Healey Pitches Sweeping Tax Relief Package

Boston Globe – The expansive proposal, which would reshape more than a dozen tax credits or incentives the state already offers, sparked cheers from the state’s business community and prompted heartburn from some Democrats and progressive groups, who slammed particular elements as a giveaway to the state’s wealthiest residents.

Healey plans to file the tax legislation alongside her first state budget plan on Wednesday.

Her office announced that the plan would cost the state $742 million next fiscal year, but budget officials Monday said the plan in the future could cost the state closer to $1 billion a year, given how Healey’s plan would change the state’s estate tax structure and how taxes are levied on capital gains.

In many instances, Healey’s proposal hews closely to legislation her Republican predecessor, Charlie Baker, first pushed a year ago; that proposal ultimately died in a Democrat-dominated Legislature, which must approve all tax changes. Even now, some legislative leaders, particularly in the Massachusetts House, appear hesitant about voluntarily curtailing tax revenue, given looming economic uncertainty.

“We have to acknowledge there are some aspects of our current tax system that make Massachusetts an outlier,” Healey said at a news conference Monday morning. “When we don’t keep up with other states, we put our competitiveness at risk.” She emphasized that the cuts are “targeted at those who need it most.”

She also said it would help keep businesses and residents in Massachusetts and attract new ones.

The Cambridge Democrat’s ability to push her tax proposal into law offers one of the first, and likely biggest, tests of her nascent tenure after she campaigned heavily on easing the financial burden on taxpayers at a time when tens of thousands of people are fleeing high-cost Massachusetts to live in New Hampshire, Florida, and elsewhere.

“Everywhere we go, the Lieutenant Governor and I hear about the cost of living and how it’s impacting communities and how it’s skyrocketing past people,” Healey said at the event, which was held at the Lynn YMCA.

The majority of proposed relief would come from a new child and family tax credit Healey pitched last year as a gubernatorial candidate. The plan would combine two existing tax credits into one and promises to give Massachusetts families $600 per child, dependent with disabilities, or senior dependent, with no limits to how many children or dependents they can claim.

This change could cost $458 million while helping about 700,000 taxpayers, according to Healey’s administration, who said the new benefit will have “significant impacts in helping families keep up with rising costs and making ends meet.”

Healey is also proposing to allow some 880,000 residents to deduct up to $4,000 on what they pay on rent, an increase from the current $3,000 cap. (The Legislature appeared in agreement on a similar framework last year.) And her plan includes a measure to double the maximum credit low-income seniors can claim to offset property taxes from $1,200 to $2,400 — something Baker first proposed a year ago.

Healey’s office appeared to move quickly to marshal support for the tax package, releasing statements of support from about a half-dozen business and industry leaders. That included backing from a leader at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a business group to which Healey pitched herself as an ally during a speech last month.

“Based on this budget, it is clear that the [Healey] Administration shares AIM’s concerns about the Commonwealth’s competitive future,” Brooke Thomson, AIM’s executive vice president of government affairs, said in a statement released by Healey’s office. “This is a critical first step towards ensuring sustained growth and economic strength.”

New Wage Proposals in Massachusetts have Fans and Foes

Cape Cod Times – Efforts to increase the minimum wage in Massachusetts year-over-year have been met with a mix of resistance and enthusiasm since the so-called “grand bargain” of 2018. Now, with that $15-an-hour rate finally realized as of Jan. 1, state officials are proposing another round of wage hikes.

What are effectively two identical proposals — one each from the Senate and the House respectively — amount to a policy plan for a series of four annual rate hikes to bring the standard wage up to $20 per hour by 2027.

The proposal also includes a measure that would index the 2027 rate to the consumer price index starting in 2028, affording wage earners a rate that would raise automatically alongside inflation.

“It’s a struggle to imagine that there would be an increase every single year beyond $20 in 2027, that’s out of control,” said Pamela Parker, who has owned and operated Harvest of Barnstable for 12 years.

Grocery Prices Remain Stubbornly High

Axios Boston – Grocery prices rose 1.3% in Boston in January as compared to November 2022, per the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, Axios’ Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report.

Nationally, the cost of groceries rose only about 0.7% in January from December, about half of the increase seen in metro Boston.

For many of the approximately 63% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, rising food prices can be an especially difficult financial challenge.

Such prices, meanwhile, are particularly vulnerable to outside and difficult-to-control forces, such as climate change and geopolitical happenings.

Among the metro areas with newly published CPI data, some of the highest increases in grocery prices were reported in Denver (+2% between November 2022 and January 2023) and Washington, D.C. (+1.6%). Chicago had among the lowest increases, at +0.8% between November 2022 and January 2023.

Mark Schneider, CEO of global food giant Nestlé, recently predicted that the price of staple foods will keep rising this year.

“We are still in a situation where we’re repairing our gross margin and, like all the consumers around the world, we’ve been hit by inflation and now we’re trying to repair the damage that has been done,” Schneider said on a call with reporters, per CNN.

The retail price of one key foodstuff — eggs — is expected to drop after a collapse in wholesale prices.

