“We’ll be working on it all weekend,” Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues told the News Service after Wednesday’s sessions had adjourned. “There are no holidays with us,” he added.

Rodrigues and other top Democrats have been unable to agree on an annual bill that’s supposed to just wrap up fiscal loose ends for the previous fiscal year.  Items not tethered to fiscal 2023, like requirements for the Healey administration’s handling of the migrant shelter crisis, and a proposed port zoning carveout for a soccer stadium on the Mystic River, are among the areas that are tripping up negotiators.

Rodrigues, the Senate’s lead negotiator on the bill, said the six-member conference committee appointed last week had “been in regular communications” and that the bill was held up by “normal disagreements.”

“We turned around a bill in six days that it took them six weeks to do, so that should show how serious we are to get this done,” the Westport Democrat said as he walked out of the chamber.

Gov. Maura Healey filed the closeout budget on Sept. 13. The House used that bill as its legislative vehicle to move a controversial package of gun law reforms in October before passing its version of the budget on Nov. 8. The Senate approved its redraft on Nov. 14.

After waiting so long to put bills up for votes, Democrats couldn’t find common ground before the Nov. 15 end of formal sessions for 2023 and have boxed themselves into a position of trying to get unanimous support on a compromise bill after Republicans in both branches voted against the two bills that are on the negotiating table.

Rodrigues would not say Wednesday whether the six-member committee had even met, and he refused to discuss specifics of the House-Senate disagreements. Under the Legislature’s operating rules (Joint Rule 1A), “[a]ll meetings” of conference committees “shall be open to the public” until the panel votes to go behind closed doors.

Meantime, the Senate budget chief said, he has been negotiating with fellow committee members. He talked with Republican Sen. Patrick O’Connor, another conferee, in the Senate Chamber before presiding over Wednesday’s session.

House Minority Leader Bradley Jones Jr. said he had “no idea” about the status of negotiations and was unsure whether the conference committee had met yet.

Asked about his expectations for next Monday, when the House holds its next session, Jones told the News Service: “Monday is like a lifetime away.”

“So right now, I would say, happy Thanksgiving everybody, try to enjoy the holiday and hopefully we will have an opportunity to have some progress made,” the North Reading Republican said Wednesday morning. “Ideally from the Republican perspective, the inability to achieve a resolution to this point would hopefully have the leadership say, well maybe there’s a couple of ideas on the Republican side that we didn’t incorporate that we could incorporate to make sure there’s no issues getting it to move forward.”

Jones was among the 26 lawmakers who signed a bipartisan letter Monday spearheaded by Sen. Walter Timilty calling on the conference committee to swiftly release portions of the supplemental budget that are supported by both the House and Senate. That includes funding for disaster relief, the collectively bargained raises for state workers, and programs tied to education, health care, environmental protection, and public safety.

The letter, which says legislative action on those matters is “critical,” was signed by 10 senators, nine of them Democrats; and 17 representatives including eight Democratic House members.

“Where there is mutual agreement, conferees can release items from the bills — in part, to fund essential services and virtual accounts, and we hope this can be done as soon as practicable,” they wrote. “We believe that these items are all essential to the well-being of our Commonwealth.”

Jones and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr also wrote to state Comptroller William McNamara on Monday, asking the financial officer about “both the actual and potential implications any continued delays will have on the Commonwealth’s financial outlook and bond rating.”

The closeout budget must be finalized before McNamara’s office can complete a key annual filing, known as the Statutory Basis Financial Report (SBFR). Under state law, the comptroller must submit the SBFR by Oct. 31 — more than three weeks ago.

“Urgency” and “concerns” that McNamara voiced earlier this month “are graver now,” he wrote in his response to Jones and Tarr.

McNamara also offered a “personal” note on how the Legislature’s annual tardiness in closing the books impacts his own workflow, forecasting a potentially “untenable position” for himself in the future.

“Given my sincere respect for prerogatives of elected officials to consider and debate the complex matters of budgeting, I have not emphasized this individual concern in years when the SBFR was delivered within several days of the due date. However, in the present instance, even if there were favorable movement at this point, the total delay will now be several weeks. If the delay were to continue, so that I am at risk of being in violation of state law for more than two months and into the coming calendar year, I would view that as an untenable position,” the former Fidelity Investments executive wrote.

Healey opted to keep McNamara, a 2020 appointee of Gov. Charlie Baker, in his comptroller post earlier this year, and lauded his “professional, collaborative leadership to support our state’s financial health.”

Campaigns angling to do away with the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, address the rights and benefits for drivers on app-based platforms (one offered by an industry-backed coalition and one by a union-backed group), give the state auditor explicit authority to audit the state Legislature, gradually bring the minimum wage for tipped workers into line with the general minimum wage, and legalize psychedelics for therapy have said they gathered more than the 74,574 signatures required to be filed with local election officials by the end of the day Wednesday.

They reflect some of the heady questions that could shape the future of Massachusetts — What is work and what should workers be entitled to? How should the state measure whether its education system is adequately preparing young people for the future? Is the state Legislature transparent enough with the public that elects it?

The signatures must be certified at the local level and Secretary of State William Galvin must validate the totals before any measure advances to the next phase, but clearing the initial signature-gathering threshold is a challenge that routinely dooms prospective ballot questions. Already this year, the campaign that Rep. Mike Connolly mounted to grant cities and towns a range of new “tenant protection” options, including the ability to impose rent control, suspended its initiative petition effort ahead of Wednesday’s deadline.

Proponents of petitions to allow people to register to vote and vote on the same day, require voters to show identification at the polls, and more did not respond to an inquiry from the News Service on Wednesday morning. Campaigns that clear the signature threshold are generally eager to share that news. Backers of a proposal to suspend the gas tax are not planning to push forward to the ballot.  

Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office certified 34 ballot question proposals (in some cases representing multiple proposed versions of a potential question) that had been filed by the August deadline on Sept. 6. That gave campaigns the green light to start collecting voter signatures, an amount at least equal to 3 percent of the total votes cast for candidates for governor, excluding blanks, in the most recent election. Campaigns had 11 weeks between certification and Wednesday’s submission deadline.

The same signatures that have to be filed by the end of the day Wednesday have to be submitted to Galvin’s office by Dec. 6.

Ballot questions with enough signatures certified will head to the Legislature in January 2024. Lawmakers can approve the proposed law, propose their own substitute ballot question or decline to take any action at all.

Lawmakers sometimes want to have control over major policy initiatives if they sense support among voters, instead of allowing activists to write the laws via ballot ballot question. But many initiative petitions are proposed in part because lawmakers have been unable or unwilling to reach agreement on important policy topics. In other cases, lawmakers have amended ballot laws after they were approved. 

In some cases, lawmakers work with proponents to work out a negotiated compromise to keep questions from getting to the ballot, as was the case in 2018 with questions dealing with paid family leave, the minimum wage and the sales tax.

If legislators opt against action by May 1, 2024, campaigns will have to collect another 12,429 signatures and file them with local officials by June 19, 2024, then the secretary of state’s office by July 3, 2024, to stay in line for the Nov. 5, 2024 election.

Officials are seeing a “drop” in new arrivals seeking emergency shelter, Healey said. But she said it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause.

The governor announced on Oct. 16 that her administration would cap shelter capacity at 7,500 families, and temperatures since then have continued their seasonal drop, with winter ready to take hold next month.

House Speaker Ron Mariano last month said he was advised that declining temperatures wouldn’t make an impact, but Healey raised the weather Tuesday when asked by a reporter if fewer families were arriving following her shelter cap announcement.

“We also have colder weather, and I think frankly, people are mindful of that as they make decisions about whether to leave Texas or Florida as they’ve come into the country,” Healey told reporters.

With dozens of migrant families arriving daily in recent weeks ahead of her shelter cap announcement, Healey had expected the shelter would reach its limit by Nov. 1. But it took until Nov. 9 before officials had to start turning families away.

Some 90 families were on a waitlist to access state-funded shelter on Monday, homelessness prevention advocates said Monday.

Healey said about 17 families spent Monday night at MBTA headquarters, where administration officials converted conference rooms into a temporary overnight shelter operation. The space at the State Transportation Building can accommodate up to 25 families.

“This is all about we’re going to do everything we can, and we have so far, to make sure that families are housed here in the state. I’m proud of the effort last night,” Healey said, referring to the Transportation Building accommodations. “Obviously we have more capacity there, and we’re just going to continue to work the problem.”

The governor declared a shelter state of emergency in August and in October announced her cap, saying “we do not have enough space, service providers or funds to safely expand beyond 7,500 families.”

After Monday’s surprise announcement, Healey wouldn’t say whether other state buildings will be used for shelter, but said more shelter options are “coming online” through a previously announced $5 million grant program administered by United Way of Massachusetts Bay.

“What we’ve said right now is we’re going to continue to do what we can to make sure that people are housed, and that’s what we’ve done,” Healey said.

Spokespeople for United Way did not respond to News Service questions about the distribution of public grant dollars so far to community and volunteer organizations, as well as faith groups, to establish congregate overflow shelter sites.

Administration officials, who unveiled the grant program earlier this month, said prospective sites included communal gathering spaces with restroom facilities and heat, such as community centers, school buildings, and places of worship. Grants can be used to support staff and supplies like cots, blankets and food.

The governor’s request for $250 million to support families in the state’s emergency shelter system remains held up in private talks among Democrats who could not strike a deal on a supplemental budget bill last week before the end of formal lawmaking for the year.

While the House and Senate broadly agree on the funding amount, House Democrats want to condition some of their funding on the creation of an overflow site or sites and force the administration to revoke its shelter limit if officials fail to do so.

