MUCH OF THE DEBATE over the app-based-driver initiative petition has focused on how it would affect the drivers themselves. As important as those issues are, there is another aspect that has been overlooked. If the initiative petition establishes in law that drivers for Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, and other apps are “independent contractors” for all purposes, […]
Andy Metzger
Andy Metzger is currently studying law at Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously, he joined CommonWealth Magazine as a reporter in January 2019. He has covered news in Massachusetts since 2007. For more than six years starting in May 2012 he wrote about state politics and government for the State House News Service. At the News Service, he followed three criminal trials from opening statements to verdicts, tracked bills through the flumes and eddies of the Legislature, and sounded out the governor’s point of view on a host of issues – from the proposed Olympics bid to federal politics.
Before that, Metzger worked at the Chelmsford Independent, The Arlington Advocate, the Somerville Journal and the Cambridge Chronicle, weekly community newspapers that cover an array of local topics. Metzger graduated from UMass Boston in 2006. In addition to his written journalism, Metzger produced a work of illustrated journalism about Gov. Charlie Baker’s record regarding the MBTA. He lives in Somerville and commutes mainly by bicycle.
Posted inOpinion
Ex-reporter transitions to political partisan
A YEAR AGO, I was a nonpartisan political reporter in Massachusetts, happy to give people from either side of the spectrum due credit or due comeuppance. No longer. Now I am a full partisan in a battleground state. I display a Biden-Harris sign in our window. I proudly wear my Biden-Harris T-shirt. I have made […]
Posted inPolitics
Liberty Mutual, Verizon pushed tax change
LIBERTY MUTUAL AND VERIZON were two of the companies lobbying for a controversial corporate tax relief provision that appears to have nearly derailed a closeout budget bill late this year. The provision was pushed by Gov. Charlie Baker and the House, and opposed by the Senate. The Senate position ultimately prevailed and the closeout budget […]
Posted inPolitics
Weld: ‘All of this is totally unprecedented’
AS A YOUNG LAWYER working for the congressional committee investigating President Nixon, Bill Weld’s job was to study every impeachment that had previously occurred in Great Britain and the United States. Now he’s running in the Republican primary against the third president ever to be impeached by Congress: Donald Trump. He has some perspective. “All […]
Posted inPolitics
DeLeo: Lots of work remains on housing bill
THE HOUSING COMMITTEE advanced the governor’s housing choice bill with a nearly unanimous vote Thursday, but Speaker Robert DeLeo said that’s not a sign that agreement has been reached on the issue. Moving that bill and 19 others out of committee should put pressure on members to get to work hearing each other out and […]
Posted inUncategorized
Impeachment headed for crucible of Senate
NOW WHAT? By a margin of just over 30 votes, the US House impeached President Trump last night. For those hoping to hold the Republican president accountable for alleged abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, that was the easy part. The case now moves to the Senate, where Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Say hello to Nubian Square
THERE’S NO BRONZE traitor astride a horse. No statue whatsoever. In fact, it can be a little tricky to suss out who exactly Dudley Square is named after. But this era’s moral reckoning with villains from the past will soon shove aside the timeworn geographic honorific memorializing Thomas Dudley, a colonial functionary who was in […]
Posted inTransportation
TCI could up gas prices 5 to 17 cents a gallon in 2022
OFFICIALS DEVELOPING A new regional approach to reducing tailpipe emissions on the East Coast are considering policies that would add between 5 cents and 17 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline, generating over $1 billion in the first year spread among all the participating states. No price is set in stone yet, […]
Posted inPolitics
MassGOP goofs in swipe at Galvin
THE MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN PARTY appears to have missed a crucial detail when it lambasted the state’s top elections official and suggested he had no business including Bill Weld on the Republican primary ballot. The party, run by firebrand chairman Jim Lyons, had proposed on Thursday that President Trump should appear alone on the March 3 […]
Posted inPolitics
DeLeo laying groundwork for tax talk
WITHIN the shavings on the floor of the closeout budget conference negotiations lies a lever that House Democrats could lean on to help their case for more transportation revenue, but it would be a tricky maneuver. Even though the House and Senate had both earlier agreed on giving Gov. Charlie Baker the $50 million he […]