Government & Politics

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection assessed a penalty of $114,969 against a Worcester contractor for violations of asbestos regulations that occurred during work on a Worcester residential property in fall 2021.

A suite of tax credits aimed at incentivizing new housing development will not be "the end of what the Senate will be doing on housing," Senate President Karen Spilka said Monday.

Residents are in for a "very choppy summer" as the state's massive redetermination effort to gauge eligibility for 2.4 million MassHealth members unfolds, Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh said Thursday.

When the first recreational cannabis dispensaries in Massachusetts opened in November 2018, their parking lots assumed a festive air as people lined up, sometimes for hours, to get the newly legal product. Nearly five years later, legal cannabis has become an unremarkable part of the state economy.

Multifamily residential developers have been proposing thousands of apartments throughout Central Massachusetts, but communities are resisting the push for more housing to protect their resources and what residents and officials see as their town’s character.

Senate Democrats on Thursday advanced a long-awaited tax relief package, and both branches and the governor have now all rolled out proposals to cut costs for Massachusetts residents and make the state more competitive.

While Beacon Hill searches for solutions to the serious housing shortage that fuels affordability concerns in Massachusetts, a real estate industry organization wants to see the Community Preservation Act program retrofitted to put a greater emphasis on housing production.

As was the case for the first two years of debt payments, the saving grace for the current fiscal year 2023 and the next fiscal year 2024 is a $3-million property sale from 2021.

Gov. Maura Healey plans to continue a high-dollar commitment to the life sciences sector that began under former Gov. Deval Patrick, and her administration is also launching a new platform to recruit diverse hires to the sector and provide training opportunities.

State tax revenues surpassed expectations in May after an unexpectedly steep nosedive in April, yet the total haul remains hundreds of millions of dollars short of projections with the budget year drawing to a close, officials said Monday.