“I hope it gets done — we need that supp budget done,” Healey said. “We need the bill done, and want to be able to see that happen as soon as possible. This is important funding for state workers, for MassHealth, for special ed, for flood relief, assistance to our cities and towns. There’s a lot that is there, so we really need the action.”

Senate Democrats plan in the new year to unveil and debate a bill they want to put on Gov. Maura Healey’s desk this term, and the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on firearms bills that have been idling all year.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield and Sen. Walter Timilty of Milton, plans to gather in Gardner Auditorium to accept testimony on 56 gun-related bills.

House and Senate Democrats spent months this year at odds over whether to involve the Public Safety Committee in the review of a bill authored by Judiciary Committee Co-chair Rep. Michael Day of Stoneham, a top deputy to Speaker Ron Mariano.

The House ultimately circumvented the joint committee process and approved Day’s controversial legislation 120-38 in October. That bill cleared the House the day after a single, lengthy hearing on it hosted only by representatives without any senators present.

Senators have also been assembling an omnibus bill behind the scenes. Senate President Karen Spilka wants to approve a gun reform law this session, and Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem has been meeting with colleagues and interest groups.

The T announced Tuesday morning that more than nine miles of the Red Line, or nearly 20 percent of the branch, remains under speed restrictions, which the transit authority said is the lowest amount since March 8 when the MBTA initiated slow zones systemwide.

The slow zones — which in this case limited train speeds to 10 mph or 25 mph – are in place because the T determined it would be unsafe to run trains at normal speeds until fixes are made. The latest work involved replacing more than 2,000 feet of rail and 115 rail ties.

Once considered rare, the MBTA is now routinely taking portions of its core subway service offline to make repairs in less time than it would take to make them during overnight shifts.  The T believes it can use this approach to address all slow zones by the end of 2024.

Red Line passengers were diverted to shuttle buses while the work was conducted during evenings between Nov. 14 and Nov. 16 and all day over the weekend of Nov. 18-19.

The T also used the work period to paint, clean signs, sand and restore platform benches, install new rubber flooring on the stairway at Broadway Station, and fix “tripping hazards” on the platform at South Station. 

Chants of “Shame, shame,” and “Do your job” echoed on Beacon Street as the employees expressed disgust with elected officials who for months have left collectively bargained raises for tens of thousands of workers unfunded.

“The Legislature has failed to keep its promise,” said NAGE member Chris Cook. “And it’s not just a promise, it’s a contractual obligation. … We are not here to ask for help, we are not here to beg for charity. We are here to demand our contractual rights that we earned.”

The House and Senate adjourned their final formal sessions of 2023 last week, punting the unfinished spending bill forward to informal sessions that are set to stretch into January. There are deep wells of support in both branches to fund the contracts, but the bill is hung up due to disagreements between House and Senate Democrats over managing the emergency shelter crisis, and other matters.

Both versions of the final fiscal 2023 spending bill contain more than $300 million to fund the union contracts.

Among the workers on the State House steps was someone dressed in a Grinch costume carrying a sign that read: “How The Legislature Stole Christmas.”

Claudine Barnes of the Mass. Community College Council said her union’s members are waiting to receive two and a half years’ worth of retroactive pay raises.

“We come from the best public higher education system in the entire country. But you wouldn’t know it by how we get paid,” Barnes said.

“I thought we were essential,” someone called out from the steps. “Yeah. Do your jobs,” Barnes said, directing her comment at the legislators under the Golden Dome.

Department of Children and Families social worker Ethel Everett, a member of SEIU 509, said it would be “unacceptable” for Thanksgiving to arrive on Thursday without funding for the raises on Gov. Maura Healey’s desk. Healey filed the bill with lawmakers in September.

Everett said DCF social workers are worried about things like mortgages, rent, and car payments — for automobiles they use to transport children around the state.

“The governor and the Legislature expect us to do our jobs, and guess what? We do. Now you do your job. Stop playing politics with our lives and with our families, and fund the public sector collective bargaining agreements now, without delay, without excuses, without fail. Public workers are citizens of the commonwealth too. Do your job,” she said.

Susan McNeil, state vice president of the Association of Professional Administrators, said it felt as if the union members were pawns in a political game.

“We are outraged and insulted that our contracts … are now being held hostage by our Senate and House representatives while we are handcuffed and forced to be bystanders and human fodder to these bureaucratic and onerous proceedings,” she said. “… We do not deserve to be punished, held hostage, or financially harmed by the political posturing games you play.”

Sen. Marc Pacheco stood in the crowd in support of the organized workers.

“I mean, it’s been negotiated, they’ve been waiting. They’re absolutely correct. You know, there’s no reason why we have waited this long to have these contracts … implemented and funded. It’s just not fair,” the Taunton Democrat told the News Service. He added, “It’s really ridiculous that it’s come to this. Because it should not have come to this. There’s no need for us to be in the situation that we’re in right now.”

Earlier Monday, more than 100 public sector employees crowded into the House and Senate galleries to make their presence visible to the five lawmakers on hand for otherwise uneventful informal sessions.

In the Senate, Sen. Patrick O’Connor addressed the workers from the floor, saying in a short speech that “it is my hope” that agreement can be reached “as soon as possible” to move the raises forward.

“As a conferee in the supplemental budget, I’m very restricted in what I can say,” said O’Connor, one of six lawmakers on the conference committee, “but I wanted to let you know on behalf of myself and many of my colleagues that you are heard, seen, and respected. I know you fought hard for your well-deserved raises that were part of a fairly negotiated, collectively bargained agreement.”

Sen. Will Brownsberger said from the Senate rostrum that he “strongly endorses” O’Connor’s statement.

The House Republican Caucus fired off a letter to Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, Sen. Michael Rodrigues, and the rest of the conferees Monday, calling for the select group to issue a partial report on the closeout budget to fund the collective bargaining agreements “as soon as possible.” Minority Leader Bradley Jones Jr. and the rest of the caucus wrote that “we are confident there will be no issue with taking up such a bill during informal sessions.”

“Despite the many unresolved differences … there is a clear consensus in both branches to fund these new contracts, most of which were agreed to many months ago,” the letter said. ” … We understand the complexities the Conference Committee faces in negotiating a compromise agreement on the final deficiency budget, given the many areas of disagreement that exist. However, we feel strongly that the lack of agreement on other unrelated areas of the closeout budget does not justify continuing to hold up indefinitely the funding of these CBAs, for which there is both bipartisan and bicameral support.”

After the House gaveled out just before 1 a.m. Thursday morning, House Speaker Ronald Mariano told reporters there were areas of House-Senate agreement among the potpourri of items crammed into the budget bill, but said moving one part of the bill forward — like the union contracts — was complicated.

“There are, obviously there are [areas of agreement]. But reporting it in part has a specific set of problems that we ran into,” Mariano said, without elaborating on the problems.

Pacheco, speaking to the News Service at Monday afternoon’s rally, said he had talked with Mariano about that possibility.

“I actually bumped into the speaker right after session the night that they adjourned. And I asked him if he was, you know, can we put this out separately? And he said yeah, we can do that,” Pacheco said. “So I’m waiting for it to be done.”

Dave Foley, president of SEIU 509, was one of several union representatives lobbying at the ropeline outside the House Chamber last week during the final formal sessions of the year. He described how the conversation shifted over the course of Wednesday night into the wee hours of Thursday as optimism faded.

“And then around a little after 12:30 [a.m.], they all started filing out. So we walked over to the crowd, and you know, it’s their last day of work before six weeks of vacation, they’re all in a good mood. And they said, ‘Yeah, we gaveled out, they’re done, they put it in a conference committee.’ And our faces, the union reps who were there, our faces just dropped,” Foley said. “And we made them walk past all of us and look in our eyes. It was just, we were all disgusted.”

For Auditor Diana DiZoglio, who is in the midst of attempting to apply her auditing powers to the Legislature, lawmakers’ failure to wrap up the bill last week provided yet more fodder.

“Right now, you may have heard, we are auditing the Legislature,” DiZoglio said as the crowd began cheering. “Why are we auditing the Legislature? Well, you might have heard that there were conversations going on in the middle of the night while many of you were trying to get some rest to head to work the next day. And under the cloak of darkness, in the middle of the night, when this job was already supposed to have been done, conversations fell through the cracks, contracts didn’t get funded, decisions and the lack thereof were being made behind closed doors where none of us had access to what was happening.”

McNeil said the 100 unions involved represent more than 50,000 state employees.

“The cold weather and holidays are here. You have the power to help 50,000 Massachusetts families now,” McNeil said.

Christine Boseman Burns, a 33-year employee at UMass Boston, put it bluntly:

“Get up off of your butts, and give us our money,” she screamed from the base of the State House steps.

“Unfortunately, I think you’re seeing more and more instances where demonstrations are lending themselves to action that is simply not protected under free speech doctrine,” Healey said at a press conference when asked about hate-based incidents on college campuses.

The governor added, “I do want to be clear, there is a distinction, and I know that all of us who work together with law enforcement will make sure that we’re gonna hold the line when it comes to addressing that distinction.”

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst this month, a student was arrested for assaulting a Jewish student following a UMass Hillel event focused on calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, according to Western Mass News. Also at UMass Amherst, about 60 pro-Palestinian protestors were arrested for trespassing last month as they staged a sit-in protest at an administrative building where they called on university officials to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza and cut ties with defense contractor Raytheon Technology.

Brandeis University this month revoked its recognition of the National Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on campus. President Ron Liebowitz said university officials made the decision because SJP supports Hamas, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization, and “its call for the violent elimination of Israel and the Jewish people.”

