Looming over it all are soaring utility bills and the annual rinse-and-repeat cycle of turning to high-polluting oil-fired electric generation, as power demand is projected to keep rising across the region in the years ahead.
Massachusetts Legislature
Posted inPolitics
Healey names new climate chief after Hoffer’s departure
Aladdine Joroff, an attorney who has held roles teaching at Harvard and served as Boston’s climate policy director, assumes the post as Healey heads into a second term fraught with complicated climate and energy issues.
Posted inState Government
Frustrated by ‘prolonged inaction,’ Spilka might backtrack on extending legislative deadline next term
Lawmakers still have dozens of major policy decisions to make in the eight remaining weeks of the term, all of which will happen in the lame-duck stretch after Election Day.
Posted inState Government
Election season is done. Holiday season is approaching. And lawmakers still have dozens of big decisions to make.
It’s a new phenomenon for the Legislature to have this much unfinished business this close to the end of the two-year session.
Posted inBallot Questions
Voters subject governor and Legislature to public records law, but there’s no guarantee lawmakers will comply
All eyes will now turn to the House and Senate, where negotiators need to decide in the next eight weeks whether to follow through on an earlier proposal to substitute their own idea for public records access for the version that four out of five voters embraced.
Posted inBallot Questions
Ballotmania: Inside the flurry of measures upending Massachusetts politics
The record-tying number of initiatives on the ballot next week put Beacon Hill on the defensive, and it’s resurfaced thorny questions about the powers and pitfalls of lawmaking by statewide vote.
Posted inEnergy
‘It’s a stressful life’: How energy debt is straining 800K Massachusetts utility customers
Massachusetts isn’t alone in the rising share of households facing energy insecurity around the country, yet the state, as wealthy as it is, sticks out given its high cost of living and increasing utility bills.
Posted inEnergy
Mass. spent nearly $400K on an energy study. Three years after its completion, the state hasn’t released the results.
Even before Gov. Maura Healey entered the heart of campaign season — one that has been defined by skyrocketing energy costs and affordability issues — her administration has seemed sensitive to the price tag attached to the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars likely needed to support a sweeping green transition.
Posted inPolitics
Mass. upgraded from least competitive elections in the country to second-worst
For the first time since Barack Obama was president, Massachusetts did not land in dead last in Ballotpedia’s biennial assessment of state legislative competition across the country.
Posted inEnergy
Future of Mass Save in limbo as Legislature stalls on energy bill
A political backlash to Mass Save, amid a rising tide of angst over soaring utility bills, has taken root in the Bay State.
Posted inPolitics
Mass. voters hold Trump, utilities most responsible for high energy costs, new poll finds
Healey’s ability to evade the bulk of the blame with voters for high energy costs is notable as she seeks reelection this fall, given how energy issues have proven stubborn, dogging much of her first term.
Posted inBy The Numbers
New poll finds strong voter support for auditing the Legislature holding steady
For all of the sound and fury legislative leaders have raised, voter support for the audit law has not budged in two years.
Posted inEnvironment
The next Quabbin fight is already here
The part of the plan that’s arguably generating the most blowback is the process the MWRA is deploying to win approval from state officials.
Posted inGovernment
Mass. unemployment agency ‘mismanaged’ call center performance, ‘failed’ to quickly pay claimants, auditor concludes
The auditor’s report unveils how even before the agency was thrust into turmoil with record-breaking poor performance during a time of a relatively stable job market, out-of-work Massachusetts residents weren’t receiving the help they needed in a timely fashion.
Posted inBallot Questions
Deep-pocketed donors flood the ballot-question field with cash
Newly filed financial reports shed light on this election’s battle lines, which will pit business groups against unions, the marijuana industry against an out-of-state opponent, and transparency advocates against Beacon Hill itself.
Posted inEnergy
For Healey, a delicate dance with the utilities emerges during election season
Healey can cast the utility companies as a critical partner when it’s advantageous for her to do so — or turn them into a political punching bag and convenient foil when it benefits her.
Posted inState Government
Melissa Hoffer, nation’s first state-level climate chief, to step down
Hoffer was chosen for the new position after holding several high-powered roles in climate policy, serving under then-AG Healey before working at the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and then moving back to the Bay State to link up with Healey again under this newly crafted role.
Posted inTechnology
$17 billion Meta settlement lands in hotbed of debate over social media regulations in Mass.
A landmark agreement both reshapes Instagram and Facebook for teenagers, and adds fuel to legislative debate about permanent reforms.
Posted inEnvironment
A climate shake-up is jolting one of the most progressive cities in Mass.
The question is whether, in the end, it’s more of a mundane municipal reorganization or a sign of retreat in Newton, one of the state’s most climate-forward communities.
Posted inEnergy
Lawmakers appear poised to take some big swings against competitive electric suppliers. How big is the question.
The pushback comes as Democrats on Beacon Hill are on the cusp of a long-sought breakthrough to rein in what critics contend are shady energy companies that rip off unwitting customers.
Posted inState Government
Healey, in new letter, urges MWRA to meet the ‘pressing needs’ of Quabbin Reservoir communities
Healey, through her letter to the head of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, is wading into an escalating battle between small towns along the Quabbin and the quasi-public agency that uses that water to serve 2.7 million residents in 61 communities mostly in and around Boston.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Senate quietly launches another push for juvenile justice reforms
House and Senate negotiators hashing out a final deal on a sweeping jobs and business support package need to decide whether the measure should also embrace a major criminal justice reform: allowing many 18-year-olds to be tried in the youth justice system, not adult courts.
Posted inEnvironment
‘It’s like the Hunger Games’: Quabbin Reservoir towns take funding fight to Beacon Hill amid extended drought
A perfect storm of long-held resentments, the well-known story of the financial crunch squeezing small towns across the state, and an act of blameless chance — weather — is raising the stakes and stoking new tensions between these sparse towns and the powers that be in state government.
Posted inThe Codcast
Special episode: Unpacking the Legislature’s July 31 flurry, and what comes next
Beacon Hill made it through the traditional end-of-formals deadline with less chaos and upheaval than 2024 and 2022. But in the process, lawmakers left many big decisions for another day.
