Boston Globe: Boston is a Good Place to Start a Tech Company. Keeping it Here is Another Story.

For more than 70 years Massachusetts has nurtured tech companies despite its longstanding reputation as a high-tax, highly regulated, and expensive place to do business.

Digital Equipment, Analog Devices, and Lotus Development were among the trailblazers back in the day.

Today’s home-grown stars, launched around the turn of the century, include Akamai, Tripadvisor, and Wayfair.

And the startups keep on coming, companies you may never have heard of — yet.

The tech ecosystem has thrived — attracting industry giants like Amazon and Meta — amid mounting concern that the state has become less appealing to entrepreneurs and more inhospitable to companies, whether they are emerging or long established.

Worcester Business Journal: Nonprofits Battle against Rising Food Insecurity as Pandemic-Era Assistance Comes to an End

The model at Community Harvest Project, a nonprofit farm and orchard in Grafton and Harvard, is unique in the way it makes food available for donation. On a given week in the summer, more than 300 volunteers help harvest the 320,000 pounds of produce the farm produces each year. Its 6,000 annual volunteers come to the farm year round, in smaller numbers during the winter, supplementing CHP’s six full-time and six part-time employees who manage 15 acres of farmland in Grafton and 30 orchard acres in Harvard.

Community Harvest Project does not distribute food directly, but rather partners with 23 other organizations in what Executive Director Tori Buerschaper describes as a business-to-business model.

Calling itself volunteer farming for hunger relief, Community Harvest Project’s food donations have become more critical than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they remain so now as pandemic emergency declaration-related federal and state emergency allotments end and the costs of food continue to rise.

Boston Globe: US Unemployment Claims Highest Since 2021, but Job Market Remains Healthy

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week rose to its highest level in a year-and-a-half, though jobs remain plentiful by historical standards even as companies cut costs as the economy slows.

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending May 6 rose by 22,000 to 264,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s up from the previous week’s 242,000 and is the most since November of 2021. The weekly number of applications is seen as roughly representative of the number of US layoffs.

Many employers appear to have put a premium on retaining workers after some of them were caught short-handed by the rapid post-COVID-19 economic recovery. As a result, most economists don’t envision waves of layoffs even if a recession were to strike later this year as many expect.

The four-week moving average of claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 6,000 to 245,250. Analysts have pointed to a sustained increase in the four-week averages as a sign that layoffs are accelerating, but are hedging their bets on whether any spike in layoffs is imminent.

In Massachusetts, about 34,898 individuals filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, up 6,375 from the week prior, according to the Labor Department.

Boston Globe: Wu Proposes New Redistricting Map to Council

Just days after a judge barred Boston from using newly drawn maps for City Council seats, Mayor Michelle Wu on Friday evening proposed an alternative in a bid to bring clarity and direction to a redistricting process that has sunk into confusion.

In submitting a new political map to the City Council, Wu said her goal is to have cohesive neighborhoods remain within a single council district, rather than split among seats as they were in the previous map.

“The result is a City Council district map that unifies communities of interest within districts and attempts as best as possible to reflect how residents experience the city in their daily lives,” the mayor wrote in a letter to councilors.

The political map drawn up by the City Council earlier this year after a bitter and protracted debate was challenged in federal court by a group of voters and civic associations. And this week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the city from the using the new districts, determining that the legal challenge had a chance of successfully proving race played too heavy a role in the redrawn lines.

WBUR: Census Rejecting Some Big-City Complaints of 2020 Undercounts

Some of the largest U.S. cities challenging their 2020 census numbers aren’t getting the results they hoped for from the U.S. Census Bureau. An effort by Memphis to increase its official population resulted in three people being subtracted from its count during an initial appeal.

Some successes have come from challenges to totals of “group quarters” — dorms, jails and nursing homes. They were among the most difficult to count as campuses closed and prisons and nursing homes were locked down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Census Bureau created a separate program to handle these issues.