“All students, faculty, and staff are welcome here, and encouraged to participate in the free exchange of ideas,” Liebowitz said in a message to the university community. “To promote such free exchange, we must not and do not condone hate, the incitement of violence, or threats against or harassment of anyone, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Israeli, Palestinian, or any other religion or ethnicity.”

“I know that we’re going to continue to work in communication with our colleges and universities here in Massachusetts,” Healey said. “We’re proud in Massachusetts to be home to so many wonderful educational institutions, and it’s important that we continue to provide them with the guidance and assistance they need.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell indicated her office is also responding to hate on college campuses.

“We will work with our college and university presidents as they’re grappling with an unprecedented uptick in incidents on their campuses to be as helpful as we can,” Campbell said.

More than a week after the Healey administration began placing shelter-seeking families on a waitlist, officials announced Monday that they will use part of the MBTA’s headquarters to temporarily house eligible families for whom no space is available.

“In order to ensure that families eligible for Emergency Assistance shelter have a safe and warm place to sleep at night when there is not a shelter unit immediately available, the administration is utilizing space at 10 Park Plaza as a temporary, overnight facility,” retired Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, the administration’s emergency assistance director, said in a one-sentence statement.

Second-floor conference rooms in the State Transportation Building, the downtown Boston home of MBTA and state Department of Transportation offices, were converted into congregate shelter available to waitlisted families who need a place to stay overnight.

Up to 25 families can stay in the space, which has cots and limited amenities, during the evening and overnight hours, according to an administration official. Gov. Maura Healey’s team projects the temporary site will operate for about two weeks until another safety net shelter program comes online.

Officials did not immediately respond to inquiries about plans to use other state office buildings as shelter during the crisis, nor make clear what safety net shelter program would replace the site in MBTA conference rooms.

While Democrats on Beacon Hill like to defer comment on matters pending before conference committees, House Speaker Ron Mariano on Monday seized on the news to promote the House’s pending plan to force Healey to set up overflow sites.

“Recent reports of families sleeping at Logan Airport, and now at a temporary overflow site at MassDOT, are emblematic of the need for funding that is specifically reserved for overflow shelter options with greater capacity,” Mariano said in a statement. “The House remains committed to ensuring that families in Massachusetts have somewhere safe and warm to sleep at night, and will continue to urge the Administration to identify additional overflow shelter sites going forward.”

MBTA General Manager Phil Eng announced the new strategy in a Monday morning memo to T employees. The Boston Globe first reported on his internal communication, after which MBTA and Healey administration officials released limited details about the plan.

Eng said National Guard personnel set up the temporary shelter and that an unnamed service provider will manage its operations.

He told T workers he does not anticipate “any changes to our work environment because of the temporary shelter,” noting that the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday will shorten the work week.

“I have been asked if there are families needing clothing or other essentials. Family needs will be assessed, and if there is a need, we are considering launching a clothing drive. Should that be necessary, I will share that information with employees,” Eng wrote. “I appreciate everyone’s support as we enter Thanksgiving week. While we celebrate with our families and friends, know that we are helping others during their time of need. I wish all of you an enjoyable holiday with your loved ones.”

Second-floor conference rooms will be used for shelter services, but the plan does not impact the larger board room that regularly hosts MBTA and MassDOT public meetings, an official said.

Anti-homelessness advocates gave the plan a positive, but muted, reaction. Andrea Park, director of community driven advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, called it “welcome but belated, as dozens of families are already on a waitlist with no place to sleep.”

“With an estimated 90 families currently on the waiting list for shelter and many more families expected to be added to the waiting list in the coming days and weeks, we hope that the Administration and Legislature can work together to ensure swift access to shelter for all families determined eligible for EA, whether in longer-term placements or overflow sites,” added Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. “With waitlisted children and families seeking shelter in places such as Logan Airport, South Station, emergency rooms, police stations, and cars in the meantime, it is imperative that the Commonwealth bring safe, alternative shelter sites online and to scale immediately.”

Although Massachusetts by law must provide shelter to eligible families and pregnant women, Healey implemented a 7,500-family cap on the shelter system after months of rapidly increasing demand, much of it fueled by migrants newly arriving to the state.

The system hit the new limit on Nov. 9. Since then, eligible shelter-seekers could be placed on a waitlist instead of guaranteed placement.

In recent days, the state appears to have moved more families out of the shelter system. State data counted 7,545 families enrolled as of Nov. 10 and 7,505 enrolled as of Nov. 17, with only a handful — if any — joining the system each day in that span.

The administration’s decision to use state office space as a temporary option comes amid ongoing disagreement between House and Senate Democrats about how to respond to the months-long emergency.

Both branches agreed to steer $250 million more into the shelter system, an injection Healey requested in mid-September. However, the House wants to order the administration to stand up at least one “overflow site” to support eligible families placed on a waitlist, while the Senate does not want to dictate specific steps.

Top Democrats abandoned their attempts to find agreement in the early-morning hours Thursday and ended their formal sessions for the year with no deal in place. The Legislature returned to session Monday after four days off but Democrats have not reached an accord.

Spokespeople for House Ways and Means Committee Chair Aaron Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Michael Rodrigues both said the duo continue to discuss potential compromises. Although the House and Senate punted the underlying spending bill into a conference committee for formal negotiations, the panel has not yet scheduled its first meeting.

Sen. Patrick O’Connor of Weymouth, one of two Republicans on the conference committee, said Monday he is not concerned by Michlewitz and Rodrigues continuing their deliberations before the panel convenes.

“Being able to have an open dialogue and try and find compromise is key and paramount to everything we do up here. It’s just my hope that as negotiations at the higher level with Aaron and Mike continue and as the conference committee process starts, everyone’s cognizant of the fact there were a lot of items inside the supplemental budget,” O’Connor told the News Service. “My hope is that some of these issues that we share language on … especially things like the raises and disaster relief and other items, those can be worked out, and some of the larger disagreements can be worked on during the conference committee.”

The Hate Crimes Awareness and Response Team (HART) will be tasked with improving statewide data collection efforts to identify patterns and trends, developing “advanced training” with the Municipal Police Training Committee, and improving law enforcement coordination at the federal, state and local levels, Healey announced Monday.

Healey said HART is part of the commonwealth’s broader approach for deterring hate crimes and protecting at-risk individuals, as other law enforcement and state agencies, plus the state’s Task Force on Hate Crimes, continue their efforts to promote tolerance.

“I think what today is about is a recognition of the moment that we are in as a country and as a commonwealth, and it is appropriate and good that we are taking steps to enhance law enforcement’s capability when it comes to intelligence gathering and investigative techniques, information sharing,” Healey said at a press conference. “It will further help our ability to hold those accountable who need to be held accountable for perpetrating hate crimes, and it will also help us get better ahead of what is happening in this space, where we have seen here and around the world increased incidents of hate.”

The team is staffed by four to five sworn State Police members who will function as a “primary point of contact for local law enforcement, community and religious groups in a specific geographic area,” Interim Col. John Mawn Jr. said. He said the team will coordinate closely with the Fusion Center, which monitors threats, security updates and suspicious incidents.

“The HART team is a diverse and multilingual group of troopers who have demonstrated exceptional investigative experience and skill,” Mawn said. “Their work will continue to build upon the many proactive initiatives and strong partnerships in Massachusetts, where our level of public safety coordination is unprecedented.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell said she looks forward to working with the team, as she vowed her office will continue to tackle hate, harassment, discrimination and bullying, among other issues. Campbell urged residents who have experienced acts of hate to file complaints with her office.

Massachusetts logged 440 hate crime incidents last year, and 406 in 2021, according to a report from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. It was the highest volume since 2002, Healey’s office said.

“In recent years, we’ve seen not just around the country but even here in Massachusetts, attacks on Black churches with increasingly open declarations of white supremacy and organized white nationalism; spikes in anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric that target the vulnerable and betray our nation’s ideals as a beacon of hope; cruel attacks on the members of the Asian-American community, especially during COVID and beyond; a rise in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and violence,” Healey said. “The Jewish community has experienced a frightening surge in antisemitism, especially in the last month, but also for some time before that. And there’s been a rise, as well, in Islamophobic incidents.”

Massachusetts recorded the country’s sixth-highest rate of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in 2022, as well as the second-highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

The report had called Beacon Hill lawmakers to pass a string of bills to strengthen hate crime statutes, install protections for hate crime victims dealing with property damage, and clamp down on online harassment like doxing. House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have not identified hate crime legislation as a priority this session, though lawmakers this fall voted to override Healey’s veto that had to sought to slash funding for a nonprofit security grant program, intended to benefit groups at high risk for terrorists attacks and hate crimes.

Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, called the HART team a “step in the right direction.”

“There is a higher level of coordination that has to happen from the local to the federal (levels),” Burton told the News Service. “Not every local police department has the capacity or the training necessary to analyze everything, and certainly doesn’t have a direct line to all levels, like the federal government, so this is definitely one more tool in that toolbox. And frankly, at a time like this, where there is an incredible rise in antisemitism and hate, we need all the tools we can get.”

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said she hopes the HART team will serve as a partner to her Anti-Hate, Anti-Bias Task Force.

“The more partners, the better, and we’ll have to see how this goes,” Ryan said. “Unfortunately, there’s more than enough work for people.”

Ten school districts are also receiving grants totaling nearly $462,000 to cover professional development for educators, community engagement and other efforts to clamp down on bias incidents and hate crimes, the Healey administration also announced Monday.

Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said another $340,000 in funding is also available to school districts that have experienced hate crimes or incidents of bias in the last two years but have not received grant money this year. The grants are meant to spur partnerships between schools, community groups and law enforcement, she said.