While inflation had appeared to be cooling off broadly speaking, experts are warning that price increases are still possible, even likely — like aftershocks following an earthquake.

“No one said disinflation would be a smooth ride,” Robert Frick, an economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a recent note, as Axios’ Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown reported.

On-Street Dining Remains Banned in North End Despite Shorter Sumner Tunnel Closure

On-street outdoor dining in the North End will remain off-limits this year despite a revised schedule for the Sumner Tunnel restoration project.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has cut the Sumner Tunnel’s full closure in half from four to two months, but a city spokesman said officials maintain their stance that congestion from the project and the nearby bridge replacement on North Washington Street will prove too problematic for North End on-street dining to proceed.

“We are still talking about the closure impacting two months in the middle of the summer which we might think of as peak outdoor dining season,” the mayor’s chief spokesman Ricardo Patron told the Herald on Thursday, shortly after MassDOT announced the adjusted timeframe.

The Sumner Tunnel will be closed from July 5 through Aug. 31 instead of the original May through Sept. 4 schedule, MassDOT said in a release. The project has closed the tunnel on weekends since last summer.

“This period between July 4 and Labor Day historically has the lowest traffic volumes of the year and is outside of the school year making it much more manageable for traffic management,” MassDot stated in a release.

City officials announced the ban on on-street dining in the North End last week, saying the ongoing infrastructure projects will push more traffic into the already densely packed neighborhood known for its narrow, odd-shaped streets and sidewalks. They also cited safety concerns from neighborhood residents.

The city’s Little Italy is the only neighborhood that faces outdoor dining restrictions this year.

“They had an entire winter to figure out a new plan,” North End restaurateur Jen Royle told the Herald on Thursday. “The city has failed us, and as a small business owner, we deserve better.”

The Sumner Tunnel is expected to be fully closed between July and August 2024 for the second phase of the restoration, MassDOT said.

The city is convening a task force of North End restaurant owners, residents and other stakeholders who will be in charge of designing a permanent program for the future, and no decision has been made for next year.

Impacts from the Sumner Tunnel’s closure this summer will help the city determine how things will look next outdoor dining season, Patron said

Boston’s Residential Neighborhoods are Thriving, while Downtown Struggles

Boston Globe – Throughout the pandemic, Edward Boches spent much of his time flitting through Allston with a camera slung across his chest. He photographed graffiti-splattered bridges, unmanned store counters, snow-covered signs, and buildings old and new.

So when the malaise of COVID began to dissipate, Boches noticed the return of street life to “Rock City”: hungry diners lining up outside Lulu’s for breakfast totchos, a run on T-shirts at Vivant Vintage, and a string of new Korean restaurants.

“The businesses seem to be making a comeback,” Boches concluded in mid-February, “though maybe a bit slower than they thought.”

That they are. While the Financial District and Downtown Crossing trudge through the pandemic recovery, the outer neighborhoods of Boston are alive with activity that rivals the Before Times.

An analysis of commercial property data from CoStar, a real estate information provider, shows that 12 Greater Boston neighborhoods have fewer empty storefronts than the Financial District. In Allston, for example, just 2.8 percent of the shops were empty in the end of 2022, compared with 7.4 percent downtown. Five neighborhoods — Mattapan, Hyde Park, Dorchester, Roslindale, and Seaport — had vacancy rates below 2 percent.

And by last October, in-person consumer spending had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in most of the 20 neighborhoods the Boston Planning and Development Agency tracks using data from Mastercard. Spending in Allston was down just 7 percent between July 2021 and October 2022, compared with 2019. Downtown, it plunged by 29 percent during that same period.

Rising Prices and Interest Rates Make Home Buying Feel Impossible

Boston Globe – Afew months ago, Cherise Kenner got a raise. Another $10,000. The sort of money that just a couple of years ago would have meant the chance to finally buy a house.

Not in this city, not now.

Instead of picking up the keys to a place of her own, 41-year-old Kenner is sleeping on a futon. An investor last year purchased the building where she rented a three-bedroom with her two teenage children, and raised the rent by $700. Still determined to save for the home she someday hopes to buy, she rented a two-bedroom in West Roxbury, ceding the rooms to her kids.

Opting for one less bedroom than her family needs is saving Kenner hundreds of dollars in rent each month, though it’ll be years before she can seriously think about buying — and sleeping in a room of her own again.

“It’s what I have to do for now,” she said. “Obviously it’s not ideal. People should not have to be doing all of this to be able to afford a home.”

But after two-plus years of seismic shifts in Boston’s housing market, they do, and that put buying a home out of reach for tens of thousands more families here. And it’s not just lower-income households. Kenner now makes $75,000 a year as a faculty assistant at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, but middle-income salaries like hers are, by and large, insufficient in a market this distorted.

Cybercriminals Steal $6.4 Million from Pipefitters Local 537

Boston Herald – Pipefitters Local 537 has fallen victim to a cyberattack, as thieves recently stole more than $6 million from the Dorchester union’s health fund.

