the result of on-going bullying and harassment by the school principal, the wife of the district’s chief operating officer.

HEALTH CARE

Long-term antibiotics coverage for Lyme disease would not dramatically increase costs for insurers, says a financial panel. The news gives a lift to Rep. Ted Speliotis of Peabody, who has long been pushing for the controversial coverage, the Salem News reports. Long-term coverage for antibiotics can be cost prohibitive for individuals, CommonWealth reported previously.

A Mexican campaign to promote breast feeding that features topless celebrities is getting panned for sending the wrong messages, Time reports.

TRANSPORTATION

The state is eyeing private funding for public road projects in exchange for allowing investors to charge tolls to recoup their stake on such projects as a toll lane on Route 3 on the South Shore and a third bridge over the Cape Cod Canal.

Plans for an Allston railroad station that had residents excited about new service to downtown Boston are getting mothballed, the Globe reports.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

Neighbors of the Fairhaven Shipyard say a proposal by the owners to reconfigure the facility could result in more pollution at the yard, which has been the subject of ongoing actions by the Department of Environmental Protection.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Richard Posner , the prolific federal appeals court judge, takes a look in The New Republic at Columbia law professor Robert Ferguson’s Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment, the latest in the string of recent books decrying the American prison-industrial complex.

Jared Remy pleads guilty to murdering his girlfriend.