“There has to be a unity of purpose, authentic relationships with the impacted groups, and proactive partnerships on the ground to make the type of lasting change we hope to,” Driscoll said.

Federal prosecutors announced a 28-count indictment against the Fitchburg resident alleging that after he departed the Massachusetts Senate in 2021, he collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits while also working as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire automotive parts company.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy’s office also alleged that Tran, 48, failed to disclose more than $50,000 he earned from consulting for the company — which prosecutors did not identify — on his 2021 federal tax return as well as rental income he collected from tenants of a Fitchburg property.

“Dean Tran was once elected to serve taxpayers, but today we arrested him for allegedly cheating them out of tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent unemployment benefits that were meant to be a lifeline for those struggling for survival as a result of the pandemic,” Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in a statement. “This former state senator allegedly made the conscious decision to repeatedly lie about his employment status and underreport his rental property income so he could get a tax break. The FBI and our partners are working hard every day to shut down such fraud schemes and protect the public from being fleeced.”

An attorney who previously represented Tran did not immediately return a call Friday morning seeking a response to the latest indictment.

Tran, who in September was indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury on two counts of violating state ethics laws and in 2022 was indicted on charges related to the theft of a firearm from an elderly woman, now also faces 25 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns in a federal case, according to Levy’s office. He is due to appear in federal court in Boston at 1:30 p.m., officials said.

Federal prosecutors allege in the indictment that Tran submitted an online application for state unemployment insurance benefits on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day after his Senate tenure ended — but that his application was denied by the state because legislators are not eligible for the benefits under state law.

He accepted a consulting position with the automotive parts company on March 14, 2021, and the very next day applied for unemployment benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program retroactive to Jan. 9, 2021, allegedly checking a box “stating that he was unemployed, partially unemployed or unable or unavailable to work.” His application was accepted March 16, 2021.

In April, the Massachusetts Division of Unemployment Assistance denied Tran’s PUA claim due to an issue related to “employment substantiation” and stopped PUA payments to him. Tran appealed the decision and submitted what the feds called a “sham employment offer letter” backdated to December 29, 2020, purporting to be from the CEO of a New Hampshire-based company that produces and distributes Asian foods. The letter allegedly offered Tran a job and a $120,000 annual salary.

During an appeal hearing in May 2021, Tran allegedly made misleading statements and concealed the fact that he had been working for and being paid by the auto parts company. In June 2021, the state reversed its decision and declared Tran eligible for PUA benefits “beginning the week ending January 2, 2021, and indefinitely thereafter, if otherwise eligible.”

His PUA benefits were terminated after the week ending Sept. 4, 2021 and Tran became a W-2 employee of the auto parts company on Sept. 20, 2021, according to the indictment.

“If TRAN had become a W-2 employee of the Automotive Parts Company prior to September 2021, however, TRAN’s wages would have been reported to the state and, thus, the DUA would have disqualified TRAN from receiving PUA benefits. By remaining as a consultant for the Automotive Parts Company until early September 2021, TRAN was able to conceal his employment from the DUA while he simultaneously collected both pay from the Automotive Parts Company and PUA benefits,” the indictment says.

From March through December 2021, the feds allege, Tran collected $43,925 in PUA benefits while also being paid $82,602 by the auto parts company.

The feds also alleged Friday that Tran reported $14,100 in gross rental income on his 2020 tax return, but actually collected $27,544 in rental income that year. In 2021, prosecutors allege, he deposited $30,855 worth of rent payments into a bank account of his but reported only $15,600 in gross rental income. And in 2022, the indictment claims, Tran took in $31,200 from his rental properties but reported just $15,600 in gross rental income. He also allegedly did not report any of the $54,720 in income that he earned as a consultant for the auto parts company in 2021.

The federal charges unveiled Friday add to Tran’s legal troubles. He was indicted by then-Attorney General Maura Healey in July 2022 on charges that he stole a Colt .45 gun from an elderly constituent and then misled the investigation into the incident. And in September, Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced that Tran had been indicted for allegedly using “members of his Senate staff to campaign for him while those staff members were on state time, state payroll, and purportedly working for the Legislature” during campaigns in 2018 and 2020.

The Massachusetts Senate sanctioned Tran in 2020 after the Senate Ethics Committee found his office staff had been performing campaign work with public resources during business hours. He denied the charges. He was removed from his position as assistant minority whip and banned from interacting with his staff except through official emails.

Tran narrowly lost his 2020 reelection bid to Sen. John Cronin, a Democrat. Last year, he ran for Congress against U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan and garnered more than 88,500 votes in his loss.

Nearly a month after MBTA General Manager Phil Eng revealed that rails are too close together on more than two-thirds of the expansion, he laid out details for how workers will address the problems.

Trains will stop running on both the Union Square and Medford branches around 8:45 p.m. each night between Monday, Nov. 27 and Sunday, Dec. 10. During that time, shuttle buses will replace trains between North Station and Medford/Tufts, while riders hoping to get to Union Square will instead need to take other bus routes or the Orange Line, which travels to Sullivan Square.

Normal Green Line Extension service will resume at the start of each day, except for Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, when buses will replace trains between Lechmere and North Station all day.

“The intent is to tackle all of the tight gauge from end to end, Medford/Tufts and Union Square, and eliminate that issue once and for all,” Eng said at an MBTA board meeting on Thursday.

Eng said the T also plans to repair tracks on the Lechmere Viaduct during the upcoming nighttime work, which will allow the agency to lift a pair of slow zones.

The start of the GLX repairs will overlap with planned 24-hour closures of the Green Line between North Station and Babcock Street, Heath Street and Kenmore Stations, part of a sweeping maintenance campaign Eng rolled out last week.

MBTA officials suddenly slowed travel on large stretches of the nearly brand-new Green Line Extension to a crawl this fall after discovering that tracks were too close together.

Repairs allowed the T to resume full-speed travel, but Eng, who started on the job in April, said last month that 50 percent of the Union Square branch and 80 percent of the Medford/Tufts branch is still narrower than the construction standard and will need to be fixed.

Other officials at the MBTA were or could have been aware of the problem as early as 2021, before either branch opened to the public, Eng said. MBTA officials said last month that two senior employees on the Green Line Extension project left after the previous missed warnings became clear.

It was not immediately clear Thursday how much the upcoming work would cost or who would cover the bill. Healey administration officials have said they want Green Line Extension Constructors, a joint venture of contractors that built the expansion including Fluor Enterprises Inc., The Middlesex Corp., Herzog Contracting Corp. and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc., to pay for the repairs.

House and Senate Democrats downplayed the obstacles of moving their stalled supplemental budget with shelter system funding during upcoming informal sessions, but it was the latest example of the majority party showing fundamental disagreements about legislative goals and being unable to rally around a single approach in a timely manner.

Talks around a spending bill to steer money toward the emergency shelter crisis collapsed late Wednesday and the last formal session the Legislature is allowed under its rules to hold this year ended without an agreement between the House and Senate Democrats who left the pressing matter until the very last minute, and are now at the start of a holiday season recess.  They now plan to more formally negotiate a compromise and if they can put their differences aside, try to get Republicans on board and pass it during the next several weeks.

“I just want to remind folks that many close-out budgets and other budgets get done in informal session. It’s not that unusual for this to happen,” Senate President Karen Spilka told reporters at about 1 a.m. Thursday.

Any single member has the power to block something from passing in an informal session. Republicans have been united in their opposition to the shelter funding spending bill, and Republican Rep. Peter Durant just made the issue part of his winning Senate special election campaign, but the GOP has stopped short of saying they’ll force Democrats to shelve the bill until January.

Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues said he’s confident he can get the entire Senate on board with passing the bill in an informal, and House Speaker Ron Mariano said he planned to talk to the House Republicans about “whether or not they need another vote” given that they recorded their opposition to the House version.

Lining up the votes (or scuttling potential informal session opposition) might be a more straightforward task than actually reaching a compromise among the six-person conference committee formed in the wee hours of Thursday. The core of the disagreement is whether the Legislature should just approve money for the shelter system or also prescribe specific steps it wants the administration to take to address the crisis.

The House and Senate both agreed to fulfill a request Gov. Maura Healey made more than two months ago to inject $250 million more in the state’s emergency assistance shelter system, which has already surpassed the 7,500-family capacity limit that Healey set.

But the House took the additional step of ordering the Healey administration to use a portion of that money to stand up at least one overflow site within 30 days for families unable to access shelter due to the cap.

“We will continue to work with the Senate to get to an agreement where we can protect the folks who are coming in over and above the cap. We’re committed to trying to make sure that everyone has shelter, has access to shelter,” Mariano said after 1 a.m. Thursday. “So that’s basically what the arguments are over. How can we determine that everyone will have an opportunity to receive some sort of opportunity at shelter.”

Senate leaders were far more circumspect in the way they talked early Thursday about the areas of disagreement between the branches. Asked if the House approach of dictating how Healey’s team could was one of the sticking points, Rodrigues refused to say.

“We’re not going to comment and violate conference protocol and comment on specifics,” he said. “Let’s just say that we are committed, as we said right from the start, to getting this done as quickly as possible.”

But when asked if the Senate still generally supports giving the governor flexibility on how the $250 million is spent, Rodrigues said, “Yes.”

On the other side of the building, House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz was asked almost the same questions and suggested with some frustration evident in his voice that the Senate had refused to come around to the House’s approach.

“Our bill says it says what it says, and I think we’re here with no agreement,” he said.

