Healey Offers Sympathetic Ear in Business Address

State House News -Three weeks into her tenure in the corner office, Gov. Maura Healey told business leaders her administration is ready to “do more” to address their pressing concerns and targeted workforce strain, tax relief and health care investment as broad areas of focus.

Addressing hundreds of business leaders, Healey said she is keyed into their concerns about competitiveness, tax burdens, a shortage of employees, runaway housing prices and unreliable transportation services. But her speech included few specifics about what her nascent administration will do to tackle those issues.

The new governor said her address at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts event came at “a pivotal time for our state, particularly with all that you are confronting day in and day out.”

“We are the greatest state in this country. I also know we have to be honest about the realities, and the fact is, Massachusetts is expensive – high housing costs, high child-care costs, high electricity costs, unreliable transportation. Remote work flexibilities, as wonderful as they have been, also have changed dynamics within a workforce,” Healey said, adding that due to a confluence of potent inflation, widespread hiring challenges and economic upheaval, “We know it hasn’t been easy.”

Higher-ups at AIM, an influential business group, have called for undertaking a “more expansive discussion about what constitutes economic health” for Massachusetts, including not just competitiveness – a theme Healey targeted in her remarks – but also ways to make the Bay State affordable and attractive for workers.

The group called in December for lawmakers and the new Healey administration to revisit and approve a suite of proposed tax reforms Gov. Charlie Baker pursued, including breaks for renters, seniors and caregivers and changes to the state’s estate tax. Those tax policies were shelved over apparent affordability concerns, but supporters of the proposals say the state’s fiscal condition is strong enough to support the changes.

Healey Gets ‘Glimpse into Tomorrow’ in Visit to Wilmington’s Analog Devices

Lowell Sun – WILMINGTON — Less than a month since she took office, Gov. Maura Healey paid a visit to Middlesex County to shine a light on the state’s manufacturing industry.

Healey, alongside Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Yvonne Hao and Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Lauren Jones, stopped at Wilmington’s Analog Devices Tuesday morning to understand its impact on Massachusetts’s economy.

Analog Devices, a member of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, is a manufacturing company that works on “advancing breakthrough technologies,” namely with semiconductors, according to Ferda Millan, the company’s director of global public relations and external communications.

While there, Healey toured two product line laboratories: Analog’s Battery Characterization Lab, where they work on improving battery health for electric vehicles, and their High-Speed Converter/Radio Frequency Lab, where they create products for wireless communication, such as cellphones, and automotive radar, as well as other markets.

Boston Chamber CEO Sees Lots Of Work To Do

State House News – As remote work gives some Massachusetts workers the opportunity to move out of state, and high housing costs and transportation woes drive others out, Boston businesses are calling for a statewide housing plan, new MBTA leadership and greater government support for apprenticeship programs.

During his State of the Business address, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO James Rooney outlined the group’s agenda as a new Legislature and gubernatorial administration get their wheels turning.

“Other cities and states are proactively and aggressively working to attract talent, build businesses, and create industries. If we are being honest, they are working harder and with greater focus than we are,” he said. “To compete and to win, Massachusetts must be a place where employers and employees want to be and feel welcome.”

With the state flush with cash from three years of unexpectedly high revenue growth and an influx of federal money, tax issues are at the forefront of the chamber’s agenda this year, Rooney said.

Experts said at the consensus revenue hearing on Tuesday that they expect elevated revenue levels to remain high, growing in fiscal year 2024 between 0.2 percent and 1.3 percent from the Department of Revenue’s fiscal year 2023 forecast.

Rooney also warned of “unintended consequences” of the new voter-approved surtax on earners who bring in over a million dollars a year and said the state’s flush coffers could be used to “mitigate” these consequences.

“Some of those revenues should be used to protect existing industries and businesses, stimulate new economic activity, correct tax policies where Massachusetts is an outlier, and mitigate unintended consequences from the millionaire’s tax,” he said.

Cannabis Gross Sales in Massachusetts Top $4 Billion

WWLP – The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) reports that adult use marijuana establishments have surpassed $4 billion in gross sales since stores opened in November 2018.

The amount passes the $3 billion mark reported on May 18, 2022. Read the breakdown of sales and product distribution here.

In 2022 Massachusetts saw the openings of 71 marijuana retailers, 3 marijuana couriers and 4 marijuana delivery operators, generating $1,483,898,510 in sales for calendar year 2022.

