RULING THE DAY — A compromise on new joint rules that Democratic legislative leaders planned to pass as part of their promise to bring more transparency and efficiency to Beacon Hill is so far coming together in typical Beacon Hill fashion: slowly, behind closed doors.
But it isn’t dead yet. While the conference committee “has not formally met since the initial public hearing” in March, according to Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem, “the committee chairs have continued conversations with staff.”
“Both sides have exchanged ideas productively, and we intend to hold another public meeting,” Creem said in a statement. Her office didn’t elaborate on when the next meeting could be.
Creem and House Majority Leader Mike Moran struck an optimistic note during the rare public conference committee meeting they led in March. They agreed, Moran said at the time, that “the goal is to try and get something done here” after hitting an impasse over procedural protocols governing the joint committees.
More than a month later, the two chambers are still gridlocked. And as budget debate begins and more hearings are added to the schedule, advocates who’ve long pushed for reform are growing impatient.
“It's kind of embarrassing that we're hitting the marker of Trump's first 100 days and they still haven't even passed joint rules,” said Jonathan Cohn, the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts.
Zoom in: Officially, the joint committees are operating under the rules package they passed in 2019, but the expectation that new rules could be coming soon is causing confusion among lawmakers and advocates.
“The current approach to the transparency change is completely piecemeal,” Scotia Hille, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Act on Mass, told Playbook. “Some of the joint committees have made changes, but they're not consistent. Some seem to be adopting Senate versions, some are adopting House versions, leaving constituents even more confused than before.”
Some of that confusion could spill out into the open today, when committees have to report out any proposals for constitutional amendments they want to consider this session.
Zoom out:New legislative rules were supposed to be a way for the chambers to address calls for transparency, which became particularly pronounced amid state Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s campaign to audit the Legislature.
Instead, they’re threatening to resurrect old tensions between the branches that led to the messy end of formal business last summer.
In other words: “It's a bad sign when their attempt to reform the legislative process to be more efficient and to avoid bottlenecks gets bottlenecked,” Cohn said.
GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS . Have a tip, story, suggestion, birthday, anniversary, new job, or any other nugget for the Playbook? Drop me a line: kgarrity@politico.com .
TODAY — Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll attend a Creative Sector Day event at 11:15 a.m. and join the annual Denim Day event at 2:45 p.m. at the State House. Driscoll attends and MA250 related event at 1 p.m. in Boston and is on GBH’s “The Culture Show” at 2:20 p.m. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu speaks at the city’s Vietnam flag raising ceremony at noon at City Hall and at Boston Business Journal event at 1:10 p.m. in Back Bay
DATELINE BEACON HILL
BUDGET WATCH — House budget plan grows by $31.7 million on day two by Sam Drysdale, State House News Service: “The $31.7 million that representatives voted to include Tuesday is added to the $18.4 million in additional spending they approved Monday. … Coming into the week, representatives filed 1,650 amendments to the committee's fiscal 2026 budget. After two days, they've worked through 1,023, or about 63.7%, of those amendments in one way or another.”
****MASS GOP WANT TO RE-WRITE THE COURT'S DECISION & DETAIN SOMEONE ILLEGALLY - THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS! THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT REP. PAUL FROST IS AN ATTORNEY!*****
— Massachusetts House Democrats reject GOP-led civil immigration detainer reform by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “House Democrats resoundingly rejected a Republican-led effort Wednesday afternoon to reform a 2017 court ruling that bars law enforcement in Massachusetts from detaining people based solely on suspected civil immigration violations. … Rep. Paul Frost, an Auburn Republican, unsuccessfully pushed legislators to sign off on a proposal that would have allowed local law enforcement to detain someone wanted by federal immigration authorities for up to 12 hours after their court proceedings end.”
Beacon Hill eying 2017 immigration-related court ruling. Here’s what the decision means
Beacon Hill Republicans are lining up in their crosshairs a seven-year-old court decision that bars law enforcement in Massachusetts from detaining people based solely on suspected civil immigration violations just as President Donald Trump is attempting to enact mass deportations.
Critics argue the July 2017 ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) provides “sanctuary” protections to undocumented immigrants in Massachusetts but supporters say it does not impede the work of federal immigration officers and sets clear boundaries.
