In a spasm of suits, the United States Department of Justice challenged four states’ policies that blocked the feds’ use of confidential license plates. Last week, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced the Registry of Motor Vehicles would not provide Immigration & Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection with civilian plates to conceal their civil immigration operations.
The Springfield City Council had a debate April 18 that no one could miss. It was the first time since the shroud of the coronavirus fell upon the city that all 13 serving councilors had assembled in person for a regular meeting. Full in-person attendance had its advantages, including procedural efficiencies the Council had gone without for six years.
Following a change of law that granted her sole authority to appoint the Cannabis Control Commission, Governor Maura Healey has announced her choices to run the revised and often troubled agency. In a release, Healey announced the appointment of three new commissioners including. One name is quite familiar to Western Mass and Springfield in particular.
During Town Meeting Tuesday night with just under 650 voters, Longmeadow rejected a $8.6 million debt exclusion that would have financed the build out of a municipally-owned Internet provider. At the meeting, backers, which included the Select Board, mostly jousted with the Finance Committee. The Committee, a volunteer advisory panel, had given the project a thumbs-down.
By Matt Chilliak
“Have you ever killed someone?” isn’t the type of question you would normally need to ask someone running for public office.
It’s probably the most important question no one is asking Massachusetts Republican candidate John Deaton, who’s running for U.S. Senate again.
As Longmeadow has moved toward developing its own municipal fiber, that is local Internet service, a nebulous and shadowy advocacy group and one of the nation’s largest telecommunications groups have moved in—at least on Facebook in town.
A federal judge in Springfield has agreed to dissolve the consent decree that the city of Springfield and the federal government had agreed to in 2022. On Thursday, Judge Michael Ponsor granted the joint motion to end the agreement, which the parties had filed about 10 days ago. The ruling was not a surprise.
Seven years after New England Public Radio and WGBY merged to become New England Public Media, the nonprofit media landscape is shifting again. Last Friday, the GBH Foundation, which oversees NEPM now, announced that it would formally absorb the 413’s largest public broadcaster.
WASHINGTON—Fifteen months after Springfield formally accepted its Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change (ECJCC) grant, it and several cities and environmental groups were fighting to keep the program alive. Far from 36 Court Street, in a wood-paneled courtroom between the Capitol and the White House, a motley crew of grantees urged a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court’s dismissal that had doomed an effort to revive the ECJCC program.
The COVID pandemic, in the words of Mercy & Baystate’s then leaders, provided an opportunity to collaborate and share resources. As the shroud of the coronavirus began to lift, they took turns appearing at the weekly pressers. One did not quite represent the other at each tradeoff. Little would anybody know then that their successors—or perhaps successor—could conceivably be in a position to do so.