The feds are investigating the cybercrime, and law enforcement is “optimistic” that they’ll be able to return the vast majority of the $6.4 million in stolen funds, according to Daniel O’Brien, business manager/financial secretary-treasurer of Pipefitters Local 537.

O’Brien reassured union members that this theft will not impact their benefits “in any way,” and there’s no evidence that any member information was stolen or compromised.

“This is very unfortunate news; but please be assured that nothing about your benefits with Local 537 has changed and our Health Fund remains well-funded,” O’Brien wrote in an update to union members.

“… It has been reiterated throughout the investigation to remind our membership to be mindful of what we put out online and on social media, as these are easy places for cybercriminals to gain information and locate potential targets,” he added.

Three weeks ago, the Fund Office learned that it had been the victim of a social engineering cyberattack, resulting in the theft of $6.4 million from the health fund.

The Fund Office immediately contacted legal counsel, filed a cybercrime report with the FBI, filed a report with the Boston Police, contacted the Fund’s cybersecurity provider to take emergency measures, and contacted the Fund’s cyber insurance company.

The Board of Trustees retained a cybersecurity forensic investigator immediately, who began investigating the breach in addition to the investigations of the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service. The Department of Labor reached out to the Fund’s attorney about the theft. The Board of Trustees has filed claims on the funds’ cyber insurance policies.

Gannett Eliminated 20% of its Journalism Jobs in 2022

Boston Business Journal – The nation’s largest local newspaper chain, Gannett Inc., eliminated 20% of its journalism positions in 2022 and nearly the same percentage of its total U.S. jobs, according to its annual report filed on Thursday.

The McLean, Virginia-based company, which owns several small dailies in Massachusetts — including the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, The Patriot Ledger in Quincy and the Cape Cod Times — reported its fourth quarter and full-year financials Thursday and filed a related document with the Securities and Exchange Commission the same day.

In the annual report, Gannett (NYSE: GCI) said it ended 2022 with 11,200 employees in the U.S. That’s down 19% from the 13,800 employees it reported a year earlier, and totals less than half the combined employees four years earlier of the two companies (GateHouse Media and Gannett) that merged to create the current company in 2020.

The filing also revealed that the company employed 3,900 journalists at the end of 2022, including 3,300 in the U.S. and 600 at its U.K-based media company, Newsquest. That’s down 20% from the 4,846 journalists it said it employed at the end of 2021 (the earlier filing did not say how many of those journalists were in the U.S.).

The annual filing is typically the only time throughout the year that the company discloses its headcount. Gannett announced several rounds of layoffs over the course of last year, but does not typically say how many employees are affected.

Gannett ended 2022 with a net loss of $34 million. It reported $2.95 billion in operating revenue for the year, down 8.2% from 2021.

Health Care

Millions who Rely on Medicaid may be Booted from Program

Boston Globe – If you get health care coverage through Medicaid, you might be at risk of losing that coverage over the next year.

Roughly 84 million people are covered by the government-sponsored program, which has grown by 20 million people since January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

But as states begin checking everyone’s eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years, as many as 14 million people could lose access to that health-care coverage.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government prohibited states from kicking people off Medicaid, even if they were no longer eligible. Before the pandemic, people would regularly lose their Medicaid coverage if they started making too much money to qualify for the program, gained health care coverage through their employer or moved into a new state.

That all stopped once COVID-19 started spreading across the country.

Over the next year, states will be required to start checking the eligibility again of every person who is on Medicaid. People will have to fill out forms to verify their personal information, including address, income and household size.

That will vary depending on which state you live in; some states are moving faster than others to check eligibility. Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia are among the states that will begin removing ineligible Medicaid recipients as early as April.

Other states will start taking that step in May, June or July.

Not everyone will be removed from the program all at once. States plan to verify all recipients’ eligibility over periods of nine months to one year.

Nursing Home Closures in Western Massachusetts Leave Families and Hospitals Scrambling

Boston Globe – The abrupt announcement that four nursing homes in Western Massachusetts will be closing this spring has forced hundreds of people to scramble to find alternative facilities for their fragile family members.

At the same time, overwhelmed hospitals in the region that frequently discharge patients to the four nursing homes are bracing for potential gridlock — elders with nowhere to go languishing in beds needed for new-arriving patients — underscoring the precarious condition of the state’s overwhelmed health care system.

“I was calling so many other nursing homes and either not getting a call back or being told they are full,” said Edward Czepiel, a retired Chicopee deputy fire chief who scrounged to find his 98-year-old mother another nursing home after learning Feb. 7 that Willimansett Center East in Chicopee is among those closing.

His struggle — and his mother’s predicament — could soon be replicated across the state, as nursing homes and their frail residents head into a time of heightened uncertainty and risk.

And Czepiel is among the lucky ones. He has secured a nursing home in Amherst, about a half hour’s drive away, that has a bed for his mother, who has dementia.

“She is fearful,” Czepiel said. “It’s like anything else, if you move anyplace else, you are apprehensive about what will happen.”

