He was joking when he described “fortune-telling” as a preferred pastime, but House Speaker Ron Mariano still managed to divine the way electoral politics would affect a Senate tax cap proposal.
Massachusetts Legislature
Posted inPublic Records
Senate ready to open access to legislative records, muddying outlook for ballot question
The Senate will take up a bill next week that would subject the governor’s office and Legislature to public records requirements, but huge questions still linger about how legislative action would affect a question on the November ballot seeking a similar goal.
Posted inPolitics
Eleventh-hour Senate move could upend tax rebate ballot question
Democrats in the Senate appear to be coalescing around a late-term push to repeal the law known as Chapter 62F, in the process inviting incendiary anger from groups that want government to control its spending habits.
Posted inEnergy
A Mass Save reform generating consensus among lawmakers is drawing blowback from advocates
The change under consideration by the Legislature would impose new income verification requirements on only the moderate-income customers in the state’s 21 designated equity communities.
Posted inEducation
Healey seeks $100 million in additional school funding as districts confront mounting financial strain
Deploying a somewhat novel approach to budgeting “Fair Share” dollars, Gov. Maura Healey wants to give K-12 districts another funding injection amid rising economic pressures.
Posted inState Government
Complicated decisions ahead as lawmakers crystallize Big Tech response
With a bevy of bills in play, legislators need to figure out not just which policies they want to advance to protect user data and shield minors from addictive feeds, but which vehicles will host the proposed reforms.
Posted inEnergy
Ten communities in Massachusetts went ‘fossil fuel free.’ Then utilities spent $100M on natural gas infrastructure there.
As these municipalities are quickly finding out, moving off gas for new buildings doesn’t preclude the utilities from needing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year upgrading the existing gas system.
Posted inState Government
July is here, and that means it’s busy season again on Beacon Hill
An even-year July 31 is always a critical crossroads for the House and Senate, but rules changes this time around mean it will look different than it has for the past two decades. And as the House budget chief put it, “it can’t go worse” than last term.
Posted inEducation
Trump DOJ sues Mass. over immigrant tuition law
The Trump administration opened up another front in its campaign to crack down on immigrant communities by asking a federal judge to scrap a Massachusetts law that lets high school graduates without legal status attend public colleges and universities without paying higher, out-of-state tuition.
Posted inEnergy
Senate energy bill seeks to end contentious gas pipe replacement program
The bill reveals just how deep a chasm has formed between the Legislature’s two Democratic-controlled branches over energy policy after the House passed its version in February
Posted inState Government
How the House’s sausage-making put transparency groups in a tough spot
A trio of good-government and transparency organizations backed the House’s proposal to craft a new public records framework for the Legislature, but they’re straining to avoid the riptide of the audit-the-Legislature debate that representatives tied to the same bill.
Posted inBallot Questions
Mass. high court strikes rent control question from ballot
The decision averts a months-long season of aggressive campaigning that seemed sure to generate tens of millions of dollars in spending on attack ads and dire warnings about economic upheaval.
Posted inState Government
A climate chief in an era of Trump and energy affordability: Does Melissa Hoffer still get a say?
Given how dramatically the landscape has changed around climate change since Hoffer took office, an obvious question emerges: What exactly is her job? And what kind of influence does she hold within the Healey administration?
Posted inBallot Questions
SJC blocks high-stakes income tax cut question from the November ballot
In a blockbuster ruling just as ballot measure campaigns submit their final signatures, Massachusetts’s highest court cut the fuse of a revenue bomb that was set to blow $5 billion out of the state budget. An initiative aiming to cut income taxes is blocked from the ballot because of errors in the attorney general’s summary.
Posted inBallot Questions
Powerful real estate group says it’s open to rent control compromise
With just two weeks until a controversial rent control ballot measure could be locked in, a flurry of negotiations — and pockets of sustained resistance — puts Beacon Hill in a tricky position.
Posted inThe Saturday Send
Natural gas is hard to kick and four more stories: Saturday Send – June 13, 2026
The Saturday Send Welcome back to the Saturday Send, a weekly digest of stories from CommonWealth Beacon that you may have missed. This week, Jordan Wolman dives into recent snafus […]
Posted inHealth Care
Senate ready to force more money toward primary care — and away from specialists
Inviting a political fight with influential hospital systems, the Senate plans to approve legislation that would more than double the share of health care dollars that go toward the ailing primary care sector.
Posted inTransportation
MBTA eyes another spending boost as ‘austerity’ approach fades
Transit agency leaders will seek approval Thursday on a $3.4 billion budget that would add another 550 positions, embracing an eager-to-spend approach that supporters say has improved service and safety.
Posted inThe Codcast
The World Cup has arrived, but how are the vibes?
Matches in the world’s biggest sports spectacle will kick off this week across North America. With Boston as one of the host cities — seven matches will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, which will be renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup tournament — Massachusetts will be in the spotlight as it hosts thousands of international fans and will need to safely move people between the city and a stadium some 22 miles away by rail. Are we ready? And is hosting these sorts of mega-events even worth it? This week on The Codcast, Chris Dempsey, the former co-chair of “No Boston Olympics” joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman to discuss whether this time is any different from more than a decade ago when Dempsey successfully fought against Boston’s bid to play home base for the 2024 Olympics.
Posted inState Government
Transparency fight escalates as House votes to limit its exposure to audit, public records requests
The House’s top Republican described the controversial bill as an “[expletive] sandwich with extra pickles.”
Posted inCriminal Justice
Mass. inspector general faults sheriffs for using private bank accounts
Punctuating a months-long political feud, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said lawmakers, the executive branch, and sheriffs alike need to make changes to leave behind the “chaos” that consumed budgeting at the county law enforcement offices.
Posted inState Government
Senate’s new audit compliance raises more questions than it answers
Another series of twists arrived in the audit-the-Legislature saga as the Senate voted to provide some documents while insisting that their move in no way concedes that Diana DiZoglio has a constitutional right to probe lawmakers.
Posted inPolitics
Yet again, legislative competition in Massachusetts will be woeful
Even as voters prepare for a historic number of ballot questions with enormous stakes, most will have no options other than the incumbent when it comes to picking their representatives and senators.
Posted inEnergy
State regulators are weighing how much to crack down on leaky gas pipes
DEP’s program review is one slice of the central debate animating the dynamic between regulators and the gas companies: whether and how fast the utilities should shift away from delivering gas to customers — their current business model.
