Organizers with the cheekily named “Equalititty” and GoTopless groups walked about with a simple proposition: In 2024, there isn’t a particularly good reason to bar women from taking their shirts off entirely in the summer heat wherever men are allowed to do the same.
Legislature
Posted inOpinion
The compelling case for Massachusetts legislative reform
What’s the one thing businesses, climate advocates, and lobbyists can agree on? The need to overhaul the state’s broken legislative process. Here are six ideas to get the conversation started.
Posted inState Government
House, Senate leaders to call lawmakers back into formal session
Both Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano issued statements saying they are interested in resolving differences between the two branches on the bill and then holding a special session to approve it and send it along to the governor so she can sign it into law.
Posted inState Government
Democrats warm to continuing debate on unfinished legislation
Nothing official has been announced, but House Speaker Ron Mariano and members of his leadership team raised that possibility early Thursday morning as it became clear that many of the bills they wanted to pass were not going to make it. Gov. Maura Healey also chimed in, urging action on her economic development legislation.
Posted inState Government
Lawmakers stumble through early morning hours with little accomplished
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s property tax shift proposal, which drew intense opposition from real estate interests, appeared dead, as did overrides of Gov. Healey’s vetoes from the $58 billion fiscal 2025 budget.
Posted inEnergy
Finger-pointing galore as climate legislation stalls
The House was content with a bill that did the siting and permitting changes and little else, but the Senate had additional priorities, including language that would begin to rein in the natural gas industry, eliminate the retail electricity industry, and overhaul the way clean energy is procured.
Posted inState Government
Spilka throws Mariano’s own words back at him
Unlike other state houses, it’s not Democrats fighting Republicans, or the executive branch battling the legislative branch. It’s the House versus the Senate.
Posted inPolitics
Why are so many amendments being withdrawn on Beacon Hill?
A lawmaker gets up to make a speech, notes how important it would be for his or her colleagues to pass the amendment, and then withdraws the very amendment that was supposed to be so important.
Posted inHousing
BlueHub court battle shifts to Legislature
The legislative push comes as the legal battle in Suffolk Superior Court appears to be nearing a resolution, with both sides seeking summary judgments that they are in the right. Both sides can point to customers on their side, some saying they were ripped off and others who insist BlueHub helped save their house.
Posted inState Government
Crunch time is coming to Beacon Hill
“It’s always been part of the process that no matter what you do, or who’s doing it, that there will be a lot of serious work left for the last few days of session,” said Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat who is leaving the Senate after 32 years in the chamber.
Posted inPolitics
65% of incumbents in Legislature face no opponents
130 incumbents appear to be going without a challenger in either a primary or the general election. Democrats are expected to continue to hold a super-majority in both chambers.
Posted inOpinion
Dissecting the ‘toxic’ State House culture
The culture incentivizes a Stockholm syndrome-like relationship to power, where reps fall in line for crumbs from leadership, and advocates and organizations fall in line for access to the reps.
Posted inCourts
On 20th anniversary of same-sex marriage, here’s the story of how it almost did not happen
The story of how we stopped the “Defense of Marriage” amendment before the Goodridge ruling has never been fully told. And it’s a real banger of a tale.
Posted inState Government
Lawmaker who sent out phony mailer resigns job at Cape association
First-term state Rep. Chris Flanagan last week stepped down from his job as executive officer of the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Cape Cod, the group said in a press release.
Posted inBallot Questions
Lawmakers, academics call DiZoglio ballot question a ‘power grab’
DiZoglio’s supporters come from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum, agreeing with her argument that the Legislature is one of the most opaque operating in the country.
Posted inEnergy
Chairs of divided energy committee call a truce
The legislative workaround resolves a particularly nasty fight between the two branches that resulted in an unusual committee standoff, with House members holding hearings separately from Senate members and witnesses forced to testify before both groups.
Posted inState Government
Republicans spoil Democrats’ shelter crisis compromise
Democratic leaders finally reached a compromise on a $2.8 billion spending bill that includes $250 million for the state’s emergency shelter program, but they couldn’t win legislative approval for the measure because a small band of Republicans in the House refused to let it move forward in an informal session.
Posted inOpinion
Beacon Hill dawdling comes with consequences
Despite months of opportunity to work with Gov. Maura Healey to accommodate migrants and other families and pregnant women under the state’s right-to-shelter law, lawmakers dawdled, seemingly content to let Healey take the political heat.
Posted inState Government
Campbell says DiZoglio lacks legal authority to audit Legislature
Attorney General Andrea Campbell concludes the state auditor lacks the legal authority to audit the Legislature without its consent.
Posted inCourts, Drugs, Guns, Marijuana, State Government
Here’s what passed in marathon all-night legislative session
IN A MARATHON all night session, the Massachusetts Legislature finally finished many of their key priorities of the 2021-2022 legislative session, even as one key priority – tax reform – […]
Posted inOpinion, State Government
On Beacon Hill, it’s last-minute business as usual
AS THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE slogs to the finish line, having once again ceded its super Democratic majority, this time to a lame duck governor, it’s fair to ask how does […]
Posted inPolitics
Reform advocates will press for changes in House rules
WHEN THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE sets its rules for the new two-year session, a group of advocates and lawmakers will renew their attempts to introduce more transparency into frequently opaque House […]
Posted inPolitics
Sweating it out on Beacon Hill like it’s July
THE WEATHER IS cold, Christmas lights are still up. But on Beacon Hill, the mood is more like July 31 – the traditional last day of formal sessions during the […]
Posted inOpinion
A holiday wish list for legislative action on housing
WHEN IT COMES to Massachusetts affordable housing policy, it is easy to have a vigorous debate about whether the glass is half full or half empty – and both sides would have […]