Northeast Hospital Group, the Pennsylvania company that owns the nursing homes — Willimansett Center East and West in Chicopee, Chapin Center in Springfield, and Governor’s Center in Westfield — declined to speak to the Globe.

Medicare Won’t Cover New Alzheimer’s Drug until it Gets Full FDA Approval

Boston Globe – A new drug for Alzheimer’s disease is unlikely to be covered by Medicare until federal regulators conduct a more thorough review of the therapy’s effectiveness and safety later this year, according to a statement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released Wednesday.

Medicare covers nearly 63 million Americans who are 65 and older. Without the federal health insurance footing the $26,500 annual bill for the drug — let alone the pricey brain scans and biweekly visits to infusion centers that the treatment requires — the vast majority of potential patients who could benefit from it will be unable to afford it.

The drug, called Leqembi, was developed by Cambridge-based Biogen and Japan-based Eisai. Experts anticipate that it could eventually reap billions in annual sales, but now those potential profits have been punted. Last week during a call with investors, Biogen said it expects to lose money on the drug this year.

Leqembi won accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration in January. That regulatory pathway can help companies get drugs to patients faster by focusing on changes in a biomarker — such as the shrinking size of a tumor or lower levels of a toxic protein in the brain. But the pathway has come under fire because drug makers frequently fail to complete the required follow-up studies to show whether the medicine actually helps patients.

Lawmakers, Advocates Press for ‘Full Spectrum’ Reproductive Care

Gazette Net – Advocates say that despite the 2020 passage of the ROE Act and a multimillion-dollar investment in reproductive health-care access, infrastructure, and security last year, Massachusetts still faces a threat from efforts to restrict interstate travel and medication for abortions, and additional legislative action is needed.

Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, has filed legislation that would eliminate co-payments and deductibles for reproductive health care, providing relief for those who need it.

“We’re hoping that this bill will step up and require insurers to make sure that people are getting the care that they need, but also not incurring the debt that a lot of high deductible plans can come with,” Sabadosa said.

Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said continued protections and help are needed as a result of efforts by Texas and other states to impose wide-ranging abortion restrictions.

Last June, the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe’s 49-year precedent, returning the question of legal abortion to the states.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health care and rights, 12 states have imposed “near-total” bans on abortion. In addition to Texas, those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia.

The Texas Heartbeat Act, or SB. 8, bans abortion after the detection of embryonic or fetal cardiac activity, which normally occurs after six weeks of pregnancy. When the law took effect on Sept. 1, 2021, Holder said Massachusetts started seeing patients from Texas “almost immediately” for access to health care.

Budget and Taxation

Beacon Hill Response Looms Over Boston’s Rent Control Debate

NBC Boston – As the conversation about rent control in Boston heats up, city councilors have to contend with how aggressively they want to pursue a policy that will eventually need to win approval from state lawmakers who have historically opposed the measure.

Progressive tenant advocates criticized Mayor Michelle Wu’s rent stabilization proposal as being too moderate during a public hearing on Wednesday, while the Greater Boston Real Estate Board is launching a $400,000 campaign against the measure, saying it will lead to decreased development of new units in the city.

Meanwhile, city councilors and the mayor’s administration have to consider how much to hedge their bets if they want the rent regulation to pass through the State House.

Rent control was made illegal on a state level in 1994 when voters narrowly decided at the ballot box to prohibit limiting how much rent can grow for tenants year after year.

Wu’s rent stabilization and “just cause” tenant eviction proposal before the council would limit annual rent hikes within city limits to 6 percent plus the change in the Consumer Price Index, with a cap of 10 percent in high-inflation years. It would also exempt live-in small landlords in two- to six-unit buildings, as well as new construction for 15 years, in a bid to avoid disincentivizing new development.

In 2023, Boston is expected to be one of the most expensive cities in the country in which to rent an apartment, according to online realtor Zumper, and the median price for a one-bedroom apartment as of February was $3,040.

Healey Budget Preview Outlines Boost to State Education Funding

WBUR – The budget that Gov. Maura Healey will file tomorrow will boost the largest source of state education aid by almost 10% in what the administration said would be the biggest percentage increase since the last millennium.

The general public got a preview of the first Healey-Driscoll state budget last week.

It was the first detailed look at some of the ways in which the new governor and her administration plan to make some of her priorities and campaign promises reality, and it offered an early check-in on the relationship between the new administration and the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts.

The governor’s fiscal year 2024 budget will propose a total of $8.36 billion for local aid programs, which the administration said would be a $635 million or 8.2% increase over the final budget Gov. Charlie Baker signed for fiscal 2023. Along with $1.26 billion for general government aid (a $24.6 million or 2% increase), cities and towns would share $6.585 billion in Chapter 70 school funding (a $586 million or 9.8% boost).

Both the House and Senate will rewrite the budget before sending a final version back to Healey in the early summer months.

The Healey administration said the Chapter 70 total it will propose represents full funding of the Student Opportunity Act school finance reform law passed in 2019 and, if enacted, would be the largest increase since at least 1999.

