The move means all new hires, with some exceptions, will be subject to individual approval starting Wednesday by the state’s budget office based on time-sensitivity and importance of positions, according to the Healey administration.

Tax collections in Massachusetts have consistently come in below expectations more than half way through fiscal year 2024, putting a strain on Beacon Hill budget writers who are also contending with a nearly $1 billion a year tab for emergency shelters that has prompted top Democrats to warn of further challenges.

Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said officials are not putting in place a “hiring freeze” but rather implementing “hiring controls within the executive branch for the remainder of the fiscal year as one tool at our disposal to responsibly manage spending over the next three months.”

“These hiring controls, while temporary, will help ensure that the administration can balance the budget at the end of the year and preserve critical funding for core programs and services,” Gorzkowicz said in a statement Tuesday night.

The Boston Globe first reported the move, though it described it as a freeze.

It was not immediately clear how far-reaching the administration planned to go with their more stringent hiring protocols. But the state’s budget office said certain positions like direct care and public safety personnel will be exempt.

Seasonal positions, those that have to be filed due to a court order or settlement, returns from leave, and offers of employment made before April 3 “will also proceed,” according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.

Months of below benchmark revenues led Healey in January to lower tax expectations by $1 billion for this fiscal year and slash $375 million from the state budget. The decision to tighten up hiring in state government signals another escalation in the cost saving mindset that has taken hold on Beacon Hill this year.

Revenue figures for March are scheduled to be released Wednesday and could offer more insight into why Healey made the decision to pause hiring. Fourth quarter revenues carry “significant risk” to budgeted revenues, state budget officials said.

Healey is not considering further unilateral cuts to the fiscal year 2024 budget, according to the state’s budget office.

A plan to free up about 43 acres of land along the river to build an arena and park has prompted pushback from officials in Boston, including Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration, who say they have been left out of conversations around a stadium that could draw thousands to games or large events.

The proposal has been cast as potential boon for Everett, with Mayor Carlo DeMaria arguing the city could see millions returned to its coffers if a private development group revamps an outdated powerplant that sits on the site now.

As state lawmakers take another shot at reviewing a bill from Sen. Sal DiDomenico that would open up a pathway to developing the soccer stadium, Boston Chief of Planning Arthur Jemison said the plan does not include “significant parking” at the stadium.

Jemison said there is not enough information for the City of Boston to take a stance on the proposal but suggested Charlestown and surrounding neighborhoods “will bear the brunt” of the transportation impacts as the MBTA’s Sullivan Square stop is the nearest public transit option.

“The project would also rely on the Alford Street Bridge as a pedestrian connection to Sullivan Square, which is currently not safe as a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Last December, a pedestrian was killed at the intersection of Dexter and Alford (Streets),” Jemison said at a hearing before the Legislature’s Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee.

DeDomenico’s bill would remove the land at 173 Alford Street from a designation that restricts its use to commercial fishing, shipping, or other vessel-related activities and allow a developer to convert it into a “professional soccer stadium and a waterfront park.”

The measure has the backing of the Kraft Group and the New England Revolution, a professional soccer team owned by Kraft that could move to the future stadium from its spot at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.

The location the Kraft Group is eyeing currently features a rundown power plant that DeMaria said can only be cleaned up with the financial and political power of a private development firm.

“They can get it done. They (can) get it cleaned up and build something that’s going to be beautiful,” he said. “There’s no parking spaces. I told them, if we go forward, there’ll be no parking there. We’re going to rely on public transit. We’re going to build out the transportation system.”

Everett is expected to lose out on $55 million in tax revenue between fiscal year 2021 and 2026 “due to the loss of value from this parcel,” DeMaria said. The city has already lost $28 million since fiscal year 2020, he said.

“We need this legislation to help pull Everett back from the harm this loss of revenue is causing our community,” he said.

Traffic concerns and the ability for elected officials and the public from Boston to participate in public meetings on the matter were top of mind for some.

Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan, who represents the West End Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, and Mission Hill, said it would “be a nightmare for traffic” if TD Garden and the proposed stadium had events at the same time.

“Because I represent Fenway Park and because I represent TD Garden. I know that people are often willing to take the ticket and take resident parking if … the ticket is less than parking cost,” Durkan said.

New England Revolution President Brian Bilello said he expects the majority of fans would use public transportation “as they do with most urban stadiums, including new options for getting to a destination via water transit.”

“We’re trying to get the stadium and our club to public transportation, and what we hear from most of our fans is they want to have public access to the stadium. They want to have public transportation. So for us, public transportation is the entire reason why we want to be up in Everett and Greater Boston,” he said.

DiDomenico, a Democrat from Everett, successfully added language to a multi-billion spending bill in the fall that would have cleared the land for development. But it was ultimately cut from the final version after House Democrats said they had many unanswered questions.

Rep. Jerry Perisella, who co-chairs the Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee, said he believes the proposal has a chance to move forward this time around.

“I do think that there is some compelling arguments about what would happen to this site otherwise if we don’t allow a stadium to be built,” he said. “There are a lot of environmental issues related to that site.”

More than 20 migrant families have called Harborside Suites in South Yarmouth their home since last September, but the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals has declared the motel has violated a local bylaw that limits temporary stays to less than 30 days.

“We would move today if we could,” motel Attorney Mark Boudreau said during a meeting last week. “The migrants that are there, they are ready to move. A lot of them have work visas… They would like to get going so they can obtain work where they’re going to be.”

Building Commissioner Mark Grylls issued a violation notice to the motel – currently housing 27 families – last October, but he told the ZBA he had to have their blessing before he could start imposing fines.

Harborside Suites, on Route 28 in the popular summer vacation beach town, sought a reversal of the violation, pointing to state officials that had said that “emergency needs of migrant families supersede the occupancy requirements of local zoning.”

But ZBA Vice Chairman Sean Igoe countered that he’s not confident Gov. Maura Healey’s migrant state-of-emergency carries more weight than local ordinances.

In her declaration last August, Healey wrote: “To the cities and towns across the state, many of which have a rich history tied to waves of immigrants settling within their borders, I am encouraging their communities to keep welcoming those families who wish to resettle in all corners of Massachusetts.”

Igoe took exception to the governor’s wording before the ZBA voted to uphold Grylls’ violation notice. “She’s just urging the cities and towns, she’s not ordering us to do it,” he said.

The state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities did not immediately respond to a Herald request for comment on Saturday.

In January, the ZBA approved Harborside Suites maintaining the migrants as Boudreau had told members that the motel heard from the state that the families would be moved to a “larger facility in the Foxboro area” that would “provide better opportunities for food and room.”

Motels that housed migrants in Bourne and Wareham, which Boudreau represents, have been “completely evacuated,” the attorney said. The future shelter for the Yarmouth migrant families, he added, is “within a 20-mile radius of Foxboro.”

“Unfortunately, the property did not pass inspection and had some code violations so they have not moved,” Boudreau said last Thursday. “Everyone is aware in the motel that they will be moving as soon as the property is ready.”

The exact date when the families will be moving out is unclear, but in previous violations of the Yarmouth motel-stay ordinance, the ZBA has given 45 to 90 days depending on the situation, Grylls said.

“I don’t believe we’ve had circumstances like this,” he said.

Harborside Suites is the latest motel or hotel to be thrust into the spotlight of the Massachusetts migrant crisis.

A 26-year-old Haitian national, living at a Rockland motel housing migrants, was charged with aggravated rape of a 15-year-old girl who police described in a report as “disabled,” on March 14. A Hingham judge found Cory Alvarez dangerous a week later and ordered him held without bail.

Taunton officials in February sued the owners of the Clarion Hotel housing migrant families in that city for providing living quarters to nearly 450 people, more than 350-person capacity. The suit seeks over $100,000 in overdue civil fines.

House Speaker Ron Mariano has suggested that broad budget cuts could be on the table when lawmakers sit down next year to draft the fiscal year 2026 budget, fueled by the historically high cost of running the state-run shelters.

With an expected $932 million tab this fiscal year and $915 million in the next to maintain shelters, associated services, and keep municipal reimbursements on track, Mariano projected that a range of other programs could be on the chopping block and put the blame on the feds and their lack of action in solving the migrant crisis.

In his fight with the Yarmouth ZBA, Boudreau highlighted the state’s “great expense” while arguing that the emergency declaration and right-to-shelter law –  homeless families and pregnant women must be provided housing in the Bay State – took precedence over local ordinance.

“To the extent that there is a question of safety and a question of the adequacy of the rooms,” Boudreau said, “the Commonwealth has at great expense provided food, shelter, education, medicine and medical care. They’ve arrived legally, and my client is simply trying to cooperate with the town and the state in getting them moved.”

Since migrant families arrived at Harborside Suites last fall, Yarmouth firefighters responded to a flooding at the motel in January, and a 6-month-old baby was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital the day after they took up residence, according to the hyperlocal Hyannis News. The baby had  “phlegm coming from her mouth, with blood-tinged sputum, according to radio transmissions,” the hyperlocal Hyannis News reported.

Town leaders assured residents last December that there were no active cases of tuberculosis at the motel after a brief scare, the Cape Cod Times reported.

Yarmouth resident Cheryl Ball told the Herald Saturday she is “very pleased” with the ZBA’s decision and hopes it creates a precedent across the state.

“It’s draining our resources,” Ball said of the impact the migrant families have had on the town. “They’re a burden on our education system because we have to pay extra tax dollars to support them in our schools. We have emergency services that we are providing to the hotel that comes out of our tax money.”

But some members of the Governor’s Council want to know exactly how a blanket pardon of at least tens of thousands people — the first of its kind in Massachusetts — will actually work. Healey said records would be updated automatically but councilors said they wanted more details that were missing when the governor announced the move earlier this month.

The group voted to schedule an informational hearing for Wednesday at noon, according to a council staff member.

Not all were immediately on board with the idea, including Councilor Marilyn Devaney, who said that it would only slow down the timeline for people who have had to deal with the ramifications of past convictions.

“There are people that are waiting and there isn’t any law against what they have been accused of and it’s preventing them from jobs and so much. This was all discussed,” she said Wednesday. “If anyone has any objections when we’re voting on it, that’s when any person who objects to approving the pardon will talk. But having a hearing … I think it’s really unconscionable. People are waiting.”

Her colleagues didn’t agree.

“I understand the concern. But frankly, this is the first time in history this has happened in the commonwealth. I know other states have done things like this. I think for transparency and for the public and for procedure, that it’s not a bad idea to do. It is our job,” Councilor Eileen Duff said.

Healey’s office has said pardons for misdemeanor cannabis possession convictions could impact “hundreds of thousands of people.” The plan would take effect immediately after the Governor’s Council votes to approve it, Healey said, though there could be a delay for individual criminal records to be updated.

Healey argued the pardons were the “most comprehensive action” by a single governor since President Joe Biden pardoned federal cannabis possession convictions and called on state leaders to do the same.

“The reason we do this is simple, justice requires it. Massachusetts decriminalized possession for personal use back in 2008, legalized it in 2016. Yet, thousands of people are still living with a conviction on their records, a conviction that may be a barrier to jobs, getting housing, even getting an education,” she said earlier this month.

While a majority of Governor’s Councilors told the Herald they were on board with the idea shortly after the governor announced it, the group approved an “informational hearing” on the initiative.

Councilor Terrence Kennedy said he initially thought an informational hearing wasn’t necessary but had a change of heart.

“I think that it’s important that the public fully understand what the pardon means and what impact it has on people as well as the councilors. And I think the only way you can really get all of that is by way of a hearing,” he said.

Devaney ultimately relented in her opposition.

