The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has selected a site for a rail station in Palmer, marking a significant step for the project. The choice may bring some controversy. The agency chose “Site B,” a location on the south side of a CSX railyard half of a mile from downtown Palmer. The state will now proceed to a conceptual design phase.
EASTHAMPTON—Despite years of involvement with Democratic politics, it is no secret that the 2016 election was a turning point for Nicole LaChapelle. Two reelections later, LaChapelle will not seek reelection as mayor here next year, although there is another presidential election before that.
“I was out at the Brass Cat and one of the bartenders is like, ‘Hey, Trump can be president again. Does that mean you’re gonna run again?’” LaChapelle recalled.
Weeks after the Massachusetts Department of Transportation confirmed planning for a Palmer train station had begun, the department took another step to advance rail service west. On Thursday, MassDOT and Governor Maura Healey formally named Andy Koziol “West-East Rail director.”
During a visit to the region earlier this year, Healey announced she would appoint a director of rural affairs within her executive office for economic development. On Monday, she named Spencer Senator Anne Gobi, whose sprawling district still includes a sliver of Hampshire County, to the position.
This week Governor Maura Healey’s office announced some staffing decisions of salience to the 413. On Thursday, Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll announced that Kristen Elechko, recently of Senator Ed Markey’s office, would lead her office in Western Mass.
SPRINGFIELD—A new calendar year also means a new municipal year here. The only formal order of business in the new year was the installation of the Council President. At-large Councilor Jesse Lederman had already secured the votes for a full term as President in 2023. Yet, this is no ordinary municipal year.
Maura Healey, the former b-baller and civil rights attorney who leapt from obscurity to become the top lawyer in Massachusetts, took office Thursday as the commonwealth’s 73rd governor. She becomes the first woman and the first gay-identifying person to hold the highest office in Massachusetts and one of the most ancient in the United States.
The year 2022 has come and gone with much affecting the City of Springfield. As a part of the commonwealth, nation and world, it felt inflation, the war in Ukraine, national political contests and the state’s own elections.
BOSTON—Days before Eric Lesser gave his last speech as a state senator from Western Massachusetts, the commonwealth, jointly with Amtrak, applied for a $108 million federal grant. In the twilight of his Senate tenure, the project took one of its greatest leaps toward reality.
Nearly three weeks after Attorney General Maura Healey formally became governor-elect of the commonwealth, some meat on the bones of her budding administration are coming into view. Some of their choices for policy committees signal some commitment to a key promise.