STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE on Friday asked the state’s highest court to weigh in on whether the Senate abided by the constitution in proposing to freeze the income tax rate and add a tobacco tax through its version of the state budget. In a sparsely attended Friday morning session held only […]
Andy Metzger
Andy Metzger is currently studying law at Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously, he joined CommonWealth Magazine as a reporter in January 2019. He has covered news in Massachusetts since 2007. For more than six years starting in May 2012 he wrote about state politics and government for the State House News Service. At the News Service, he followed three criminal trials from opening statements to verdicts, tracked bills through the flumes and eddies of the Legislature, and sounded out the governor’s point of view on a host of issues – from the proposed Olympics bid to federal politics.
Before that, Metzger worked at the Chelmsford Independent, The Arlington Advocate, the Somerville Journal and the Cambridge Chronicle, weekly community newspapers that cover an array of local topics. Metzger graduated from UMass Boston in 2006. In addition to his written journalism, Metzger produced a work of illustrated journalism about Gov. Charlie Baker’s record regarding the MBTA. He lives in Somerville and commutes mainly by bicycle.
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, Transportation
McGee hedges on overturning union contract awards
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE SENATE’S POINT MAN on transportation issues hedged on Thursday on whether lawmakers will give the Massachusetts Department of Transportation board the power to reject an arbitrator’s union contract award. Sen. Thomas McGee of Lynn, the cochair of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, said the Senate sees no need to appoint a […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Pollack says dissolving T was considered
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE SWEEPING ASIDE THE AGENCY that oversees metro Boston’s transit system and reassembling the bureaucracy was a path considered and rejected by a gubernatorial advisory panel, though it is not unreasonable, the state’s transportation chief said Tuesday. “We don’t have a Turnpike Authority anymore. It’s gone. It is not silly to say […]
Posted inEducation, Politics, State House News Service
Chief of Lowell campus gets top UMass job
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AFTER TOUTING HIS FUNDRAISING capabilities and pledging to make diversity a priority, UMass Lowell Chancellor and former Congressman Martin Meehan was chosen by the University of Massachusetts Board Friday to serve as the system’s next president, a choice made about 24 hours after Meehan’s candidacy was publicly disclosed. Surpassing a Harvard […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
House fends off film tax credit change
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH NO RECORDED VOTES and many members absent from the chamber, the House retained the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax along with state aid for the movie industry during the start of a budget debate Monday. In three hours of a sometimes feisty debate where roll call votes were occasionally sought […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Pollack: “Hemorrhaging” MBTA needs tourniquet
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE MBTA HAS an estimated 535 employees on its debt-funded capital budget and without state budget help will run a $187 million deficit next fiscal year, Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack told lawmakers Tuesday. Pollack told lawmakers the $187 million request in Gov. Charlie Baker’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal would help the […]
Posted inOlympics, State House News Service
Boston 2024 backs state referendum
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE CHIEF BACKER of a Boston bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics is now supporting the idea of a 2016 referendum on the bid. Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish, who is spearheading the privately funded nonprofit seeking to bring the summer Olympics to Boston, told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Baker proposes T funding hike
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE TAXPAYERS WILL further subsidize the struggling MBTA under Gov. Charlie Baker’s budget proposal, which calls for a $64.5 million increase in funding for the agency, an investment that one top House lawmaker and MBTA critic called “kind of crazy.” The increase, part of a spending bill that will be fully […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Baker talks more broadly about the T
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. CHARLIE BAKER, who has avoided discussion of long-term solutions in favor of focusing on short-term fixes for the snow-battered MBTA, said Thursday he is not foreclosing any approach but expressed strong reservations about turning immediately to tax hikes. Baker campaigned in favor of repealing a law linking the gas tax […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
MBTA still unsure when it can resume operations
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH ITS RAIL service shut down, MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott on Tuesday defended the transit system’s response to historic snow amounts and said she would not know when the rail system could resume operations until later Tuesday afternoon. During a late-morning press conference, Scott said she could not assure the […]