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition State Government Affairs Director Amy Grunder said the ruling, known as the Lunn decision, is drawing scrutiny because President Donald Trump is targeting “sanctuary cities and sanctuary states.”
“These laws, even though people call them sanctuary laws, they do not provide sanctuary from enforcement of our criminal laws,” Grunder told the Herald. “And they certainly don’t provide sanctuary to people from (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). ICE has jurisdiction to be anywhere in a public space in Massachusetts and nothing about Lunn changes that.”
In a 34-page decision, SJC justices wrote that local law enforcement do not have the power to hold someone only on the basis of a civil immigration detainer issued by federal officials beyond the time they would otherwise be released from custody.
The ruling means law enforcement must release people from their custody even if federal immigration authorities issue a civil immigration detainer.
The detainers ask local authorities to hold someone for up to two days after they would otherwise be entitled to release in order to allow federal officials to arrive and take the person into their custody for removal proceedings.
Multiple conservatives on Beacon Hill have filed legislation that would hand local law enforcement the authority to hold people on a civil immigration detainer just as the Legislature is gearing up for a larger debate around the interaction between police and federal officers.
Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a Boston University law professor and associate director of the university’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic, said the ruling does not prohibit federal officials from enforcing U.S. immigration laws.
The decision instead says that local authorities do not have the inherent authority to arrest someone based on an ICE detainer, she said. Civil immigration detainers are issued without a judicial warrant and they do not require probable cause, she said.
“It’s like a letter to Santa — ‘we wish you would hold this person for us,’” Sherman-Stokes said in an interview. “But courts don’t have to do that. That doesn’t mean that ICE can’t enforce its laws in all the other myriad ways that it engages in enforcement, it just means that this one particular way is off the table.”
Removing someone from the United States is a civil, not a criminal, matter, which makes federal immigration detainers civil in nature, justices wrote in the ruling.
The removal process is not a criminal prosecution and detainers are not criminal arrest warrants, the justices said.
“They do not charge anyone with a crime, indicate that anyone has been charged with a crime, or ask that anyone be detained in order that he or she can be prosecuted for a crime,” the ruling said. “Detainers like this are used to detain individuals because the federal authorities believe that they are civilly removable from the country.”
Justices said that holding someone on a civil immigration detainer, against their will, constitutes an arrest under Massachusetts law.
“We conclude that nothing in the statutes or common law of Massachusetts authorizes court officers to make a civil arrest in these circumstances,” the ruling said.
The court did not decide whether arrests based on civil immigration detainers, if they were authorized by state law, would be permissible under the U.S. Constitution or the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
That left the door open for future clarification if the Legislature decided to pass a law modifying the Lunn decision, said Grunder of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition.
“They did say … we’re not answering this now but if the Legislature decides to create such a statute, we will then consider whether it violates the U.S. Constitution or the Massachusetts Constitution,” Grunder said.
And the Supreme Judicial Court did not block Beacon Hill lawmakers from further defining the ruling.
“The prudent course is not for this court to create, and attempt to define, some new authority for court officers to arrest that heretofore has been unrecognized and undefined. The better course is for us to defer to the Legislature to establish and carefully define that authority if the Legislature wishes that to be the law of this commonwealth,” the justices wrote in the decision.
The law’s origin
The case stemmed from the experience of Sreynuon Lunn, who was arraigned in a Boston court in October 2016 on a single count of unarmed robbery.
The day before his arraignment, federal immigration officials issued a civil immigration detainer against him.
His case was later dismissed for lack of prosecution, leaving Lunn with no criminal charges pending against him in Massachusetts. But a judge declined to release him after Lunn’s lawyer brought up the civil immigration detainer.
Instead, Lunn remained in state custody for at least several hours before federal immigration officials arrived at the courthouse and took him into their custody, according to the Supreme Judicial Court ruling.
The next morning Lunn’s lawyer filed a legal challenge in county court that alleged the trial court and its court officers had no authority to hold him on the federal immigration detainer after the criminal case against him had been dismissed, according to the ruling
The lawyer also argued that Lunn’s rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Articles 12 and 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights had been violated.
Even though Lunn was already in federal custody at that point, the SJC took up the matter “recognizing that the petition raised important, recurring, and time-sensitive legal issues that would likely evade review in future cases,” according to the 2017 ruling.