“I did not vote against it because if that’s the will, then so be it and you’ll be chairing it and so be it,” Devaney said to Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who chairs the Governor’s Council.

Drinks to-go eighty-sixed?

Most people would be lying if they said alcohol didn’t help them get through the darkest days of the pandemic, and the ability to grab a drink or cocktail to-go during that time was also a boon for struggling restaurants.

But the pandemic-era policy is set to lapse Monday without any action from the Legislature, which has so far not found a compromise on legislation that could include a permanent extension of the measure.

A spending bill passed by the House earlier this month codified the practice into state law. But the Senate did not include the language in their version when they pushed the bill forward a few weeks later.

The proposal is stuck in inter-branch discussions because it includes hundreds of millions for the emergency shelter system housing migrants and local families and a policy that would cap families’ stay in shelters at nine months. Negotiators meet for the first time Monday morning.

A deal could very well pop this week considering the drinks policy has expired and money for the shelter system is running out. But until then, drinks to-go and another pandemic-era initiative allowing for outdoor dining are about to be eighty-sixed.

Everett and soccer fans get their Beacon Hill moment

Supporters of turning a run-down industrial park in Everett into a soccer stadium will have a chance to lobby lawmakers on a bill filed by state Sen. Sal DiDomenico that opens a path forward for the development.

The Legislature’s Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies scheduled a 2 p.m. hearing Tuesday. DiDomenico’s proposal is the only matter up for discussion.

A push for a stadium near Encore Boston Harbor was put on ice late last year after lawmakers ultimately scrapped it from a controversial spending bill that also included money for emergency shelters.

DiDomenico, an Everett Democrat, filed a standalone bill in December that would remove a portion of land at 173 Alford Street from a “designated port area” on the Mystic River only “for the purpose of converting the parcel into a professional soccer stadium and a waterfront park,” according to the bill text.

The roughly 43-acre plot is partially in Boston and Everett, according to the bill.

Delahunt died from a long-term illness surrounded by family while at the Marina Bay neighborhood, his family said in a statement in a statement to the Herald.

“While we mourn the loss of such a tremendous person, we also celebrate his remarkable life and his legacy of dedication, service, and inspiration. We thank everyone who has given him, and our family, care, and support. We would also like to acknowledge all those who stood with him for so many years in his work towards making a difference in the community, throughout our country and the world. We could always turn to him for wisdom, solace and a laugh, and his absence leaves a gaping hole in our family and our hearts,” the family said.

As the district attorney for Norfolk County for over 22 years, Delahunt pioneered the nation’s first prosecutorial unit focused on domestic violence and sexual assault cases and programs to combat violence against women that later became models for the rest of the country.

He served as the representative for Massachusetts’ 10th Congressional District from 1997 to 2011, which included the South Shore, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Delahunt said his decision in November 2010 to not run for re-election “had nothing to do with politics.”

“I’ve been wrestling with this decision for a while,” he said, according to Herald reporting from the time, which credited former U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as urging Delahunt to stay in office to help pass former President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.

His departure from Washington was mourned by fellow Democrats, including former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, who said Delahunt had an “incredibly strong voice” for Massachusetts and would leave a “void” in Congress.

As he ran for a first-term in Congress in September 1996, Delahunt pointed to unrest among the middle class about living standards at the time.

“There’s a growing sense on the part of the middle class that sustained middle-class living standards for many now are being eviscerated, or at least an effort has been made to reduce them dramatically during this past session of Congress,” Delahunt said, according to Associated Press reporting from the time.

One of Delahunt’s more debated accomplishments as a U.S. representative saw him broker a deal in 2005 with then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to provide winter heating oil to low-income residents in Massachusetts. Delahunt cast the deal as a “humanitarian gesture,” according to news accounts from the time.

The move earned him some backlash from critics and was seen by some as an attempt to put a thorn in the side of the Bush administration.

But Delahunt, who was later present at Chavez’s state funeral in 2013, brushed off the pushback.

“I don’t report to George Bush,” Delahunt said in December 2005, according to reporting by the Associated Press. “I’m elected by the people here in Massachusetts. So I don’t feel any particular need to consult with George Bush or Dick Cheney about oil.”

He was a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and served as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, among other designations. Delahunt was also a congressional delegate to the United Nations.

When Delahunt announced he was leaving office in 2010, Republicans eyed his seat as a potential momentum builder in the wake of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s victory earlier that year. But ultimately, Democrats would retain the seat when U.S. Rep. Bill Keating declared victory in November 2010 over Republican Jeffrey Perry.

After leaving office, Delahunt worked at the law firm Eckert Seamans, which said in a statement they were “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of our partner and friend.”

“Bill was a tremendous colleague and dear friend to many at the firm. Throughout Bill’s numerous years of dedicated service to the legal and U.S. political community, Delahunt developed significant relationships with world leaders, ambassadors, and countless clients of Eckert Seamans, as well as advancing his community in Massachusetts. Our firm extends heartful thoughts and prayers to Bill’s family during this difficult time,” the company said in a statement.

Delahunt had a stint in the state’s cannabis industry after leaving politics.

He ran Medical Marijauna of Massachusetts, a firm that at one point was granted provisional approval to sell medical cannabis but was later turned down in June 2014 because of profit-sharing concerns with a management company also led by Delahunt, among others.

He stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer in March 2014, the Herald reported.

Delahunt’s was recognized in October 2022 when the Norfolk County Superior Courthouse was named in his honor.

“The challenge to improve the quality of life for our communities was exciting and inspiring, and our initiatives fundamentally transformed the justice system,” Delahunt said at the time.

Herald editor Joe Dwinell contributed reporting.

Members said they were concerned about how easy it is for college-aged residents and young kids to access sports betting, especially on mobile phones. After Massachusetts legalized the practice two years ago, some officials are starting to raise alarms about problem youth gambling.

The coalition includes Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, Civic Action Project, NCAA, and every major sports team in Boston.

“There are alarming national and state statistics about how this demographic engages with gambling, both on sports and generally. National data from the NCAA has found that 58% of 18 to 22 year olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity,” Campbell said during an event at TD Garden.

The announcement came a day after former Gov. Charlie Baker, who now serves as president of the NCAA, said he wants to states with legal sports wagering to ban prop bets on college athletes. Prop bets on college athletes are already illegal in Massachusetts, and betting on Massachusetts colleges is only allowed when a team competes a national tournament.

Coalition members plan to develop an “evidence-based education, training, and health curriculum targeted at middle school, high school, and college-aged young people, ages 12-20, throughout” the state, according to Campbell’s office. Their first meeting is in early April.

Massachusetts legalized online and in-person sports betting in 2022 to great fanfare, and sportsbooks officially launched their gambling platforms the next year. But since then, some lawmakers have raised concerns about younger generations’ susceptibility to addictive gambling.

Baker, who championed the sports betting law in the state, said he has talked to 500 to 1,000 student-athletes since he took over the top job at the organization.

“The message I kept getting from them was, ‘there’s so much of this going on, it’s very hard for us to just stay away from it and out of it.’ And what they meant by that was being dragged into it by their classmates who wanted to talk to them about how is so and so doing, is he or she going to be able to play this weekend?” he said.

An influx of migrants from other countries and the crushing costs of living in Massachusetts have pushed people to seek assistance from emergency shelters at record levels. The state is required to run the shelter program because of a decades-old right-to-shelter law.

But with an expected $932 million tab this fiscal year and $915 million in the next to maintain shelters, associated services, and keep municipal reimbursements on track, Mariano projected that a range of other programs could be on the chopping block.

“Every program that we fund is susceptible to being tapped to fund the shelter program. Not in this budget but in the next because there will be no help coming. There’s no help coming. The federal government can’t get its act together,” he told reporters. “They couldn’t even agree on a vote to shut down the border.”

Emergency shelters in Massachusetts have remained at a 7,500-family cap Gov. Maura Healey imposed in the fall. Legislative budget writers said this month that it costs the state roughly $75 million a month to care for those families with children and pregnant people temporarily living in a sweeping network of hotels, motels, and traditional shelter sites.

The exorbitant cost of the system has started to weigh heavily on Beacon Hill amid a consistent return of lower-than-expected tax revenues. The House, Senate, and Healey have proposed limiting families’ stays at shelters and overflow sites in an attempt to curb demand and costs.

“If we keep getting a billion-dollar bill for emergency shelters, where are we going to get the money?” Mariano said. “There has to be some realities that people put forth so that there’s some understanding that cuts will have to come. And it’s not something that I look forward to and I’m not going to spring it on people at the last minute and say hey, ‘we just whacked your budget.’ People have to understand how we get to this.”

Budget writers expect to run out of money to pay for the emergency assistance shelter program this fiscal year in early to mid-April, and two top Democrats are hashing out a plan to pay for services for the rest of the fiscal year and potentially into the next.

Questions about fiscal year 2026 have been lingering in the hallways of the State House, especially if demand for emergency shelters does not slow down.

Mariano said Beacon Hill will manage to fund services in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 because of surplus revenues left over from the pandemic.

But once those funds are tapped, and if Congress continues to find itself stalled over immigration aid, Massachusetts could find itself in a difficult spot in fiscal year 2026, the Quincy Democrat said.

Everything is “on the table” come next year, he said.

“Good times are great. And when there were good times, everyone really enjoyed spending the money. And I enjoyed spending the money. But I’ve been through bad times in here when local aid has been cut, when everything in the budget has been on the table for a cut. When you cut local aid, you’re really pretty much at the bottom of the budget,” he said.

Mariano spoke at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition’s annual “Immigrants’ Day” at the State House, where he told the large crowd that next year “is going to be extremely difficult.”

“It will be extremely difficult for us as legislators and extremely difficult for you as advocacy groups. There is no money coming from the federal government. They are in such a disarray. We can’t count on their help at all,” he said. “We’re going to have to do it on our own. And we’re all going to have to tighten our belts and do the best we can to make sure that the programs that are important are funded adequately.”

MIRA Coalition Executive Director Elizabeth Sweet said it is no surprise to hear Mariano say the federal government is not sending help.

“We also see the reality and his comments are not a surprise in that sense. But I remain optimistic that we are in some agreement that some of this programming is critical to Massachusetts and to the Massachusetts economy, that we continue to welcome immigrants here,” Sweet told the Herald at the State House.

Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless Associate Director Kelly Turley said she is “obviously” concerned about the state’s financial situation.

“We want to make sure that the current housing crisis and homelessness crisis don’t lead to families and individuals who need services not being able to access them, whether that’s shelter, housing, wraparound supports,” she said after listening to Mariano speak. “We encourage the state to make the investments in homelessness prevention so that the state doesn’t have the higher price tag of long-term shelter stays.”

The Healey administration reported spending $53 million on the emergency shelter system over two weeks this month as it also made clear that it is running out of cash to directly pay for shelters this fiscal year, according to a report released Monday.

That comes as House and Senate negotiators are working to produce a deal that could fund shelters for the rest of the fiscal year 2024 and potentially parts of fiscal year 2025. But the clock is ticking as direct funding for emergency assistance shelters is expected to run out the first or second week of April, according to legislative budget writers.

If negotiators cannot find a compromise in time, the Healey administration could turn to other pots of money set aside to respond to the crisis, according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.

A spokesperson for the office said Healey has access to $707 million this fiscal year that she can spend on the broader humanitarian response to an influx of migrants from other countries, including the emergency assistance program, overflow shelters, and school reimbursements, among other things.

A backup plan could see the administration use dollars intended for school reimbursements to pay for the emergency assistance shelter program, according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.