While the shelter funding got most of the attention during debate and now appears to be holding up the supplemental budget, the branches included a bevy of policies in their bills that really aren’t controversial — hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver on collectively bargained raises to state employees, setting the 2024 state primary elections for Sept. 3, 2024, and including language to allow renegotiation of contracts for parts of a transmission project linking hydroelectric power generated in Quebec to the regional grid.

Mariano said “obviously there are” points of agreement between the House and Senate, but added that they did not pass a bill featuring just those provisions Wednesday night because that approach, known as reporting in part, “has a specific set of problems.”

The T published a new analysis of the quality of its trains, tracks, signals, construction equipment and other assets, confirming the dire state of the system that is widely understood but has not been quantified in four years.

Nearly two-thirds of all MBTA assets are not in a state of good repair, and it would cost $24.5 billion to fix all of those issues, the agency concluded in its latest assessment. That figure includes the costs only of addressing current problems, not regular maintenance for infrastructure in a state of good repair nor expansions, electrifications and other large-scale projects.

The new estimate is nearly two and a half times more expensive than the last capital needs assessment produced in 2019 under the Baker administration. Officials said the sharp increase is driven by a combination of factors including stinging construction inflation and MBTA assets aging faster than they are being replaced.

MBTA General Manager Phil Eng told agency overseers the estimate is a “snapshot in time of our assets” and what it will take to bring them all to a state of good repair.

“The MBTA is one of the oldest transit agencies in the country, and while there are a number of contributing factors, it’s clear that years of underinvestment have added to the cost of bringing our system back to a state of good repair,” Eng said in a statement alongside release of the analysis, adding that his team is “committed to aggressively addressing our immediate needs.”

Officials also updated their methodology this time around. As a result of changes to the T’s asset management systems, the latest study factored 83,683 individual assets into its cost estimate, compared to 59,073 assets in 2019.

Infrastructure not in a state of good repair is past its useful life and incurs more costs to maintain and operate, but MBTA officials said the state of good repair is not a direct reflection of asset safety.

The highest share of poor conditions is on the T’s subway and trolley tracks. Nearly 90 percent of those stretches — some of which have been unable to support full-speed travel for months due to unaddressed defects — are outside a state of good repair, representing $2 billion in costs, according to the T’s assessment.

About 35 percent of facilities are not in a state of good repair with a total cost of $6.4 billion, the largest single-area price estimate. Other major categories include power systems (76 percent out of good repair, $5.1 billion in cost), trains and trolleys (55 percent out of good repair, $2.4 billion in costs) and structures (22 percent out of good repair, $5.3 billion in costs).

MBTA officials based their estimates on asset conditions in 2021.

Kate Dineen, president and CEO of the A Better City business group, described the report as “confirmation of what was already clear to T riders and supporters — the MBTA is suffering from a legacy of underinvestment and needs more funding to get the system back on track.”

“Now, the Administration, elected officials, and advocates must come together to develop an actionable plan to identify new sources of revenue to address this critical backlog, as well as the investments needed [to] modernize, decarbonize, and fortify our system from the worsening impacts of climate change,” Dineen said in a statement.

The astonishing bottom line could rip open a new round of debate about how the state funds the MBTA. While lawmakers have steered large sums of one-time funding to the agency to assist with safety improvements, the T has chronic operating budget problems and officials there project they will face a budget shortfall of up to $139 million in fiscal year 2025, which begins July 1, that will then rise to as much as $543 million by FY28.

The nearly $25 billion in state of good repair needs is roughly nine times the MBTA’s fiscal year 2024 operating budget, more than two and a half times the size of the agency’s five-year capital investment plan, and about 44 percent as big as the entire state budget for fiscal year 2024.

Monica Tibbits-Nutt, a former MBTA overseer whom Gov. Maura Healey this week officially named transportation secretary, had funding on her mind during her first public appearance Wednesday, one day before the T released its long-awaited study.

“The amount of money that is coming from the Legislature is not enough. And I don’t think that that’s even a controversial thing to say; that’s just simple math. It isn’t enough,” Tibbits-Nutt said Wednesday. “So how do we get enough money for it? Because we cannot make that money contingent on, ‘Oh, well, the service needs to be this level of quality, you need this level of on-time performance to get that money.’ Because you can’t achieve that if you don’t have that money. You put the T in a difficult position where they can only lose, because there’s no winning that way.”

The state’s slots parlor and resort-style casinos (Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor in Everett) generated $96.67 million in gross gaming revenue last month, and the physical sportsbooks at those facilities plus eight online sports betting platforms raked in a cumulative $59.18 million in taxable sports wagering revenue. Casino gambling yielded $27.23 million in tax revenue for the state last month and sports betting added nearly $11.79 million, totaling roughly $39.02 million for the state.

Sports bettors wagered more money on October sporting events ($571.76 million) than for events in any other month since legal betting launched here in January. The previous high-water mark was the $568.22 million wagered on events in March. Nearly all of the money wagered was processed online ($555.73 million).

Among the eight online sports betting platforms, DraftKings continues to take the most action. The Boston-based platform took more than $304.76 million in bets on October games, almost twice as much as runner-up FanDuel ($155.56 million).

For the state’s three physical gambling centers, last month’s $96.67 million in revenue fell just short of last October’s $97.3 million take, but still surpassed the October totals from 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Since Plainridge Park ushered in a new era of legal gambling here in 2015, Massachusetts has collected about $1.568 billion in taxes and assessments from casino operations. Since legal sports betting began here on Jan. 31 (in-person betting only, online betting started March 10), the state has counted $72.05 million in total tax and assessment revenue from sports wagering operations, the Gaming Commission said.

After keeping sessions open for roughly 13 hours over the course of the day while top Democrats traded proposals via email and phone, the House and Senate abruptly pivoted after midnight to naming a conference committee to embark on more formal negotiations.

Ways and Means Committee Chairs Aaron Michlewitz and Michael Rodrigues told reporters — in separate press huddles — that they were unable to find agreement to resolve differences in the House and Senate versions of a $2.8 billion spending bill.

“We weren’t close enough to try to see it through tonight. Obviously, over the last couple of years, we’ve had some late nights here, and I think at those points in time, we felt we could really get something done and so we really wanted to see it through,” Michlewitz said. “But I think at the point where we are at, both us and our Senate counterparts felt it was time to pack it up for tonight and try to see if we can talk tomorrow.”

Rodrigues said he was “very disappointed” in the outcome.

“Our goal was to get it done tonight, but we just weren’t able to,” he said.

While Democrats got tripped up on their differences, both the House and Senate bills would steer $250 million toward the shelter system while also scheduling the state primary on Sept. 3, 2024, funding collectively bargained raises for state employees, and clearing the way for contract renegotiations on a hydropower transmission project that is key to Massachusetts’ clean energy goals.

The failure to complete a deal means Democrats will need to steer a final bill through the choppy waters of informal sessions. Legislative rules set Wednesday as the final day for formal sessions until Jan. 3, and for the next seven weeks, any single lawmaker’s objection can delay a bill’s passage. Also, spending bills like the supplemental budget die on Jan. 2, 2024, the final day of the first “annual session” in the 2023-2024 lawmaking term. If lawmakers cannot achieve a deal by then, the entire process would need to restart from square one.

Republicans in both chambers opposed the spending bills over concerns about the state’s response to the emergency shelter crisis fueled in large part by migrant arrivals, and it’s unclear if they would use their newfound leverage to prevent a final version from reaching Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.

“I’m confident, at least in the Senate, that we’ll be able to secure the votes to pass the bill once we get it through the conference,” Rodrigues said. “I can’t speak for the House.”

House and Senate Democrats both agree on fulfilling a request Healey made more than two months ago to inject $250 million more toward emergency shelters, which already received $325 million in the state’s annual budget, amid a period of unprecedented demand. But they are split on whether to dictate how the new money must be used.

The House plan would set more specific requirements on shelter spending, and it would also order the Healey administration to stand up at least one overflow site within 30 days for families unable to access shelter. If officials failed to do so, they would be ordered to lift a capacity limit Healey imposed on the system, citing a lack of providers, space or funding to continue expanding.

Senators did not support that prescriptive approach and instead have said they want to continue to give the administration leeway to decide how to manage the crisis.

“We just want to prevent people from sleeping in the streets or sleeping in airports or sleeping in our train stations or emergency rooms,” Michlewitz said. “… Our plan in particular sets an agenda, sets a course, of making sure that those that are above the cap at least have a place to temporarily stay while they’re going through the waitlist process.”

Anti-homelessness advocates lamented the Legislature’s inaction, warning that families currently on the administration-imposed waitlist — most recently estimated at nearly two dozen — “don’t have a place to stay.”

“We’re really in unchartered territory. For 40 years, Massachusetts has had a right to shelter, has guaranteed shelter placement for every eligible family, so this is the first time that we’re seeing the state impose a waiting list and talk about establishing a cap on how long families can stay in shelter,” said Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s really unknown what’s next for families experiencing homelessness and families who right now in Massachusetts are facing eviction, facing housing instability.”

Turley said although she sees “room for compromise” between the branches in how the $250 million should be used, she believes lawmakers need to embrace the House’s plan to order the launch of overflow sites.

The lack of a deal prevents the state from closing its books on fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30, and leaves in limbo billions of dollars in spending.

The so-called closeout supplemental budget also includes hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver on collectively bargained raises to state employees, schedules the 2024 state primary elections for Sept. 3, 2024, and includes language to allow Avangrid to renegotiate contracts with energy distribution companies for parts of a transmission project linking hydroelectric power generated in Quebec to the regional grid. That project, which could become a source of clean energy for Massachusetts, had been upended by a ballot question in Maine and lengthy delays before a legal resolution.