Time to Address Equity in Public Transportation

Commonwealth Magazine (Opinion) – The Massachusetts public transportation system is broken, and now is the time to fix it – equitably.

The public is demanding action, and Gov. Maura Healey is bringing fresh energy and a strong commitment to public transit. The tools are available, including $1 billion  in additional revenue from the Fair Share transportation and education surtax, on top of already robust state finances. It is imperative that these resources be equitably distributed to cover the whole of the Commonwealth. The time is now to seize this opportunity to invest comprehensively in our public transportation system to ensure that every resident, no matter their zip code, has access to reliable service that gets them where they need to go. Our economy and the success of the next generation depends on it.

We must ensure that the benefits of public transportation are extended across Massachusetts for full economic recovery. Our state’s 15 Regional Transit Authorities, or RTAs, provide essential service to riders in over 250 cities and towns beyond the reach of MBTA bus and subway service. However, although 55 percent of Massachusetts residents live in an RTA community, RTAs currently receive less than 7 percent of state transit operations dollars. Where is the equity in that?

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Healey Creates Advisory Council on Black Empowerment

MassLive – In the final days of Black History Month, Gov. Maura Healey created an advisory council designed to bolster Black empowerment by focusing on issues tethered to economic prosperity and wellbeing.

Members will include more than 30 Black leaders, representing state government, religious groups, advocacy organizations and labor unions, among other interests.

Members will delve into topics like education, health care, housing and workforce development. Tanisha Sullivan, president of the NAACP Boston, will serve as the council’s co-chair, alongside Anthony Richards II, vice president of equitable business development at the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency.

“Massachusetts’ Black residents make tremendous contributions to our state, but far too often, they face systemic barriers that hold them back from opportunity,” Healey said in a statement Friday morning.

“Our administration is committed to bringing people together and centering equity in all that we do, and that requires ensuring that those who are most impacted by our policy have a seat at the decision-making table. We look forward to working closely with our Advisory Council on Black Empowerment to explore how we can best support our Black community, reduce inequities and expand opportunity for all.”

Comfort Kitchen Wants to Change the Way Diners Think about Immigrant Food

WBUR – Visit Dorchester’s Comfort Kitchen for dinner and you’ll be given a menu that almost looks like a magazine, with photographs and explanations of the ingredients used for the food, the dishes’ history and origin, and why certain culinary choices were made.

That’s because owners Biplaw Rai and Kwasi Kwaa want visitors to the restaurant to think deeply about what they’re eating, and where it came from.

“It’s like, ‘OK, how did this ingredient or how did this dish become so similar in this place as opposed to the other place?’ And that intersection is based on trade, both human trade and spice trade — migration, whether forced or intentional,” said Kwaa, Comfort Kitchen’s head chef. “And one of the things that I always thought about was spice profiles and how similar they are.”

The culture-merging dishes include potato curry cakes, trout seasoned with brown butter and Za’atar, and jerk-roasted duck.

“We’re trying to celebrate the jerk, which was originally a preservation method,” Kwaa said. “It’s like, all right, let’s have fun with jerk. You see jerk chicken all the time, so let’s spice it up a little bit.”

Comfort Kitchen is housed in a historic building that used to be a comfort station — a rest stop for streetcar riders — in Dorchester. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Rai, the restaurant’s branding partner, said he hopes diners take away some knowledge as they come in to eat a meal.

“We’re getting people from all walks of life. You’ll have people that are not aware of, you know, cultural differences, but you’ll have people who are really into it,” Rai said. “And our intention … is let’s explain these dishes really well. So, people have the clear picture of what it is.”

Sustainability and Climate

Commonwealth Magazine – The CEO of Avangrid told financial analysts on Wednesday that his company needs price relief on two of the biggest renewable projects in New England – a major wind farm off the coast of Nantucket and a transmission line carrying hydroelectricity into the region from Quebec.

In his remarks, Pedro Azagra also voiced support for building some form of price flexibility into future offshore wind procurements so prices can be tweaked to accommodate changing economic circumstances.

“You’ve seen some index considerations in other states in terms of offshore development,” he said. “That has to be taken into account. It’s important in the auctions – the process takes so long that a lot of things can happen in the middle and there should be some adjustments.”

Massachusetts officials may be thinking the same thing. The Department of Energy Resources is seeking comment for the next offshore wind procurement and one question it is asking is how best to “account for current and future rates of inflation and other supply chain and economic pressures on the offshore wind industry to both ensure project viability and protect ratepayers.”

Avangrid is a major player in the state’s and the region’s efforts to displace fossil fuels with renewable energy. The company is currently building Vineyard Wind, an 806-megawatt wind farm that is expected to begin producing electricity by the end of this year.

The company is also building a 2,036-megawatt wind farm with the power output to be split between ratepayers in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  The Massachusetts portion of the project is called Commonwealth Wind and the Connecticut portion is called Park City Wind.

Does the Restaurant Kitchen of the Future run on Electricity?

