CALL IT a sign of the times: Layoffs have hit Massachusetts’s agency aimed at turbocharging the state’s green economy.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has laid off 11 people, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon, as it navigates a “challenging funding landscape as the federal administration has disrupted clean energy programs and the industry overall.”
The timing is notable: It comes just a month after Gov. Maura Healey signed a $63.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2027.
MassCEC, a quasi-public agency that boosts clean technologies in energy, buildings, and transportation, receives funding from a variety of sources. But Healey’s budget did it no favors.
The agency was allotted just $8 million in the FY27 budget, down from $10 million last year and $30 million in FY24. That will leave the organization’s new CEO Ben Downing to reckon with a smaller staff as it seeks to pivot from its emphasis on offshore wind supply chain development, given President Trump’s stifling of new such projects.
And the reduced budget speaks to the fiscal pressures facing Massachusetts officials: Even as the needs are greater than ever, including in the clean energy sector that has suffered from whipsaw federal policies and revoked incentives for electric vehicles, solar power, offshore wind, and energy efficiency measures, funding from Washington has also dried up, forcing states to shoulder more costs for core safety net programs like health care and food aid.
Those federal headwinds “have forced both the Legislature and the administration to adjust operating budget proposals in recent years,” the MassCEC spokesperson said.
MassCEC will still be able to collect money from its three remaining federal awards and a small charge on utility bills that generates about $20 million annually.
No matter what, Rollins is on the ballot
Rachael Rollins, the scandal-tarred former Suffolk County district attorney running to reclaim her old job, has been in the spotlight all week amid reports that she filed nomination papers featuring the signatures of several Chelsea city councilors who say they never actually signed. Asked whether she should be removed from contention, Attorney General Andrea Campbell replied during a live radio interview, “If she fraudulently got on the ballot, yes.”
There’s just one catch: At this point in the calendar, Rollins is on the primary ballot — no matter what other facts emerge.
The ballot for the September 1 Democratic primary has already been printed, distributed, and returned by many voters. There is no mechanism by which state elections officials can remove a candidate from consideration after votes have already been cast.
And while the series of stories in the Boston Herald and The Boston Globe have generated significant buzz, the secretary of state’s office has not received any formal complaints about the nomination papers that would prompt officials to refer the matter to law enforcement, according to Deb O’Malley, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Bill Galvin.
Todd Taylor, one of the Chelsea city councilors whose name appears despite saying he did not sign, even went to Galvin’s office in early June — roughly two months before the news stories appeared — to review Rollins’s nomination papers featuring his signature, after which he did not file a complaint, O’Malley said. (Taylor’s signature wound up not counting anyway because he’s a registered Republican and Rollins is running in a Democratic primary.)
The Chelsea city clerk also reached out earlier in the process to Galvin’s office to ask what to do if a local official thought a signature was fraudulent. Unlike the cases of attorney general candidate Michael Walsh and GOP lieutenant governor candidates Anne Manning-Martin and Anne Brensley, in which several town clerks submitted questionable nomination papers to the secretary’s office for review, the Chelsea clerk did not send along any documents with her inquiry suggesting a broader issue, O’Malley said. In those cases, the secretary’s office alerted district attorneys in Plymouth and Norfolk Counties.
“That was an unfortunate breakdown in communication from the Chelsea city clerk to our office, but she did not refer it to us” for further action, O’Malley said.
Plus, Rollins filed a total of 1,606 signatures, easily surpassing the 1,000 she needed to qualify, and the number in question in Chelsea is far fewer than 606.
So the scrutiny — including the latest Globe report detailing how Rollins personally handed in two sheets in question — might impact how voters think about the Democratic primary, but it will not change the list of names from which they will choose.
A $40 million question at Hanscom
The developers of a controversial and high-profile effort to add 17 new hangars for private jets at Hanscom Field airport have closed on a $40 million loan to retrofit one existing hangar, according to a bank document reviewed by CommonWealth Beacon —though progress on the larger project remains stalled.
The developers have finalized the financial transaction with Needham Bank to fund construction of one hangar previously used by the Navy, confirmed Rick Muse, director of operations for the Hanscom redevelopment proposal. That part of Hanscom will be used by Merlin Labs to pilot autonomous flights.
State officials approved that limited “change of use” of Hanscom last year.
The influx of cash reignites questions about when the developers will pursue the larger project to add new private jet hangars at the Massport-owned airport. The state rejected an earlier environmental plan in 2024 and sent it back to the developers to resubmit, which they thus far have failed to do.
Public records obtained by CommonWealth Beacon show a resubmitted environmental impact review continues to face delays as the developers cite shifting customer preferences and even the presence of a rare flower on the site that has caused hiccups.