The Legislature operates on a two-year session and the thousands of bills filed for consideration earlier this year remain in play through 2024, although the House and Senate are now expected to hold only light, twice-weekly informal sessions through December.

Lawmakers and Healey agreed to a major tax relief law this year and significant spending increases backed up by a new stream of revenue from the income surtax on wealthier households that voters approved in 2022. Action on scores of other pressing issues, including clean energy, transportation woes, and the housing affordability crisis, will have to wait until next year.

The joint committees assigned to review bills have until Feb. 7, 2024 to make recommendations. The last stretch of formal sessions in 2024, culminating at the end of July, features the most extensive legislating, but also overlaps with the extreme amount of time and effort attached to the annual state budget.

While the unsuccessful negotiations were happening, the House churned through amendments to legislation aimed at boosting the long-term care industry workforce and subjecting the industry to new oversight, regulation and steeper penalties for violations.

Specifically, the House bill gives state public health regulators new tools to ensure that nursing homes are meeting their responsibilities, including the potential to newly limit, suspend or revoke home licenses for cause and to appoint temporary managers. Under the bill, licensure suitability standards would also change to include a more comprehensive review of the background and legal record of applicants.

The bill also sets a two-year term for licenses, requires annual inspections and a 90-day “notice of intent to acquire” to be processed in the event of a transfer, and requires new state rules governing the development of small house nursing homes limited to no more than 14 individuals per unit.

To give nursing homes a hand up, the bill requires the state to establish workforce training programs and career ladder training to lift certified nurse assistants, home health aides, homemakers aspiring to become licensed practical nurses, and supervisory and leadership training. Homes would also be able to take advantage of no-interest or forgivable loans to offset certain capital costs and fund capital improvements.

House Elder Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Tom Stanley of Waltham recalled his father’s experience in long-term care and described constituents calling to say they couldn’t secure nursing home placements due to staffing shortages, or that their loved one needed a new placement due to a sudden home closure.

The bill pairs workforce development with efforts to target “bad actors” in the sector through accountability, transparency and oversight measures, Stanley said, citing abrupt home closures, patient abuse and diminished care as among the issues that are in need of immediate legislative solutions.

The Senate also held a marathon session Wednesday, working on its latest version of a prescription drug access bill.

While they haven’t been able to entice the House to join them, senators voted 39-0 just before 10:45 p.m. on their third legislative attempt in as many sessions to rein in prices that Bay Staters pay for prescription drugs and subject pharmaceutical companies to greater regulatory scrutiny.

The bill would require pharmacy benefit managers to be licensed, empower the Center for Health Information and Analysis to more closely examine prescription drugs, give the Health Policy Commission new tools to control high prices, and create a fund to help cover costs for lower-income patients.

The latest version newly features a provision capping out-of-pocket costs for some widely used medications that treat chronic illnesses at $25 for name-brand versions and at $0 for generic alternatives.

Senators embraced several changes during the amendment process, including one from Sen. Mark Montigny of New Bedford calling for a study of restricting certain marketing practices by pharmaceutical representatives.

The bill drew a mixed review from the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, which represents insurance carriers. President Lora Pellegrini said insurers believe the reforms will “finally hold drugmakers to the same transparency and accountability standards required for health plans and providers.”

“However, we are deeply disappointed that the bill includes provisions that will eliminate important cost-saving health plan tools, increase pharmaceutical spending, and decrease oversight of network pharmacies,” she added in a statement. “We believe provisions added to the bill will increase prescription drug spending that will translate into higher premiums for employers and consumers.”

After years of contentious debate over Native American mascots in school districts, some indigenous activists say it’s time to take the decision out of local hands.

“Unfortunately, today, the remaining schools with native mascots are stubbornly attached to controlling our native identities, which they’re using against our permission,” said Rhonda Anderson, a Iñupiaq – Athabascan Native American and western Massachusetts representative on the state Commission on Indian Affairs.

The Rep. Brandy Fluker Oakley and Sen. Joanne Comerford bill (H 477 / S 245) would require that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education bar Massachusetts public schools from using an athletic team or school mascot name that represents or is associated with Native Americans, or denigrates any racial, ethnic, gender or religious group. It includes a carve-out to allow indigenous tribes to use a Native-related name or logo, as well as for tribes to give explicit consent for a school to use their name.

When Anderson began advocating to remove these mascots from schools 25 years ago, there were over 90 districts in Massachusetts that used a Native American on their logo, she said.

Today there are 23 Bay State schools that continue to use indigenous mascots, nicknames or logos, according to the New England Anti-Mascot Coalition, including the Billerica Memorial High School Indians, The High School of Commerce in Springfield’s Red Raiders, and the Middleborough High School Sachems.

Foxborough is the latest town to wade into the controversial debate over using an image of a Native American, which looked similar to the now-defunct Washington Redskins logo.

The Foxborough School Committee voted in October to change the image of the indigenous person, but to keep the name “Warriors.”

“Most of the indigenous mascots classify us as warriors and things of that nature,” said Faries Gray, a Massachusett native American. “Classifying us as a warrior class society — which we were not, if we were, there would be no colonists here because we would have went to war against all of them … My tribe, we were primarily fishermen and farmers. I don’t see one school within this commonwealth calling themselves the farmers or the fisherman.”

During an Education Committee hearing on the bill on Monday, Kelly Pease, a Westfield Republican, questioned Gray and Anderson.

“This is, for a long time having mascots, and you think it should be a state law not decided at the community level? And you think it’s racism?” Pease began.

Anderson jumped in, “It is a racial group that’s being identified, yes.”

Pease continued, “And you don’t think it’s a time to highlight your heritage and make it educational because the school is looking at it?”

“Those mascots are not of our choosing. They’re not who we are, we are over 576 different — vastly different — communities and cultures, and what’s being used is a stereotype,” Anderson replied.

Sen. Jason Lewis, who co-chairs the Education Committee, said he was proud of his daughter for being part of an effort at Winchester High School to retire a “Sachems” mascot.

Lewis said students and teachers who start these movements often face bullying from other students, school committee members and parents. He thanked the indigenous advocates who came to testify before the committee.

Similar bills have been filed every session since 2017.

“Mascots are typically assigned to animals or mythical creatures, but we’re living people,” Gray said. “We’re not somebody of the past. We’re living people — we’re not mythical creatures and we’re not animals.”

The governor announced that $62 million in new program funding included in the fiscal year 2024 budget she signed this summer will go toward expanding the MASSGrant Plus program, which her administration says will benefit approximately 25,000 students attending the state’s community colleges, state universities and the University of Massachusetts.

The MASSGrant Plus expansion will cover the full cost of tuition and fees for Pell Grant-eligible students, including the federal government-determined expected family contribution, and an additional allowance of up to $1,200 for books and supplies. It does not cover housing costs.

Most Pell Grant recipients typically come from families with an annual income of $40,000 or less, or have otherwise difficult financial situations. About one-third of UMass students are eligible for Pell Grants, according to university President Marty Meehan, as are 40 percent of students at Salem State University, according to its president John Keenan.

“MASSGrant Plus Expansion by the Healey-Driscoll Administration is a game changer for state university students. It is simply historic. I know at Salem State University, 40 percent of our students are Pell Eligible and hundreds of our students are considered as being from middle income families. This unprecedented investment will allow more of the Commonwealth’s students to pursue their dreams of a college education. It’s a win for them and a win for the future Massachusetts’ workforce,” Keenan said in a statement.

In addition to expanding financial aid for the lowest-income students, the expansion program also seeks to alleviate college costs for middle-income students.

Those from families who earn between $73,000 to $100,000 annually in adjusted gross income will have their costs for tuition and mandatory instructional fees reduced by up to half of out-of-pocket expenses, the Healey administration announced Wednesday.

Middle-income students must be enrolled full-time to qualify, while the grant funding will extend to full- and part-time Pell-eligible students. The financial aid only applies to undergraduate students, according to the administration.

The program is retroactive to the start of the fall 2023 semester. The money had been approved prior to most schools starting, when Healey signed the annual budget in August, though the program details were only released on Wednesday.

The $62 million program uses a pot of newly-available revenues stemming from a tax increase on the state’s highest earners.

State budget writers had an extra $1 billion available this year for education and transportation investments, made available by a surtax voters approved last year on individuals’ annual income over $1 million — $84 million of which was earmarked for MASSGrant Plus.

The administration is estimating their plans to make college tuition-free for Pell Grant eligible and up to half-price for middle-income students will cost $62 million, but is leaving the extra $22 million for wiggle room and other financial aid initiatives.

A press release from the Healey administration says the remaining funds will also help implement a new law that allows qualifying undocumented immigrants who have completed high school in Massachusetts to access state financial aid.

Former Gov. Charlie Baker launched MassGrant Plus in 2018 to cover unmet costs of tuition and mandatory fees for low-income community college students. It started with a $7.5 million investment, which at the time doubled the amount available previously for community college scholarships.

After years of significant investment in K-12 education, advocates have seen the passage of the income surtax as an opportunity to make education more affordable at both the beginning and advanced stages of a student’s career.

In addition to the MASSGrant Plus expansion, the Legislature this year passed another one of Healey’s priorities — a $20 million last-dollar free community college program for Bay Staters over 25 without a college degree, called MassReconnect.

With everyone in Massachusetts facing the state’s high costs of living, the governor has said that investments in higher education will help the state’s economy, and encourage an educated workforce to put down roots in Massachusetts.

“For so many Massachusetts residents, higher education can be the ticket to their future career and economic stability. Our employers are looking for graduates of Massachusetts’ exceptional public colleges to meet their workforce needs, and those graduates are most likely to stay in Massachusetts. But far too many people are held back from pursuing the education of their choice because of high costs,” Healey said in a statement.