Boston Globe – At Rifrullo Cafe in Brookline, the house-made bread, spelt scones, apple tarts, and lemon yogurt cake taste as delicious as ever. But these days, they’re baked in an electric oven. When chef-owner Colleen Suhanosky needed to replace her gas oven last year, there was no question she would make the switch: Rifrullo has been recognized for its commitment to sustainability by the nonprofit Green Restaurant Association.

In restaurants as in homes, gas stoves use the fossil fuels we need to move away from to mitigate climate change; multiple studies also say they’re bad for our health, increasing the risk of childhood asthma and more.

“There is no difference whatsoever,” Suhanosky said of the baked goods from the electric oven. “I thought when we were switching over that there would be, but there was no disruption in our baking.” When she and co-owner Melissa Fetter opened Beacon Hill Books & Cafe in September, they installed both an electric oven and an electric stove. “It hasn’t hindered my ability to cook anything yet,” she said.

According to a 2022 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 76 percent of restaurants use natural gas, and 90 percent of chefs who do so say that a ban on gas would have a negative impact on the quality of their food. “The professional chefs will tell you cooking with gas is better,” said Stephen Clark, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. “They definitely prefer an open flame. They will say it affects the quality, the taste, everything. Every time it comes up, I get texts or e-mails or calls saying this would be a problem.”

Lawmakers, Advocates Call for Faster Rollout on Local Fossil-Fuel Bans

WGBH – Last year, Massachusetts legislators approved a pilot program to let 10 cities and towns ban fossil fuels in new buildings. Now, lawmakers and advocates are urging the state to streamline how municipalities participate and let them start doing it — soon.

“It’s important that state government permit the towns that want to do this to go forward as quickly as possible,” state Sen. Mike Barrett told GBH News. “The Legislature wrote this language because a handful of towns had already moved way out in front. The communities had gone through the laborious process of drafting local bylaws and ordinances.”

The state’s Department of Energy Resources released draft regulations and a model rule at the end of December, soliciting public comment up through last week. The law mandates that, for participating communities, both new construction and major renovations would have to be fossil fuel–free operations, with some exceptions for settings like research labs and hospitals.

Under DOER’s proposed regulations, municipalities that have already asked the state for permission to ban fossil fuels in new construction, via a home-rule petition sent to Beacon Hill, would need to wait until early 2024 at the earliest to implement their bans.

It “proposes to delay the entire process much longer than the Legislature ever imagined,” Barrett said.

Many are impatient to get the ball rolling after then-Gov. Charlie Baker signed the legislation last summer, which will go into effect July 1. In addition to moving up the timeline, some lawmakers worry about red tape baked into the DOER’s drafts that could create a stop-start process as each municipality vies for state approval, one by one. Advocacy groups also raised broader concerns that restricting the pilot program to just 10 communities could create problems of its own: holding the state back in meeting its energy goals, and deepening inequity because many of the first cities and towns to apply for this program are wealthy municipalities.

Chinatown Residents Weigh in on Pollution

Bay State Banner – Members of the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) held a final listening session Feb. 15 to present and get feedback on the draft of an environmental justice strategy that would govern how departments within the office approach their work.

EEA began developing the draft strategy in 2020, a process required under the EEA’s environmental justice policy. The draft was released in November and the office sought feedback from Massachusetts residents in five listening sessions across the state, held either in person or virtually. The comment period on the draft closed Feb. 17 and the EEA expects to release final strategy later this year.

At the Feb. 15 session, Chinatown community members voiced a number of environmental concerns about their neighborhood generally, including access to open space, air quality issues due to the neighborhood’s proximity to both Interstates 90 and 93, and heat island effects due to the neighborhood’s limited tree cover.

“There’s just so many [environmental justice concerns],” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust. “I think heat is a huge one, [and] lack of open space, and then I think energy justice, because it’s a very low-income community and people are being hit hard by utility costs.”

The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In.

Plans to install 3,000 acres of solar panels in Kentucky and Virginia are delayed for years. Wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota have been abruptly canceled. And programs to encourage Massachusetts and Maine residents to adopt solar power are faltering.

The energy transition poised for takeoff in the United States amid record investment in wind, solar and other low-carbon technologies is facing a serious obstacle: The volume of projects has overwhelmed the nation’s antiquated systems to connect new sources of electricity to homes and businesses.

So many projects are trying to squeeze through the approval process that delays can drag on for years, leaving some developers to throw up their hands and walk away.

More than 8,100 energy projects — the vast majority of them wind, solar and batteries — were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021, up from 5,600 the year before, jamming the system known as interconnection.

That’s the process by which electricity generated by wind turbines or solar arrays is added to the grid — the network of power lines and transformers that moves electricity from the spot where it is created to cities and factories. There is no single grid; the United States has dozens of electric networks, each overseen by a different authority.

PJM Interconnection, which operates the nation’s largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, has been so inundated by connection requests that last year it announced a freeze on new applications until 2026, so that it can work through a backlog of thousands of proposals, mostly for renewable energy.