“Consumers’ demand for tested, quality cannabis products remains strong since Massachusetts became the first East Coast state to open adult-use stores in 2018 and delivery service in 2021,” Commission Executive Director Shawn Collins said. “As new jurisdictions come online, I am confident that licensees in the commonwealth will maintain the competitive edge by demonstrating to peers what it takes to operate a safe, effective, and equitable cannabis industry.”

Marijuana establishments and medical marijuana treatment centers sell products that have been tested and have detailed packaging and labeling information about product contents. They provide safe access for adults and patients seeking alternatives to buying on illegal markets. The cannabis tax revenue is used for programs including youth prevention campaigns and community reinvestment funds.

Cannabis industry sales information for the state is available by visiting the Commission’s Open Data Platform.

These six charts show we’ve never seen a Mass. job market quite like this one

Boston Globe – It’s been nearly three years since pandemic shutdowns staggered the economy.

In just two months, March and April 2020, Massachusetts employers cut 690,000 jobs — nearly one out of five. Unemployment soared to 17 percent from less than 3 percent.

There’d been nothing like it, even during the Great Depression. And the aftershocks continue to reverberate across the state, exposing faults in what otherwise seems like a solid job market.

Employers added an average of 11,000 jobs a month last year, compared with 4,300 a month in 2019. Yet there were 240,000 open jobs in November, according to the most recent data available. That’s a historically elevated level — the monthly average in the five years before the pandemic was 157,000 openings — that indicates hiring is being held back by a shortage of workers.

Wu pledges to overhaul Boston’s planning process

Boston Globe – In her first State of the City address, Mayor Michelle Wu pledged to overhaul the city’s urban planning process, challenging business and elected leaders to support her vision as she works to sustainably grow Boston back to its population peak of 800,000.

Wu’s speech, delivered Wednesday evening at the MGM Music Hall in Fenway to an audience of several thousand, included pledges to ensure academic excellence in every public school, speed the city’s transition from fossil fuels, and grant public land to builders for free to construct affordable housing.

“It’s thanks to the people of Boston that I can stand here tonight and say: The state of our city is strong. And we have the resources, the resolve, and the responsibility to make it even stronger,” Wu said. “As we look to the year ahead, our administration is focused on building a green and growing city for everyone.

“Together,” Wu added, “we can build a Boston that’s more green than concrete — where housing is a given, not a godsend, and mobility is the minimum, not a miracle. Where the things we build inspire, but don’t define us, and where each generation shines brighter than the last.”

Downtown Boston is Recovery Depends on Which Downtown You’re Talking About

Boston Globe – Since the start of the pandemic, there have been lots of questions about the future of downtown Boston. But three years in, it’s increasingly becoming clear that the answer to those questions hinges largely on which downtown Boston you’re talking about.

After all, the city’s core business districts — stretching roughly from Mass. Ave. to the edges of Boston Harbor — are hardly a monolith. And in a time of hybrid work, it’s the hybrid places, where people don’t just work but also live and play, that are bouncing back fastest.

So the post-COVID recovery of downtown can look quite different depending on where you’re standing.

Taxation

Healey Pledges to Take on Tax Reform, but Details are Few

Boston Globe – Governor Maura Healey went to great lengths on Thursday to portray herself as an ally to the business community during a speech before Associated Industries of Massachusetts. However, she provided few specifics about the policies her new administration intends to advance to improve the state’s economic competitiveness.

In particular, she was vague about taxes. Speaking to an audience of about 500, Healey reiterated her pledge to make tax reform a top priority. But she offered no real details and steered clear of addressing business leaders’ suggestions to tinker with who gets hit by the “millionaires tax” that voters approved in November.

Healey Seeks $282 Million For Shelter, Food Aid Programs

State House News – Reviving debate on an issue that lawmakers left untouched at the end of last session, Gov. Maura Healey on Monday filed a $282 million spending bill she said is necessary to manage a surge in demand for emergency shelter and prevent the free school meals program from running out of money.

Healey called on top House and Senate Democrats to make quick work of her new supplemental budget bill, which would steer $85 million toward an emergency shelter “crisis,” allocate $130 million to keep expanded nutrition assistance in place for a few more months, and appropriate $65 million to ensure a universal school meals program remains afloat through the end of the academic year.

Her bill (H 47) targets the same growing shelter strain, fueled in part by an influx of migrant arrivals to Massachusetts, that prompted Gov. Charlie Baker to unsuccessfully seek $130 million in November.