The Census Bureau has received more than 100 submissions in total for its two challenge programs from cities, towns and villages of all sizes across the U.S.

The challenges won’t affect how many congressional seats each state got during the apportionment process, or the more detailed numbers used for redrawing political boundaries. But new numbers could shape how the federal government distributes $1.5 trillion for transportation, health programs and other funding, which is most pertinent for cities.

Boston Globe: MBTA Will Take More Than a Decade to Reach Staffing Goals

Good news for commuters: The T is on track to have enough employees to operate its trains and buses more reliably.

The bad news: It could take the agency more than 10 years to get there.

Federal regulators and state leaders have said that staffing up is one of the top priorities for increasing safety and reliability at the MBTA, but growing the workforce has been and is a massive challenge for the agency. At Thursday’s board of directors’ subcommittee meetings, agency leaders revealed they are falling far short of their staffing goal for this fiscal year and will not meet the goal for the next fiscal year, which starts in July, unless the current rate of hiring and retention improves dramatically.

The T has added just 141 people to its staff in the last 10 months, when accounting for people who have left the agency, chief human resources officer Tom Waye told board members.

At that pace, it will take the T more than a decade to fill the 7,643 budgeted positions for next fiscal year with active employees, according to calculations by transit advocates and the Globe. The T currently has 5,658 active employees, according to spokesperson Joe Pesaturo.

State House News: Healey Chooses Augustus For Housing Secretary

Gov. Maura Healey has named Edward Augustus as state housing secretary, according to a source familiar with the process, turning to a former state senator and Worcester city manager to serve as point person on one of her top priorities. The governor created the position earlier this year after she promised to make housing a priority on the campaign trail.

WGBH: Will Beacon Hill Rein in AI?

When historians look back on 2023, they’ll describe it, among other things, as the moment when everybody started freaking out about artificial intelligence.

The deep unease currently thrumming through the culture involves apocalyptic scenarios in which AI develops consciousness and pursues humanity’s destruction, and more mundane fears (relatively speaking) about ChatGPT and similar tools becoming so sophisticated that they render entire professions obsolete.

But two companion bills currently under consideration on Beacon Hill would address a more immediate set of concerns. The bills would establish a new state commission tasked with answering a couple of key questions: first, how are artificial intelligence and other decision-making tools that replace human judgment being used by state government right now? And second, what steps, if any, should Massachusetts take to regulate their use moving forward?

Kade Crockford runs the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, which supports the legislation in question. She says the standing commission could look at practices that are already in place — including the use of so-called risk-assessment instruments to help determine whether criminal defendants are incarcerated prior to trial. That practice, Crockford says, is a clear-cut example of state government using tech in a way that “reach[es] into people’s lives, and mak[es] decisions that can completely change the course of a person and a family’s life.”

Boston Globe: Massachusetts Senate Will Actually Pay Some Student Workers

After years of advocacy by elected officials and legislative staff, the Massachusetts Senate will pay student fellows for the first time this summer and fall, bringing the chamber in line with many workplaces that have done away with unpaid student programs in recent years.

Each state Senate office will be allowed to choose one fellow who comes from an “underserved population” for either summer or fall, and each fellow will be paid $20 per hour for a maximum 150 hours, according to an e-mail announcing the online application obtained by the Globe. The state Senate will also continue to offer an unpaid internship program available to a wider pool of applicants.

The internal announcement came several hours after the Globe made inquiries with Senate leadership about why the chamber has not paid its interns despite allocating money to do so in recent years.

In the last three budget cycles, Massachusetts state lawmakers have earmarked money for a paid internship program “to promote inclusive and diverse participation” in the public service sector. The Senate defines underserved populations as groups “that have been denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life and share particular characteristics” including race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, disability, and economic status.

Boston Globe: ‘This is the Moment’: Yvonne Hao Stepped Up Just in Time for Mass. Tech

Yvonne Hao’s cellphone buzzed with a call from an unrecognized number. She answered it anyway.

