STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE The state’s largest gun owners group released a critique on Tuesday of a task force’s recommendations to reduce gun violence, concluding that experts appointed by House Speaker Robert DeLeo, who characterized the state’s gun laws as among the strongest in the nation, failed to recognize the inability of those laws to […]
Michael P. Norton I State House News Service
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Target: Data breach could affect 40 million
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Target, the major retailer with locations throughout Massachusetts, confirmed Thursday “unauthorized access to payment card data” that may have impacted 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The impacts would have been between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. “Target’s first priority is preserving the trust of our guests and we have […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Baker, Polito to run as GOP team
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker on Tuesday tethered his hopes to take back the Corner Office to a former state representative from Shrewsbury, joining Karyn Polito at a diner in her hometown to declare a GOP ticket for the 2014 election. Polito, who lost a race for treasurer in 2010, brings […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics, State House News Service
Fact-checking Patrick’s health care article
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Gov. Deval Patrick is bullish about the 2006 health care access law, the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act, and a 2012 state law to control cost increases. In a Huffington Post op-ed Monday, Patrick, a Democrat finishing his second term and considered a potential national office seeker, unsurprisingly focused on the […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
Record MCAS scores but news not all good
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Fourteen Massachusetts schools designated “underperforming” in 2010 have met three-year turnaround goals and will shed their Level 4 status, but four turnaround schools could fall into state receivership, state education officials announced Wednesday. Fourteen of the 34 Level 4 schools have increased student achievement and demonstrated significant progress in improving school […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service
Vermont Yankee plant to close next year
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Citing financial factors including lower natural gas prices, Entergy announced plans Tuesday to close and begin a decades-long process to decommission the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, which is located a few miles north of the western Massachusetts border between the two states. The Vernon, VT, plant began commercial operation in […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service, Transportation
Cabral: Administration using ‘scare tactics’
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE SENIOR TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS on Tuesday cautioned that major expansion projects prioritized by the Patrick administration could be in jeopardy if tolls on the western portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike come down in four years, but one House lawmaker called the warning “scare tactics.” Rep. Antonio Cabral, a New Bedford Democrat and […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Lobbyists win challenge to Galvin requirement
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE ASSERTING THAT PART of Secretary of State William Galvin’s arguments made “absolutely no sense,” a Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of lobbyists who went to court to challenge Galvin’s interpretation of a requirement that they disclose “direct business associations” with public officials. Beginning last July, Galvin’s office started interpreting […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Murray faces probe on campaign finances
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE REGULATORS FOUND evidence that Lt. Gov. Tim Murray and his campaign committee did not comply with campaign finance laws and referred the matter last September to Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office. In a Sept. 19 letter, Office of Campaign and Political Finance Director Michael Sullivan informed Coakley that his office […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics, State House News Service
Patrick wants to cut local aid by 1 percent
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE AS PART OF A PLAN to address an estimated $540 million mid-year budget gap, Gov. Deval Patrick on Tuesday slashed spending by $225 million and asked the Legislature to allow him to unilaterally reduce unrestricted local aid to cities and towns by 1 percent. Unrestricted local aid pays for local services, […]