Healey’s office said about $65 million would help the Department of Housing and Community Development expand shelter options, projecting the state will need more than 1,100 units beyond its baseline to meet demand. Another $21.9 million would help schools place a surge of students who have arrived through the process of shelter placements.

Health Care

Healey Calls Workforce Challenges ‘Devastating’ in Massachusetts Health Care

MassLive – In an increasingly familiar refrain, Gov. Maura Healey sounded the alarm about acute workforce shortages to hundreds of health care leaders and medical professionals Friday.

Healey, whose family includes a long line of caregivers, praised members of the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association at their annual meeting in downtown Boston, particularly for their resiliency and life-saving efforts during the grueling COVID-19 pandemic.

The health care sector is “not easy,” Healey said, as she invoked workers on the frontlines at community hospitals and community health centers, among other settings.

“I think for me, my No. 1 commitment and concern is workforce. I know workforce is devastating,” Healey said Friday morning at the Westin Copley Place.

“But now, we have got to do all we can to recruit and train up as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. I know things are spiraling, and you’re paying the price for that every single day.”

Healey, a former basketball player who in her nascent administration repeatedly affirms the value of teamwork, called on health care leaders to “collectively convene” to tackle workforce woes and leverage some pandemic-era innovations, such as telehealth.

Healey’s brief remarks came the same week she appointed Kate Walsh, the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, as her health and human services secretary. Healey lauded Walsh, who attended Friday’s meeting, for her creativity, innovation and resiliency.

Mary Beckman, Healey’s acting health chief, will “stay on and help us out at HHS,” the governor said.

Healey stopped short of disclosing new potential state funding or legislative initiatives for the health care workforce at the meeting, though the new governor told reporters there’s “an array of things we need to do.” She spoke broadly about expanding telehealth options and sending more mobile health units into communities.

US Proposes Once-a-Year COVID Shots for Most Americans

Associated Press — U.S. health officials want to make COVID-19 vaccinations more like the annual flu shot.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday proposed a simplified approach for future vaccination efforts, allowing most adults and children to get a once-a-year shot to protect against the mutating virus.

This means Americans would no longer have to keep track of how many shots they’ve received or how many months it’s been since their last booster.

The proposal comes as boosters have become a hard sell. While more than 80% of the U.S. population has had at least one vaccine dose, only 16% of those eligible have received the latest boosters authorized in August.

Legislation Addresses Root Causes of Health Disparities in the State

Boston Globe – A coalition of Black and Latino leaders in health care, philanthropy, and business have filed legislation to combat racial and ethnic health disparities in Massachusetts.

The bill was filed by the Health Equity Compact, a group of 55 experts and executives launched last May to create an expansive health reform bill aimed at closing many of the racial and ethnic inequities highlighted by the pandemic. The coalition includes leaders from organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Boston Public Health Commission, and Point32 Health, the Commonwealth’s second-largest health insurer.

The pandemic “was a call to action for us to leverage our lived experience, having come from those communities that were most impacted,” said Juan Fernando Lopera, Beth Israel Lahey Health’s inaugural chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and a member of the compact. “Across the country, our health care system fails many who are lower income and come from underrepresented communities.”

The bill aims to prioritize equity in the state government by creating a new Cabinet-level Executive Office of Equity, led by a secretary of equity, and requiring state agencies to track and publicly report health equity data.

Record 16.3 Million People Seek Health Coverage through ‘Obamacare’

Associated Press — A record 16.3 million people sought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act this year, double the number covered when the marketplaces first launched nearly a decade ago, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.

More than 3 million new members joined the marketplace, also known as “Obamacare,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The government worked with nonprofit groups and invested in program specialists who helped to sign people up in low-income, immigrant, Black and Latino communities to enroll more people, said Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We made unprecedented investments to expand our enrollment organization footprint into nearly every county in the country and targeted the hardest to reach communities,” she said.

The boost in enrollment comes as the number of uninsured people is at an all-time low — just 8% of those in the United States remain without coverage.

Health-Care Providers Mark Roe Anniversary

WBUR – This week marked the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that secured the right to abortion in America.

For abortion rights supporters, it’s a bittersweet anniversary because the Supreme Court overturned Roe in the Dobbs decision last year. More than a dozen states have since banned or heavily restricted abortion.

In Massachusetts, abortion remains legal and has broad support from the medical community. More than a hundred medical professionals gathered at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Monday to mark the anniversary of Roe and discuss the future of abortion access.