“Hi, this is Maura Healey,” the voice said. Robocall, Hao thought.

But the veteran private equity partner quickly realized it was Healey herself calling that day in December 2022, asking Hao to join her administration. A couple days later, over lunch at the Cambridge Common restaurant near Harvard Square with Healey and Lieutenant Governor-elect Kim Driscoll, Hao learned the job they had in mind was one of the state’s biggest: secretary of economic development.

Hao was hesitant at first because she lacked government experience, but she quickly realized the impact she could have. For Healey, the choice of Hao couldn’t have been more fortuitous. When the tech scene got walloped in March with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Hao, who spent her career leading and financing companies here and across the country, became the right person at the right time. With coolness and confidence, she helped guide the local tech sector through the immediate crisis, and gained the credibility to lead the innovation economy through uncertain times.

Boston Globe: Commerce Department Starts Process to Fund Tech Hubs with $500 Million in Grants

The Commerce Department on Friday is launching the application process for cities to receive a total of $500 million in grants to become technology hubs.

The $500 million is part of a $10 billion authorization from last year’s CHIPS and Science Act to stimulate investments in new technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotech. It’s an attempt to expand tech investment that is largely concentrated around a few US cities — Austin, Texas; Boston; New York; San Francisco; and Seattle — to the rest of the country.

“This is about taking these places on the edge of glory to being world leaders,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told The Associated Press. “My job is to enhance America’s competitiveness.”

The Biden administration has made it a priority to set an industrial strategy of directing government investment into computer chips, clean energy and a range of other technologies. Officials say that being leaders in those fields will foster economic and national security, reflecting a belief that the best way to compete against China’s ascendance will come from building internal strength.

US Wholesale Price Data for April offers Hope on Inflation

Wholesale prices in the United States rose modestly last month, the latest sign that inflationary pressures may be easing more than a year after the Federal Reserve unleashed an aggressive campaign of steadily higher interest rates.

From March to April, the government’s producer price index rose just 0.2 percent after falling 0.4 percent from February to March, held down by falling prices for food, transportation, and warehousing.

Compared with a year earlier, wholesale prices rose just 2.3 percent, the 10th straight slowdown and the lowest figure since January 2021. Lower energy prices helped slow the annual inflation rate.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale inflation rose 0.2 percent from March and 3.2 percent from 12 months earlier. The year-over-year increase in core wholesale inflation was the lowest since March 2021 and marked the seventh straight slowdown. The Fed pays particularly close attention to core prices, which tend to be a better gauge of the economy’s underlying inflation pressures.

The producer price index that the Labor Department issued Thursday reflects prices charged by manufacturers, farmers, and wholesalers. It can provide an early sign of how fast consumer inflation will rise. The index is used to help calculate the Fed’s favored inflation gauge: the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures index.

Health Care

Boston Globe: Finally, a Promising New Class of Drugs for Alzheimer’s Patients

At last: a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

After decades of frustration and failure, including a spectacular misfire by one of the state’s biotech pillars, the first medicines to slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients are starting to arrive.

The drugs ― which provide modest but measurable benefit for people in early stages of the memory-ravaging disease ― are being hailed by patients as the dawn of a new era in its treatment.

And Cambridge biotech Biogen, not long ago reeling from its disastrous rollout of an earlier Alzheimer’s therapy, has re-emerged as a leader in the push to vanquish the long intractable illness.

Boston Globe: A Q&A with Boston’s Public Health Commissioner

From 2017 to 2021, overall deaths in Boston increased by 11 percent, rising more sharply in Black and Latino communities. The leading cause of deaths through those years was cancer — with the exception of 2020, when COVID-19 was the most common cause.

These are among the findings of the Boston Public Health Commission’s “Health of Boston” reports, a series of five reports released Friday each examining how a particular health issue is affecting Boston’s residents. Researchers analyzed data from 2017-2021 to track how rates of diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and premature deaths are trending in the city.