Some school payments are not due immediately, leaving officials with wiggle room if the Legislature does not find a quick compromise on the spending bill, according to the office. Any dollars used would be backfilled at a later date when money arrives from the Legislature, according to the office.

The administration reported spending $480 million of the $575 million the Legislature allocated for the emergency assistance shelter program as of March 21, and the remaining $95 million could dry up in the next few weeks as more bills come due, according to the Monday report.

Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate said it is not surprising that the Healey administration is considering an alternative plan to keep shelters funded, but resolving the spending bill is in “everyone’s best interest.”

“We have demands on this program that have a real and significant cost and tapping into some of these remaining surplus dollars to manage through this over a six to nine-month period is okay, provided we’re using that time to figure out what the long-term plan is,” Howgate told the Herald Wednesday.

House and Senate lawmakers this month passed competing versions of a spending bill that would direct hundreds of millions in surplus revenues left over from the pandemic to the emergency shelter system.

The two branches differed in their approach to funding shelters, with the House proposing to hand over $224 million for this fiscal year and the Senate opting to grant Healey access to more than $800 million to cover costs in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

The two proposals set nine-month limits on families’ stay in shelters but diverge in how families can extend their stay.

The Healey administration projected it would spend $932 million on shelters this fiscal year and $915 million in the next, an enormous tab that has led Beacon Hill to place limits on shelter stays to curb demand on an already strained system.

The emergency shelter system, created under Massachusetts’ decades-old right-to-shelter law, has been at a 7,500-family limit since November. State officials project the shelter network will cost taxpayers about $75 million a month.

The Healey administration reported $53 million in spending between March 7 and March 21, according to the report released Monday.

Of the $480 million spent this fiscal year, just over $39 million has gone to shelter providers, nearly $11 million on clinical assessment and overflow sites, $8.8 million on student aid, nearly $1 million on municipal reimbursements, $203,000 on upgrades to an overflow shelter site in Cambridge, $8,000 for upgrades at an overflow site in Roxbury, and $28,000 on nursing staff at overflow sites.

Another $1.6 million has been spent on payroll for National Guard troops deployed at shelter sites throughout Massachusetts. Healey first called up the Guard in August as families found themselves hotels and motels without staff.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said 209 Guard members are at 25 shelter sites. Troops help with “onsite coordination” of food, transportation, and medical care as well as help students enroll in schools.

The Guard members do not provide security or law enforcement services and work in teams of less than 10 during daytime hours, according to the spokesperson.

Four Democrats carried a vote to move all meetings into executive session. They cited concerns about future legal challenges to any compromise they produce, personal threats, and the generally divisive nature of politics in the United States after the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Sen. Joan Lovely, a Salem Democrat, said she initially supported debating the bill in public but had a change of heart after a man she said previously stalked, harassed, and threatened the life of her daughter “resurfaced.”

“Knowing what he could be capable of because of his mental health status, that’s why I support going into executive session for this particular conference committee. I think it’s just safer for the conferees,” Lovely said.

Lovely said in 2019, both she and her daughter received “gun threats” from a man who lived in Lovely’s Senate district. The man also threatened a police officer, was arrested, and was “seen” at a local district court where Lovely’s daughter worked as an assistant district attorney, according to Lovely.

The man would follow her daughter at the courthouse and sent “hundreds of emails, very threatening emails” to Lovely, the senator said. The man was eventually arrested and held without bail for over a year while “he was examined for his mental health status,” Lovely said.

Lovely said she even sought a license to carry a firearm in 2020 “to protect my family” because of the threats she received.

The man has since made his presence known again, Lovely said.

“He was actually subsequently released and has left the state of Massachusetts but resurfaced just recently threatening another ADA, a local ADA. And I did receive more content from him through social media, through messaging,” Lovely said. “That’s all been turned over to the police as well.”

Both the House and Senate passed firearms proposals this session that largely hit on the same key issues — untraceable homemade guns and the ability to convert a semi-automatic firearm into an automatic one.

But the two branches diverged enough in their approaches that four Democrats and two Republicans were tasked with finding a compromise, a process that typically plays out behind closed doors and can stretch for months on end with few updates.

Talks on the gun bills initially kicked off in the open view of the public, with one top negotiator, Sen. Cindy Creem, telling reporters a decision had not yet been made on whether all meetings would be accessible.

Creem said Wednesday that she “had expected that these meetings would be open” but would support closing them out of concern that allowing the public to hear discussions “could potentially result in litigation somewhere down the road.”

“In my mind, that would be a reason why executive session would be appropriate in this regard,” she said.

Both Republicans on the panel, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Rep. Joseph McKenna of Webster, voted against the motion to move into executive session. Tarr said one way to maintain public trust is “to keep the proceedings open so that folks can witness what we’re discussing.”

“I would suggest that there are many issues, if not the vast majority of issues that we deal with in the Legislature, that could be the subject of litigation. And to suggest that this particular issue should be singled out because of that prospect, I don’t feel is an appropriate reason to close this committee to the public discussions that I’m hoping that we will have,” he said.

Lawmakers could barely be heard when listening through a door to a room where they were meeting. At one point, a boisterous laugh was clearly heard from the hallway outside the hearing room.

An agenda for the Wednesday meeting circulated by Day’s office said lawmakers were expected to discuss areas of the two bills where the House and Senate “closely align,” “broader topics” covered by both proposals, Senate-only ideas, House-only ideas, and a next meeting date.

Rep. Michael Day, a Stoneham Democrat who has spearheaded firearms reforms in the House, declined to say what lawmakers discussed during the meeting as he left, including any specific areas of agreement between the two branches.

“Look at the bills, you can find out the areas that are in agreement. Right?” Day told reporters. “Certain sections are touched on by both chambers. Certain sections of language that’s very close together. Other sections don’t appear in one of the other bills.”

Pressed on the matter, Day said the panel had a “broad discussion on the ones that are close.”

The small contingent held large signs in front on the steps of the State House reading “close the Healey hotels” and “lawmakers woke, taxpayers broke.” State officials have projected spending on emergency shelters could reach $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million in the next.

“Maura Healey, shame on you,” said Lou Murray, chair of Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities and a past contributor to the Herald. “ And I think if we have one message today, it’s end the right to shelter and close the Healey hotels. The lawmakers are woke and the taxpayers are broke. And we’re tired of it.”

Massachusetts’ decades-old right-to-shelter law requires the state to provide temporary shelter to families with children and pregnant women through the emergency assistance program. Over the past year, an influx of migrants fleeing oftentimes dangerous conditions in their home countries have arrived in Massachusetts.

The migrant families with children and pregnant women who are granted access to the emergency assistance shelter program are lawfully in the United States and have been recognized by the federal government, most times as humanitarian parolees or asylum seekers.

Noncitizens seeking shelter are required to have been “lawfully admitted for permanent residence or otherwise permanently residing under color of law in the U.S.” to access taxpayer-funded shelters, according to state regulations.

About half of the people in the state-run emergency shelter program are migrants from other countries and the rest are Massachusetts residents, according to the Healey administration.

Henry Barbaro, the executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, said “tax dollars are a precious resource.”

“What is happening in Massachusetts is (an) entirely unsustainable expenditure of tax dollars. I think that there are plenty of poor and needy Americans that should come first,” he said.

Tempers flared as DiZoglio pushed back on criticism leveled against a proposed ballot question that would grant her office the authority to crack open the Legislature’s books, a measure that a pair of academic experts described as an “old-fashioned power grab” and likely to be successfully challenged in court.

DiZoglio left few legislative officials on Beacon Hill unscathed as she excoriated them for refusing to comply with an audit her office has sought for months to conduct into the internal proceedings, finances, rules creation, and details on active and pending legislation.

“At some point, this body is going to need to face reality when it comes to these bogus arguments that are being perpetuated by the (legislative) leadership team because the taxpayers of Massachusetts are smarter than the way they’re being treated right now,” she said. “They’re the experts on the issue.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell ruled in November that DiZoglio did not have the legal authority to conduct an audit of the Legislature without their consent. DiZoglio was left to pursue the matter at the ballot box and has since cleared multiple signature-gathering hurdles.

But the measure has slim chances on Beacon Hill.

Rep. Alice Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat and co-chair of the committee tasked with reviewing potential ballot questions, said it is “highly unlikely” to pass the Legislature on its own. If the Legislature does not act, supporters will need to collect additional signatures from voters to gain access to the November ballot.

“(It is) clear from the testimony that we’ve heard today, both expert and otherwise, including some of the proponents of the question, that this particular question does raise some serious constitutional issues and that’s something we are going to have to take into consideration,” Peisch said.

Two academics focused on constitutional law, who were invited to testify by the chairs of a committee reviewing potential ballot questions, slammed DiZoglio’s efforts to gain additional power to audit the House and Senate.

David King, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Havard Kennedy School, said the change in law DiZoglio is proposing could “deeply damage the balance of powers between the Legislature and the executive branch.”

“Cloaked as an appeal to transparency and accountability, the gambit reads like an old-fashioned power grab,” King told lawmakers. “The auditor’s gambit would transfer power away from the Legislature into the unchecked hands of the executive branch. To my eyes, and in my reading of history, (the proposal) is a power grab — simple and raw. It is exactly what John Adams and the founders warned against.”

DiZoglio did not take kindly to the bombs lobbed by King, who runs a bi-partisan program for newly elected members of Congress. In a tense exchange with Rep. Kenneth Gordon, DiZoglio said lawmakers invited “so-called experts, as intelligent as they may be,” to testify before her at the hearing.

“The experts are the people that have been disenfranchised by this state Legislature, not the cherry-picked speakers that this committee invited to testify this morning for the purposes of political theater,” DiZoglio said.

Gordon shot back, pointing out that the first two speakers were State Comptroller William McNamara and an accountant for a firm that audits the Legislature. As for one of the professors, Gordon said he called Northeastern University and asked them if anyone could speak to constitutional law.

“I spoke with one professor, and he’s here to speak. I did not speak to anyone and ask that person not to speak,” the Bedford Democrat said. “That person’s opinion is that person’s opinion.”

Peisch and Sen. Cindy Friedman, the other co-chair of the committee reviewing ballot questions, said their standard practice for multiple hearings has been to reach out to local colleges and universities to find experts.

Rep. Michael Day, a Stoneham Democrat who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee, said no other person has accused the committee of “cherry-picking” experts.

Central Connecticut State University Political Science Professor Jerold Duquette said he does not know what to do when DiZoglio dismisses the “expert arguments” of the attorney general, a former auditor, and “every political science professor I’ve been able to get my hands on.”

“That’s dangerous. We’ve got all the anti-intellectual, ‘the people know the truth,’ ‘experts are lying’ that we need in this country. We don’t need it in Massachusetts,” he said.

Former State Auditor Susan Bump, who endorsed DiZoglio’s opponent in the 2022 election, questioned whether her successor could remain impartial during a hypothetical legislative audit because of her past feuds with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.

“Her ardent advocacy of her agenda renders implausible any claim to the legally required objective and nonideological attitude of an auditor. Her clearly stated goal is to gain the power to change the operations of the state Legislature,” Bump said.

“Today, our healthcare system is at risk,” said Health Care Financing Committee co-chair Sen. Cindy Friedman. “The recent events concerning Steward Health System have exacerbated a crisis that has existed and exists across all aspects of healthcare delivery in the Commonwealth, from primary care to hospital systems to long-term care. And while there are many factors that are destabilizing the delivery system, the entry of profit-driven entities in healthcare has and does play a key role.”

The Joint Committee on Health Care Financing held a nearly five hour hearing with panelists from researchers to health care professionals Monday to discuss the growing role of private equity in funding health care — meaning companies who fund hospitals and health facilities and make profit by selling stock to private investors. Panelists discussed what role the state policy may be able to play in the management and oversight of the companies to protect against future collapses like Steward’s.