Ambulance Response Times in Boston Slow with Hospital Gridlock, Short Staffing

Boston Globe – Imagine your spouse collapses and you call 911. Two minutes tick by. Then four. Then six. Still no ambulance.

Median ambulance response times in Boston for life-threatening emergencies — think cardiac arrest, arterial bleeds, an unconscious person — have grown significantly this past year, rising from just over 7 minutes in January 2022, to 7.7 minutes in December, Boston EMS records show. Those city-wide numbers mask even more troubling signs in some neighborhoods: Response times in Hyde Park hit nearly 11 minutes for the most urgent calls in December, while West Roxbury was at 9.5 minutes.

Citywide, response times for the most urgent calls are the slowest since at least 2014, records show.

The reasons for the delays aren’t just high call volumes, which have plagued Boston EMS in the past, or acute workforce shortages, which have wreaked havoc with virtually every area of health care and the broader economy.

This time, another major cause is hospital overcrowding, triggered by hospitals’ inability to quickly discharge patients to understaffed nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. The hospital capacity crisis is slowing ambulance response times across Greater Boston by forcing EMS workers to stand in line, sometimes for hours, inside busy ERs until overwhelmed hospital teams can take over their patients’ care.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

State Spends to Boost Home Ownership. What Happens When the Money Dries Up?

Both the state and Boston have poured COVID relief funds into programs to help tackle the rising costs of housing. Now some are wondering if the programs are sustainable.

Boston Globe – She had to move about 30 miles from Boston, but Jasmine Toussaint is at last a homeowner.

A longtime resident of the city, Toussaint, 40, had for the better part of five years fruitlessly scoured the Boston area for anything in her price range. Then, at the beginning of 2022, her luck turned.

She got a better-paying job. Her student loans were forgiven through a federal public service program. And crucially, she received a $38,000 grant from a state-backed housing agency to use toward a down payment on the newly constructed townhouse in Haverhill that she now calls home.

“It has changed a lot for me,” said Toussaint, who works for the educational equity initiative Campus Without Walls. “I’m the first person in my family to buy a house. It feels like I’ve been lucky enough to unlock a better future for myself.”

But in the state’s frenetic housing market, stories like Toussaint’s are about more than good fortune: they also speak to the success of government programs aimed at helping people clear the increasingly insurmountable hurdles to becoming a homeowner. In her case, Toussaint was one of roughly 1,600 people who were on track at the end of 2022 to receive homebuying grants through a program known as MassDREAMS, which was financed with some of the billions the state received from the federal pandemic relief law known as the American Rescue Plan Act.

Advocates Seek Re-Commitment to Boston Police Reform after Beating of Tyre Nichols

WBUR –  Boston officials gathered in Chinatown Sunday morning to celebrate Lunar New Year – but many were thinking about Memphis, after the release of the police video showing the brutal beating death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols at the hands of five police officers.

Police Commissioner Michael Cox told reporters he was grappling with what he saw in the video.

“I can’t put into words,” he said, before trailing off. “I won’t even try, that’s how bad it is.”

“It shows how much work we have to do as a country, and as a society,” said Mayor Michelle Wu.

But Wu said she’s confident in the police reform process underway in the city.

“I feel so lucky that the standards that we have here, the level of professionalism and accountability and community-connected focus, puts us at a different starting point than many places around the country,” she said.

Boston initiated a slate of reforms after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

The city launched a new online dashboard tracking information such as how often police use their firearms and when they stop to interrogate people. It also expanded its body camera program and created the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency.

But a year into its existence, that office had only reviewed a handful of cases.

Sustainability and Climate

House GOP Seeks New Restrictions on Use of US Oil Stockpile

Boston Globe – WASHINGTON — For the second time this month, House Republicans are seeking to restrict presidential use of the nation’s emergency oil stockpile — a proposal that has already drawn a White House veto threat.

A GOP bill set for a vote Friday would require the government to offset any non-emergency withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with new drilling on public lands and oceans. Republicans accuse President Joe Biden of abusing the reserve for political reasons to keep gas prices low, while Biden says tapping the reserve was needed last year in response to a ban on Russian oil imports following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden withdrew 180 million barrels from the strategic reserve over several months, bringing the stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s. The administration said last month it will start to replenish the reserve now that oil prices have gone down.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attacked the latest GOP proposal, which follows a bill approved two weeks ago that would prohibit the Energy Department from selling oil from the strategic reserve to companies owned or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

EV Reliance is Sparking a Dangerous Mining Boom

Boston Globe -The transportation sector is the largest contributor to US greenhouse gas pollution, responsible for more than a quarter of all emissions. Both the Biden administration and the state of Massachusetts aim to eliminate those emissions by 2050, largely by getting people into electric cars.

