MASSACHUSETTS INSPECTOR GENERAL Jeffrey Shapiro called on the Cannabis Control Commission to conduct an audit following the commission’s failure to collect approximately $550,000 in licensing fees since August 2022. In a letter to Travis Ahern, the newly appointed executive director, and Bruce Stebbins, the acting commission chair, Shapiro wrote that the agency’s failure to collect […]
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Posted inHealth Care
Second Trump term has Mass. abortion advocates on edge
Rebecca Hart Holder, the president of Reproductive Equity Now, says Massachusetts needs to brace for possible assaults from the incoming Trump administration on the state’s ability to offer services not only to its own residents but to the thousands who have turned to Massachusetts for abortions in the past two years.
Posted inMarijuana
Vineyard and Nantucket pot shops on the ropes
Marijuana outlets on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket say they are facing an untenable fiscal squeeze because of a ban on transporting cannabis through federal waters.
Posted inOpinion
Advice from 2 mothers whose children died from meningitis
AS MOTHERS who have both lost a child, we often say we’re in a club that we want no one else to ever join. We started our individual foundations and the Meningitis B Action Project after we each lost our young, healthy daughters too soon to a now vaccine-preventable disease, Meningitis B. Kimberly (Patti’s daughter), […]
Posted inUncategorized
Feds downshift, say right to repair law can be implemented
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE AND FEDERAL regulators appear to have made a breakthrough to move forward with a voter-approved vehicle repair data law after legal battles and safety concerns stalled its implementation. A bit more than two months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that a 2020 Massachusetts “right to repair” update […]
Posted inUncategorized
Greg Torres: A most interesting man
IN 2016, MassINC and CommonWealth hosted Serious Fun, a humorous spoof on politicians and the Massachusetts political scene held at the John F. Kennedy Library. Greg Torres, the CEO of MassINC and the publisher of CommonWealth, appeared in one of the video skits as “the most interesting man in the world” – a funny take on the […]
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Lawmakers, Healey push budget deadline back another month
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. MAURA HEALEY bought top legislative Democrats up to another month to reach a long-overdue budget deal Thursday when she handed them a get-out-of-missed-deadline-free card, but it’s not clear if they will actually take full advantage of it. With the list of House-Senate feuds growing longer and a compromise state budget […]
Posted inUncategorized
Iselin of Blue Cross raises red flag on rising health care costs
SARAH ISELIN, the president and CEO of the state’s largest health insurer, says the rising cost of health care may be another reason why Massachusetts is in danger of losing its competitive edge. Iselin, who returned to nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts in January after a decade working elsewhere, noticed a change. She […]
Posted inOpinion
A letter to Bill McKibben: Do the math
Dear Bill McKibben, Thanks for coming home to Concord/Lexington on April 2 and reminding us how we have wasted precious time since you sounded the alarm in 1989 with “The End of Nature” book. We shrugged our shoulders then and went on to build McMansions in your old neighborhood and ignore the far-flung receding Arctic […]
Posted inUncategorized
New Census numbers underscore competitiveness issues
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE POPULATION of Massachusetts shrunk by nearly 8,000 people between July 2021 and July 2022, a drop of about 0.1 percent, but the newest estimate released in fresh data from the US Census Bureau puts the state’s population ahead of its revised 2020 Census level. The bureau’s “Vintage 2022 estimates of […]