INTRO TEXT when the community Preservation Act emerged from a tortuous legislative process to become law in 2000, state officials heralded it as the most significant land-use bill passed in years. Simultaneously adding to the state’s affordable-housing stock, preserving open space, and restoring historic buildings, it was billed as a planning and funding tool to […]
State House News Service
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Closed meetings carry a cost
INTRO TEXT Municipal officials could be in for a rude—and costly—awakening if they don’t follow the letter of the law. The Open Meeting Law, that is. Under bills now pending in the Legislature, a court could fine government bodies that contravene the statute up to $1,000 and each member attending the session up to $500. […]
Posted inState House News Service, Transportation
Still working on the railroad: funding fuzzy for South Coast rail
INTRO TEXT “it’s easy to say, ‘Give me this, give me that,’” said Rep. Joseph Wagner, the Chicopee Democrat who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Transportation, during testimony on a commuter rail proposal this spring. “It’s not so easy to finance it.” That sums up the South Coast rail conundrum. But Gov. Deval Patrick says […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
A study in tax-study avoidance?
INTRO TEXT Of the seven business tax proposals put forward by Gov. Deval Patrick, “combined reporting” would deliver the biggest boost to state coffers, an estimated $136 million in fiscal 2008. It would prohibit corporations from shifting profits to subsidiaries in states with lower corporate taxes in order to reduce their exposure in Massachusetts. Patrick’s […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Following the Money
Gregory Sullivan’s first termas IG ends in August, and he’smaking it known that he isavailable for another. phil johnston thought all hell was going to break loose at the State House. It was 1977, and two state legislators had just been sentenced to a year in federal prison for soliciting $40,000 in bribes from a […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
The cable guys
it may not be etched in stone, but it’s a rule nonetheless: No one can write about public-access television without making reference to “Wayne’s World,” the Saturday Night Live skit—later a movie—about an access show starring two high-school-age stoners who prattle on about the heavy metal they can’t play and the sex they haven’t had. […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
Accreditation agency raises questions about school finance
INTRO TEXT at first, the news looked good for Georgetown Middle High School, the sole secondary school in a northern Essex County town of 7,377 residents, with students in grades six through 12. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ Commission on Public Secondary Schools reviews the accreditation of its roughly 630 dues-paying members […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
Taking Off
andreas gottzmann racks up quite a few frequent-flyer miles, traveling to Germany on business, but getting to the gate is a hassle. With no flights to Europe from Hartford’s Bradley International Airport, the president and CEO of Süddekor, a German-owned company with offices in Agawam, treks to Logan International Airport six to eight times a […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
On the Cape new homes for workers go begging
INTRO TEXT sandwich attorney jonathan Fitch doesn’t like the term “workforce housing.” He thinks it’s “gimmicky.” All he and his wife Nancy, who have been active on land-use issues in town since 1970, wanted to do was build “the least expensive new housing” in the area. But town officials and local housing groups persuaded the […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Two startups try to make consultants affordable for nonprofits
most nonprofit organizations run lean, if not mean, operations, with only the largest able to afford luxuries like contracting out a new database design to private management consultants. But even in the nonprofit world, performance matters more than ever, and engaging expert consultants is no longer a frill, but a necessity. What’s a shoestring operation […]