As attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey essentially ran point for the commonwealth’s legal opposition to Donald Trump. Two years into her first term, Trump’s assumption of office reoriented the focus of her office to defending Massachusetts from his onslaughts. That role concluded for her
After two years in office, Governor Maura Healey has made a mark on the judiciary. Governors can effectively choose whomever they wish to sit on the bench, subject to Governor’s Council confirmation. To that end, advocates have been pressing Healey to pick someone from Hampden County to join the Appeals Court.
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Another major staffing change has hit Springfield City Hall with the exit of City Solicitor John Payne. Mayor Domenic Sarno has chosen former legislator and onetime district attorney candidate Stephen Buoniconti to replace Payne. Given his late-career return to City Hall, Payne’s exit should not be a shock.
About 15 years after biomass entered the public consciousness of Springfield, the matter is still milling paper. Most recently, this took the form of a fresh defeat for the proposed project once slated for East Springfield. What now seems like beating an expired horse, is actually a reminder of how far opponents have gone.
To fulfill a campaign promise, Massachusetts State Auditor Diana Dizoglio will have to go to voters to change the law. Fellow statewider, Attorney General Andrea Campbell, announced Friday that existing law does not authorize an audit of the legislature, a key plank of Dizoglio’s platform.
It was just a line in The Republican’s election profile of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, but it was a reminder of one of his longest-running falsities. Sarno still “maintains the court order gave the commission power only over discipline, and not as an overall supervisory body.”
Taking far less time than another judge did on a similar motion last year, Hampden Superior Court Judge James Manitsas has already decided the fate of a claim that lawyers for Mayor Domenic Sarno and his former aide Darryl Moss did battle over on Tuesday. The court dismissed the claim that Sarno violated Moss’s First Amendment rights.
UPDATED 5/14/23 6:42: Judge Manitsas has ruled against Moss and in favor of Mayor Sarno. Full story here.
SPRINGFIELD—Lawyers for former mayoral aide Darryl Moss and Mayor Domenic Sarno squared off Tuesday over whether the former sufficiently pleaded a violation of his First Amendment rights. The hearing came some five months after the attorneys jousted over other claims, two of which a Hampden Superior Court judge ultimately dismissed.
Former Springfield mayoral aide Darryl Moss’s lawsuit against Mayor Domenic Sarno appears just about ready to inch out of the pleading phase. After a judge dismissed some of Moss’s suit in December, he repleaded to revive his First Amendment claims.
In a 5-2 ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated criminal charges arising from the COVID-19 outbreak that killed 76 veterans at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. Former Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former medical director David Clinton were the only officials to face such charges. Hampden County Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough, Jr. dismissed the indictment in 2021 prompting the appeal.