R.H. White Named Winner of 2023 AIM Vision Award

AIM Blog – R.H. White Companies of Auburn epitomizes the kind of successful family businesses that are the heart of the American economy. The Auburn based company today employs nearly 500 people providing design/build construction services, as well as repair and maintenance services for the energy, water, wastewater, industrial, corporate and institutional markets throughout the Northeast. Associated Industries of Massachusetts recognizes all these accomplishments in awarding the 2023 AIM Vision Award to R.H. White Companies.

Businesses Still Want a Break on the COVID Unemployment Surcharge

Boston Globe – After going deep into the red during the pandemic, the employer-funded account that pays state jobless benefits is now flush.

But business owners aren’t celebrating.

Many are still peeved that they are being required to pay back — through a special tax surcharge — the $2.7 billion in bonds sold by the state to retire the unemployment insurance (UI) trust fund’s federal loans. They’re also unhappy that they must cover other UI costs incurred by the old Baker administration and the new Healey team.

“The state mandated these businesses close their doors and restrict their operations, which resulted in layoffs,” said Chris Carlozzi, Massachusetts director of the National Federation of Independent Business. “It is unfair that employers are left to shoulder the financial burden of the post-pandemic UI crisis.”

The UI trust fund is back in the news thanks to my colleague Shirley Leung, who on Thursday broke the story that Governor Maura Healey’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development is seeking to finally close the books on a bureaucratic mess that ensnared 590,000 unemployment recipients.

Women Hold Top Leadership Position in 8% of Biggest Massachusetts Companies

WBUR – Let’s start with the good news. The number of women who hold the title ‘Chief Operating Officer’ at the 75 biggest companies in Massachusetts has doubled since 2019.

The bad news: that number increased from three to six.

The data come from the Eos Foundation, a Massachusetts philanthropic foundation that publishes reports on gender and racial disparities in leadership under an initiative called ‘The Women’s Power Gap.’

Eos Foundation President Andrea Silbert frequently hears the severe gender gap is because of a “pipeline problem.” In other words, there simply aren’t enough women training and preparing for the top executive role.

She doesn’t buy it.

“You get all the way up to the top and then you just don’t get the next position,” Silbert said.

Healey Pleads for People to Apply for MBTA Jobs

DotNews – Addressing a crowd of community leaders and activists in Roxbury’s Nubian Square, Gov. Maura Healey asked for their help in fixing the MBTA by spreading the word about job openings.

At an event put together by the political action coalition known as Communities of Color (COC), Healey laid out some of the challenges facing the MBTA and praised the incoming general manager, Phillip Eng of New York’s Long Island Railroad.

“He’s going to be great. He’s an engineer, he’s on the job, he’s been hands-on,” Healey told a crowd at Hibernian Hall that included political activists and elected officials such as Mayor Michelle Wu and Auditor Diana DiZoglio. She appeared on stage with Joseph Feaster, an attorney and chair of the city of Boston’s task force on reparations.

Eng will build out a leadership team, Healey said, and “their charge is to transform things, to fix things.”

The MBTA has suffered from “years and years, decades of, you know, at times questionable management and leadership, underinvestment, and you pay the price every single day, and we know that,” Healey told the crowd of about 500 leaders mostly from Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury.

The T is facing a workforce shortage, and she asked attendees to encourage people to apply for the “great jobs” at the public transit agency.

New Law Allows Notaries to Operate Digitally in Massachusetts

Boston Globe – Massachusetts notaries will step into a more digital future under a law signed by Governor Maura Healey on Wednesday.

The new law, tucked into the state’s supplemental budget, allows documents to be notarized digitally online, without requiring physical stamps and signatures. Legal, real estate, and banking groups have been pushing for years for the modernization.

A host of transactions that require signatures witnessed by notaries will be able to be completed online under the new law, everything from mortgage loan closings to end-of-life healthcare proxy forms, building permit applications, and fiduciary trusts.

The new law goes beyond what was allowed during COVID, when the state temporarily legalized many forms of virtual remote practices. During COVID, notaries could watch people sign documents on a video conference, but the documents still had to be signed and physically sent to the notary for stamping.

“This new law is a significant improvement…since it provides more convenience for buyers and sellers in a real estate transaction,” Greg Vasil, chief executive of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board said in an email. “By allowing all parties to appear virtually from ‘anywhere’ — not just in the Commonwealth — the state is bringing its policies in line with the way the business world operates in our post-COVID world.”

Bill Extends Alcohol To-Go

MassLive – Some popular pandemic-era innovations in Massachusetts will continue into at least next year, including alcohol to-go orders that initially helped restaurants and bars stay afloat as they dealt with coronavirus-related closures and strained revenue streams.

Gov. Maura Healey signed her first major piece of legislation Wednesday, a nearly $389 million supplemental budget, that allows for a one-year extension of allowing beer, wine and cocktail to-go orders through April 1, 2024.

Massachusetts Losing Residents to Other States, Census Data Shows

Eagle Tribune – A majority of Massachusetts’ counties saw their populations shrink in the last fiscal year amid an exodus of tens of thousands of residents, according to newly released Census data.

The county-level data, released Thursday, shows that nine of the state’s 14 counties saw declines in their populations between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022 after factoring births, deaths and new residents against those leaving the state.

The biggest decline was in Suffolk County, which lost 9,044 residents as a result of net migration — or the number of people who moved to the state minus those who moved away, according to the data. Suffolk lost 18,424 people to domestic migration but gained 9,390 through international migration, the data shows.

Essex County lost a net of 1,619 residents in the previous fiscal year, according to the data, with a loss of 6,861 residents to domestic migration that was offset by 5,242 new immigrants. The county also saw more births than deaths over the previous fiscal year, which added another 942 residents.

Middlesex County lost 4,051 people in the previous fiscal year through net migration, the data shows, with a decline of 18,102 residents to domestic migration that was offset by 14,051 new arrivals. The county reported more births than deaths, which added nearly 4,000 new residents.

Overall, nearly 57,000 more people moved out of Massachusetts between July 2021 through July 2022, according to previously released census data, one of the highest rates of domestic migration in the nation.

The Bay State reached a peak of 7 million residents as of the 2020 Census, but has seen its overall population shrink in the last three years by about 50,000 people.

State Supreme Court Backs Boston Vaccine Mandate

Boston Herald – The state’s top court has ruled in favor of the city in the battle over its COVID-19 mandate, throwing out the preliminary injunction against the Wu administration and clearing the way for future versions of such policies.

Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Elspeth Cypher wrote the opinion issued Thursday, throwing out an appellate judge’s order not to enforce the vaccine-mandate police from December 2021 — a policy under which no one’s ever been disciplined.

“The defendants’ policy decision to amend the COVID-19 policy was based on concerns not only for the health of their employees, but also for the residents of the city, for whom the defendants were obligated to provide continued access to public safety services,” Cypher wrote. She added that “the potential harm to the city and the public resulting from the spread of COVID-19 clearly outweighed the economic harm to the employees.”

This fight stems from the start of the omicron-variant surge in December 2021, when new Mayor Michelle Wu announced that every city employee would have to get the COVID-19 jab by mid-January or face suspension and possible termination.

Three unions — the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 718, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation and Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society — sued, claiming Wu had violated their labor rights by unilaterally overriding previous policy.

A superior court judge quickly sided with the city, saying that though he continued to have questions about how the city had handled bargaining, he wasn’t going to tie the administration’s hands in an emergency. The unions appealed, and the city delayed implementation — ultimately forever, after Associate Justice Sabita Singh of the appellate court overrode the lower judge, deeming that the city had violated labor rights.

Singh put the injunction into place, and that’s remained in effect until now, when the SJC reversed it.

Health Care

Massachusetts Pharmacies Required to Continue Providing Medication Abortion

Daily Free Press – Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey issued a statement that pharmacies statewide  will still be required to stock essential family planning medications, despite national efforts to ban them.

“At a time when states are rushing to ban medication abortion and some pharmacies are irresponsibly restricting access to it, we are reminding Massachusetts pharmacies that they have an obligation to provide critical reproductive health medications,” Healey said in a statement.

The reminder comes just two weeks after Texas District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk heard a lawsuit case that aimed to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the mifepristone drug, after decades of it being in circulation.

“One thing to really remember about misoprostol is that it is a very routinely used medication for a whole host of reproductive health care, including abortion care,” said Caroline Kimball-Katz, director of communications and marketing at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. “It also includes miscarriage management and other pregnancy-related care.”

Millions Poised to Lose Medicaid as Pandemic Coverage Protections End

Washington Post – At the end of this week, states will begin to sever an anticipated 15 million low-income Americans from Medicaid rolls that ballooned to record heights because of a pandemic-era promise that people with the health insurance could keep it — a federal promise that is going away.

The end to the temporary guarantee that preserved the safety-net health coverage for the past three years saddles every state with an immense undertaking: sorting out which Medicaid beneficiaries actually belong. Around the country, officials have been preparing for months, but the result is a bumpy landscape consisting of states that vary in how ready they are for this daunting work.

Five states will start April 1 — the first date allowed under a recent federal law — to cut off beneficiaries who no longer qualify for Medicaid or have not provided proof they still deserve the coverage. Nearly all other states will begin to remove people between May and July. Already, almost half the states have set in motion the preliminary work of checking eligibility.

Texas Decision on Obamacare Could Imperil Preventive Services in Massachusetts

Boston Globe – A Texas court decision on the Affordable Care Act could eliminate full coverage of a number of preventive health care services, a development that legislators and advocates say could affect the health of millions, including patients in Massachusetts.

On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas reversed a provision of the Affordable Care Act that required that insurers cover all the costs associated with screening tests, medications, counseling, and other services recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts that advises the government.

The decision followed a ruling by the judge in September that said members of the task force were unconstitutionally appointed because they were not selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Though likely to be appealed, the decision voids the requirement that insurers fully cover a large swath of preventive services that the task force has recommended since 2010, when the ACA was passed. Those include anxiety screening in children and adolescents, weight screening and control for pregnant women, unhealthy drug use screenings for adults, and coverage of an HIV-prevention drug known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

The ACA requires full coverage of a number of other services that were recommended by other groups. Those requirements will remain in place, including full coverage of contraception.

Insurers will also still be required to follow coverage recommendations for preventive care in place before 2010, said Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan.

“These are questions insurers will have to resolve and that HHS will offer guidance on,” Bagley said. “There will be a fair amount of uncertainty.”

While the decision has imperiled how much patients will have to pay to access certain preventive services, insurers may provide coverage of certain services, with cost sharing, or might continue to provide full coverage, even if not mandated.

Budget and Taxation

Mariano Leaps Back on Tax Relief Bandwagon

State House News – Top House Democrats plan to unveil and debate a “comprehensive” tax relief package in the next few weeks designed to make Massachusetts more affordable for its residents and “more competitive with other states,” according to Speaker Ronald Mariano, who pledged Thursday to deliver relief to people across the income spectrum.

Mariano, who in recent months sounded a more cautious tone about whether the state could afford tax relief, said he expects the forthcoming bill to revive several measures lawmakers embraced and then spiked last term, as well as some kind of increase to the estate tax threshold.

He forecast the House’s tax relief proposal will emerge “just before” the House Ways and Means Committee in April releases its fiscal year 2024 budget bill, which will also feature funding for universal school meals and a free community college program.

The speaker’s announcement, delivered in a speech to business leaders at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event, tees up a new round of legislative debate on a topic from which lawmakers retreated last year.

“The House will soon release a comprehensive tax reform package aimed at providing responsible, permanent financial relief to all residents of the commonwealth, regardless of income status,” Mariano told a crowd of business leaders.

Several of the tax code changes in the pending legislation would be phased in over a multi-year period to ensure that they do not “jeopardize the long-term financial security of the commonwealth,” Mariano said, offering few details about what will be in the bill.

Mariano said after his speech that all of the measures lawmakers initially approved last year “will be considered again.” In a question-and-answer session with chamber president Jim Rooney, Mariano said of reforms to the estate tax, “It’s pretty much assumed you’re going to see that in the package.” And asked by reporters if the House’s bill would propose slashing the short-term capital gains tax — a Gov. Maura Healey-endorsed measure that both branches left out of last session’s ultimately doomed bill — Mariano replied, “Everything’s on the table.”

The Quincy Democrat said he wants the bottom line to “come in at a meaningful number,” but added that discussions are still taking place about both the overall package size and the scope of each individual form of relief.

Healey Signs $389 Million Supplemental Budget 

WWLP – A $388.7 million supplemental budget signed by Governor Maura Healey for Fiscal Year 2023 means that Massachusetts will continue to provide free school meals to all children through the end of the academic year and provide critical and timely resources to its family shelter system.

Additionally, the budget includes $68 million for Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grants to stabilize childcare providers through the end of the fiscal year, and $130 million for creating an offramp from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which the government began providing during the COVID-19 outbreak.

To prevent interruptions to core state capital programs that support housing and economic development across the Commonwealth, and to remain competitive in the pursuit of federal grants, the Governor signed a bill that authorizes $740 million of borrowing in addition to direct spending. The funds include $400 million for MassWorks, $104 million for the Clean Water Trust, and $125 million for matching grants to compete for federal dollars.

Governor Announces Funding for 450 New Affordable Housing Units

WHDH – Gov. Maura Healey announced funding for 450 new affordable housing units across Massachusetts on Wednesday as part of this year’s Permanent Supportive Housing Grant Awards.

The awards total more than $62 million and will support 12 affordable projects that offer specialized services to residents, including one on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain. Nearly all the new housing units will be reserved for low-income households, including 317 allocated for very low-income residents.

“Our administration is committed to ensuring that Massachusetts residents have access to safe, secure and affordable housing,” Healey said in a statement. “We’re proud to support projects in every region of our state that are providing permanent supportive housing for families, seniors, veterans, young people and people experiencing homelessness. This is the type of housing production that we want to drive in communities across the state to lower costs and address our housing crisis.”

Wednesday’s awards include $62 million in direct subsidies, including federal ARPA funding, and state and federal housing tax credits which will create an additional $74 million in equity for projects.

Healey said one of the state’s new housing projects is slated for Washington Street in Jamaica Plain. The Neighborhood Development Corporation will be awarded $8 million to build 39 affordable one-bedroom units, with 12 further restricted for very low-income seniors.

Few State Tax Breaks have Sunset Dates

Eagle Tribune – Massachusetts has hundreds of tax breaks on the books, from refundable credits for filming movies and redeveloping vacant lots to sales tax exemptions for cement mixers and aircraft parts, bleeding tens of millions of dollars a year from the state’s coffers.

And many of them may never go away.

That’s because most of the state’s tax expenditures don’t have a sunset date, when they would either need to be re-authorized by the Legislature or scrapped.

It’s an issue that’s come up during a review by a commission tasked with ensuring that the state and its taxpayers are getting the biggest bang for their buck.

Over the past three years, the Tax Expenditure Review Commission, which includes state officials, lawmakers and fiscal experts, has reviewed 84 dozen tax credits, deductions and exemptions to corporations that do business in Massachusetts to determine if they outweigh the revenue lost from state coffers.

Of those, 94% have no expiration dates, the panel noted in its latest report. At least 80% of the tax expenditures were approved prior to the 1990s, they said.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Business Groups Up Their Focus on Supplier Diversity

Boston Globe – Major Boston business groups are stepping up their efforts to help members improve the diversity of their supply chains, with the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership becoming the latest to join the fray.

The partnership, a group of high-powered CEOs, has unveiled an online survey that it will make available for free to companies to assess and improve their supplier diversity efforts with a series of measurable standards. The partnership used this survey to poll its own members, who run many of the biggest employers in the state, and found that 12 of 16 already have mature or somewhat mature supplier diversity programs.

In a coincidence that underscores the issue’s importance in the local business community, there were dueling panels held last Wednesday to address supplier diversity. In the morning, Associated Industries of Massachusetts held its second annual supplier diversity forum at Microsoft’s office in Cambridge. Then, in the afternoon, the Competitive Partnership held a virtual roundtable to discuss its survey data and online assessment tool.

Education

Mariano: Business Needs to Help with Early Education Costs

State House News – House Speaker Ron Mariano offered more evidence Thursday that lawmakers are eyeing ways to support the state’s stretched-thin early education and child care workforce and to wrangle sky-high costs that continue to burden families.

And to Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jim Rooney, Mariano’s remarks in a speech before the group also contained a “somewhat subtle call to action to the business community” to be part of the funding solution.

“I think it was wise of you to pick that gem out,” Mariano replied during a Q&A with Rooney after his speech at the Colonnade Hotel.

The speaker recounted a meeting with former Education Committee Co-chair Rep. Alice Peisch, who is now an assistant majority leader, after she helped lead a special commission that last year called for sweeping changes to the early education and care sector that would cost “upwards of $1.5 billion annually over time.”

“When Alice presented her plan and everyone saw the price tag, I think we all were a little taken aback when we realized how much we would have to put into this to get it up to where we want it to be,” Mariano said. “We need help, and we still need help.”

In their inaugural speeches kicking off the session, Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka flagged early education and care as an area where they will direct significant focus.

The Senate in July approved a bill aimed at expanding access to subsidized child care, strengthening the workforce pipeline and creating a permanent framework for provider stabilization grants that have proven valuable in recent years. The House never advanced the measure for a vote.

As he warned that Beacon Hill “need[s] help” to tackle the issue, Mariano described a resource strain that cuts across other areas: the end of pandemic-era heightened federal aid.

“I don’t think federal funding is going to be going up any time soon unless you live in the Ukraine. We’re looking at tightening up on our federal resources that we’ve received, and we’re going to have to do this on our own,” Mariano told business leaders. “We can’t, as a body, step in and fill every time they cut a federal program. We can’t replace it at the levels that we were getting federal money.”

Lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey agreed to fund three more months of heightened food aid after the federal government ended a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enhancement, and they have also kept a universal school meals program in place once federal dollars dried up.

The House’s upcoming fiscal 2024 budget bill would make the free meals program permanent, Mariano said Thursday, while Healey filed a separate spending bill to fund it for another year.

“We’re going into this very strange economic situation where inflation may or may not be out of control, I don’t know. I watch the financial news like everyone else, but I don’t know if it’s going up or down or sideways. But it is an issue, and it’s got me concerned,” Mariano said.

City Announces $4 Million Investment in Free Community College

Boston Herald – Boston will make a $4 million investment into allowing any Boston resident to attend one of six community colleges tuition free, city officials announced at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design on Thursday morning.

“Expanding Boston’s Tuition Free Community College is a critical step in ensuring more of our city’s residents are eligible to pursue a higher education right here in the city,” Mayor Michelle Wu said. “This funding will  increase community college enrollment and connect more residents with quality jobs.”

Previously limited to income-eligible recipients, a city release stated, the investment will allow the program to cover costs for all Boston residents to enroll in up to three years at a partner college. The funds are split between $3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and $1 million through the Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s Community Project Funding.

Eligible schools include Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, Bunker Hill Community College, Massasoit Community College, MassBay Community College, Roxbury Community College and Urban College of Boston.

TFCC has covered costs for over 1,000 students since 2016, according to the city.

The expansion “aims to address the pandemic’s impact on community college enrollment, completion rates and eliminate barriers to re-enrollment for aspiring students,” the release said.

The expansion will allow for students of any age or immigration status to use the program and makes participation automatic for Boston-residents who enroll in the eligible colleges.

The expansion allows students to use the funding to work at the colleges towards industry-recognized certification, which are “often not covered by federal financial aid,” officials noted. The credentials programs include fields like healthcare and information technology.

Here’s How the Massachusetts House Hopes to Make Community College Free

MassLive – The prospect of making community college free for thousands of Bay Staters gained major momentum Thursday, as House Speaker Ron Mariano announced the initiative would be included in his chamber’s upcoming fiscal 2024 budget proposal.

Mariano, speaking at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event, said the House will mirror Gov. Maura Healey’s plan to make community college free for Bay Staters who are over 25 years old without a college degree.

Similar to how Healey framed her initiative, Mariano said free community college would alleviate workforce shortages in sectors like health care, STEM and manufacturing.

The Quincy Democrat drew a loud round of applause as he previewed the budget pitch among hundreds of business leaders directly affected by those shortages.

Healey initially touted her free community college plan, known as MassReconnect, during her inaugural address in January. She unveiled more concrete details of the $20 million program at Bunker Hill Community College on March 1, hours before she released her $55.5 budget proposal.