COULD THE RETURN of the “stale cookies” improve relations between Gov. Charlie Baker and legislative leaders? For most of his two terms in office, the Republican governor appeared to have […]
Karen Spilka
Posted inCriminal Justice
Police reform: Big momentum, little time
WITH THE END OF the legislative session fast approaching, the House and Senate are trying to hammer out a bill dealing with police reform. In the wake of George Floyd’s […]
Posted inHealth Care
Senate bill extends telehealth, scope of practice
THE MASSACHUSETTS SENATE is poised to extend the governor’s emergency order on insurance payments for telehealth, while at the same time reviving controversial proposals related to the types of services […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
Tales from the legislative trenches
RESPONDING TO THE fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, the Legislature recently passed and the governor signed an eviction and foreclosure moratorium law. It enables people who are unemployed or lost income […]
Posted inHealth Care
Senate passes mental health bill
SEN. JULIAN CYR has struggled with anxiety and depression since childhood. As a boy who was gay, he was bullied in school, had panic attacks and developed an eating disorder. […]
Posted inPolitics
Baker tries to nudge House and Senate toward agreement
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER has seen House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s offer of a barebones closeout budget deal to break a logjam on Beacon Hill and, like any confident poker player, raised […]
Posted inEducation
With education bill-signing, cheers and challenges
AFTER YEARS OF false starts and Beacon Hill standoffs on a growing funding crisis that has seen school districts shed hundreds of teachers and pare back vital curriculum offerings to […]
Posted inPolitics
DeLeo and Spilka on different pages
THE HOUSE AND Senate are circulating proposals for a compromise on an overdue spending bill, and the one idea that has had a public airing would leave out a $50 […]
Posted inPolitics
Lawmakers botch budget bill negotiations
BY FAILING TO reach agreement on a major spending bill before the winter break, legislative leaders have squandered much of their control over what goes into it, and they have […]
Posted inTransportation
Concerns on police bias linger after distracted driving vote
OVERWHELMING VOTES IN the House and Senate to enact driver safety legislation belie enduring disagreements within the Legislature over how best to monitor and tamp down racial bias by police. […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Time to rise up for healing
WE HAVE FAITH but have lost our patience. As faith leaders with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, we call on state leadership to rise up for healing by lowering the […]
Posted inEducation
House unveils education bill — minus controversial Senate amendment
TWO WEEKS AFTER the Senate approved a sweeping education funding bill, but stripped out language giving the state authority to oversee how the money is spent, the House appears poised […]
Posted inHealth Care
Lawmakers: Baker’s health care bill a good start
LAST SESSION, Beacon Hill’s big three – the governor, the House speaker, and the Senate president — each had fundamentally different ideas about how to reform the state’s health care […]
Posted inUncategorized
DeLeo: There will be no budget filed Tuesday
THERE WILL BE no budget agreement filed Tuesday, two days into fiscal 2020, but House and Senate negotiators haven’t reached an impasse and are trading proposals back and forth, according […]
Posted inPolitics
Spilka refers Brady case to Ethics Committee
THE SENATE ON Thursday took a step towards opening an ethics investigation into Sen. Michael Brady, a Brockton Democrat who was arrested for drunk driving last year. Brady admitted to […]
Posted inPolitics
Spilka calls for gender X bill’s passage
SENATE PRESIDENT KAREN Spilka took the rare step Thursday of appearing before her colleagues to argue for passage of a bill — in this case a measure to benefit non-binary […]