Originally Published:
****WHAT REPUBLICANS ARE PROPOSING IS ILLEGAL ACCORDING TO THE SJC DECISION! WHILE THE BLOVIATORS LIKE AMY CARNEVALE (WHO IS NOT AN ATTORNEY) ARE PROPOSING HAS BEEN ADDRESSED! READ THE SJC DECISION!
THIS IS TYPICAL OF MASS GOP LIES TO INCLUDE THE SHELTER ISSUE SINCE IT WAS PREVIOUSLY ADDRESSED THAT SHELTERS WERE FILLED WITH MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS!
IT'S TIME TO STOP THE INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC. IT'S TIME TO STOP PROPOSING ILLEGAL ACTIONS! MASS GOP WHINE & COMPLAIN - NEVER ANY SOLUTIONS! THE ISSUE IS HOMELESSNESS THAT EFFECTS LARGE PORTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS! *****
“Rather than endorse a commonsense approach to dealing with the spate of violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants harbored in Massachusetts, Democrats would rather bury their heads in the sand about a problem that continues to persist long after the migrant shelter crisis hit its high-water mark,” state Republlican Party Chairperson Amy Carnevale said in a statement.
A 2017 state Supreme Judicial Court ruling known as the “Lunn Decision” limits how state and local law enforcement assist with federal immigration enforcement, according to thestate branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
— Bellingham Republican setting sites on potentially running for Mass. constitutional office by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “Rep. Michael Soter, a Bellingham Republican, says he has narrowed his focus to potentially running for a statewide constitutional office in 2026, telling the Herald he has multiple donors lined up if he decides to jump into the mix. The fourth-term state representative has been mulling a campaign for higher office this year, and previously told the Herald he was not ruling out challenging U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. But in a statement Tuesday, Soter said he is now considering a ‘statewide constitutional office.’”
BOSTON HERALD PROPAGANDA RAG PAY WALL
****PETER DURANT'S FIRST ACT WAS TO ENDORSE DESANTIS - PRESENTLY SURROUNDED BY ANOTHER SCANDAL! HE WAS JOINED BY RYAN FATTMAN WHOSE CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION INVOLVED MANY OTHERS IN A CONSPIRACY....
GOP couple agree to Mass.’s largest settlement after campaign finance investigation
MEANWHILE — State Sen. Peter Durant tells State House News Service’s Alison Kuznitz he's “getting closer” to a decision on whether to run for governor. Durant had $7,049 in his campaign account at the end of March.
DESANTISLAND — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis picked up another two backers in the Bay State after this week's debate: Republicans state Sen. Ryan Fattman and state Rep. Kelly Pease .
— Some Boston schools’ promises unfulfilled as state improvement plan expires by John Hilliard, The Boston Globe: “Three years after the state declared Boston was failing to serve its most vulnerable students, and brokered a deal with Mayor Michelle Wu for the district to fix its schools to avoid a state takeover, both sides are walking away — despite problems the district has yet to resolve.”
THE RACE FOR CITY HALL
****SCRUTINIZE THE NEWTON NEBBISH CAREFULLY! CARPETBAGGER WHO OFFERS NO SERIOUS SOLUTIONS! SUPPORTED THE WHITE STADIUM LAWSUIT THAT WAS DENIED BY THE COURT, HIS PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO MASS & CASS ARE SUPERFICIAL AT BEST - NOT A SOLUTION! *****
Judge rules in favor of Boston and soccer team in White Stadium lawsuit
STATE OF THE RACE— Boston Mayor Michelle Wu holds a wide lead over Josh Kraft in the city’s mayoral contest, according to a new poll from the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
Asked who they would back if the election were held today, 53 percent of the 564 likely Boston voters surveyed said they would choose Wu, while 21 percent would back Kraft.
Wu also had strong job approval (61 percent approve of the job she’s doing compared to 37 who disapprove) and 50 percent of voters say she should be reelected, compared to 32 percent who want someone else leading the city.
Still, the results did point to vulnerabilities for the incumbent: 67 percent of those surveyed said they disapprove of how Boston has handled the cost of housing, 66 percent disapprove of traffic management and 57 percent disapprove of how the city is managing homeless — areas Kraft has hammered Wu on.
Kraft, meanwhile, leads with voters who disapprove of Boston’s “sanctuary city” status, those unhappy with Boston’s quality of life and Republicans.