Here’s what Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, had to say in an interview with the Globe about the reports and what’s needed to tackle the racial disparities the research shows.

What are the most important takeaways from the report?

“There are these persistent and pervasive health inequities across the city of Boston, which are disturbing, but not really surprising. One piece [of data] we wanted to focus on was the differences in life expectancy between different parts of the city. About 10 years ago, there was a report, which noted a 33-year life expectancy gap between a census tract in Roxbury and a census tract in Back Bay. We redid that analysis and found…some things haven’t changed. In Back Bay, life expectancy is still 92, which is what it was before. And that area still has one of the highest life expectancies in Boston. The lowest life expectancy is also still in [an area in] Roxbury where the life expectancy is 69 years. So now there’s a difference of 23 years, which is still very concerning.

WWLP: Smooth Sailing, So Far, in Big Health Insurance Review

State officials on Thursday offered a first glimpse into efforts to redetermine MassHealth members’ eligibility.

About six weeks into the process, which is expected to take a year, about 70,000 Massachusetts households have begun the process of assessing whether they still qualify for state-funded health insurance.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to lose MassHealth coverage over the next year as federal coverage requirements in place since March 2020 expired on March 31. As the state redetermines eligibility for the first time since the pandemic began, those who lose coverage will need to find new health insurance plans. Budget writers on Beacon Hill are already factoring into their spending plans massive savings associated with lower MassHealth rolls.

About 50 percent of MassHealth members will be automatically renewed. The other half of the 2.3 million people enrolled in the program will be receiving a blue envelope containing forms to fill out with their current information, which MassHealth will use to determine if they still qualify.

Boston Business Journal: Sarepta Gains More Than $2Billion in Market Cap on New Hope for Duchenne Drug

Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. instantly gained more than $2 billion in value when the stock market opened Monday, following a key FDA committee’s “yes” vote on its Duchenne drug Friday evening.

Sarepta (Nasdaq: SRPT) had a market capitalization of $14.9 billion as of 3:45 p.m. Monday, up from $11.6 billion Thursday — trading of the Cambridge company’s shares was halted all day Friday while the committee met. Its stock price was up around 30% at that time.

The committee consisting of 14 experts convened on Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to discuss a gene therapy Sarepta has developed as a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. After a daylong discussion, including presentations from both Sarepta and FDA staffers, as well as testimony from patient advocates and others, the members voted eight to six in favor of granting the drug accelerated approval.

The FDA’s final decision will come by May 29, but the agency usually follows the recommendations of its advisory committees.

“Today’s advisory committee outcome is extremely important to the patient community, who are in urgent need of new therapies,” Sarepta CEO Doug Ingram said in a statement late Friday. “We extend our sincere appreciation to the families, clinicians, FDA presenters and committee members who participated in today’s panel and to all those who provided input and comments both in the written record and in the open public hearing.”

Budget and Taxation

Boston Herald – Tax-Cap Law, Online Lottery Included in Senate Budget Amendments

A push to digitize state lottery sales and prevent changes to a once-obscure tax cap law are among the thousand-plus amendments senators filed this week to their fiscal 2024 budget proposal.

A total of 1,049 amendments were filed to the Senate’s fiscal 2024 budget with the largest number pertaining to health and human services. Senators are scheduled to debate the budget starting May 22, and will likely take several days to wrap up deliberations.

An amendment filed by Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, would delete budget language that exclude revenue from an income surtax known as the “Fair Share Amendment” from state tax revenue cap calculations under Chapter 62F.

That part of state law was triggered last year when revenues exceeded the annual cap for fiscal 2022 by $2.9 billion. Eligible taxpayers received refund checks from the state that roughly equaled 14% of their personal income tax for 2021.

Gazette Net: Massachusetts Senate to Offer its Own Tax-Relief Plan

Ending some of the uncertainty in the tax relief journey for Massachusetts residents, Senate leaders said their chamber will move ahead and propose its own relief package. They’re just not sure about its contents or when they might pass a plan.

