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By Credit search: State House News Service

By CHRIS LISINSKI

BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey checked off one long-unanswered priority for municipal leaders by proposing two years’ worth of road and bridge maintenance funding in a single bill, but after years of inflation, city and town leaders are worried this...

By CHRIS LISINSKI

BOSTON — What’s the first step in dealing with an overflowing bathtub?That’s the question MASSPIRG legislative director Deirdre Cummings asks to make her pitch for a sweeping new bill aimed at wrangling the presence of PFAS chemicals in food...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey, who made gun laws a central part of her eight years as attorney general, said Thursday that so-called ghost guns should be banned and that she would support legislation to do that in Massachusetts.Untraceable ghost guns can...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

BOSTON — The budget that Gov. Maura Healey will file next week will boost the largest source of state education aid by almost 10% in what the administration said would be the biggest percentage increase since the last millennium.Local officials are...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

More than $3.7 million in state gaming tax revenue is flowing to 43 nonprofit and municipal performing arts centers to help them compete with the state’s casinos to book touring artists and performances, the Mass Cultural Council announced...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

Gov. Maura Healey tapped Lt. Col. John Mawn Jr., a 30-year veteran of the Massachusetts State Police, to serve as interim colonel of the department as she looks both inside and outside its current ranks for someone to assume the role on a permanent...

By Sam Drysdale

BOSTON — Residents all over Massachusetts are scheduled to absorb a significant decrease in food assistance aid in just over two weeks, with more than 630,000 households facing a loss of about a third of what they have received in SNAP benefits over...

By CHRIS LISINSKI

BOSTON – The $15 minimum wage that kicked into effect Jan. 1 was years in the making and took more than five more years to be implemented. Now, with the new rate just setting in, key power players have set their sights on making Massachusetts the...

By SAM DRYSDALE

BOSTON — As educators and policymakers alike are learning to navigate a world in which artificial intelligence can write both high school essays and legislation, some in Massachusetts have embraced the controversial technology with open arms.But while...

By MICHAEL P. NORTON

Coyotes are present in every Massachusetts city and town, according to state wildlife officials, who are out Tuesday with new tips to prevent rare “negative coyote encounters” during their ongoing mating season.“Whenever you see a coyote in your yard,...

By SAM DORAN

BOSTON — The House and Senate seem to once again be on different tracks when it comes to legislative transparency, potentially teeing up the branches for a do-over of their 2021 negotiations on internal operating procedures, which ended in an...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

New England grid operators expect demand for and use of electricity to hit their highest points yet this winter on as bone-chilling cold takes over Friday and Saturday, but they also expect they will have more than enough power available to meet that...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

The day before he resigned as chair of the Department of Public Utilities last week, Matthew Nelson responded to nearly 100 state lawmakers who had written him with concerns about winter energy bill increases to tell them that the gas bill reductions...

By CHRIS LISINSKI

The share of Massachusetts students who take out loans to pay for public higher education has exploded in the past two decades while the combined pressure of inflation and a lack of investment have hamstrung the impact of state-funded financial aid,...

By CHRIS LISINSKI and SAM DORAN

BOSTON — The biennial increases in legislator pay always generate a hearty share of public attention and inevitable criticism of the automatic, inflation-adjusted raises required by state law. But it’s the supplemental pay on top of that where the...

By SAM DRYSDALE

BOSTON — After agreeing last summer to a $110 million one-year extension of a pandemic-era program, lawmakers, advocates and families are calling for the state to make school meals free for all Massachusetts students permanently.Supporters of the...

By SAM DRYSDALE

BOSTON — Of the over 7,000 bills lawmakers filed in the last month, anti-poverty advocates are pushing to ensure increases in direct cash assistance to low-income families is one of the few hundred that will cross the finish line this session.Over a...

By SAM DORAN

The Legislature’s Food System Caucus is getting ready to “fight like hell” for its priorities, co-chair Sen. Jo Comerford said Wednesday, and another caucus leader said money to combat hunger can be realized by the savings it will create elsewhere in...

By Sam Drysdale

BOSTON — In her first appearance before Massachusetts’ municipal leaders, Gov. Maura Healey said she would fully fund the Student Opportunity Act, seek supplemental funding to cover costs associated with serving migrant children in the state’s public...

By Chris Lisinski

BOSTON — Around the country, state legislatures use their public websites to publish reams of written testimony submitted in support or opposition to proposals, name special interest groups and people who offer formal feedback, and identify how...