The expert’s take: “Kraft has a defined base, but to compete he must broaden support — especially among voters who don’t yet connect the city’s challenges to overall quality of life,” Neil Levesque, executive director of NHIOP, wrote. “That will be difficult in an issues environment dominated by national concerns.”
The poll was conducted online from April 23 to 25 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES
— New England Patriots' charter plane flew to Guantanamo Bay — not for the first time by Walter Wuthmann, WBUR: “A charter company flew one of the New England Patriots' team planes to and from the U.S. naval base and detention center at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba on Monday, according to public flight tracking data. A plane bearing the team plane's call sign and tail number took off from Fort Worth, Texas, and landed in Guantánamo at 10:49 a.m. central time Monday morning, according to data from FlightAware and ADS-B Exchange. The plane left a few hours later for Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso. … Public flight tracking data show the Patriots' planes have bounced between multiple U.S. military installations in recent months, including another February trip to Guantánamo as well as flights to Naval Base Coronado in California and Fort Campbell, an Army installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.”
excerpts:
A charter company flew one of the New England Patriots' team planes to and from the U.S. naval base and detention center at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba on Monday, according to public flight tracking data. "I think it's reasonable to be very concerned," said Angelina Godoy, director of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. "We know that Guantánamo Bay is being used as we speak as an offsite, extra-judicial detention facility for migrants."
Godoy said a Patriots' plane has been used for deportation flights before, in 2022 when Joe Biden was president. A report from the center she runs found a Patriots charter plane was used three times for deportation flights to Honduras, as part of a wider look at how ICE charters planes used by sports teams, musicians and celebrities.
The Patriots say they no longer contract with their old charter provider and neither of their planes has been used for a deportation flight with the current charter manager, according to a Patriots spokesperson.
***THIS IDEA JUST SEEMS TO MAKE SENSE TO ENABLE COMMUNITIES TO ADDRESS SURROUNDING ISSUES!*****
— Massachusetts town official floats idea of tolls at Cape Cod bridges by Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald: “A Cape Cod town official says he’s advocating for tolls to be “imposed” at the Sagamore and Bourne bridges, charging motorists from outside the region to enter the popular vacation getaway. Mashpee Select Board Vice Chairman David Weeden is pitching the idea, estimating that tolls could bring in tens of millions annually and suggesting that the money should be earmarked to address ‘coastal and water quality issues.’”
excerpt:
The Masphee Select Board member highlighted that over 35 million vehicles cross the bridges combined every year.
“Even if you did $2 an axle, only calculating cars, you’d bring in about $70 million a year,” Weeden said. “We could generate a lot of money towards helping the local Cape Cod communities address the lack of infrastructure.”
“We are all facing it,” he added, “We are all recognizing the environment needs help, and looking for the state to support us in our efforts to do so and help with some funding for that.”
The regional board, Cape Cod Commission, floated a congestion pricing idea in 2009. Drivers’ license plates would have been captured by a high-speed camera. Officials could have then matched a plate number with a corresponding mailing address and sent a bill for using a particular road or bridge.
The charge would have been limited to drivers who do not live on the Cape, but the idea received sharp backlash.
The National Transportation Safety Board has included the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, built in 1935, on a list of spans recommended for assessments to determine their risk of collapse from a vessel collision.
Agencies are working to replace the spans owned, operated, and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Officials had received $1.7 billion in federal funding for the effort as of last year.
MassDOT has started to have contractors conduct subsurface investigations and vegetation management operations near the Sagamore, requiring temporary lane/shoulder closures on area roadways.
— Lawmakers want answers on South Coast Rail disruptions by Grace Ferguson, The New Bedford Light: “A state Senate committee has opened an inquiry into delayed and cancelled trains on the new South Coast Rail line. … The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight sent a detailed list of questions to the MBTA last week asking for information about staffing and cancellations. The MBTA has until Friday to respond.”
excerpt:
Disruptions have frustrated riders since the MBTA extension opened on March 24, including several canceled trains the weekend of April 19-20. Keolis, the company that runs commuter trains under a contract with the MBTA, has said it cancelled trains because it doesn’t have enough staff trained on the new tracks. Some riders say they were stranded for hours.