Steward, the third largest hospital system in Massachusetts, admitted to being millions in debt in rent, with unpaid contracts and other expenses in early 2024. Following ultimatums from state leaders, the company is looking to sell off all their hospitals in the state, but the future of all nine hospitals remains uncertain.

Current data suggests over 400 hospitals in the country are owned by private equity firms, said Zirui Song, associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Song cited a broad research study of looking at over 600,000 hospitalizations at private equity hospitals compared to over 4 million at other hospitals.

Hospitals acquired by private equity firms had a 5% rise in “hospital acquired complications or adverse events for patients” in their first three years, Song said, driven by a 38% increase in bloodstream infections from central lines and a 27% increase in patient falls. Surgical site infections doubled compared to the control, he continued, even though there was a decrease in surgeries done.

Similar negative health outcomes have occurred in nursing homes, said Robert Tyler Braun, health sciences researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College

While health risks increase, more panelists said, further research shows prices at the private equity hospitals are surging and staffing levels are suffering.

While many private equity firms pose themselves as “saviors” for struggling hospitals, Song said, many of the promised benefits just “haven’t panned out.”

“Let’s ask ourselves: does the saving of a hospital with private capital either necessitate or justify the staffing reductions or the patient harms that we found?” Song said.

David Seltz, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, said private equity can be particularly destabilizing in the health care industry because of the model’s “focus on short term return and the leverage of debt.”

The “pressure to produce high investment returns in a short time” can incentivize companies to take riskier options, Seltz said. The complex private model can allow the companies to avoid financial disclosures and transparency and insulate investors from legal liability, among other issues, he said.

Steward has been court ordered to turn over financial documents, a representative from CHIA and the HPC noted, but is currently appealing the decision.

Policy recommendations focused in on giving state agencies like the Attorney General and HPC greater enforcement, regulatory and oversight powers regarding mergers and transactions, measures to require greater transparency and disclosure from private equity firms, and others.

Sarah Jaromin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted a number of bills and policies in other states aimed at the issue.

“There are a variety of policy levers that states are using relating to private ownership and healthcare,” said Jaromin. “These include but may not be limited to the general regulating mergers and acquisitions, increasing transparency of ownership, either for private equity for entities, and lastly related efforts like study committees, cost control measures, anti-competitive contracting provisions.”

“The need for urgent action cannot be greater,” said Seltz, noting the HPC has pledged to work with the committee to ensure legislative solutions this session.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey has also scheduled a congressional hearing to explore the for-profit health care company model issue on a national level next month and has called on Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre to testify.

Edwards made it clear in two separate posts on X this month that she prefers Cartwright, an attorney with 30 years of legal experience, over Murphy, an at-large councilor and former Boston school teacher, for the Suffolk County seat that opened up when longtime SJC Clerk Maura Doyle opted not to run for re-election.

Quoting a post shared by Cartwright, Edwards wrote on X, “Exciting to see such a qualified and professional candidate running for this position,” a statement that perhaps could be seen as a dig at Murphy’s lack of legal experience.

The outgoing clerk, Doyle, has been a member of the bar since 1981. She was a civil litigator in the state and federal courts for 11 years and an adjunct professor at Suffolk University Law School before joining the SJC clerk’s office as an assistant clerk in 1992. She became the court’s first female clerk four years later. Doyle earned $189,324 in 2023, Herald payroll records show.

Edwards, who sat alongside Murphy for a time on the City Council, later posted that she was out campaigning for Cartwright, who, according to her campaign announcement, is “currently serving as managing director of the public defender office for Suffolk and Norfolk Counties.”

Murphy is likely not deterred, however, particularly after picking up a big-name endorsement this week from U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, who cited her “record of providing constituent services across all neighborhoods, her successful efforts to uphold the voting rights of all Boston residents, and her commitment to helping those less fortunate,” her newsletter states. – Gayla Cawley

Ron DeSantis floats migrants on the Vineyard … again

Ears pricked up — and some eyes definitely rolled — this week when failed presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis floated sending more migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

Lest we forget, DeSantis last year shipped dozens of Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, with a quick pitstop in Florida. It was a move that was derided as a political stunt and spurred a federal lawsuit by a pair of legal advocacy groups.

So where is the legal challenge?

It has been mostly dormant since August 2023, when the groups representing some of the migrants who landed on the wealthy enclave petitioned a judge not to dismiss the case or move it out of Massachusetts and to Florida.

“Defendants induced 49 destitute immigrants to fly across the country through fraud and misrepresentation and, after using them as unwitting props in a stunt devised for the personal political gain of defendant DeSantis, abandoned them on an island,” Attorneys with Alianza Americas and Lawyers for Civil Rights wrote in the latest court filing.

The lawsuit accused DeSantis and others of violating the migrants’ Constitutional rights and federal rights by luring them onto a plane in Texas and crossing state lines. But DeSantis and his officials have pushed back, arguing the legal groups “obviously disagree with Florida’s policies and political leaders.”– Chris Van Buskirk

Another ‘nationwide search’ for a Massachusetts judge

There’s been yet another “nationwide search” for a Massachusetts judge, in addition to Gov. Maura Healey handing her ex-romantic partner a $226,187-a-year spot on the Supreme Judicial Court.

On the same day the Governor’s Council confirmed that pick earlier this month, they also okayed for the District Court Marjorie Tynes.

In an amazing coincidence, the new Judge Tynes is the wife of Dorchester District Court Judge Jonathan Tynes, who is an appointee of ex-Gov. Deval Patrick and a proud graduate of the now-defunct Mount Ida College.

Mrs. Tynes returned to the public service after a 10-year hiatus as soon as the Democrats regained control of state government last year. Healey made her a $156,000-a-year “deputy executive director” of the Executive Office of Public Safety.

But that was obviously only a holding pen until the ultimate hack appointment opened up – a judgeship.

Mr. and Mrs. Tynes will now each be making $207,855 a year. Total hack family annual take: $415,710. – Howie Carr

MassGOP election loser update

The month of March just keeps getting worse for the faction of the state GOP led by perennial election losers Jim Lyons and Geoff Diehl.

After losing a slew of seats in the state committee races March 5, two days later another of their stalwarts was sentenced to a month in federal prison for income-tax evasion.

This time it was Christianne Mylott-Coleman, a former chief of staff for ex-Sen. Dean Tran of Fitchburg, another of the Lyons-Diehl cult’s serial election losers.

Mylott-Coleman made $52,489 on the state payroll working for Tran at the State House in 2019 before he was ousted from office in 2020, two years after Lyons and Diehl got the boot. He was then crushed for Congress in 2022, but still got a higher percentage of votes than Diehl did in his sad bid for governor.

In Springfield federal court, Tran’s aide Mylott-Coleman was found guilty of evading $269,209 in income taxes while she was running a home-services business.

Meanwhile, her old boss, Tran, is still awaiting his own day(s) in court. He’s been indicted on both state and federal charges, including COVID welfare fraud and theft of a firearm.

Prior to being lugged by both state and federal cops, Tran was ticketed to run on the Lyons-Diehl slate for GOP state committee. According to the federal indictment, at the time of his alleged welfare fraud, Tran was employed by another GOP election loser, Rick Green, who owns 1A Auto Parts in Pepperell. – Howie Carr

City Council avoiding a New Year’s Day hangover

The Boston City Council, in seeking to avoid a repeat of their New Year’s Day hangovers this past inauguration, voted in favor of a home rule petition that, if passed at the state level, would change the date of future inaugural ceremonies.

The petition, put forward by Councilor Brian Worrell and approved via an 11-2 vote last Wednesday, seeks to amend the city charter in a way that would prevent mayoral and city council inaugurations from falling on a federal holiday like what occurred with this year’s New Year’s Day ceremony.

If signed by Mayor Michelle Wu, the petition would be sent to Beacon Hill, where state lawmakers would have to approve two city charter changes — by moving the inauguration and end-of-term dates for the mayor and city council from the first Monday of January to the first weekday after Jan. 2.

Worrell pointed to the strain he felt the requirement placed on first responders, who “had to staff our inauguration 10 hours after First Night and New Year’s Eve.”

Not everyone was on board. City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy both voted against the “unnecessary” change, speaking to the honor that they and their colleagues should feel in serving on the City Council, and the lack of frequency in which an inauguration falls on a federal holiday. – Gayla Cawley

DiZoglio is scheduled to head before a committee Tuesday to pitch a group of legislators on her proposed ballot question that would allow the state auditor’s office to audit the Legislature, an idea that has so far faced fierce resistance from top Democrats at the State House.

The former senator and representative said if history repeats itself, “the Legislature is highly unlikely to support this” and the committee tasked with reviewing the measure is not likely to give it a stamp of approval.

“It is highly unusual for folks who are assigned to committees of such importance like this to oppose legislative leaders. So we know what we’re walking into. But I still think it’s important to show up and to say our piece,” DiZoglio told the Herald in an interview Friday afternoon.

DiZoglio has sparred with both House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka over an effort to conduct a legislative audit, something DiZoglio says is necessary because of the often opaque and closed-door nature of the Legislature.

Mariano and Spilka have stonewalled requests from DiZoglio to willingly participate in an audit, arguing that both of the branches they lead are already regularly scrubbed and handing the auditor the power to look through internal books violates the state constitution.

In a March 2023 letter to DiZoglio, Mariano said the claim that the auditor’s office has legal authority to conduct an audit of the Legislature is “entirely without legal support or precedent.”

After Attorney General Andrea Campbell declined to approve legal action last year to force the Legislature to comply with an audit, DiZoglio was left to pursue a question at the ballot box, a campaign that has already cleared multiple signature hurdles and raised more than $300,000.

But before the question lands before voters in November, the Legislature has an opportunity to take action on the measure. If lawmakers decide against taking action, supporters of potential ballot questions have to collect more signatures.

Mariano and Spilka put together a committee to review all potential ballot questions led by Sen. Cindy Friendman, an Alrington Democrat, and Rep. Alice Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat.

DiZoglio’s chance to convince lawmakers that they should let her peer through the finances, procedures, and inner workings of the House and Senate is scheduled for a 10 a.m. hearing Tuesday at the State House.

DiZoglio said she is more focusing her efforts on pushing her audit questions towards ballot rather than lobbying legislators to pass the measure as a bill, an option they retain.

“Just like when I was in the Legislature, even if a bill failed over and over, such as the nondisclosure agreement legislation that I tried to pass, I didn’t slow down in continuing to get up and to advocate for it while knowing that certain members of leadership were still going to oppose the bill,” she said.

Beacon Hill lawmakers have spent most of the new year putting together a plan to pay soaring shelter bills just as state revenues have consistently come in below expectations, Washington has offered no help, and demand on services continues to persist at historic levels.

With cash likely running out ahead of an April time window, the Legislature is now locked in negotiations over a new spending plan that could allow Healey to access dollars at a critical moment. Top budget writers say they are confident they can find a compromise before time runs out.

House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said he understands the need to produce a deal on a spending bill “as quickly as possible.”

“I’m hopeful that once we get into this discussion with our counterparts that we’ll be able to produce something with time to spare in terms of any funding running out,” the North End Democrat told the Herald Friday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the Executive of Administration and Finance, Matt Murphy, did not say if the Healey administration has a working date for when money could run out.

“We don’t have any further updates at this time. We are encouraged by the progress the Legislature has made and look forward to working with them to finalize the supplemental budget as soon as possible,” he said in a statement.

