The Boston Globe: How Does Anyone Lose Track of $2.5 Billion?

As Massachusetts and federal officials work to resolve the state’s massive mistake in the funding of unemployment benefits, it seems like a good time to discuss what we know and don’t know about the blunder.

One of the country’s top experts in unemployment insurance told me the state is — surprise! — a leader in modernizing its unemployment insurance operations.

To recap: Two weeks ago, in response to questions from the Globe, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (LWD) issued a statement confirming that $2.5 billion in federal money was used to pay jobless claims during the pandemic. The problem: the claims should have been covered by the state unemployment insurance trust fund, which is financed by assessments on employers.

WWLP: It’s Sales-Tax Holiday Selection Time for Legislature

More than half a billion dollars in tax relief is expected to win Senate approval Thursday, and that’s not the only action on the tax front due this week.

The Legislature faces a Thursday deadline to select an August weekend as this year’s sales tax holiday, when the typical 6.25 percent levy does not apply to most retail items that sell for less than $2,500.

Businesses are eagerly preparing for the next round. Retailers Association of Massachusetts President Jon Hurst said the annual burst of shopping on the weekend without a sales tax generates roughly half a billion dollars in sales, far more than the revenue state government foregoes in those two days.

Boston Globe: What CEOs Make of the Inflation Reduction Act Depends Largely on What Their Company’s Selling

Corporate earnings season just ended, and the verdict is in: The Inflation Reduction Act was the hot topic this spring.

Chief executives and chief financial officers raved about it — not because they think it will tame inflation, as the Orwellian-sounding name implies. No, many of them like it because of all the money that will flow into domestic manufacturing, and the clean-energy sector in particular.

The IRA was mentioned on the earnings calls of 61 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, from March 15 through May 31, according to an analysis conducted for the Globe by financial data firm FactSet. That’s one out of eight. Other big federal spending bills barely got a mention in comparison; the CHIPS Act came up on 12 calls, while the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act came up on seven.

All three laws share similar DNA because they use federal dollars and policies to spur domestic manufacturing. In the IRA’s case, we’re talking $369 billion — with a B — to address “energy security and climate change.” It’s a smorgasbord of tax credits, loans, and grants, all to subsidize wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and other clean-energy endeavors.

Not everyone is a fan of the IRA. Biotech executives have been sniping at the bill since Congress passed it last summer because of its potential impact on drug prices; word at the BIO International Convention in Boston last week was that it should be labeled the “Innovation Reduction Act” instead. And there have got to be some corporate bean counters grousing about the new corporate minimum tax that the law imposes.

Banker & Tradesman: Wu Signals Help for Battered Office Buildings

Public subsidies could be the next tool in Boston’s bid to revive the downtown economy through conversions of neglected offices into housing.

At the end of the first quarter, Boston’s central business district had nearly 17 million square feet of available office space, according to a CBRE report, or the equivalent of 14 Prudential Towers. The big ramp-up in vacancies and sublease listings since the pandemic has prompted a rethinking of downtown’s future, as the shift to hybrid work appears likely to depress office demand for the long term.

In an interview with Banker & Tradesman, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the administration is in talks with several office landlords about city subsidies to help pay for residential conversions.

“We want to identify what the financing would even look like and what’s necessary,” Wu said. “We’re eager to think about what roles the city and state could apply, whether it’s permitting and zoning streamlining, or financial incentives and tax incentives.”

The potential pilot program is taking shape as the administration awaits the findings of a $100,000 study by HR&A Advisors this summer on the office-to-residential incentive strategies.

The loss of office occupancy has implications for other elements of a healthy downtown economy, from tourism to retailers and restaurants. The scarcity of office workers, particularly on Mondays and Fridays when many companies don’t require in-office work, draws attention to social problems, Downtown Boston Business Improvement District President Michael Nichols said.

“With reduced foot traffic comes perceptions of a lack of safety, or perceptions of a lack of employment,” Nichols said at a Downtown Boston Residents’ Association meeting last week. “I don’t think we’ll ever have a day where we have five-day-a-week office worker foot traffic. Are we willing to continue to chase that? Or think about incentivizing tourism or residential conversions?”

Foot traffic, as measured by Downtown BID sidewalk cameras, is registering modest gains in 2023. During the week of May 21-27, for example, total pedestrian activity increased nearly 14 percent from 2022 to 736,579.

Boston is already considering revamping its zoning in the downtown area, including a potential increase in base building heights from 155 to 400 feet in parts of Downtown Crossing.