She continued, “This expansion of MASSGrant Plus will open doors for more students to access higher education, which will strengthen our economy as a whole. We’re grateful to our Legislative partners for making this funding available and look forward to our continued collaboration to make Massachusetts more affordable.”

Healey is announcing the program expansion during a visit to Salem State University Wednesday morning.

Senators voted 36-3 to approve a roughly $2.8 billion spending bill that, in addition to directing more funding to the emergency shelter crisis, would also close the state’s financial books for fiscal year 2023, schedule the next primary for Sept. 3, 2024, and remove barriers to construction of a professional soccer stadium in Everett.

There’s consensus in both branches on most of the spending, including about $2.1 billion for MassHealth, hundreds of millions of dollars for collective bargaining agreements, and $75 million to support school districts saddled with a spike in special education costs.

But House and Senate Democrats have different visions for how the state should respond to an unprecedented surge of demand on the emergency assistance shelter system, much of it involving migrants who recently arrived to the United States.

The House wants to dictate specifically where the funding will go and force the Healey administration to create at least one “overflow site” as a backup for waitlisted families, or else eliminate a limit on shelter capacity, while the Senate bill would instead let Gov. Maura Healey and her team continue to call almost all of the shots.

Now, months after Healey first requested a $250 million infusion into the system, House and Senate Democrats appear once again headed for familiar territory: working outside public view to get on the same page before an imminent deadline hits.

Legislative rules call for no formal sessions to take place this year after Wednesday. Starting Thursday, lawmakers will shift into a seven-week stretch of light work with no roll call votes. GOP opposition to the bills in both branches points to need for a quick compromise or Democrats risk leaving important matters to the uncertainty of informal sessions when a single objection can stall any bill’s progress.

If Democrats fail to reach an agreement on strings attached to the emergency shelter funding before they break, they risk being unable to get the measure to Healey until January, the same month the administration estimates existing shelter funding will run out.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday evening if legislative leaders would convene an official conference committee to tackle the negotiations behind closed doors, or if Ways and Means Committee Chairs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz and Sen. Michael Rodrigues — the architects of each branch’s plan — would try to hash out a compromise themselves.

The Senate debate revealed deep, bipartisan concerns about the long-term outlook for the shelter system, which has been pushed to its limits by the surge of demand, and disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about the degree to which state services should remain available to newly arriving migrants.

Deliberations about the new funding on several occasions spilled over into proxy debate about broader immigration and housing issues.

With migrants representing roughly half of the families in the Massachusetts emergency shelter system, Republicans pushed unsuccessfully to constrain eligibility under the state’s right-to-shelter law only to people who have lived here for at least six months.

An amendment filed by Sutton Republican Sen. Ryan Fattman would have exempted some families, such as victims of domestic violence and those affected by natural disasters within the state’s borders, from the six-month residency requirement.

Fattman pointed out that Massachusetts is the only state that guarantees shelter access to some families and pregnant women, and he argued that failing to limit access could leave Bay Staters unable to access necessary services.

“This is an unsustainable program, and there’s no security at our border. While we don’t control that federal immigration policy, we do control the emergency housing policy,” Fattman said. “This crisis is within our control to make a difference.”

“Continually throwing more money at a problem with no end in sight is not a solution,” he added.

Democrats countered that constraining who can access emergency shelter would not solve underlying housing and immigration problems that have driven demand to record levels, and they suggested that blocking support for newer migrants would run counter to state values.

Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton said the proposal “comes dangerously close to characterizing those who are worthy and those who are unworthy of humane treatment.”

“This crisis will not go away simply by denying services for six months to new arrivals,” she said.

Senators voted 36-3, along party lines, to reject Fattman’s amendment.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Massachusetts for months have been urging the Biden administration to take more action to speed up work authorizations and offer states funding to mitigate the crisis, and several senators used Tuesday’s session to air additional grievances with the federal government’s response.

Sen. John Velis of Westfield described “dysfunction” in the nation’s capital as “absolutely disgusting.” Minority Leader Bruce Tarr warned that “the cavalry isn’t coming.” And Sen. Patrick O’Connor mentioned that a U.S. senator on Tuesday challenged a union leader to a fight.

“The federal government has totally abdicated their responsibility and walked away,” Rodrigues said on the Senate floor. “They establish immigration policy, we don’t establish immigration policy. They are nowhere to be found. They announce $100,000 here, $1 million there, when we’re talking — to date — close to $600 million in this fiscal year that is only four months old. We all know and we all expect more from our friends and our colleagues in government in Washington, D.C.”

Lawmakers railed against the federal government dysfunction, but also made clear that calling for federal help remains a central part of the state’s plan as it navigates in uncharted waters.

Not all blame was aimed at the nation’s capita. Sen. Lydia Edwards, who co-chairs the Housing Committee that on Tuesday heard hours of testimony about rent control bills, said state policymakers contributed to the shelter crisis by failing to address sky-high housing prices.

“The reason why we’re full is because we failed, not the federal government, us, our local zoning, the way we chose to build or not to build,” the Boston Democrat said. “We failed, and now we’re being exposed in many different ways.”

Both chambers have fairly full agendas Wednesday. The House plans to take up an omnibus long-term care industry reform bill, while the Senate will vote on the latest iteration of a prescription drug pricing proposal that has failed to win House support in two prior sessions.

Asked Tuesday afternoon about the chances of completing a final spending bill by Wednesday, Rodrigues replied, “It’s my goal.”

“The Senate is preparing to take up its version of the bill today with the goal of getting something to the governor hopefully by Wednesday, so quick turnaround time,” Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz told the Local Government Advisory Commission on Tuesday.

The so-called closeout budget would shut the state’s books for fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30 with a tax revenue shortfall, and allow the state comptroller to finalize a financial report that is now two weeks past its statutory deadline of Oct. 31.

In addition to the $250 million for the emergency shelter system, the bill features another $10 million to help resettlement agencies that support immigrants and refugees.

Like the House bill, the Senate bill would schedule next year’s statewide primary election on Sept. 3, 2024, the day after Labor Day.

Needham Sen. Becca Rausch, who has long been a vocal critic of the existing primary election schedule, pushed unsuccessfully to change the primary to the second Tuesday in June, arguing that the September dates continue to run into scheduling conflicts and drive down voter engagement.

“Every election cycle since 2012, every single one, this Legislature has had to change the primary date. Every single cycle for more than a decade. How much proof do we need?” Rausch said on the Senate floor. “These date changes have happened for all sorts of reasons, including direct conflicts with the Jewish high holy days and the important element of complying with federal election laws. Our current law, the one we keep changing, is a detriment to democracy.”

No one spoke in opposition to Rausch’s amendment changing the primary date to June before the Senate rejected it on a voice vote.

As many as four communities had once been in the mix to fill a single open slot in the program, but only Northampton and Somerville submitted official applications by the Friday deadline, according to the state Department of Energy Resources.

That means that neither Salem nor Boston will join the 10-municipality pilot program, despite each city previously approving a home rule petition seeking state permission to curb the use of fossil fuels locally.

It’s an about-face for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who as recently as July 31 said her city was still hoping to join the program and needed state support to achieve Boston’s full climate goals.

Wu told the Boston Globe she decided not to submit a formal application because she received “clear indications that Boston would not be chosen for the one available spot.”

The shift also reduces pressure on Gov. Maura Healey’s administration, who gets to decide which “substitute community” will fill the final slot in the pilot program following West Tisbury’s withdrawal. Had officials selected Boston as the 10th community, they would have more than doubled the number of Massachusetts residents who live in participating cities and towns.

Lawmakers approved the pilot program in a 2022 clean energy law, aiming to get a better sense of the impacts of restricting fossil fuels in construction and major renovation. Buildings contributed about 35 percent of Massachusetts greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, the second-largest share of any individual sector.

One year ago, many on Beacon Hill thought Tibbits-Nutt would be considered for the transportation secretary role in Gov. Maura Healey’s new administration. Instead, Healey appointed Gina Fiandaca as secretary and named Tibbits-Nutt as transportation undersecretary. When Fiandaca resigned in mid-September, Tibbits-Nutt took over as acting secretary.

“Monica Tibbits-Nutt is a proven leader who has done important work at MassDOT over the past year as we’ve worked to make Massachusetts’ transportation system more reliable, safe and accessible,” Healey said in a statement Monday. “As Acting Secretary, she hit the ground running by working with the MBTA to prepare a first-of-its kind plan to fix the tracks by the end of next year, taking important steps to integrate climate planning across MassDOT, securing federal funding  to support infrastructure needs, and stepping up for communities that were devastated by extreme weather.”

The announcement from Healey’s office included eight bullet points detailing her work as acting secretary, including receiving more than $108 million in federal grant funding meant to lay the groundwork for East-West rail, leading emergency construction after flooding last month, working with the MBTA to extend ferry service deeper into the fall, and submitting applications for federal help for major projects like the Cape Cod bridges replacement.

Tibbits-Nutt, the former executive director of the 128 Business Council transportation management group, previously served on the board of directors of MassDOT and as vice chair of the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board, which oversaw the T from 2015 until it dissolved in 2021. After Healey won last year’s gubernatorial election, she co-chaired the transition team’s “how we get around” policy committee.

She also serves as vice president of the non-profit Youth Engagement Planning, which brings urban planning and community advocacy into K-12 environments. And Healey’s office said Tibbits-Nutt commits a significant portion of her time to mentorship through a role on the board of advisors to The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and through less official channels.