The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight sent a detailed list of questions to the MBTA last week asking for information about staffing and cancellations. The MBTA has until Friday to respond.
“Stranding passengers late into the evening hours is an unacceptable error that presents a potential safety issue for older riders, young children, and those with medical conditions in addition to the obvious inconvenience inflicted upon all passengers,” wrote State Sen. Mark Montigny, who chairs the committee, in the letter to MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng.
Keolis spokesperson Jake O’Neill did not answer repeated phone calls from The Light this week.
Train conductors and engineers need to be qualified to work on specific lines, O’Neill wrote in an email on Tuesday. Trains were cancelled because there haven’t always been enough crews trained on the new South Coast Rail tracks to cover for workers who called out sick or missed their shift.
Keolis says it’s training more staff. It has 54 conductors currently qualified for South Coast Rail, and a plan to raise that number to 65 by early June, O’Neill said.
MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo declined to make any agency officials available for interviews. In an email, he referred the Light to Eng’s comments at last Thursday’s MBTA board meeting, when Eng said Keolis officials had communicated to the T before the extension opened that “they were ready to deliver this level of service.”
Keolis replaced some trains with buses the weekend of April 19-20. It planned to do that again this past weekend, but it found enough crews at the last minute to run trains as scheduled, O’Neill said. The MBTA has fined Keolis $51,541 for the disruptions, State House News Service reported.
The MBTA is extending weekend free fares for South Coast riders through the end of May “as a show of gratitude to riders who have been utilizing this new service.” The promotion was originally planned to end this month.
The staffing shortages are disappointing to transit advocates who have watched the project stumble through decades of delays.
“Why wasn’t this thought of and prepared for?” asked Reggie Ramos, executive director of the advocacy group Transportation for Massachusetts.
She wanted a fuller explanation from Keolis on how the shortages happened and what the company was doing to mitigate them.
Ramos said launching the project two months early may have contributed to the staffing shortages, leaving less time for Keolis to train enough workers. Earlier this year, the MBTA moved up the opening date from May to March.
The disruptions rob riders of dignity and discourage ridership on public transit as a whole, Ramos said.
Large corporations made appearances on the list, including e-commerce giant Amazon and Facebook owner Meta, which each gave $1 million. The largest donation, coming in at $5 million, was from Pilgrim’s Pride, a poultry producer based in Colorado. Cryptocurrency interests also donated, with Ripple Labs donating $4.9 million.
The 21 Massachusetts donors and businesses, with donations totaling roughly $4.1 million, fell below their counterparts in other states, such as Pennsylvania ($8.6 million) and Michigan ($6.4 million). Both were swing states in 2024, while Massachusetts has remained a Democratic stronghold, with Ronald Reagan the last Republican to win the Bay State in 1984.
CommonWealth Beacon reviewed the Trump inauguration fundraising committee’s filing with the Federal Election Commission, which included donors and companies listing Massachusetts addresses. One of the largest donors in the state was a company tied to billionaire and car dealership magnate Ernie Boch Jr. The company, which is called Boston Port Service and shares an address with his nonprofit charity Music Drives Us, donated $1 million. Boch, who previously hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2015, was unreachable for comment.
DraftKings, the Boston-based gambling company with a focus on sports betting, gave $502,000, while FanDuel, its New York-based rival, gave $482,000.
Another $500,000 came from GE Vernova, a Cambridge-based energy technology company working in the renewable power sector. The company, whose wind power division is grappling with a White House that has sought to put a stop to new wind turbine projects, spun off from the conglomerate General Electric in 2024. (CommonWealth Beacon reached out to DraftKings and GE Vernova for comment but did not hear back.)
Jessica Beeson Tocco, the CEO of A10 Associates, which bills itself as the country’s “largest woman-owned bipartisan lobbying firm,” personally donated $101,652 to the Trump inauguration committee and then an additional $50,000 through her Malden-based company. (The company also hosted a cocktail reception at the Waldorf Astoria the weekend before the inauguration, according to Politico.)
One of her clients, Quantum Computing Inc. CEO William McGann, also donated $101,652. He is retiring from the technology company in May and is listed as having an East Falmouth address on the FEC’s records.
Reached for comment, Tocco stressed that her firm’s donations go to top elected officials in both parties, with contributions flowing to prominent Massachusetts Democrats like US Sen. Ed Markey, Gov. Maura Healey, and Congresswoman Lori Trahan.