It now takes roughly four years, on average, for developers to get approval, double the time it took a decade ago. And when companies finally get their projects reviewed, they often learn, to their surprise, that existing power lines are too clogged and the cost of connecting is prohibitive.

Many give up. Fewer than one-fifth of solar and wind proposals actually make it through the so-called interconnection queue, according to research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“From our perspective, the interconnection process has become the No. 1 project killer,” said Piper Miller, vice president of market development at Pine Gate Renewables, a major solar power and battery developer.

After years of breakneck growth, large-scale solar, wind and battery installations in the United States fell 16 percent in 2022, according to the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. It blamed supply chain problems but also lengthy delays connecting projects to the grid.

Electricity production generates roughly one-quarter of the greenhouse gases produced by the United States; cleaning it up is key to President Biden’s plan to fight global warming. The landmark climate bill he signed last year provides $370 billion in subsidies to help make low-carbon energy technologies — like wind, solar, nuclear or batteries — cheaper than fossil fuels.

But the law does little to address many practical barriers to building clean energy projects, such as permitting holdups, local opposition or transmission constraints. Unless those obstacles get resolved, experts say, there’s a risk that billions in federal subsidies won’t translate into the deep emissions cuts envisioned by lawmakers.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” said Spencer Nelson, managing director of research at ClearPath Foundation, an energy-focused nonprofit. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

Waiting in line for years

In the largest grids, such as those in the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic, a regional operator manages the byzantine flow of electricity from hundreds of different power plants through thousands of miles of transmission lines and into millions of homes.

Before a developer can build a power plant, the local grid operator must make sure the project won’t cause disruptions — if, for instance, existing power lines get more electricity than they can handle, they could overheat and fail. After conducting a detailed study, the grid operator might require upgrades, such as a line connecting the new plant to a nearby substation. The developer usually bears this cost. Then the operator moves on to study the next project in the queue.

This process was fairly routine when energy companies were building a few large coal or gas plants each year. But it has broken down as the number of wind, solar and battery projects has risen sharply over the past decade, driven by falling costs, state clean-energy mandates and, now, hefty federal subsidies.

“The biggest challenge is just the sheer volume of projects,” said Ken Seiler, who leads system planning at PJM Interconnection. “There are only so many power engineers out there who can do the sophisticated studies we need to do to ensure the system stays reliable, and everyone else is trying to hire them, too.”

PJM, the grid operator, now has 2,700 energy projects under study — mostly wind, solar and batteries — a number that has tripled in just three years. Wait times can now reach four years or more, which prompted PJM last year to pause new reviews and overhaul its processes.

Delays can upend the business models of renewable energy developers. As time ticks by, rising materials costs can erode a project’s viability. Options to buy land expire. Potential customers lose interest.

Two years ago, Silicon Ranch, a solar power developer, applied to PJM for permission to connect three 100-megawatt solar projects in Kentucky and Virginia, enough to power tens of thousands of homes. The company, which often pairs its solar arrays with sheep grazing, had negotiated purchase options with local landowners for thousands of acres of farmland.

Today, that land is sitting empty. Silicon Ranch hasn’t received feedback from PJM and now estimates it may not be able to bring those solar farms online until 2028 or 2029. That creates headaches: The company may have to decide whether to buy the land before it even knows whether its solar arrays will be approved.

“It’s frustrating,” said Reagan Farr, the chief executive of Silicon Ranch. “We always talk about how important it is for our industry to establish trust and credibility with local communities. But if you come in and say you’re going to invest, and then nothing happens for years, it’s not an optimal situation.”

PJM soon plans to speed up its queues — for instance, by studying projects in clusters rather than one at a time — but needs to clear its backlog first.

‘Imagine if we paid for highways this way’

A potentially bigger problem for solar and wind is that, in many places around the country, the local grid is at capacity, unable to absorb more power.

That means if a developer wants to build a new wind farm, it might have to pay not just for a simple connecting line, but also for deeper grid upgrades elsewhere. One planned wind farm in North Dakota, for example, was asked to pay for multimillion-dollar upgrades to transmission lines hundreds of miles away in Nebraska and Missouri.

These costs can be unpredictable. In 2018, EDP North America, a renewable energy developer, proposed a 100-megwatt wind farm in southwestern Minnesota, estimating it would have to spend $10 million connecting to the grid. But after the grid operator completed its analysis, EDP learned the upgrades would cost $80 million. It canceled the project.

That creates a new problem: When a proposed energy project drops out of the queue, the grid operator often has to redo studies for other pending projects and shift costs to other developers, which can trigger more cancellations and delays.

It also creates perverse incentives, experts said. Some developers will submit multiple proposals for wind and solar farms at different locations without intending to build them all. Instead, they hope that one of their proposals will come after another developer who has to pay for major network upgrades. The rise of this sort of speculative bidding has further jammed up the queue.

“Imagine if we paid for highways this way,” said Rob Gramlich, president of the consulting group Grid Strategies. “If a highway is fully congested, the next car that gets on has to pay for a whole lane expansion. When that driver sees the bill, they drop off. Or, if they do pay for it themselves, everyone else gets to use that infrastructure. It doesn’t make any sense.”