The Senate voted Thursday to give Healey access to up to $840 million over fiscal years 2024 and 2025 to pay for shelter costs while the House approved earlier this month a $245 million injection only for this fiscal year. Both bills cap time in shelters at nine months, with different rules for extending stays.

Lawmakers have so far handed the Healey administration $575 million in fiscal year 2024 to deal with a shelter crisis that has been exacerbated by an influx of migrants fleeing dangerous conditions in their home countries.

In a report released last week, the administration said it had already spent $427 million on emergency shelter services as of March 7. An updated report that could shed light on the latest financial figures is expected to be released next week.

Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues said his “read” of the situation is money could dry up in the first or second week of April, a timetable that puts a quickly ticking clock on House-Senate deliberations on additional shelter spending.

“This current rate of spending is truly unsustainable, and it may further hamper our ability to address time-sensitive needs facing the commonwealth if we don’t act. With the failure of a federal government to act in aid in this crisis, the responsibility unfortunately falls upon our shoulders here in the commonwealth,” he said during a Thursday Senate session.

More than 7,500 families with children and pregnant women are living in a sprawling network of hotels, motels, and traditional shelters across Massachusetts. Half are considered to be migrants.

Some shelter guests receive a range of services from health care to transportation and food to legal help. The Healey administration has projected it will spend $932 million this fiscal year and $915 million next fiscal year on emergency assistance shelters.

In years past, normal emergency shelter capacity hovered around 4,100 families and cost taxpayers about $27 million per month, Rodrigues said.

That escalated to $45 million a month in August 2023, when Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency as shelters were quickly filling up, and, according to Rodrigues, again to $75 million a month as the stem of new arrivals kept up.

The state could be doling out as much as $78 million per month on shelter needs in fiscal year 2024 and there are “only so many levers” to control the crisis, said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Howgate said lawmakers need to be “laser-focused” on managing costs and getting them back down to a more “sustainable level.”

But if they were to stay at the roughly $900 million rate the administration expects for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, Howgate said, “You’d have to figure out a way to build that into the (annual) budget.”

“I think if you look at the budget this year, if you had to just immediately increase that line item by a further $600 million, which is what it would take to get up to the $900 (million), you’d be faced with some really, really tough decisions and some really bad cuts to do something like that,” he said.

During the Thursday debate on the Senate’s shelter funding bill, Rodrigues said the state is spending roughly $10,000 per family in shelter each month.

“This continued wave of migrants seeking shelter is not going away anytime soon, and presents immense challenges for our communities. Currently, the projected cost of the state’s emergency shelter program is on an unsustainable trajectory,” he said.

Kelly Turley, associate director at the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said that calculation may be an oversimplification of monthly costs that are “a little more nuanced.”

“There’s money going to other services,” she said Friday. “I think $75 million a month is right but not necessarily for each family because … that’s including money for welcome centers, the National Guard, clinical assessment sites, then the overflow sites.”

Healey has faced criticism and questions in the past week after a four-day trip last month surfaced into the public view well after she had taken it and aides declined to say where the governor went.

Healey spokesperson Karissa Hand said Healey was in Puerto Rico on a birthday trip with her partner, Joanna Lydgate. Future out-of-state trips “will be available to media upon request in her calendar at the end of each month,” Hand said.

“The governor’s focus is on balancing the need to protect the privacy and security of her family while also providing information to the public. Last month, the governor’s partner, Joanna Lydgate, took her to Puerto Rico for a long weekend for her birthday – their first vacation together in a long time,” Hand said in a statement.

Healey last fall said her office would stop telling the public when she was traveling out of state because of “security concerns,” which, at the time, was a break from the governor’s own initial policy and that of her immediate predecessor, former Gov. Charlie Baker.

At an unrelated event earlier this week, Healey defended her decision to not inform the public where she was going when leaving the state.

“I continue to provide details about all of my work-related travel. I’ve also said that my personal life is my personal life and I’m going to work to make sure that privacy is maintained for my family,” she told reporters.

The spending bill that passed the Senate on a 32-8 vote inches Beacon Hill closer to figuring out how to temporarily finance a flailing emergency shelter network that is projected to run out of money this spring amid record demand on services, declining state revenues, and no help from Washington.

But the stamp of approval from the Senate sets up what could be tense and time sensitive negotiations with the House, where lawmakers will have to hammer out the details of two different funding solutions for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

It is a conversation where speed will likely be critical, a fact that was not lost on Senate budget writer Michael Rodrigues, a Democrat from Westport who shepherded the spending bill to the floor of the Senate.

“About half the families in our shelter system currently are Massachusetts residents. If the money were to run out without any action on the plan, we would be talking about thousands of these families suddenly on the street in many communities across the state. This is an unacceptable and equally irresponsible outcome,” Rodrigues said.

The Senate plan hands Gov. Maura Healey the keys to a more than $1 billion account filled with surplus dollars leftover from the pandemic that can be used only once. It allows her to spend up to $840 million over fiscal years 2024 and 2025 with declining monthly spending limits.

The proposal also caps the time families with children and pregnant people can stay in state-run shelters at nine months, with opportunities to renew their stay in 90-day increments if they meet certain criteria like being a single parent of a child with disability.

Tapping the one-time account would come as Massachusetts finds itself in a difficult financial situation having consistently missed already downgraded monthly revenue benchmarks since the start of fiscal year 2024.

House lawmakers took a more targeted approach in a spending bill they passed earlier this month, setting aside $245 million in surplus revenues from the pandemic to pay for shelter costs only in fiscal year 2024.

Rodrigues said his “read” is that money for the shelter system is set to run out the first or second week of April, putting pressure on House-Senate negotiators to find a deal before then.

“We’re going to try to get it done as quickly as possible,” he told the Herald. “I don’t draw any lines in the sand. I’ll go into conference committee with Chairman (Aaron) Michlewitz with an open mind.”

Massachusetts is spending about $75 million each month — or about $10,000 per family — on the 7,500 migrant and local families that are living in a sweeping net of emergency shelters across the state, Rodrigues said.

That is a large jump from the $45 million a month Healey said the state was spending when she first declared a state of emergency over the shelter crisis in August.

The Healey administration projected the state will spend $932 million on shelters this fiscal year and $915 million in the next, a massive cost that has so far led lawmakers to funnel millions to the system to keep services afloat.

Republicans, who have very little sway over policy in the Legislature, have hammered Democrats on Beacon Hill for throwing more money at the shelter system without putting in place what they argue are sufficient measures to stem demand on services.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr unsuccessfully attempted to get Democrats to agree to a six-month residency requirement for shelter access, a measure some lawmakers have repeatedly pushed this session.

He said if lawmakers and the Healey administration are going to fundamentally change the right-to-shelter law by capping the system at 7,500 families and attempt to impose a nine-month time limit, then officials should also look at a residency requirement.

“We are proposing to change this law collectively in the bill that now pends before us. The question is … how should we best change it?” Tarr said. “Clearly, we would do well to say that in terms of those that would be enfranchised with a right to shelter, we should narrow that opening.”

Amid a flurry of wheeling and dealing amendments, many senators were clear that the demand on shelters in Massachusetts was not going to end in the near future.

An unfolding crisis in Haiti, where armed gangs are regularly launching attacks across the country amid a governmental upheaval, has the potential to send more families to Massachusetts, which has one of the largest Haitian communities in the United States.

Sen. John Velis, a Westfield Democrat, said he interacted with people from Haiti during a National Guard deployment to a shelter in Massachusetts and found himself wondering what “would I do if I were in their circumstance.”

“I’ll tell you what I’d do if I was in their circumstance, I’d grab my son, if I was in a place like Haiti, I’d grab my wife and I’d get the hell out of there. People are dying, people are getting raped. Gangs are running the country in Haiti,” he said.

During a Thursday debate on a bill that in part looks to fund state-run shelters in Massachusetts serving migrants and local residents, state Sen. John Velis dragged Jordan for seeking information on Cory Alvarez, 26, who allegedly raped a 15-year-old disabled girl in Rockland, according to court documents.

“I read the newspaper the other day, I think it was the Boston Herald, where I saw that one member of Congress is going to be investigating something that happened here in Massachusetts. And I chuckled, and I laughed,” Velis said from the floor of the state Senate.

Velis told the Herald Friday that “it is literally because of the federal government, because of their complete inaction to deal with this absolute chaos at the border, that some dangerous individuals like this end up in Massachusetts and we are left to deal with it.”

The Westfield Democrat also said it was “comical” and “disgusting” for a federal lawmaker who opposed a bipartisan immigration deal in Washington to wade into an individual state’s issues with immigration.

“For a federal official, whose job it is to solve the immigration crisis … to pass on some type of a bipartisan immigration bill, and then to not do anything, and then because of that inaction, kind of look at states and then say you’re gonna launch an investigation, I just find it’s comical. To me, it just speaks to how unserious Washington has become,” he said.

Jordan and U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to release a range of case files on Alvarez in their “continued oversight of federal immigration policy and procedures.”

“Criminal aliens exploit vulnerabilities in our nation’s immigration system to the detriment of those in the United States. The Biden administration’s border and immigration policies only increase the likelihood that criminal aliens will successfully enter and remain in the U.S.,” the pair wrote in a letter addressed to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The two federal legislators are looking for the time, date, and place of “any and all of the alien’s entries into the United States,” forms documenting any financial support Alvarez received from U.S.-based sponsors, his immigration history, benefit applications, immigration detention details, and other immigration records.

Jordan and McClintock also want information about Alvarez’s processing by federal border officials, including if they were “alerted to derogatory information about the alien and what questions were asked of the alien during the screening process,” according to the letter.

Alvarez legally entered the United States through New York in June 2023 and was vetted by both federal and state officials, according to Gov. Maura Healey and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Alvarez has pleaded not guilty to a charge of aggravated rape of a child with a ten year age different and is being held in prison without bail pending the outcome of a dangerousness hearing scheduled for Friday.

Velis called Alvarez’s alleged actions “absolutely reprehensible” and said he should be punished to the “harshest extent of the law.”

But Washington, he said, has failed to act on immigration.

“There is a perfect opportunity for Washington, both parties to come together and say, let’s solve this problem. And they took a pass at it,” Velis said. “Now, we are bearing the brunt of that with money that we do not have and we’re seeing what that chaos is leading to.”

The legislation that cleared the Senate on a unanimous vote Thursday afternoon is likely on its way to a six-person panel of legislators who will be tasked with hashing out the differences with a proposal the House passed earlier this year.

Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat, said the Senate bill closes a loophole in Massachusetts law and gives closure to people who have been victimized by “this crime.”

“Let this legislation make a difference so that everybody knows this is not acceptable. It is criminal, and there will be a consequence,” Keenan said from the floor of the Senate. “If there’s a young child involved, we recognize that they’re young and young people make mistakes. Let them know that we are there to help them get through this with this diversionary program.”

Both the Senate and House versions of the bill call for the development and implementation of a “comprehensive” educational diversion program for teenagers on the consequences of sexting and posting explicit images or videos online.

The House tasked the Attorney General’s Office with creating the program whereas the Senate tapped the Office of the Child Advocate to lead the efforts.

Senators did not include in their version House-backed language that extends the statute of limitations for assault and battery on a family or household member, or against someone with an active protective order, from six to 15 years.

An amendment from Sen. Joan Lovely would have restored that language to the Senate bill. It was initially rejected on an unrecorded vote without debate but a few minutes later, Lovely successfully petitioned for it to be withdrawn.

“It was a withdrawal so I went along with it. It was a no so I went along with it. So that’s why,” Lovely told the Herald while entering an elevator just outside the Senate Chamber.

