Sam Drysdale

School vacation week is almost over and representatives are preparing to return to Beacon Hill next week for arguably their biggest (and usually longest) debate of the year: the annual budget bill. Thanks to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation for putting in the legwork, we have a clearer sense of how the 1,495 amendments representatives filed to House Ways and Means‘ $57.9 billion […]

Gov. Maura Healey‘s team will huddle today with health care providers about the hottest topic on Beacon Hill — but if you’re looking for much more information than that, don’t hold your breath.  The talks about uncertainty around patient care at Steward Health Care hospitals will be held privately and virtually. The first forum will take place today, focusing […]

It’s been six months since Gov. Maura Healey filed her $4 billion housing bond bill, and nearly a year and a half of lawmakers saying the Bay State’s expensive and paltry housing stock is one of the biggest issues in Massachusetts — and representatives seem to finally be readying to try to tackle the problem.  The House sent […]

In a Legislature notorious for moving at a snail’s pace, it’s always big news whenever a chamber simply brings a major bill forward for debate. But both of the big bills before the Senate today will still have a long way to go after amendments are voted up or down and the legislation is (likely) passed through the body. […]

Gov. Maura Healey took a trip to D.C. yesterday, where she led a talk with other state executives about one of the hottest topics with which both states and the feds are grappling: artificial intelligence.  It makes sense for the governor of an “innovation economy” state to be leading the AI front nationally, plus Healey was […]

No one mentioned the elephant in the room on Wednesday. Though they did kind of… gesture at it? Appeals Court Justice Gabrielle Wolohojian sailed through a four-hour confirmation hearing without a single direct question from the Governor’s Council about her previous personal relationship with Gov. Maura Healey, who nominated her to the Supreme Judicial Court. Wolohojian, an experienced jurist and […]

Looks like Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre has made the governor’s naughty list.  After “many months of discussion” about the fiscally flailing hospital system, Gov. Maura Healey took pen to paper on Tuesday to demand de la Torre clue the state in on the details of their financial peril, and prepare a plan to transfer the system’s seven running for-profit […]

“I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a ‘Harvard man’ is an enviable distinction and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain,” former President John F. Kennedy‘s application to Harvard University reads.  And go to Harvard he did, following in his famous and wealthy father’s footsteps — the kind of […]

State and municipal officials alike have been up against a somewhat sisyphean-seeming task of trying to find housing for homeless families, as immigrants stream into the state seeking shelter and fleeing violence and economic turmoil in their home countries.  It’s taken up ink and airtime likely hundreds of times over the past year, even considered […]

And that’s that on “creative accounting.” Gov. Maura Healey‘s fiscal year 2025 budget compensates for slowing revenue growth and big spending priorities by tapping into a number of one-time funding sources — though she and her budget chief made a point of telling reporters Wednesday that they did not touch the state’s hefty rainy day […]