Chris Lisinski

Seeds of discontent appear to be germinating Lots of business groups cheered when Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey agreed to a roughly $1 billion tax relief package in October 2023, but there were still a few voices who suggested at the time that the measure did not go far enough. Still craving relief nearly […]

Plus: GOP Senate contender, SEIU endorsements and bipartisan transparency push If at first you don’t succeed, well, maybe the governor will. That’s an unsolicited mantra we might offer to Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who a year and a half ago watched as the House took a records-access bill he backed and changed it so […]

Try a little tenderness Keller at Large In all the glowing testimonials last week to the late Frank Caprio Sr., the Rhode Island municipal judge whose “Caught in Providence” TV show became a global hit, one word kept popping up: compassion. For Caprio, that meant seeing the humanity in the defendants (and victims) who sat […]

Senate Democrats for days have been unusually tight-lipped about why they scheduled a private huddle in a week with no major lawmaking planned. Now we know at least one topic they’re likely to discuss. The Senate will vote in the coming weeks, probably by the end of the month, on legislation implementing a statewide ban on […]

“Big” and “beautiful” must be in the eye of the beholder. The federal tax and policy megabill with that “big, beautiful” moniker completed its arduous journey through the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, putting congressional Republicans much closer to achieving many of their top priorities. It will come as no surprise that Democrats are apoplectic about […]

You might be starting to sweat next month’s electric bill after running your AC nonstop for days. And maybe, if Gov. Maura Healey gets her way, the inevitable heat waves a year or two from now won’t be quite as costly for consumers. In a serendipitous act of legislative scheduling, lawmakers on one of the hottest […]

Hey, Beacon Hill, have you heard about how much it costs to run a business here these days? How about the impending insolvency of the unemployment system? Maybe you’ll be surprised to learn what a squeeze energy prices are putting on employers? No, the topics that small business industry leaders plan to highlight this morning when […]

For weeks if not months, Beacon Hill’s insiders have been pondering what the next big policy push would be once the annual budget bill was (mostly) shuttled backstage. The answer, at least as far as the House is concerned, turns out to be marijuana. The House plans today to take up a major cannabis industry […]

Senate Democrats must have looked at the limited pile of legislative action through the first five months of the term and said: you know what, another spending bill in the mix isn’t enough. Let’s split it in two. With the calendar quickly approaching June, the House and Senate are still seemingly unable to get on the […]