But architects and commercial real estate executives say the cost of construction and other complications make residential conversions difficult in many cases.

Boston Globe: Is Mayor Wu Giving A Cold Shoulder to the Business Community? It Depends on Who’s Answering that Question.

Is Mayor Michelle Wu giving the cold shoulder to the business community?

Depends on who you ask. Take, for example, Boston venture capitalist Jeff Bussgang.

“I’m representative of the tech and entrepreneurship community so I can only speak about my experience,” said Bussgang, who met Wu a decade ago when she first ran for City Council. “She has always been thoughtful, engaged, proactive, and reactive.”

In March, when customers of Silicon Valley Bank were frozen out of their accounts and feared it would fail, Bussgang recalled how Wu immediately reached out to him and other tech players about what the city could do. Wu and her administration worked closely with state and federal officials to help avert a crisis — one that was resolved when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took the unusual step of guaranteeing all deposits.

Wu also leaned on Bussgang, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, shortly after she was elected mayor in November 2021. She asked him to organize a sitdown with other top venture capitalists on how Boston can remain a leader in the innovation economy and a magnet for talent, in particular entrepreneurs.

Previous mayors have welcomed tête-à-têtes with real estate developers and other captains of industry to discuss projects or other matters. Often, those were one-on-one meetings. But that hasn’t been Wu’s style. Instead, she prefers to assemble groups of leaders to help shape specific policies and forge public-private partnerships. Sometimes these meetings take place at City Hall, other times they are held at companies. For instance, Vertex CEO Reshma Kewalramani hosted Wu and other business leaders in April to discuss workforce development in the life sciences industry.

WGBH: Record Numbers of Massachusetts Residents are Moving Out of State, Report Says

In 2021, Marianne Iarossi and her husband Matthew Bergholm sold their house in Hudson, Massachusetts, bought a camper van, and hit the road.

“Because of COVID, we kind of did a lot of reflecting in our life and realized that we wanted to do some traveling before starting a family,” Iarossi said. They spent eight months traveling around the country. On the way back, they realized they needed to figure out where they now wanted to live.

“And Massachusetts real estate was really expensive, especially post-2020,” Iarossi said. “So we decided to move to New Hampshire.”

Iarossi and Bergholm are among the nearly 111,000 Massachusetts residents who moved out of the state between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2022, according to a new report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. That’s the highest level of out-migration the state has seen in 30 years, the report says.

Some of that population loss has been made up by new people moving to the commonwealth, including an estimated 61,000 people who relocated here from other countries, according to the report. But census estimates show Massachusetts still had an estimated population decrease of 0.7% over that period.

Iarossi, who’s now expecting their first child, said they’re renting a New Hampshire home and are looking to buy property there or in Vermont.

“We are big outdoors people and tree huggers, so we like to spend our weekends outside camping or just exploring natural areas,” said Iarossi, who works in land preservation for the Trustees of Reservations. “And it saddens me to say that Massachusetts is so developed and privatized that you don’t really have that good access to natural resources publicly.”

Boston Globe: Bidding Wars Appear in Boston’s Brutal Rental Market

Bridgette Kelly sat in her 2011 Subaru and started to panic. In less than two months she and her husband would have nowhere to live. Their landlord had hiked their rent, again, and enough was enough. Now she had arrived early to an open house for another rental in Malden, but there was already a line, and it was growing.

She texted her husband. “Two more people just showed up.”

In truth, the two-bedroom apartment was not perfect. The Orange Line was a 20-minute walk, and the $2,200 rent would be such a stretch that come winter, the couple would need to keep their heat low. But it had a small office space, and with both of them regularly working from home, that was a plus.

They submitted their application that night, and morning brought word. What Kelly feared was true. There was competition. “If you wish to offer additional, favorable terms to entice the property manager/owner to accept your application, please email me,” the broker wrote. In other words, $2,200 — yes, the listing price — would likely not be enough to land the unit.

Bidding wars — once mainly the plague of home and condo sales — are increasingly hitting rentals. And in our famously brutal market, it feels like the final insult.

 Boston Globe: MBTA Ridership Hits Highest Level Since Pandemic Began

Ridership on the MBTA in March reached its highest level since the pandemic began, with the slow-zone-plagued subway system the laggard among the various modes of travel.

Total ridership reached 68 percent of pre-pandemic levels in March, led by commuter rail (80 percent of pre-pandemic levels), bus (79 percent), and ferry (64 percent). Ridership on the subway system was 59 percent of pre-pandemic levels in March.