Keenan said the statute of limitation has more to do with domestic violence cases than “anything relating to revenge porn.”

“I think its outside the scope, yeah,” Keenan said. “I think it’s something we have to absolutely look at.”

Both bills would divert a child who violates laws banning the possession or dissemination of explicit visual materials from the criminal justice system to the education program. The two versions also boost the fine for criminal harassment from $1,000 to $5,000.

Lawmakers in both branches agreed to add “coercive control” to the state’s definition of abuse, a change that has been cast as a way to allow abuse prevention orders to cover non-physical forms of abuse like financial, technological, or emotional.

Senators look to create a new criminal offense for the distribution of visual material depicting another person who is nude, partially nude, or engaged in sexual conduct without their consent. Their bill also puts on the books a juvenile offense for similar crimes that is eligible for expungement.

Like the House bill, senators also looked to tackle non-consensual deep-fake pornography, or computer-generated images of a person that are shared without their permission.

Keenan said the provisions on deep-fakes put Massachusetts “in the forefront” in trying to address explicit digital images.

“It also highlights that there’s a whole lot more we have to do in this area of digitization,” Keenan said. “We have to address digitization that results in artificially created child pornography, we have to address with time the issues of sexting, we have to address the issues of images being created and profiles being created. That’s the next step.”

Versions of the bill the Senate passed Thursday and the House approved in January have floated on Beacon Hill for years. Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said former Gov. Charlie Baker filed a similar proposal at least as far back as 2017, again in 2019, and a third time in 2021.

Both the House and Senate passed versions of the bill during the 2021-2022 legislative session but lawmakers could not get a compromise version to Baker in time before the term was up, something the former governor lamented at the end of his time in office.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Marlborough Democrat, acknowledged how close legislators came last session.

“This is a tightly crafted bill because we are establishing a new crime in an era where we are repealing or often reforming our criminal statutes,” he said. “In addition, we are discussing social media and messaging activities where the First Amendment, the right of free speech, including protecting even offensive speech, is often a factor.”

Massachusetts and South Carolina are the only two states in the country that do not have a law on the books addressing so-called revenge porn. Sen. John Velis, a Westfield Democrat, said many states that have addressed the issue “haven’t had this holistic approach where we capture this AI.”

“We capture this new technology,” he said.

Firearm bills that have separately passed the House and Senate this session largely cover the same topics — untraceable homemade guns and the ability to convert a semi-automatic firearm into an automatic one, among other things — but diverge enough in the details that a group of six lawmakers was tasked with finding a compromise, which met for the first time Wednesday.

Rep. Michael Day, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee and is the lead House negotiator, said Massachusetts has seen 88 shootings since September, 54 residents injured, and 46 killed, not including suicides attempted or ones that were carried through.

“We know these numbers are going to spike. They always do. Every summer, we get a spike in gun violence,” the Stoneham Democrat said. “So that’s coming. So the longer we wait on getting this bill done and getting the language lined up and to the governor’s desk, the longer we have to deal with this pandemic. And it is a pandemic.”

Sen. Cindy Creem, the lead Senate negotiator, said producing a final bill is “going to take time, effort, and some compromise.”

“But I’m confident we’ll be successful. And as we go through the process, my goal, as was the Senate’s goal, will be to develop legislation that will meaningfully impact and improve public safety, while respecting the rights of law and responsible gun owners,” the Newton Democrat said.

Rep. Carlos González, a Springfield Democrat, said his hometown has been “devastated” by gun violence, including from 32 murders last year — some that involved children — and a shooting earlier this month at a local high school.

“Responsible gun ownership is a fundamental right protected by our Constitution. And our mission, and I would think that everybody would agree, is not to infringe on anybody’s legal rights,” he said. “I know that everybody stands solid on that issue. But we must ensure that it is exercised in a manner that prioritizes public safety.”

The six lawmakers met publicly Wednesday and scheduled another open meeting for next week, a break from the typical practice of closing off proceedings and keeping negotiations private. Creem said there has not been a decision on whether to keep all meetings public.

“We certainly want our members to participate and have a thorough discussion about all the issues with all the members. Whether that ends up being a bit more fruitful with or without the public, we haven’t decided,” she said.

Open negotiations over competing bills is rare on Beacon Hill. But Creem was part of a 2012 group that kept deliberations on criminal justice reform legislation open to the public.

“It went on and on and on,” Creem said of those talks. “It was long. We did a good job at criminal justice reform.”

Another group of lawmakers in 2016 kept negotiations open to the public on reforms to the state’s public records law.

Top Republican leaders have argued for months that restricting access to state-run shelters is necessary to lessen the overwhelming demand on the system in Massachusetts, which is housing both migrants fleeing unstable home countries and locals reeling from high costs of living.

But Democrats, who control much of what moves forward in the Legislature, have signaled they are not interested in the idea, with some questioning the constitutionality of a rule requiring someone to have lived in Massachusetts for a certain amount of time before gaining access to emergency shelters.

The debate could flare up again Thursday, when the Senate is scheduled to take up a bill that would guarantee shelter residents only nine consecutive months of housing with the possibility of 90-day extensions if they meet goals laid out in individualized “rehousing plans” or other criteria.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, filed separate amendments instituting a six month residency requirement.

“There’s been a proclamation that it is unconstitutional. There is a fair legal argument that it is, in fact, constitutional and we should continue to pursue that,” Tarr said. “We should … think about, as we are now in the realm of modifying the right to shelter law, fundamentally changing it, how we want to change it, and what are the contours of constitutionality.”

Top Senate Democrats have not spoken publicly about their proposal since it was released earlier this week. But House Democrats shot down a similar Republican-led attempt to impose a residency requirement during a debate on their own bill earlier this month.

Legislation advanced Monday by the Senate’s budget writing committee is a shift away from a House-approved plan that also capped time in shelter at nine months but offered automatic three-month extensions to veterans, pregnant women, people with disabilities, those with a job, or people in workforce training.

Both chambers largely leave the process to kick people out of shelter to the Healey administration, though they do require 90-day notices before shelter services end and in different forms, limit the number of families who can be asked to leave shelter in a given week.

The two bills also diverge in the way each branch proposes funding the financially-strained shelter system for the rest of the fiscal year, with the Senate handing the Healey administration more latitude over a pot of one-time pandemic-era dollars during fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Senators will comb through 66 amendments to their bill when they gavel into session Thursday morning, including one from Sen. Becca Rausch that calls on the Office of Inspector General to conduct a “review and analysis” of emergency shelter contracts and expenditures.

Rausch, a Needham Democrat, said the state has spent “buckets and buckets of money” on the shelter system.

“All I can really know as a lawmaker is that we’re putting a bunch of money in here and we are being asked for more money,” she said. “And we should have some independent oversight and review and analysis of all that money.”

An amendment from Sen. Michael Moore, a Millbury Democrat, would require Gov. Maura Healey’s administration to hold a community meeting one month before an overflow shelter site opens in a city or town.

Moore said he is pursuing the change after watching the Healey administration hold a meeting in Fort Point after a shelter had already opened in the neighborhood.

“I think it should be the other way around,” the Millbury Democrat told the Herald. “I think there should be a community meeting first to discuss the opening, or potential opening, of a shelter, and then try to possibly flush out what the issues are. And maybe there’ll be greater community collaboration in it rather than initial resistance from the community.”

Jordan and U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to release a range of case files on Cory Alvarez, 26, who entered the United States through a federal program, underwent two state sex offender checks, and is accused of raping a 15-year-old disabled girl at a state-run shelter in Rockland, according to law enforcement.

The two lawmakers said they are seeking files on Alvarez in their “continued oversight of federal immigration policy and procedures,” according to the letter, which was addressed to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“Criminal aliens exploit vulnerabilities in our nation’s immigration system to the detriment of those in the United States. The Biden administration’s border and immigration policies only increase the likelihood that criminal aliens will successfully enter and remain in the U.S.,” the pair wrote in the letter, which asked the information be provided by April 2.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency “cannot publicly comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation” and responds to congressional correspondence directly via “office channels.”

The 15-year-old girl from Haiti told police that Alvarez asked her “if she had a boyfriend, then pushed her on the bed and penetrated her,” according to court documents filed in Hingham District Court. That came after Alvarez allegedly had the 15-year-old go to his room at  the shelter to help with an electronic tablet, the court documents said.

“I asked him to leave me alone but he didn’t stop,” the girl told police, according to a report filed in court, which said the girl identified Alvarez from a lineup of photos.

Alvarez pleaded not guilty to a charge of aggravated rape of a child with a ten year age difference during a court appearance last week. Alvarez is being held in prison without bail pending the outcome of a dangerousness hearing scheduled for March 22, according to court records.

Attorney Brian Kelley, who is representing Alvarez, said Alvarez denies the allegations and he is “glad” Jordan is “concerned about the welfare of the migrants living in shelter.”

“I wonder where that concern was when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State when it was clear he knew about inappropriate behavior occurring by the team physician on some of the wrestlers,” Kelley said in a statement to the Herald. “In any event rather than engaging in this kind of speculative nonsense I’m focused on whether there exists any evidence to support the allegations in this case beyond the statements of the singular complaining witness. I’m looking forward to seeing evidence, not assumptions and speculation, at the hearing this Friday. ”

The alleged rape set off a wave of Republican-fueled criticism of the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts, which houses more than 7,500 families, including migrants from other countries and local residents. The incident was even made an issue in the New Hampshire governor’s race.

Jordan and McClintock petitioned the Department of Homeland Security to release the time, date, and place of “any and all of the alien’s entries into the United States,” forms documenting any financial support Alvarez received from U.S.-based sponsors, his immigration history, benefit applications, immigration detention details, and other immigration records.

The two Republicans also want information about Alvarez’s processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, including if the agency was “alerted to derogatory information about the alien and what questions were asked of the alien during the screening process,” according to the letter.

Alvarez was screened and vetted against national security and public safety databases when he entered the United States and no “derogatory information”  was found, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

If an individual is determined to pose a threat to national security or public safety, the Department of Homeland Security denies entry, detains, removes, or refers the individual to other federal agencies for more vetting, investigation, or prosecution, according to the agency.

Alvarez, a national from Haiti, entered the United States “lawfully” through New York on June 26, 2023, according to James Covington, a spokesman for Boston Enforcement and Removal Operations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

An immigration detainer was lodged against Avlarez with the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office on March 14, the same day he was arrested, Covington said. Alvarez was at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office.

The detainer is a request from ICE to local law enforcement to notify them before a noncitizen is released from custody so that ICE can take custody and start deportation proceedings, according to the federal agency.

Covington declined to say which program Alvarez entered the United States through, telling the Herald the information conflicts with Alvarez’s right to privacy and could impact removal proceedings against him.

But Gov. Maura Healey last week said Alvarez entered the country “lawfully under the federal government through a federal program” — though it was unclear which one — and that the man was vetted before entering shelter, a standard practice for all residents.

“We have security and systems in place. We have vetting in place. It is unfortunate that from time to time, things will happen … anywhere, not just in shelter, but anywhere,” Healey told reporters. “This is an allegation of sexual assault and rape. It’s one that we take very seriously. I’m glad that law enforcement was right on it.”

Backers say the measure would address the city’s affordable housing “crisis,” but the idea is not sitting too well with residents. Some engaged in a shouting match with city councilors during a meeting last week.

Eighteen cities and towns across the Bay State are already waiting for action from the state Legislature on their own “real estate transfer fee” proposals, a concept aimed at spurring affordable housing production.

Medford could become the next municipality to join the group after the City Council requested a subcommittee to develop a home rule petition on the measure.