The Senate’s hurtling toward its annual budget debate, and if taxpayers are going to see any relief in fiscal 2024, the state budget would theoretically need to account for that. So as he discussed his committee’s newly-released budget bill Tuesday, Ways and Means Chairman Mike Rodrigues said they had sewed in a $575 million placeholder to cover the yet-to-be-named relief proposals.

That figure seems to indicate the Senate — or, rather, its chieftains — are in the same dollar range as the House.

Gov. Maura Healey’s relief proposal would implement around a billion dollars’ worth of relief off the bat. But with a blip on the revenue radar this spring ($1.4 billion off the mark in April’s revenue report), House Speaker Ron Mariano told the press last week that lawmakers “anticipated the potential downslope of the economy” when Healey’s bill landed on their desks.

Hence, the House’s move in its $1.1 billion package to stagger implementation of some of the tax reforms over a multi-year period. So, what’s the pricetag for implementing roughly half of a $1.1 billion collection of tax changes? The $575 million sounds about right.

Boston Herald – Don’t Touch Tax Rebate Law, Polling Shows

Likely voters do not want lawmakers to carry through with the proposal to tamper with a rebate law which just last year sent about $3 billion back to taxpayers, according to new polling.

Chapter 62F of the General Law, passed by the will of the voters via a ballot question offered in 1986, was unexpectedly triggered last summer for just the second time since its passage, surprising state lawmakers and effectively ending a push for tax cuts which very nearly made it to then-Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk.

The law requires the state to pay taxpayers back when it takes too much in taxes and wages aren’t keeping up, as was apparently the case in 1987 and 2022. This year, House lawmakers have approved a plan to change the law’s rebate calculations, currently tied to a taxpayer’s income and tax burden, so that every resident receives an equal payment should the law again require rebates.

According to a poll of 750 likely voters prepared on behalf of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, the majority of voters do not want the law they passed nearly 30 years ago to change.

WCVB: Raise Debt Ceiling before Negotiating Spending Cuts, Rep. Neal tells OTR

A Massachusetts congressman, one of Capitol Hill’s most experienced money managers, suggests that Republicans and Democrats should separate negotiations over spending cuts from the issue of raising the government’s borrowing limit to avoid a potentially catastrophic default.

Rep. Richard Neal is the ranking member and former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“We all have a point of view here on proceeding with getting a more manageable approach to the federal deficits — that’s different than the debt,” he said. “The debt is accumulated deficits.”

Boston Herald: MBTA Budget Gap could Hit $542 Million by 2028

The MBTA was able to lean on state and federal assistance, and a hefty dip into its own emergency fund to close a $366 million budget gap for fiscal year 2024, but faces future shortfalls that could grow to $542 million by 2028.

Chief Financial Officer Mary Ann O’Hara said how these “sizable budget gaps” are addressed in upcoming years is dependent on fare revenue, hurt now by lower ridership levels that have persisted since the pandemic, and actual spending over the next two years.

“This year’s budget is unique from prior years, given the historic investment of state resources into safety and training investments to be overseen by our new chief safety officer from MassDOT and the MBTA,” O’Hara said at Thursday’s Audit and Finance subcommittee meeting.

“The fiscal year 2024 budget includes a major investment in safety and training, which quadruples our prior year efforts.”

O’Hara said more than half of new spending next year, $90 million of the $170 million budget increase, will be earmarked for this training, as part of the MBTA’s efforts to comply with safety directives from last year’s federal investigation.

Energy and Environment

State House News: Senator: House-Senate Rift May Extend Beyond TUE Committee

Tensions on the legislative committee that handles climate policy are bubbling over, and the House and Senate wings of the panel appear set to go their own ways.

Senate co-chair Sen. Michael Barrett announced Monday that the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy’s House and Senate members will convene separately this week for “parallel hearings” on bills concerning offshore wind, clean energy, and energy storage.