But over-reliance on electric vehicles will wreak havoc on the environment and on vulnerable communities, according to a new report, because it would require a massive supply of lithium. The silvery white metal mined from rocks and groundwater is widely used in EV batteries. When extracted, it often has harsh social and environmental impacts, especially on Indigenous communities.

Instead of simply swapping traditional cars for EVs, the report released Tuesday by the climate justice-focused research network Climate and Community Project offers another way to tackle transportation’s climate impact: reducing dependency on cars in general.

“It’s not a question of, do we decarbonize, or do we protect Indigenous people and ecosystems?” said Thea Riofrancos, lead author, Climate and Community Project member, and associate professor of political science at Providence College. “It’s asking, how can we do both?”

The study’s authors created a novel modeling tool to examine different paths the United States can take to eliminate transit emissions, and how much lithium each would require.

The least ambitious scenario — just switching to EVs — could increase the need for lithium by up to threefold by 2050, the authors say. But if the country boosts density, invests in mass transit, builds out lithium battery recycling, and regulates EV battery size, it could cut the amount of extra lithium needed to decarbonize transit by 2050 by more than 90 percent.

The study is the first to project lithium demand based on transit policy choices. It raises questions surrounding EV policy in Massachusetts, where climate and transit advocates have expressed frustration with both state and federal climate plans for placing too much emphasis on electric cars.

Demand for lithium has soared in recent years, due mainly to a growing demand for EVs. Global lithium consumption has doubled over the past two years, according to Bloomberg, and is expected to rise over 40 times by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

Though lithium is globally abundant, increasing production isn’t easy because new mines can’t be built overnight. Lithium mining has also notoriously led to widespread land and water pollution, habitat destruction, and human rights abuses in Indigenous and rural communities.

The study looks at ways to mitigate that impact by finding a way forward that requires less lithium.

“There are different ways that our transportation sector could look in 2050,” said Riofrancos. “They all eliminate emissions but otherwise, they’re radically different.”

In the “electrified status quo,” Riofrancos said, the United States makes only one change — swapping traditional cars for EVs — while maintaining the rest of the transportation system and allowing EV batteries to grow.

But a bolder future would see the nation build highly dense cities, hugely expand public transit and bike paths, build out battery recycling infrastructure, expand access to electric bikes, prioritize electric trains over buses because they use less lithium, and limit the size of passenger vehicles, reducing the amount of lithium needed for their batteries. This could lower the projected rise in lithium demand by 2050 by 92 percent, the study found.

The biggest share of that reduction in lithium demand comes not from battery recycling or reducing battery size, but from getting people out of cars. But crucially, even the most ambitious scenario does not eliminate cars altogether. “We wanted to stay within the bounds what could be actually doable in 2050,” said Riofrancos.

Slashing future lithium demand would help the United States decarbonize humanely, the study says, and would protect social welfare.

Globally, 85 percent of the current and planned lithium extraction projects are located on or near land managed or inhabited by Indigenous people, a December 2020 study found. In Chile and Argentina, two of the world’s largest lithium producers, mining has led to pollution, water depletion, and strong human rights and labor concerns, sparking staunch resistance from affected communities.

“Policies should avoid causing new harm to the environment and human rights of communities in the lithium rich areas in the Global South,” said Pía Marchegiani, environmental policy director at the nonprofit Environment and Natural Resources Foundation in Argentina, who coauthored the report.

Here in the United States, there is only one active lithium mine in Nevada, but dozens of new ones are under development. That includes the Thacker Pass mine, which was approved at the end of the Trump administration but is tied up in the courts, and which environmentalists and Indigenous tribes oppose due to concerns about ecological impact and a lack of community consultation.

The authors say low-lithium plans to decarbonize transit would come with other benefits, too. Improving public transit, for instance, could offer economic benefits to those who may struggle to afford cars, and could improve air quality. And regulating the size of EV batteries could make zero-emission vehicles more affordable for those who still need them.

Riofrancos noted that some New England municipalities are taking steps in the right direction. In Boston and in her own city of Providence, among others in the region, officials are experimenting with fare-free public transit to boost ridership and are building out bus lanes.

“We’re seeing some movement, but we’re also still seeing the expansion of car dependency with more parking lots and underfunded buses and the like,” she said. “But there’s a real opportunity.”