A potential Healey rival for the corner office in the State House, Michael Minogue, donated $250,000 to the Trump inauguration committee. Minogue, who now has his own consulting firm after serving as president and CEO of medical technology company Abiomed, has previously donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee and the state GOP. He also gave several thousand dollars to former Gov. Charlie Baker and Josh Kraft, who is looking to unseat Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, according to publicly available campaign finance records.
Others gave smaller amounts. Sriprakash Kothari, an accounting professor at MIT and a Lexington resident who regularly donates to the state GOP, gave $2,500 to the Trump inauguration committee. Kothari, who worked as the chief economist for the US Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration, declined to comment about the donation.
Some of the donors, like the company tied to Boch, had to be tracked through corporate documents on file with the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office. For example, Randolph-based GGBF Inc. donated $50,000 to the Trump inauguration committee, according to the FEC filing.
Documents on file with the state show the company shares the same address and same president as NEI General Contracting, Josef Rettman. Rettman has mostly donated to Democrats at the state and local level, and a mix at the federal level, including US Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s 2022 congressional campaign in New Hampshire.
The list of donors to the inauguration committee did not include the names of some major donors who had previously contributed to the first Trump presidential campaign or the first inauguration in 2017. Jim Davis, the chairman of shoemaker New Balance, donated nearly $400,000 to support Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Kraft Group, tied to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, didn’t donate to the 2025 inauguration after donating $1 million for the 2017 inauguration. Ahead of the 2024 election, Kraft distanced himself from Trump, saying he was “very upset” by the insurrection attempt to keep Trump in office on January 6, 2021. Kraft has since reportedly helped a law firm, Paul Weiss, broker a peace deal with Trump, who has targeted lawyers through executive orders.
“I made a strong donation to his [2017] inauguration,” Kraft said during an appearance on a radio show last October. “I couldn’t believe it, it was like having someone who was a drunk fraternity brother become president of the United States.”
Massachusetts donors to Trump inauguration
Massachusetts businesses and individuals donated approximately $4.1 million to President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. See who contributed:
— Newton School Committee, mayor clash over school fiscal woes by James Vaznis, The Boston Globe: “The Newton School Committee and Mayor Ruthanne Fuller teamed up a year ago to end a two-week teacher strike, but now the two sides are at odds over how to fund the city’s schools next year as the district confronts an onslaught of rising costs. At the root of the fight is growing frustration that Newton schools could potentially face its third round of spending cuts within four years in a city where home values average about $1.5 million, even as the mayor has increased funding for the schools.”
— Voters pass operating budget, capital projects, more at Town Meeting by Angelina Berube, The Eagle-Tribune: “Voters passed all capital projects and a $243.8 million budget for fiscal year 2026 during the first night of Town Meeting on Tuesday night. There were at least 477 voters who turned out at the Collins Center for the Performing Arts at Andover High School to cast their votes.”
PAY WALL
— Why hasn't Taunton spent more than $1 million in opioid settlement money? by Emma Rindlisbacher, Taunton Daily Gazette: “Taunton City Councilor Estele Borges is questioning why the city has only spent a tiny fraction of the opioid settlement money it's had in its coffers since 2024. Borges, who is running for mayor against O'Connell, criticized O'Connell in an interview and a Facebook post for lacking a "sense of urgency" and spending only $67,600 of the $1.5 million in opioid funding distributed to Taunton by the state. But Mayor Shaunna O'Connell said that the way the city distributes opioid funding is why ‘our City is not in a financial crisis like other communities.’”
IN MEMORIAM — Funeral services for Molly McGovern, the daughter of Rep. James McGovern, will be held May 2 and 3. Calling hours are set for 4 to 8 p.m. May 2 at St. Bernard's Church of Our Lady of Providence Parish in Worcester. A funeral Mass will be held May 3 at 11:00 a.m. on at St. Bernard's Church, followed by a burial at St. John’s Cemetery in Worcester.
HEARD ‘ROUND THE BUBBLAH
HAPPY BIRTHDAY — to Matt Segneri, Matt Wilder, Martin Kessler, Nam Pham, Nikko Mendoza, James Barron of Barron Associates Worldwide and Joseph Bottum.
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