Correction: An earlier version of this story mispelled “Ronald Mann.” WITH BLACK FRIDAY not far off, business leaders and municipal officials have been clamoring for the Patrick administration to act fast to require Amazon.com to collect the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax now that the company has a physical presence in Massachusetts. State officials are […]
Growth and Development
Posted inEconomy
Half full or half empty?
from the sound bites blanketing the airwaves, it’s clear that politicians everywhere are concerned about the impact of the recession and slow recovery on the middle class. Elected leaders intuitively feel the public angst. But are things truly getting worse for middle-class families? Or are voters mostly reacting to the constant barrage of dispiriting media […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
A bank for infrastructure
 Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey. the pivot was abrupt, but it hardly sounded unfamiliar. For two straight hours, Joe Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, had led an auditorium packed with angry residents in a rousing denunciation of the state’s Highway Department. This was a somewhat unusual scene, in that Somerville residents are normally […]
Posted inEconomy, Environment, The Download
A123 looks to China
A Chinese company’s plan to invest in A123 Systems may save the Waltham battery maker, but the deal is another blow to the US economy and the country’s efforts to subsidize green technologies. Dave Vieau, the CEO of A123, announced the deal in a conference call with analysts on Wednesday morning. He said Wanxiang Group […]
Posted inEconomy
Patrick signs jobs bill, vetoes tax credits
Gov. Deval Patrick signed an economic development bill into law on Tuesday but vetoed a number of provisions that would have extended or expanded some of the state’s existing tax credits. Greg Bialecki, Patrick’s secretary of housing and economic development, said the governor’s vetoes were based on the recommendations earlier this year of the state’s […]
Posted inEconomy, The Back Story
The Greenway standoff continues
The state Department of Transportation didn’t take the knees out from under the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy this week. MassDOT may not have heard what it wanted to hear from the Conservancy, but it made conciliatory noises nonetheless. The lack of fireworks surrounding the release of the Conservancy’s new budget, however, doesn’t mean that […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Conservancy loses bid for Armenian park care
The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy has lost its bid to maintain the Armenian Heritage Park, a half-acre park that sits in the middle of the Greenway park system. The lost maintenance contract is likely to increase scrutiny of the Conservancy’s cost structure, as the Boston nonprofit heads into a critical lease negotiation with its […]
Posted inEconomy
Legal ambiguities face Mashpee Wampanoags
When Massachusetts lawmakers legalized casino gambling last year, they put the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in a legally tenuous position: Lawmakers gave the tribe first crack at opening a casino in the state’s southeastern region, but on the condition that the tribe work through a federal approval process that had been shut down by the Supreme […]
Posted inEconomy, Education
What would Jesus do?
The Holy Trinity School in Lawrence, which closed in 2004, was recently sold with the restriction that it not be used as a charter school for the next 90 years. Photo by J. Cappuccio. Boston cardinal Seán O’Malley condemns the Obama administration’s requirement that all employers, even religious ones, offer insurance covering the cost of […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care, Opinion
Mass. health care law hasn’t stunted growth
The following is a slightly edited transcript of Sen. Dan Wolf’s testimony in Washington on Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform regarding the job and economic costs of the federal Affordable Care Act. The other four individuals asked to testify before the committee took a very different view of the law. Click […]