Window Into The State House

By
South Boston Today Staff
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Quincy council mulls hauling Marty Walsh before board to explain Long Island Bridge project
 
The Quincy City Council may slap down more ordinance hurdles to make it harder for the city of Boston to build a new bridge to Long Island — and the council may even try to get Boston Mayor Marty Walsh before the board to answer some questions, Sean Phillip Cotter reports in the Patriot Ledger. One member noted the council has subpoena power that could be used to quiz the mayor on his long-term intentions for the island. File under: ‘Fat chance.’

 

SJC rejects challenge to state’s cap on charter schools
 
Another setback for charter-school advocates. From Shira Schoenberg at MassLive: “Massachusetts’ highest court has upheld the state cap on charter schools. The Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday, in a decision written by Justice Kimberly Budd, agreed with a Superior Court judge and dismissed a case brought by five public school students challenging the charter cap. ‘The education clause (in the Massachusetts Constitution) provides a right for all the Commonwealth’s children to receive an adequate education, not a right to attend charter schools,’ Budd wrote.”
 
 
L’Italien blasts Third rivals’ ties to Walsh, Meehan and bankers
 
State Sen. Barbara L’Italien is uncorking on her politically and financially wired rivals in the Third Congressional District race – and that means you Dan Koh, Lori Trahan and Rufus Gifford. The Herald’s Hillary Chabot has more on L’Italien’s blast at blow-in candidates and/or their outside-the-district benefactors like Marty Walsh, Marty Meehan and banker Chad Gifford et gang.

Meanwhile, the Globe’s Mark Shanahan starts off with what looks like a puff-piece ode to the glitzy Rufus Gifford, but then he gets to the nub of the matter: Gifford’s feud with the mom of actor Nicolas Cage’s son over either back rent or alleged black mold (depending on who you believe) tied to Gifford’s Los Angeles home.
 
 
Pollack to struggling regional transit authorities: No more money
 
Regional transit authorities say they’re financially reeling. But state Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack says more money is not the answer to financial problems facing the struggling agencies, reports Bruce Mohl at CommonWealth magazine. “They’re going to need to reinvent themselves the same way the T is in the process of reinventing itself,” she says.

 

Bump draws Republican challenger as Weld pushes Libertarian candidate
 
Helen Brady, a Concord Republican, will run against state Auditor Suzanne Bump in the November election, saying the incumbent hasn’t done enough to root out fraud and waste in state government during her two terms in office, Shira Schoenberg reports at MassLive. Brady, who works for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, won the GOP nod to run for state representative in 2016 but lost by a wide margin to incumbent Cory Atkins.

Meanwhile, former Gov. William Weld, the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2016, will be accompanying Libertarian candidate Dan Fishman as he files his nomination papers to run for auditor. Weld has previously expressed his support for Fishman.
 
 
Higher education board seeks more authority to avert future Mount Ida fiascos
 
The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education wants the power to intervene when colleges or universities, like Mount Ida College, face the prospect of financial collapse, reports the Herald’s Kathleen McKiernan and Brian Dowling. “This is a system failure,” said board chairman Chris Gabrieli of Mount Ida’s planned closing next month. “So many people were misled or straight out deceived.”

The Globe’s Laura Krantz has more on yesterday’s sometimes emotional board hearing into Mount Ida’s controversial plan to close the school and sell off the Newton campus to UMass-Amherst. Meanwhile, the BBJ’s Max Stendahl reports that angry Mount Ida students have disinvited the college’s president from their graduation ceremony next month, while Stendahl in a separate BBJ story says Mount Ida food-service workers are already getting pink slips. Last but not least, we missed this piece yesterday by the Herald’s Hillary Chabot, on the surprised reaction of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Setti Warren, who teaches at Mount Ida, to the school’s unexpected closing.
 
 
Fall River plant closure: You can believe your lying eyes — or an academic study
 
A union boss is encouraging/pleading/demanding that President Trump and others help save the blue-collar jobs at a soon-to-be-closed Fall River plant owned by Philips Lighting, which is planning to move operations to Mexico, reports the Herald’s Dan Atkinson and Kimberly Atkins. But, wait, the New York Times is touting a study by a University of Pennsylvania political science and communications professor who says Trump supporters are driven by fear of losing status and privilege, not economic anxiety. Just pointing out two stories that caught our attention this morning.

 

Shire finally concludes that $64 billion is a lot of money
 
It took a while to consummate, but it looks like a deal that will transform the state’s biotech sector is going through. From the Globe’s Jonathan Saltzman: “Shire PLC, the second-largest biotech employer in Massachusetts, said Tuesday that it had accepted a $64 billion takeover offer from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and would recommend the sweetened deal to shareholders. It was the fifth proposal made by the Japanese company since it first expressed interest in Shire on March 28.”
 
 
Healey agrees to prosecutorial reforms after drug-lab controversies
 
From Sean Musgrave at the Globe: “Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has committed to measures to guard against the kind of egregious prosecutorial misconduct committed in the Amherst drug lab scandal, when prosecutors mischaracterized evidence of drug use by a state chemist. In a brief submitted to the state’s top court, Healey promised to create an ethics committee within her office and train prosecutors on their obligations to share evidence, among other measures.”
 
 
SJC to review ‘creepy’ GPS tracking case
 
The Herald’s Bob McGovern has a good piece about how the Supreme Judicial Court will review a case about a man who stuck GPS tracking devices on a Hingham couple’s vehicles, allowing him to monitor their travels to Hull, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York – and it was all perfectly legal, or so say the experts, because there’s no law against it. “Creepy is not yet a crime in Massachusetts,” observed civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate.

 

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