Should the MBTA use some of its future parking revenues to help rescue the agency from its latest financial crisis? A group of independent transportation experts who advise the state Department of Transportation is dubious. The Transportation Advisory Committee has expressed “grave reservations” about the MBTA’s latest proposal to begin to chip away at its […]
State House News Service
Posted inEconomy, Environment, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Payback
Maybe it’s the defensiveness engendered by the decades-long moniker of Taxachusetts or the relentless hammering by Republicans and corporations about the inhospitable business atmosphere in the state, old perceptions that officials have worked to overcome. Massachusetts has always had a “thank you sir, may I have another” approach to rejection by those who have received […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Patrick as political analyst
Gov. Deval Patrick spent the weekend in Washington, DC, raising his national profile, raising cash, and getting some practice in the role of campaign surrogate for President Obama. The trip allowed him to plant an unwanted kiss on the mug of one Willard Mitt Romney, but it also caused a stir back home when the […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Redistricting – there’s an app for that
Why is meeting with members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation the first order of business for Beacon Hill’s point men on redistricting, Rep. Michael Moran and Sen. Stanley Rosenberg? Massachusetts Republican Party chief Jennifer Nassour criticized Moran directly for the private meetings. But House Minority Leader Brad Jones told the State House News Service that Moran, a Brighton Democrat, has made a […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Cash for credits
The US Tax Court is making it easier to turn tax credits into cash. Travis Blais, a Mintz Levin tax attorney, issued an alert about a recent decision that he says gives tax credit investors a big boost. The case revolved around a $100 million renovation of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, a certified historic […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service
Ending Middleton’s environmental nightmare
Receivers have been known to parachute into Bay State municipalities to clean up their finances, but never to clean up their landfills. That all changed when attorney Michael Leon was appointed receiver to help Middleton deal with a decades-old environmental nightmare. How the receiver handled the case, along with the push to confront problems with […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
The little college that could
WILKELSON GEDEON HAD his heart set on majoring in engineering at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. But the Arlington native, a self-declared procrastinator, missed the application deadline. After a friend had raved about the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston’s South End, he applied and was accepted to the electrical technology program. […]
Posted inHealth Care, State House News Service
DeLeo bucks public unions on health
House Speaker Robert DeLeo , in a move likely to erode his longheld union support, today vowed to push for legislation that would help rein in municipal health care costs by requiring cities and towns to join the state’s Group Insurance Commission. “Unless cities and towns can find health insurance at the same or lower […]
Posted inEconomy, Environment, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: House hunting
Headlines about housing woes are usually followed by tales of low-income families squeezed by the sky-high cost of housing in Greater Boston. But that very difficult reality has obscured a very different housing story that is playing out in the state’s Gateway Cities, where subsidized housing has taken over local housing markets and is holding […]
Posted inEducation, Environment, Health Care, Politics, State House News Service, The Download
The Download: Dreams deferred
Last week Gov. Deval Patrick said that he wanted to facilitate undocumented immigrants’ access to college and drivers’ licenses in his overall strategy to expand opportunities for legal and illegal immigrants. Yet new federal pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and the broader opportunities that come with them, may end up being dreams deferred, according to a Mother Jones story […]