A better approach, Mr. Gramlich said, would be for grid operators to plan transmission upgrades that are broadly beneficial and spread the costs among a wider set of energy providers and users, rather than having individual developers fix the grid bit by bit, through a chaotic process.

There is precedent for that idea. In the 2000s, Texas officials saw that existing power lines wouldn’t be able to handle the growing number of wind turbines being built in the blustery plains of West Texas and planned billions of dollars in upgrades. Texas now leads the nation in wind power. Similarly, MISO, a grid spanning 15 states in the Midwest, recently approved $10.3 billion in new power lines, partly because officials could see that many of its states had set ambitious renewable energy goals and would need more transmission.

But this sort of proactive planning is rare, since utilities, state officials and businesses often argue fiercely over whether new lines are necessary — and who should bear the cost.

“The hardest part isn’t the engineering, it’s figuring out who’s going to pay for it,” said Aubrey Johnson, vice president of system planning at MISO.

Climate goals at risk

As grid delays pile up, regulators have taken notice. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed two major reforms to streamline interconnection queues and encourage grid operators to do more long-term planning.

The fate of these rules is unclear, however. In December, Richard Glick, the former regulatory commission chairman who spearheaded both reforms, stepped down after clashing with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, over unrelated policies around natural gas pipelines. The commission is now split between two Democrats and two Republicans; any new reforms need majority approval.

If the United States can’t fix its grid problems, it could struggle to tackle climate change. Researchers at the Princeton-led REPEAT project recently estimated that new federal subsidies for clean energy could cut electricity emissions in half by 2030. But that assumes transmission capacity expands twice as fast over the next decade. If that doesn’t happen, the researchers found, emissions could actually increase as solar and wind get stymied and existing gas and coal plants run more often to power electric cars.

Massachusetts and Maine offer a warning, said David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute. In both states, lawmakers offered hefty incentives for small-scale solar installations. Investors poured money in, but within months, grid managers were overwhelmed, delaying hundreds of projects.

“There’s a lesson there,” Mr. Gahl said. “You can pass big, ambitious climate laws, but if you don’t pay attention to details like interconnection rules, you can quickly run into trouble.”

Education

Saugus and Lynn Schools Land State Money

Item Live – Gov. Maura Healey’s administration announced Thursday that her administration’s budget will contain “historic investments in local aid,” including fully funding the Student Opportunity Act, bolstering the state’s school system with more than $5 billion in Chapter 70 aid.

That investment trickled down to local communities, with Lynn and Saugus each seeing their allotment increase significantly. In Lynn, the city is set to receive more than $269 million in funds through Chapter 70, the state’s primary program of state aid to public elementary and secondary schools. The budget also proposes more than $26 million in unrestricted general government aid for the city. The proposed allotment in Chapter 70 monies for Saugus sits at nearly $12 million, with an additional $4.3 million in unrestricted general government aid.

“The Student Opportunity Act calls for a historic investment in our schools, our students, our educators and their futures,” said Healey in a statement. “Additionally, these funds will help cities and towns support their first responders, public works, youth violence prevention programs, housing production, cybersecurity and more.”

Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson said in a statement that he was pleased “to see continued investment established by the Student Opportunity Act,” and that the funding will assist in making sure that students enrolled in Lynn Public Schools will have a quality education.

“Funding like this is much-needed, especially in our community, and will ensure that our students receive the quality education and resources that they deserve,” Nicholson said.

Nicholson also said that his office is currently assessing how the funding will affect the budget for fiscal year 2024.

Public Schools Rely on Paraprofessionals, but Pay Meager Wages

Boston Globe – Schools across Massachusetts depend on the Amy Morins of the teaching corps.

A paraprofessional, or teacher’s aide, in the Lexington public schools, Morin works intensively each day with kindergartners with special needs, freeing up classroom teachers to tend to the other students. On a recent morning, she helped one child with a hearing aid, went over classwork with another, stomped to the beat with a third during music class.

But she is paid just $38,000 a year, less than half the average teacher’s salary in Lexington. A single mother of two children, she lives in subsidized housing and gets by on bare necessities.

“I only work 10 months out of the year and I have no income over the summer,” Morin said. “I have to budget in order to make ends meet, because all the bills still stay the same even though the income stops.”

“I’m constantly worried,” she said.

No longer “teacher helpers,” charged with making copies or cleaning classrooms, today’s paraprofessionals are integral to functioning classrooms in public schools across the country. They represent the fastest growing sector of the US education workforce, their ranks doubling in the last 30 years as the shortage of teachers has grown more acute.

Many work with special education students, who are now largely integrated into mainstream classrooms, offering academic assistance, life-skills training and behavioral management. Massachusetts paraprofessionals must have a high school diploma in addition to some college credits, or they need to pass a state-approved exam. According to the 2020 Massachusetts Teachers Association’s membership survey, the majority of its paraprofessionals are well-educated: 57 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher.