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By Credit search: State House News Service

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...

By COLIN A. YOUNG

After two years of double-digit increases in home sale prices and inventory that couldn’t keep up with demand, signs of a correction in the Massachusetts housing market were apparent in the final 2022 statistics, analysts at The Warren Group said...

By Sam Drysdale

BOSTON — Cannabis control commissioners are in sharp disagreement over a new curriculum on driving under the influence of marijuana.This month, Massachusetts became the first recreational-use cannabis state in the nation to adopt a curriculum to...

By Colin A. Young

BOSTON — As she prepares to speak at the unveiling of The Embrace, a Boston Common monument honoring the lives and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Gov. Maura Healey said the memorial is particularly meaningful given the...

By SAM DRYSDALE

Cannabis Control Commission Chairwoman Shannon O’Brien did not break any CCC regulations with her ties to a company that the commission regulates, a CCC investigation released Wednesday concluded.An application from the Greenfield cultivation company...

By SAM DRYSDALE

Top Democrats are leaving the door open to reassessing the role of Massachusetts’ long-controversial standardized testing system as some education advocates reinvigorate calls to abolish the tests or remove the requirement that high school seniors...

By SAM DRYSDALE

COSTON — As promised in her inaugural speech Thursday, one of Gov. Maura Healey’s first actions as governor was to issue an executive order creating the country’s first Cabinet-level climate chief.The order announced Friday, Healey’s first full day in...

By MICHAEL P. NORTON

Gov. Charlie Baker has agreed to a new law aimed at making roads safer for “vulnerable users” such as bicyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders and anyone else who is not in a vehicle.Baker signed the bill (H 5103) Sunday after it gained momentum during...

By CHRIS LISINSKI

BOSTON — The Registry of Motor Vehicles now has another tool to track out-of-state driving records, an area where gaps in the past have been tied to tragic results.Over the weekend of June 25 and 26, the RMV tested and successfully rolled out a new...

By SAM DORAN

BOSTON — The Legislature on Monday set the dates of this year’s sales tax holiday weekend, settling on Aug. 13 and 14, when Massachusetts shoppers will get a break from state sales tax on most retail items less than $2,500.The annual sales-tax-free...

By CHRIS LISINSKI

Roughly 31,000 defendants who had criminal convictions vacated in the wake of a massive state drug lab scandal are poised to split about $14 million in settlement payments under a new agreement between their lawyers and Attorney General Maura...