With sky-high sale prices and rents suffocating residents, the House will try to shift the tide by pumping more money into existing housing programs and rolling out a few new strategies.
State House News Service
Posted inEconomy
House approves liquor licenses for under-served Boston neighborhoods
The redrafted bill steers 180 non-transferable licenses over three years to 12 ZIP codes in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, East Boston, Roslindale, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, Charlestown, and Jamaica Plain.
Posted inTransportation
Coming this summer, T riders can use credit cards, phones to pay their fares
The start of contactless payment — a feature in place in other major transit systems, including New York City’s subway — will mark a milestone in a delayed, over-budget project to modernize fare collection at the T.
Posted inState Government
Millionaire surtax revenues far exceed expectations
Massachusetts has collected about $1.8 billion from a voter-approved surtax on the state’s highest earners through the first nine months of the fiscal year, the Department of Revenue said Monday in a quarterly report.
Posted inHealth Care
House passes broad health care legislation
The House voted 152-1 to approve a bill that combines reforms intended to avert a repeat of the Steward Health Care crisis with changes designed to boost state oversight of facility expansions and closures, refine cost control tools to better account for fluctuations, and increase funding for hospitals that typically serve high shares of low-income patients and people of color.
Posted inHousing
Mariano having doubts about local option transfer tax
The controversial policy idea may be what is holding up the House in taking up Gov. Maura Healey’s $4.1 billion housing bond bill, which she filed last October and has said is critical to addressing the shortage of affordable and available homes in Massachusetts.
Posted inState Government
Former prison in Norfolk to reopen as overflow shelter
A razor fence around the facility will be removed, according to a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.
Posted inBallot Questions
DiZoglio targets Uber, Lyft with supercharged hypothetical audit
The analysis estimated the on-demand ride platforms would have owed the state about $266 million in combined workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and the paid family and medical leave payments over the past decade if their tens of thousands of drivers were treated as full employees.
Posted inState Government
Rivera steps down at MassDevelopment
Dan O’Connell, MassDevelopment board member and former secretary of housing and economic development under Gov. Deval Patrick, will step in as interim CEO while the board conducts a search for a new leader.
Posted inRace/Racism
Antisemetic incidents surge in New England
Rabbi Ron Fish, ADL New England’s interim region director, called the data “simply stunning.”