AS BEACON HILL gears up for the second leg of its two-year legislative cycle, lawmakers are staring down a series of overlapping crises in housing, health care, education, and the state’s financial health generally. Outside and under the Golden Dome, municipalities and advocates have no shortage of suggestions.

This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith hosts a start-of-year roundtable with Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson; Jennie Williamson, the state director of the research and advocacy organization The Education Trust in Massachusetts; and Clark Ziegler, the outgoing executive director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, who is retiring after four decades at the helm of the quasi-public organization.

All three noted that Beacon Hill seems to recognize the need for action — be it ramping up housing production or addressing the literacy crisis among young people — but “much more work needs to be done” Ziegler said.

For Zeigler, the past few years included some promising housing swings like the MBTA Communities law and the housing bond bill that legalized accessory dwelling units in single-family zoning areas. At the same time, “the housing trends are really discouraging,” he said, noting that production last year was at a 12-year-low, “so there’s enormous unmet need to promote housing development and to remove barriers to new housing.”

He points to potential housing legislation in the Senate, which includes recommendations from a Healey task force focused on unlocking housing production – like removing large lot size requirements or parking minimums – as a promising move this term.

Williamson said the state needs to face that a quality education for most students in Massachusetts is closely tied to where they live and their families’ incomes, with some of the nation’s widest education gaps.

“I think the broader issue we’re facing here in Massachusetts is that we’re patting ourselves on the back for being number one in education,” she said, “but when you look beyond the state averages, there is a much more complicated and, frankly, troubling story that emerges. And that’s that we’re really only number one for some.”

Despite investments in K-12 education and a focus on supporting high need students, she said, the outcomes “aren’t improving at the pace we need.” On addressing the state literacy crisis, she said, efforts like providing funds to districts to transition them to so-called “evidence-based reading curriculums,” and a House bill that would require all districts to use those curriculums, are meaningful.

Even with a supportive gubernatorial administration and local delegation, Nicholson noted, cities are struggling to adequately fund their education systems.

“One of the big issues that remains to be tackled is municipal revenue and the limitations that municipalities experience trying to provide the services that our residents rely on,” he said, referring to the Proposition 2 1/2 limit on raising municipal taxes over time and “really intense cost pressures” in areas outside of municipal control like pension obligations and health insurance for city employees.

“There are a lot of good ideas at play — bold ideas at play,” Ziegler said. “We just need to see them through, and that’s where crunch time in a Legislature really matters.”

On the podcast, the guests break down what has and hasn’t been a lawmaking priority (2:00), dive into the current relationships between cities, the state, and the federal government (6:45), and discuss their legislative wish list for the second half of the two-year cycle (13:20).