Even though ridership is ticking upward, fare revenue hasn’t budged much, remaining fairly stable since October 2022. For the first nine months of the current fiscal year, fare revenue was $276.3 million, down $75.3 million, or 21 percent, from what was forecasted.

Part of the problem on the subway is that rides take so long. A fifth of the system is operating under slow zone rules because of defective track. At a meeting of the MBTA board of directors on Thursday, General Manager Phillip Eng said track work still has a long way to go but is showing signs of some progress, with some slow zones being eliminated and others converted to slightly higher speeds – say, 10 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour..

On the Red Line, for example, northbound service from Ashmont to Park Street Station is now 6 minutes faster than it was on May 1, 10 minutes faster from Braintree to Park, and 2 minutes faster from Park to Alewife. Going southbound, service between Alewife and Park is 1 minute faster, 4 minutes faster from Park to Ashmont, and 5 minutes faster from Park to Braintree.

Health Care

EXTERNAL: WBUR: Black Maternal-Health Crisis Persists

Marie, a longtime Boston resident, entered her second pregnancy fearful and anxious. Her first pregnancy and birth happened during the height of the pandemic. The experience was traumatic and ended with life-threatening bleeding that required an ambulance ride, emergency surgery and separation from her newborn.

In the months that followed, she navigated unstable housing and had trouble getting her medications, compounding her recently diagnosed postpartum depression. Her eyes welled with tears as she told her story to her new care team. Her birth care providers had made her feel abandoned and discriminated against, she explained. And because of pandemic restrictions, she couldn’t get enough family support either.

Stories like Marie’s are all too common for Black birthing individuals in Massachusetts. The state’s prestigious medical institutions draw patients from all over the globe, but many residents who live within a few miles of these same hospitals and research labs experience a very different health care ecosystem.

Despite cutting-edge treatments and near-universal health care, Massachusetts still tolerates a status quo that delivers profoundly disparate access to care and leads to vastly different clinical outcomes based on race and neighborhood. One of the most obvious manifestations of these health inequities is outcomes for pregnant Black women and birthing individuals.

Telegram: Massachusetts Lawmakers File Measures to Address Mental Health in Children

By all accounts there’s a mental health crisis among the nation’s children. And the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murtha, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and Gov. Maura Healey agree.

“The crisis is real,” Markey said during a recent online symposium with Murtha that gathered 100-plus legislators and professionals in the mental health field to discuss the problems and seek solutions. The meeting explored the interrelationship between mental health and young people’s use of technology and social media.

“They are dealing with a scourge of sadness and pain,” Markey said of the nation’s youth. “The weight of the world is on their shoulders.”

His job, Markey said, is to advocate for increases in federal funding for mental health services across the board in the United States. And to remind parents, Markey said, that they have rights when dealing with social media and technology:

Parents can demand social media companies ban ads targeted to their children.

Parents can demand that sites erase all gathered personal information and tracking.

Parents can enact social media controls.

Boston Globe: State Should Have Overseen Closure of Compass Medical

(Opinion) It’s astounding to me that the state’s response to the failure of Compass Medical is only to have the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Board of Registration in Medicine remind physicians of their individual responsibility to ensure that their patients receive uninterrupted care (“Compass Medical was in talks to be bought).

States need to recognize that they have an affirmative responsibility to oversee and regulate the corporate practice of medicine, especially at this time when we have allowed profit, instead of the ethical obligation to non-self-interested advocacy of health professionals, to become our guiding principle.

Individual physicians don’t have enough command of an overwhelmingly complex billing and electronic records infrastructure to provide any useful care once a bankruptcy like this has been allowed to go forward. Compass should have been put into receivership before it failed and run by the receiver until there was an orderly disposition of its assets so the integrity of patient care was protected and put first.

Energy/Environment

Boston Globe: Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration

August besieged California with a heat unseen in generations. A surge in air conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid, leaving a population already ravaged by the coronavirus to work remotely by the dim light of their cellphones.

By midmonth, the state had recorded possibly the hottest temperature ever measured on earth — 130 degrees in Death Valley — and an otherworldly storm of lightning had cracked open the sky. From Santa Cruz to Lake Tahoe, thousands of bolts of electricity exploded down onto withered grasslands and forests, some of them already hollowed out by climate-driven infestations of beetles and kiln-dried by the worst five-year drought on record. Soon, California was on fire.

Over the next two weeks, 900 blazes incinerated six times as much land as all the state’s 2019 wildfires combined, forcing 100,000 people from their homes. Three of the largest fires in history burned simultaneously in a ring around the San Francisco Bay Area. Another fire burned just 12 miles from my home in Marin County. I watched as towering plumes of smoke billowed from distant hills in all directions and air tankers crisscrossed the skies. Like many Californians, I spent those weeks worrying about what might happen next, wondering how long it would be before an inferno of 60-foot flames swept up the steep, grassy hillside on its way toward my own house, rehearsing in my mind what my family would do to escape.

Boston Globe: New Englanders Complained about the Smoke. In Canada, Residents Battle Wildfires at their Door.

ANTALLON, Nova Scotia — A “for sale” sign swayed at the edge of a firefighter’s driveway in this Halifax suburb. But there was nothing left to sell, only the charred footprint of a foundation, a deep blanket of chalky ash, and the scattered, ruined remnants of a displaced family’s belongings

The firefighter had been elsewhere when his home was destroyed two weeks ago, battling flames on another front of the wind-whipped wildfire that swept through this area, destroying 151 homes about 20 miles from the provincial capital. A separate wildfire, more than 100 miles to the south, leveled an additional 60 homes and continued to burn.

The fires forced more than 20,000 Nova Scotians to evacuate, and more than 60,000 acres have burned. No one has died in the fires; the cause is being investigated by provincial authorities.

“I’ve never seen any destruction like it before. It felt like I was in a war zone,” said Acting District Fire Chief Joe Fulton, who added that three firefighters lost their homes while working to save the homes of others. “It’s a job, it’s a career, but there’s a personal side, too.”

As New Englanders complained about the dense smoke that drifted south, Nova Scotians and other Canadians have been fighting wildfires at their doors. Residents in Quebec and Ontario also have been hit hard, with raging fires making outdoor activity dangerous and darkening the skies across the northern United States.

Cape Cod: Mass. to Compete for Federal Clean Energy Grants

Massachusetts is applying for upwards of $250 million in federal grants for clean energy projects.

Governor Maura Healey recently announced that an application for the Cleaner Grid New England Project has been submitted by the Department of Energy Resources, in collaboration with National Grid and Eversource, to the federal government.

That money, offered through the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, would be utilized for offshore wind and solar power plans.

Healey said federal aid on these matters could progress work to offer clean energy while also minimizing the cost to residents.

These developments come as Eversource is planning to break ground on their work to boost the electric grid on Cape Cod as well as to connect offshore wind farms throughout the New England region. Wind power projects such as Vineyard Wind and SouthCoast Wind have proposed constructing turbines off the coasts of the Cape and Islands.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

WBUR: Pride Parade Returns to Boston for the First Time in Three Tears

Riders wearing black jackets from the Moving Violations women’s motorcycle club lined their bikes up Saturday as onlookers cheered and waved rainbow flags in Copley Square.

They revved their engines – and with that, the first Boston Pride parade since 2019 was off.

The annual celebration of the LGBTQ+ community was delayed by the pandemic, and then canceled after its organizing committee disbanded.

Just behind the roaring motorcycles, Gov. Maura Healey sprinted from one side of the street to the other, hugging spectators and giving high fives. People clamored to the front to take selfies with the state’s first openly gay governor.

“I’m just so proud to be a part of it, I’m proud to lead this state, I’m grateful for the support,” she said. “And I just want people to know, in this time where there are other states going backwards — come to Massachusetts. It’s a great place to live, to raise a family, to grow a business.”

Education

WCVB: Proposed Legislation Would Change Massachusetts Graduation Requirements

Massachusetts teachers’ unions, parents and students gathered at Beacon Hill on Wednesday to push for statewide changes to public education.

Gathered at Church on the Hill, across Bowdoin Street from the Massachusetts State House, the group argued that the state’s use of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test is having a negative impact on students. They’re supporting the so-called Thrive Act, which allows MCAS testing to continue but would end the use of standardized testing as a graduation requirement.

They say many of the schools have English language learners and argue it’s not fair to require them to pass a test in English only.

“Many students in my district as well as Boston Public Schools, are first-generation English language learners that are required to pass this exam that is only in English,” said Soleei Guasp, a Harvard Student who attended Wednesday’s event.

“We’re asking our educators and students to learn a test that is not going to help them at all,” said Suleika Soto, a parent of a Boston student.

The proposal would create a graduation requirement based on coursework instead of testing.

“Governor Healey believes assessment plays an important role in measuring student achievement, but that we have an obligation to ensure the test is equitable and measuring what we need it to,” a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey wrote in a statement. “Our administration has been actively engaging with stakeholders to take a closer look at our current testing system, including potential reforms or alternatives that would best support our academic and equity goals.”