The split was triggered earlier Monday when House co-chair Rep. Jeffrey Roy announced a committee hearing without the consent of Barrett and other Senate members, Barrett said.

“I’m listed as the co-sender today of an official joint committee hearing notice, along with the House chair,” Barrett said. “The House chair knows I haven’t approved the scheduling of this hearing. There’s a small chance this is merely a serious error. Otherwise, I regret to say, the use of my name appears to be fraudulent.”

Barrett said Roy’s “unilateral act” violates a legislative rule requiring joint committee chairs to agree on the scheduling of hearings and executive sessions, and said he assumes Roy’s decision “is the first of what will be others.”

The intra-committee squabbling could spell trouble for Democrats facing important and difficult decisions this session across the energy spectrum, and perhaps in other policymaking areas.

He didn’t offer evidence, but Barrett said other Senate chairs are “being pressed in similar fashion.”

“It’s almost as if the House is done with the delicate power-sharing that enables joint committees to work,” he said. “It wants either to dominate the joint committees due to the House’s sheer numerical advantage or drive us towards the Congressional model, in which the House and Senate handle bills separately. Either way, this is quite a turn in the road.”

The House has more members than the Senate on joint committees, which has long been a sore point between the branches. The full branches often take different paths on policy and spending, resolving their differences on conference committees, where the branches have equal representation.

Barrett said House committee members plan to convene on Thursday, and Senate members on Friday.

Commonwealth Magazine: Ocean Grid Key to Explosive Offshore Wind Growth

Offshore Wind could be as beneficial to Massachusetts economy as life sciences, but not without transmission infrastructure to scale the industry.

The life science sector grew by over 60,000 jobs in the 15 years leading up to 2022, a growth rate of 131 percent vs. 6.9 percent over the same period for the broader Massachusetts labor market.  Offshore wind is poised for similar growth, with up to 58,000 jobs needed by 2030 to build the first round of offshore wind projects.   But this growth will only be realized if offshore wind farms can connect to the grid, which is not a given.

The current transmission system – centered on fossil fuel and nuclear plants located relatively close to population centers – is already straining to accept renewable energy that supplied just 12 percent of New England’s electricity in 2022, with far less than 1 percent of supply from the pilot-scale Block Island offshore wind farm.

Boston Globe: The State’s Electric Grid must Dramatically Transform. It Won’t be Easy.

There is nothing sexy about the electric grid.

It’s a thing we don’t think about — plug in your phone charger, flip on your lights, move on with your day.

Maybe you have a vague idea of what’s powering it, some mix of fossil fuels and clean energy. Maybe not.

But as climate-fueled catastrophes mount and Massachusetts pushes hundreds of thousands of residents toward electric heat and electric cars, what’s powering the grid has become an increasingly urgent question. For nearly three decades, the state has been slowly nudging out coal and oil and cobbling together enough climate-friendly energy to make steady but undramatic gains. But now, with deadlines looming and its larger climate plans at stake, Massachusetts must embark on an unprecedented sprint to build enough clean energy to complete a clean grid. Success is anything but certain.

As of this year, 59 percent of Massachusetts electricity is carbon free, according to state figures. While some energy experts question that number — saying it exaggerates how far we have come — all agree that getting to 92 percent by the end of the decade, as mandated by Massachusetts law, or to 100 percent, as Governor Maura Healey pledged during her campaign, will be a monumental task. Giant offshore wind farms, thousands of new solar projects, sprawling transmission lines, and intrastate energy collaborations all must be completed on schedule, a rarity in any large-scale effort. And already each of the biggest clean energy projects the state is counting on is facing complications that could delay or even derail them.

Boston Herald: New Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Eyes Long Tenure with New Administration after Turnover at the Top

New Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Brian Arrigo said he wants to be the “longest serving” person in the role after a report released Friday pointed out turnover at the top of the department within the last decade.

A report from Save the Harbor/Save the Bay and the Metropolitan Beaches Commission said there have been six DCR commissioners in the past eight years, which has led to a lack of “leadership continuity, clear direction, and accountability at the top.”

The Department is tasked with managing the 450,000 acres that make up the state’s parks system.

DCR commissioners, the report said, often made promises or commitments that they where then not around to keep.

Arrigo, the former mayor of Revere, is only three weeks into his new job as commissioner but, at a Friday morning event, said he has heard from staff who are excited to have a new commissioner, “who has been appointed by a new governor, who will be around for a little while.”

Boston Globe: Rising Sea Levels Force Retreat to Preserve Regional History

As sea levels inch higher, many coastal towns and cities are rushing to adapt and protect the country’s oldest buildings from the impacts of climate change.

Portsmouth is one place where the impacts of climate change are already being felt, with some of the state’s historic buildings vulnerable to flooding. On Monday, about 150 people gathered there to share case studies about how communities along the east coast are adapting to climate change and preparing for the future during a national conference called Keeping History Above Water.

Their goal is to preserve some of the country’s cherished historical sites, as they prepare for more extreme impacts of climate change like inundation rains, extreme wind, and more frequent and stronger storms.

“If we’re not careful, we’re going to be underwater soon,” said Michela Murphy, a member of the Historic District Commission and Coastal Resiliency Advisory Committee in Provincetown, Mass.

Boston Globe: Lead Paint Falling from the Tobin Bridge is among Chelsea’s Long List of Indignities

How is it possible, in 2023, for heaven’s sake, that lead paint is raining down on Chelsea?

“Look at this, and this,” said longtime resident Tony Hernandez, picking up a paint chip the size of a Ritz cracker. “This is an environmental disaster.”

He stood in a parking lot directly beneath the Tobin Bridge on Thursday morning, cars and trucks rumbling by overhead. The Tobin’s supports were covered in cracked, loose paint — or no paint at all. Apartment buildings lined the parking lot, their backyards, kids’ bikes, and gas grills ready for warm weather.

There were paint chips — toxic lead paint chips — all over.

It was Hernandez who first raised the alarm in February. An immigrant from Cuba, the former union rep spent his whole career painting bridges, including the Tobin from 1979 to 1983. So he knew right away what had happened: A frigid snap, followed by a warmup, had bubbled the paint loose and dropped poisonous green and rust-colored confetti all over the neighborhood. The wind had carried it blocks away — onto gardens, parking spots, porches, and stairs, along the streets, and all over the patio at Restaurante Sabor Especial, by the courthouse. How could this be happening?

 Boston Globe: As Climate Change Fuels Fiercer Rains, a New Report on 2010 Massachusetts Floods Sends a Dire Warning

The condo Casey Chaffin shared with her mother in Clinton is near the Wachusett Reservoir, but along a gentle slope where flooding has never been a problem. Importantly, the neighborhood is not on government maps of flood zones.

Yet when it started raining hard on March 15, 2010, the ground outside quickly became saturated, and it wasn’t long before water seeped into the basement, and then slowly rose until everything they had stored down there was underwater, including two lifetimes of memories in photo albums and heirlooms that were destroyed.

The record-shattering storms that dumped a foot and a half of rain on a swath of Massachusetts in March 2010 did more than just ruin the Chaffins’ personal effects. It also exposed how poorly prepared we are for a future when climate-fed deluges could be more frequent and more intense, as a new analysis of the 2010 flooding found that most of the homes that suffered water damage were outside expected flood zones.

Boston Globe: EPA Proposes First Limits on Climate Pollution from Existing Power Plants

The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first regulations to limit greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, capping an unparalleled string of climate policies that, taken together, could substantially reduce the nation’s contribution to global warming.

The proposals are designed to effectively eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s electricity sector by 2040.

The regulations governing power plants come on the heels of other Biden administration plans to cut tailpipe emissions by speeding up the country’s transition to electric vehicles, to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells, and to phase down the use of a planet-warming chemical in refrigerants. Together with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which is pouring more than $370 billion into clean energy programs, the actions would catapult the United States to the forefront of the fight to constrain global warming.

“We are in the decisive decade for climate action, and the president’s been clear about his goals in this space, and we will meet them,” Biden’s senior climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, said in a telephone call with reporters Wednesday.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

WGBH: Boston-Area Mayors Sign Compact to Improve Diversity in Real Estate Projects

Local mayors are committing to improving diversity, equity and inclusion in the real estate business by signing a compact that pledges a historic 25% DEI

That criteria can be met by contracting with minority and women-owned businesses, partnering with diverse equity investors, offering space for community use and retail or creating diverse internships and talent pipelines.

Mayors in Boston, Lynn, Somerville, Cambridge and Salem signed onto the compact.

“We’re a diverse city and we want to make sure that our population is included in the benefits from all this work,” said Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson, speaking on Greater Boston.

Colleen Fonseca, executive director of the Builders of Color Coalition, said one year from now she hopes to see that the pilot program has facilitated access to more diverse developers, and that valuable data can be used to further the program.

Eagle Tribune: Bill Would Allow Gender Changes on Marriage Licenses

BOSTON — Transgender individuals in Massachusetts can change their name and gender on birth certificates, state drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards and other vital records.

But they are still prevented from changing their gender on marriage licenses under a decades-old state Department of Public Health regulation.

That would change under a proposal from state Sen. Barry Finegold, D-Andover, which would allow individuals who have undergone sex reassignment surgery to apply to city or town clerks to update their marriage licenses to reflect their new gender.

“It’s a pretty common sense and straightforward change,” Finegold said. “If we allow people to change their gender on other vital records they should be able to do so on their marriage licenses.”

Finegold said the proposal was prompted by concerns raised by a constituent, who was blocked by the law from updating their marriage license.

Under the proposal, individuals seeking to change their gender identity on marriage license would be required to submit an signed affidavit that they had undergone gender reassignment surgery and notarized statements from a physician and their spouse consenting to the amended license.

The state already allows individuals to update their birth certificates to reflect a change in gender and in 2015 updated the rules to allow new birth certificates by providing proof of “medical intervention” rather than proof of surgery.

Education

Boston Herald: Boston Schools Employee asked Contractor to ‘Hide’ $164,000.

After Boston Public Schools was found to be stiffing a plumbing contractor on a $164,000 bill, racked up since 2018, district employees sought to resolve the issue by directing another vendor to pick up the tab, according to a city watchdog report.

Not only was this a breach of policy, the Boston Finance Commission contends, it left the school district with a substantially larger bill, as the second vendor tacked on a 15% fee, totaling $24,673, in the invoice it sent to BPS — which “falsely” labeled the charges as subcontractor work performed at Campbell Resource Center.

What should have been a $164,448 payment to the initial vendor swelled to $189,162.

The difference in cost benefited the contractor that BPS roped in for the favor, ENE Systems, Inc., a national HVAC company that has roughly $20 million worth of contracts with the Boston Public Schools, the report said.

“This breach of policy, procedures and public trust by City of Boston employees unnecessarily wasted $24,673.33 of the taxpayers’ money,” the commission’s report states. “BPS would have found a solution to this problem had they simply contacted Auditing, which would have walked them through the necessary steps to complete the payment.”

WBUR: Somerville Extends Free Taxi Service for Low-Income Residents

A program that pays for Somerville residents’ taxi rides to grocery stores and medical appointments has been extended.

The city’s “Taxi to Health” program, which began as an emergency measure at the height of the pandemic, will continue through Oct. 31, 2024, according to an announcement.

The program grants residents on restricted incomes 12 free taxi vouchers, with the option to reapply every three months. With a voucher, recipients can take trips to grocery stores, farmer’s markets and food pantries in Somerville, as well as non-emergency medical appointments in the Greater Boston area.

Ever since the program launched, every month there are more residents participating, said Lisa Robinson, the city of Somerville’s director of food access and healthy communities.