The city, of more than 60,000 residents, needs to build 671 more affordable housing units to meet a state requirement that at least 10% of its housing stock be affordable, said Matt Leming, a councilor behind the push.

Leming highlighted how the tax wouldn’t likely affect older residents and “average homeowners” as it would target “high-end real estate deals.” That generated boos and sighs from residents in attendance.

“We need more revenue streams in order to build up any sort of corpus of money that can be dedicated to affordable housing,” Leming said. “Residents are being priced out of the city, and we need to more actively engage in that.”

Nearby cities and towns that have passed legislation seeking to enact a real estate transfer fee include Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Boston, Concord and Somerville.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is trying to impose a 2% tax on real estate sales that exceed $2 million, with the seller incurring the fee and proceeds payable to the city.

Officials would then deposit the money into a neighborhood housing trust, for the purpose of furthering housing acquisition, affordability, creation and preservation, and senior-homeowner and low-income-renter stability.

Medford City Councilor George Scarpelli, calling the council’s exploration of a transfer fee “offensive,” said the city has dug itself in its hole by stopping multiple affordable housing projects under Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn’s administration.

Scarpelli added how his father worked “very hard” to build a two-family home on Paris Street that is now worth $1.2 million. “Why should a penny of those people’s hard-earned money go to any tax?” he said.

“These renters that live in these condos that are being moved out, we understand that,” Scarpelli said, “But unfortunately, that’s what happens when things prosper. This is what happens when you live near Boston.”

Gov. Maura Healey wants to add a real estate transaction fee of 0.5% to 2% on the portion of a property sale over $1 million, or the county median home sale price, with the revenue generated from the fee directed to affordable housing development.

The governor’s request is part of a $4 billion bond bill her administration released last October. The fee, projected to affect fewer than 14% of all residential sales, would be paid by the seller of real property.

If approved, a city or town’s housing board or legislative body could adopt the fee by a majority vote.

The Greater Boston Real Estate Board has shot back against Healey’s proposal, testifying last fall that “the real estate market is highly sensitive to economic downturns and is an unstable source of revenue.”

Tensions rose at the Medford City Council meeting when Councilor Emily Lazzaro highlighted how the cost-of-living in the region has increased the number of guests needing services at the Malden Warming Center, a seasonal homeless shelter where she works as an assistant director.

Residents started talking over Lazzaro, and President Isaac “Zac” Bears told them to “just show basic decency.”

Lazzaro became choked up while talking about how the city needs to find “diverse streams” for affordable housing, with one resident telling her to “be descript.” The councilor, in her first term, shouted at the crowd, “Sorry, you guys have been so horrible tonight. You’ve been so offensive to me. … I’m doing my best here to try to help poor people. I don’t understand.”

A shouting match ensued before Lazzaro left the meeting for a break, a resident yelling at her: “It comes with the territory. If you can’t take the heat, get out of here.”

Her annual rate is $96,000 for a part-time gig — making her the highest paid half-time employee on the books, according to state payroll records. A call seeking more to the college president’s office, that’s Jackie Jenkins-Scott who makes $220,000 as interim head of the school, was still pending as of Friday.

But back to Rollins. She last left the public sector last May after two scathing DOJ reports for attending a Democratic fundraiser while being the state’s top prosecutor and for meddling in the Suffolk DA’s race. That’s old news, now she’s back on the taxpayers’ dime at Roxbury CC.

The community college says Rollins was hired “in accordance with section 3.02 F of the BHE MA Community College Non-Unit Professionals Handbook.” We were asking if anybody else applied for the job and that was our answer. – Joe Dwinell 

‘Zip’ Connolly’s moment of schadenfreude

John “Zip” Connolly, the 83-year-old disgraced ex-FBI agent and convicted mob hitman, may be enjoying a moment of schadenfreude this St. Patrick’s Day, as one of his prosecutors in Florida just went down in flames.

Michael Von Zamft prosecuted Zip during his 2007 trial for the mob murder of a Boston businessman in South Florida back in 1983. Von Zamft was assisted by Boston Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak.

Von Zamft has been involved in multiple high-profile criminal prosecutions in Miami for decades. But last week, he was forced to resign in disgrace after what a state judge described as “severe recklessness.”

A headline from Miami said Von Zamft was accused of having “manipulated witnesses, including possibly providing conjugal visits to jailhouse informants.”

Connolly is still appealing his 2007 second-degree murder conviction in the gangland hit, and the circumstances of Von Zamft’s abrupt departure may figure in his next filing.

Zip was freed from prison in Florida in early 2021 after doctors said he would likely be dead within a year of cancer. Obviously, he isn’t. – Howie Carr

House-Senate feud over committee power simmering

Not-so-subtle barb-throwing between Beacon Hill committee chairs had a mild flare up this week after it had mostly subsided since last summer.

Sen. Marc Pacheco, a 16-term Democrat from Taunton, briefly revived the issue during a Senate session Thursday when he alluded to difficulties pushing a handful of bills through the Emergency Preparedness and Management Committee that he helps run.

“I’ve got a call into the House chair on this because as you know, across the Legislature, sometimes working and getting agreement on some of these things can be a little trying today as opposed to what they were just a few years ago,” Pacheco said.

At issue was an order to give the committee one more day to review seven bills dealing with varying subjects — student and teacher safety to creating a disaster relief fund and diagnostic testing to the threat of nuclear weapons.

Rep. Bill Driscoll, the House chair of the committee, said he has a “good working relationship” with Pacheco and said the comments were likely a reference to a well-publicized feud from last summer between two Democratic chairs of a climate-focused committee.

The frustration might also have stemmed from being “up against a deadline and trying to get everything filed,” Driscoll told the Herald Friday.

Pacheco said there are not a lot of bills that come into the committee so “it shouldn’t be that difficult to resolve but there’s a bit of resistance to move too quickly on some of these bills.”

“With all committees, the joint committees, the senators sitting on those committees have the minority vote and you know very well what it’s like to be on the minority side of voting issues. So we’re trying to resolve that by employing other strategies to get to agreement,” Pacheco told Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr. – Chris Van Buskirk

Lyons looks to new enterprises in pivot away from MassGOP

After their latest defeats in the MassGOP state committee races last week, ex-chairman Jim Lyons and his hapless crew are moving on to new, uh, enterprises.

Lyons has apparently finally realized he’s washed up in GOP politics. He is trying to organize something called “Mass. Freedom Fighters,” which is about “giving ordinary Americans a voice again.”

Oddly, Lyons announced his new plan a mere three days after “ordinary Americans” used an election to voice their opinion that they didn’t want Lyons et al. back in power at the state committee.

Meanwhile, perennial loser Geoff Diehl, a loyal Lyons minion, retained his committee seat. He is now concentrating on his next doomed mission, running for the same state Senate seat he lost in a landslide in 2015.

According to state campaign finance records, Diehl’s campaign has raised $23,000 since December, $21,000 of which came from people at his home address named “Diehl,” including $18,000 in “candidate loans.” Another $2,600 came from members of the Orlando family from Gloucester.

Amanda Orlando was the manager of Diehl’s latest sad race, running for governor in 2022. Another $100 was donated by a friend of Amanda’s named Russell Morris, also of Gloucester. Morris is currently under indictment in Essex County, charged with violent rape of a child. – Howie Carr

The Boston Police Department has received 15 reported incidents of “scentless, colorless, and tasteless drugs” being placed in the drinks of “unsuspecting victims,” a number that officers hope doesn’t spike during the weekend’s Irish holiday festivities.

Last year, the department recorded 107 cases of spiked drinks, an issue that has come to the forefront at City Hall and the State House.

“While the BPD encourages everyone to look out for each other when gathered in social settings by creating a ‘buddy system’ to prevent getting separated, there are steps you can take on your own to help ensure your personal safety,” according to a community alert issued Friday.

Those steps include making sure your drink is being served directly by a bartender or server, watching your drink at all times, taking your drink with you to the restroom if needed and keeping a hand covered over a drink when not looking at it.

And if something appears off, test your drink with test strips or nail polish that light up a certain color if drugs are detected, the BPD recommends.

Rohypnol, also known as roofie, GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid) and Ketamine are drugs primarily used in spiked drinks.

“These drugs and substances can cause disorientation, confusion, temporary paralysis, or unconsciousness, along with a host of other symptoms, leaving the potential victim vulnerable to the intentions of the suspect,” the BPD’s community alert states.

In response to an increasing number of drink spiking incidents in the city, police officers are continuing to “learn more and take action” by working with their licensing unit to track incidents, raise public awareness, and “offer an option to report drink spiking on police reports.”

At the State House, Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Foxboro, has filed legislation that would require hospitals to develop and implement a testing standard for patients who report they have been involuntarily drugged, regardless if sexual assault had occurred.

The bill has been reported favorably by the Joint Committee on Public Health and referred to the committee on Health Care Financing Joint Committee on Health Care Financing.

Feeney successfully passed an amendment last year that allocated $300,000 towards this year’s budget to prevent and raise awareness about the “ongoing drink spiking crisis” facing the Bay State.

Throughout the weekend, BPD will be increasing patrols, focusing on the parade route and calls for service and drinking establishments.

Package stores in Southie will be closing at 4 p.m. Sunday, hours after the parade kicks off at 1. Pouring establishments will stop admitting people after 6:30, with alcohol service ending at 7.

“Whether you are patronizing one of our businesses or attending Sunday’s parade we want everyone to enjoy themselves in a safe, respectful and lawful manner,” Police Commissioner Michael Cox said in a statement. “The parade – and many of this weekend’s events are family friendly and take place in the midst of our neighborhoods. There will be zero tolerance for public drinking, disorderly behavior.”

Massachusetts and South Carolina are the only states in the country that do not have a law on the books barring the nonconsensual distribution of someone’s sexually explicit photos or videos. Lawmakers here argue a statute is necessary to crack down on modern online harassment.

Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat, said lawmakers have heard from victims of revenge porn over the past two or three years, who have often said they did not know what to do when images of themselves ended up on the internet.

Many people, Keenan said, “contemplate suicide” because in order to address the situation, they would have to acknowledge that the images are real and exist online.

“They have found that when they have gone to law enforcement, law enforcement listens to them, understands, discusses options with them, but in many cases, conveys that there’s nothing that can be done because the specific act of sharing an image without consent is not illegal in Massachusetts,” Keenan told the Herald.

The bill that cleared the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which is often used as a clearing house for initiatives destined for a vote, this week largely hues to what House lawmakers passed in January.

As their House counterparts proposed, Senate Democrats want to develop and implement a “comprehensive” educational diversion program for adolescents on the consequences of sexting and posting explicit images or videos online.

But where the House charged the attorney general’s office with creating the program, the Senate looked to the Office of the Child Advocate to lead the efforts, a change Keenan said helps divert people away from the criminal justice system.

“The focus is more on education as opposed to involvement in the criminal justice system,” he said. “The attorney general does more law enforcement, criminal justice work and the Office of the Child Advocate does more educational outreach.”

A child who violates laws banning the possession or dissemination of explicit visual materials would be diverted into the education program under the Senate bill, which also boosts the fine for criminal harassment from $1,000 to $5,000.

Senators agreed to add “coercive control” to the state’s definition of abuse, a move House lawmakers argued would allow non-physical forms of abuse — financial, technological, or emotional — by a family or household member to qualify for an abuse prevention order.

The Senate in-part defines coercive control as a “a single act intended to threaten, intimidate, harass, isolate, control, coerce or compel compliance of a family or household member that causes the family or household member to reasonably fear physical harm or have a reduced sense of physical safety,” according to the bill text.

The bill creates a criminal offense for the unlawful distribution of “certain visual material” depicting another person who is nude, partially nude, or engaged in sexual conduct without their consent.

It also puts on the book a juvenile offense for similar crimes that is eligible for expungement, according to a bill summary.

Senators direct the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to “encourage” school districts to put in place media literacy skills instruction and to use content from the educational diversion program when discussing sexting and posting sexually explicit images online.

Keenan said the legislation also addresses sexually explicit deep fakes, or computer-generated images of a person that are shared without a person’s consent. Keenan said there is no difference between sharing an actual image or a computer-generated one.

“It’s done for the same reason, in the same way, and it has the same impact. And people who see it, perceive it to be the individual who’s depicted,” he said.

House and Senate lawmakers could not agree to a compromise bill last session, which Keenan attributed to “a matter of timing.” This time around, both branches have time to iron out differences, he said.

“We have the benefit of time at this point that we didn’t have two years ago,” he said.

Cory Alvarez, 26, pleaded not guilty in Hingham District Court to one count of aggravated rape of a child and was being held in jail ahead of a dangerousness hearing scheduled for next Friday. Alvarez was a resident of a hotel in Rockland that is housing migrant families as part of the state’s shelter system, according to the Plymouth District Attorney’s Office.

At an unrelated event in Worcester, Healey said everyone who enters a state-run shelter is “vetted” and Alvarez came into the country “lawfully under the federal government through a federal program,” which a spokesperson later said was a reference to the “federal immigration system.”

“This is an individual who entered through a federal program. He was in one of our shelter locations. Everybody, including him, who enters our shelter locations is vetted,” Healey told reporters. “We’re deploying all that we can in terms of vetting individuals.”

Alvarez underwent two Massachusetts sex offender registry checks — including through the sex offender registry information system and the Sex Offender Registry Board — which are standard practice for all emergency assistance shelter residents, the spokesperson, Karissa Hand, said.

Healey said the state has the “security and systems in place,” including vetting processes, but “it is unfortunate that from time to time, things will happen anywhere, not just in shelter, but anywhere.”

“This is an allegation of sexual assault and rape. It’s one that we take very seriously. I’m glad that law enforcement was right on it,” she said.

The shelter in Rockland is staffed by the Massachusetts National Guard, according to a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

Attorney Brian Kelley, who is representing Alvarez, said no matter Alvarez’s place of birth or how he arrived in Massachusetts, he is “entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

“He remains innocent. He denies the allegations against him and I will be fighting the charges on his behalf,” Kelley said in a statement to the Herald.

Rockland police were dispatched Wednesday evening to a Comfort Inn on Hingham Street used as a shelter for migrant families for a report of a “15-year-old disabled female that was touched inappropriately,” court documents said.

The 15-year-old told police that she went to a room at the hotel with Alvarez, who allegedly asked the girl “if she had a boyfriend, then pushed her on the bed and penetrated her,” according to court documents filed in Hingham District Court.

The girl told police that she asked Alvarez “to leave me alone but he didn’t stop,” court documents said.

Alvarez’s girlfriend, who stays at the shelter with him, showed up and spoke to police at the hotel through a friend, according to court documents.

“The woman translating freely spoke, stating Alvarez was helping (redacted) with his tablet and he later sent (redacted) up to get it,” court documents said. “He showed her how to use (it) and then left. She also stated (redacted) came up after and said to Alvarez, ‘we will just keep this between the two of us.”

The case immediately generated Republican-fueled criticism of the state-run shelter system, which is housing more than 7,500 families, of which half are migrants from outside the country.

Sen. Peter Durant, a Spencer Republican, said the “heinous act” is “indicative of systemic failures.”

“We have seen fires at shelters, chickenpox outbreaks, murderers and now rape. When is enough, enough? It is far past time for the Legislature and Administration to take action to come up with a solution. The path the state is currently on is not feasible. It is imperative to stop the flow into the state,” he said in a Friday statement.

Top Democrats said childcare in Massachusetts is among the most expensive in the country — akin to the cost of sending a child to college and often inaccessible to low-income families. Senate President Karen Spilka argued the bill, which was passed unanimously, aims to make high quality care more affordable.

“This would help families afford childcare and give them the freedom to go back to work if they want to. We know there’s a workforce shortage in Massachusetts, let’s get parents back to work who want to go back to work. But we need to give them to child care first,” Spilka said.

The bill makes permanent a grant program — Commonwealth Cares for Children — that provides money to more than 90% of early education and care programs in the state. The proposal adds a provision to direct more funds to programs serving children with “high needs,” according to a summary.

Senators increased the eligibility for childcare families to families making up to 85% of the state median income, which is $124,000 for a family of four. A matching grant program established in the proposal seeks to encourage employer investment in boosting early education and care capacity across the state.

The legislation directs state officials to create recommended salary and benefit guidelines that are in line with public school teachers. Existing scholarship and loan forgiveness programs administered by the Department of Higher Education would also be made permanent under the bill.

A spokesperson for Spilka said the bill puts in place a plan to spend $1.5 billion the Legislature already set aside in the fiscal year 2024 budget for early education and care initiatives. It does not obligate the state to future investments but does lay out a plan for how officials can spend dollars that are allocated down the road, the spokesperson said.

Neighborhood Villages Senior Director of Advocacy Latoya Gayle said the industry is “inherently broken” with families struggling to find spots for their children.

“Here in Massachusetts, parents often can’t afford or even find care for their children. And our providers are struggling to pay their educators much more than minimum wage or sometimes keep their businesses afloat and classrooms open. That is what we’re dealing with,” she said outside the State House.

A proposal to cap the amount of time migrants and local families can live in shelter cleared the House on a largely party line vote last week, with top Democrats arguing the system would collapse without meaningful administrative reforms. But some senators are not so sure about the plan put forward by the House.

Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat, said he was “hesitant” when he initially heard about the time limits because there is not a “good sense of what happens after nine months.”

“If they move out, what’s next? And presumably, another family will move into the system. So I don’t really know if there’s a cost saving as a result of it. But I’m open to the idea of limits or caps,” he said Thursday at the State House.

Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, was more critical of the idea, and instead called on Democrats to put in place a residency requirement for those in shelters, a proposal that some say may be unconstitutional.

“It’s total crap,” Fattman said outside the Senate Chamber. “What does it do to solve the problem? What does it do? It doesn’t. All it does is it takes one person, moves them on, and then puts another person in and doesn’t stop the flow. And the flow is the problem. That’s the cost. So I just think it’s total baloney.”

House Democrats argued time limits are necessary in the face of declining tax revenues, little help from Washington, a seemingly never-ending demand on services, and an expected $2 billion shelter spend over fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

The House plan would put in place a nine month cap on shelter stays, which could be extended to a year if people have a job, are in workforce training, have a disability, are a veteran, or are at “imminent risk” of domestic violence.

“If we don’t get our hands wrapped around this from a logistical standpoint, financially, as the speaker said, it will collapse. It will not be able to be maintained long term,” House budget writer Aaron Michlewitz said last week.

But Democratic counterparts in the Senate are not completely sold that time limits are the silver bullet to the shelter crisis.

“In my opinion, having time limits or set dates are not solving the problem,” said Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat. “The law needs to change at the federal level. And we need to have federal resources, not state resources, but federal resources to deal with a federal and a national immigration problem.”

Democrats have been increasingly willing in recent months to criticize Massachusetts’ federal delegation for what they perceive as a failure to successfully advocate for crucial aid that could alleviate fiscal pressures on Beacon Hill.

House Democrats argued that without help from Washington, a plan to cap shelter stays at nine months is a reasonable path forward. Republican and Democratic senators, however, still have questions about what happens after the time limit is reached.

Sen. Michael Moore, a Millbury Democrat, wanted to know whether families at the end of their time in shelter would end up on the streets.

“If you’re gonna just tell me a timeframe, explain to me how that’s really going to work. So, in theory, I’m going to say no, because I just don’t know how that’s going to interact with everything else that we’re doing,” he said outside the Senate Chamber. “I think we need a more comprehensive plan than just saying a nine month … cap.”

Sen. Liz Miranda, a Boston Democrat whose district includes the overflow shelter site at the Melnea Cass Recreational Complex, said nine months is not “sufficient.”

“Not a lot of things move in the commonwealth or in our cities in a nine month timeline,” she told the Herald at the State House. “We’ve talked extensively in the Senate about … what that looks like after nine months.”

Senate budget writer Michael Rodrigues said the chamber plans to take up the bill — which also includes a $245 million injection of state funds for the emergency shelter system — “very shortly” but declined to delve into any details ahead of a formal announcement.

“The emergency shelter system was designed to serve and support a population of families. Remember, this is primarily mothers with children. Primarily, not all. It was not designed to provide services to incoming migrants,” the Westport Democrat said. “I think there are some reforms necessary.”

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said the nine month time limit is “not the reform that we need” and the approach House leaders took “misses the opportunity for needed reform.”

Tarr said the “most obvious reform” is a residency requirement, and if lawmakers have concerns about constitutionality, they could ask the Supreme Judicial Court to weigh in on the matter before passing legislation.

“We ought to just step up to the plate and send a question to the SJC. This isn’t a problem that’s going to go away anytime soon and it isn’t an issue that’s going to go away anytime soon,” he said.

Support from at least five of the seven Governor’s Councilors puts the proposal on a path to approval sometime in the next few weeks. Healey, a first-term Democrat, pitched the initiative Wednesday as a “sweeping” idea that has the possibility to affect “hundreds of thousands of people.”

Councilor Paul DePalo, a Worcester Democrat, said he thinks Healey’s plan is a “brave move” and should even be expanded to cover those with intent to distribute cannabis convictions.

“We are pardoning people for crimes that we don’t consider crimes now,” he told the Herald at the State House. “We’re doing it on an issue that we know disproportionately impacted poor and Black and brown communities.”

More than seven years after Massachusetts legalized the recreational use of cannabis, Healey asked the Governor’s Council to approve a blanket pardon of misdemeanor convictions for the possession of cannabis that were resolved before March 13.

The pardon does not apply to those with other cannabis-related convictions like intent to distribute or trafficking; convictions from outside the state or federal court; or continuances without a finding or other non-conviction dispositions.

Healey said the pardons would become effective immediately after the Governor’s Council votes to approve, though it could take “some time” for individual records to be updated. Most people will likely have to do nothing in order to claim the pardon, she said.

Councilor Terrence Kennedy said he “fully supports” the initiative, and like DePalo, said he also wants to see intent to distribute cannabis convictions pardoned.

“I can walk into a dispensary right now. I’ve never been into one but I could walk into a dispensary right now and somebody is going to sell me marijuana. It’s not a crime. So why should we keep it on people’s records if it’s not a crime anymore?” the Lynnfield Democrat told the Herald.

Councilor Eileen Duff, a Gloucester Democrat, said the pardons are a “great idea” and “long overdue.”

“This is something, honest to goodness, we’ve never seen before and we’ve never done,” Duff told the Herald. “We’re in uncharted territory that we will figure it out.”

Councilor Christopher Iannella also said he would support the pardons, which were “long overdue.”

“It’s going to go through the council. There’s no question about that,” Iannella said in an interview. “And like I said, it’s long overdue and I’m supporting it.”

Councilors Tara Jacobs, a North Adams Democrat, and Joseph Ferreira, a Swansea Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Governor’s Council meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon was canceled prior to Healey’s announcement but the group could meet next in the coming weeks to consider the pot pardons.

Councilor Marilyn Devaney, a Watertown Democrat, said she was “shocked” by the proposal but expressed support for the idea.

“I’m going to talk to the lieutenant governor today and see how fast we can get this through,” Devaney said Wednesday morning.