Meanwhile, temperatures are dropping and there’s no agreement among Beacon Hill Democrats on standing up an overflow shelter site.

As of Thursday there were 7,517 families enrolled in the system, according to state data. Of those, 37 enrolled in the last 24 hours.

That’s 17 families over Healey’s 7,500 family cap, as a flood of immigrant arrivals has strained shelters over the past year and more than doubled the number of families the state has been required to house under its 1983 right-to-shelter law.

State emergency assistance director L. Scott Rice announced the system hit the limit on Thursday afternoon.

“Today, the family shelter system has reached 7,500 families, and we are at the point where we do not have enough shelter units, service providers, or funding to continue to safely expand,” Rice said. “Families will continue to be placed into shelter until the end of the day, and beginning tomorrow, families will be placed into shelter as units become available. If there are no available shelter units, families determined eligible for emergency assistance will be placed on a waitlist. Our administration continues to provide arriving families with resources, basic necessities and support, and we are working with community partners to connect them with safe, overnight options.”

With housing vouchers, rental aid and efforts to enable migrants to work, the Healey administration is attempting to move families out of shelter but it’s unclear how many slots will open up in the shelter system as families in the system cycle out and new migrant families arrive.  An administration official said Thursday that the administration “has been prioritizing exits from the emergency shelter system.” 

Eligible families may now be wait-listed, and offered available shelter units based on pre-set priorities. Priority will be given to families at risk of domestic violence, those who have an infant up to three months, have an immunocompromised family member, are experiencing a high-risk pregnancy, or have specific medical needs.

The waiting list will be refreshed once a day, and state officials plan to contact those eligible for shelter by email, phone call and text.

The Healey administration announced earlier this week that they were partnering with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay to support “overnight safety-net shelter” for families and individuals with no other options.

The United Way is using $5 million of federal grant money for the program, but it’s unclear how many people could seek overnight relief at those sites or where they will be situated.

Meanwhile, the House advanced legislation on Wednesday to invest an additional $250 million into the shelter system, including a $50 million carve-out for an overflow site. The bill, which has not yet been scheduled for Senate deliberations, would give the administration 30 days from the time the legislation is signed to erect this site because “we don’t have time to waste,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said.

Healey requested this injection of funds into the system in September, but House Democrats did not bring their plan to the floor until Wednesday, the day before the cap was hit.

Even if the House’s proposed overflow site requirement makes it into a final law, the launch date would not arrive until mid-December at the earliest, leaving more than a month during which families might be placed onto a waitlist with no backup option provided by the state.

Asked about the House’s proposed overflow site on Wednesday, Healey was noncommittal.

“Yesterday, the House filed something. That’s in the legislative process now. A lot will happen, presumably over the next week, with the involvement of the Senate and more conversations there. And I continue to stand ready to work in partnership with the Legislature, with service providers, with the Biden administration to do all we can to address the situation,” Healey said.

A disclosure that Healey filed last month with the State Ethics Commission, which was made available to the News Service on Thursday morning, revealed that Healey planned to travel to Asheville, N.C., for a Democratic Governors Association meeting on Oct. 2 and 3, and that the DGA would foot the estimated $1,341.30 bill for Healey’s travel. The trip was never mentioned on any of Healey’s public schedules and was not disclosed at the time.

In response to questions about the governor’s apparent trip to North Carolina, a Healey spokesperson said the administration will no longer publicly announce when the governor travels. Until that trip, Healey’s office regularly informed the press before the governor or lieutenant governor was leaving Massachusetts, as has been typical of at least the last few gubernatorial administrations.

“Due to security concerns, we will not be advising the Governor’s travel in advance,” spokeswoman Karissa Hand said. “The Governor is engaged in her work at all times and keeps in constant communication with her team no matter where she is.”

The governor’s office did not elaborate on the security concerns. But last month, there was a demonstration of local neo-Nazis outside of the Arlington house that Healey — the first woman and first openly gay governor elected in Massachusetts — shares with her partner and her partner’s children.

Whenever the governor leaves Massachusetts, the executive powers are passed on to the lieutenant governor. If the lieutenant governor is also away (or if the office is vacant), the powers go to the secretary of state, as has happened already this year when both Healey and Driscoll were traveling. Healey’s office said Thursday that the acting governor will be notified in advance whenever Healey (or Healey and Driscoll) will be out of state.

Healey’s travel plans will be listed on the monthly calendars that are made available to the press through public records requests after the fact. The administration had not released a copy of Healey’s calendar for October as of Thursday. Healey has previously pushed back on the mixed reviews she office has gotten for transparency.

Reduced train speeds associated with safety concerns have plagued riders with sluggish travel for months, and MBTA officials on Thursday announced they now plan to shut down segments of all four subway lines in phases over the next 13 months, allowing for repairs they say will eliminate all “slow zones” by the end of 2024.

Repair work will replace rails, fix or replace deteriorated ties, install new ballast, improve signals and switches, and more, MBTA General Manager Phil Eng said. Free shuttle buses will replace subway service during closures.

The proposal will inflict widespread disruption on riders, with a portion of the core subway system scheduled to be closed on almost exactly half of the days between now and the end of next year.

With their new plan, MBTA officials are providing more advance notice than they have ahead of recent shutdowns, and for the first time are putting an estimated endpoint on the slow train service that has become the new norm and turned some riders away from the T.

Paraphrasing Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Eng said the plan exchanges “short-term pain for long-term wins.”

“Not getting this work done has far longer-ranging impacts to the public that we serve,” Eng told the MBTA Board’s safety subcommittee while unveiling the schedule. “This is truly a pivotal time for the T as we’re looking to restore and repair years and years of disinvestment.”

The first closures will hit the Green Line. Subways will not run between North Station and Kenmore, Heath Street and Babcock Street from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, nor will they operate along the entire D Branch from Riverside to Kenmore between Dec. 11 and Dec. 20.

For 2024, the plan lays out nearly 20 planned closures of individual pieces of the Green, Orange, Red and Blue Lines, ranging in duration between four days and 21 days. Eng said the sweeping proposal would eliminate all slow zones, which currently blanket about 23 percent of the system, plus tackle any new issues that emerge.

Altogether, MBTA modeling projects the work will slash a total of 86 minutes in delays that exist today because of infrastructure problems that prevent trains from safely operating at full speed.

“The intent is to, again, address those things that have been impacting the public today and address those things that, if we don’t get to, will impact them in future years,” Eng told reporters after the subcommittee meeting. “That will allow us now to come in and do that proper cyclical, preventive corrective maintenance on a regular basis, being able to respond more timely, and not allow us to get to the point where we’re trying to tackle hundreds of speed restrictions.”

The cost of the repair campaign was not available. Eng said the work will all be funded through existing budget sources, including money set aside for the MBTA to address problems identified in a Federal Transit Administration investigation and the agency’s five-year capital investment plan.

A “significant amount” of the work will be put out to bid, which Eng said might alter some of the specific closure dates.

Eng said Thursday that the T has reached a new agreement with private developer HYM Construction, whose demolition of the Government Center Garage has required multiple subway disruptions in recent months.

The company will finish work that normally impedes T service during a total of 20 days when the nearby portion of the Green Line is closed for infrastructure repairs. Once those diversions are complete, the remaining demolition work will continue without requiring any kind of MBTA coordination, Eng said.

“That’s a big win for both the Government Center garage demolition as well as us,” he said.

Widespread slow zones have become a debilitating way of life for most riders this year. An MBTA-hired consultant attributed the sudden escalation of the problem to poorly trained staff who were not “completely fulfilling the responsibilities” of track maintenance and safety standards, communications breakdowns and a lack of inspection documentation.

The MBTA has made a habit in recent years of shutting down large stretches of subway lines to accelerate repairs, most recently on the Red Line between JFK/UMass and Ashmont stations. That 16-day closure allowed officials to lift all slow zones in the area.

The new plan takes the effort to another level, charting a course months ahead of time. Rep. William Straus, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, praised Eng’s approach with an apparent dig at former General Manager Steve Poftak and the Baker administration.

“The public should see that, with regard to the maintenance and taking-care-of-the-stuff obligation of the T, we now have the management capability that wasn’t there before,” Straus, who joined Eng at a press conference after the meeting, said Thursday.

Transit advocates and business groups praised the proposal as a step in the right direction, particularly because it gives the public more time to prepare for shutdowns and plan accordingly.

“The communication of a comprehensive, systemwide, year-long plan to address track issues is crucial and appreciated,” said Reggie Ramos, executive director of Transportation for Massachusetts. “We hope this signals a new level of transparency with the public for the MBTA especially as the work progresses. This allows impacted communities to plan their trips and activities ahead, and for municipalities to prepare for these shutdowns, ensuring riders’ lives are not disrupted greatly.”

A Better City President and CEO Kate Dineen said it “has the potential to restore rider trust, bolster our region’s economic competitiveness, and promote more climate-friendly commuting options.”

Still, advocacy group TransitMatters pointed out that the MBTA still has not outlined any plan to restore weekday Red, Orange and Blue Line service cuts implemented in June 2022, when federal investigators chided the T for overworking its dispatchers.

“While these diversions are necessary to clear the existing backlog of speed restrictions, track defects occur as a part of regular wear and tear. Going forward, the MBTA should ensure it has the capacity to handle new track defects with minimal disruption to regular service,” the group said. “If we want ridership to return to the pre-COVID levels, the T must improve speed restrictions and service levels as quickly as possible and run regular service as often as possible. Riders can learn to rely on the MBTA again, and we look forward to them doing so.”

The long-awaited supplemental budget bill was adopted after little debate on a roll call vote of 133-25 just before 6 p.m. Senate leaders said that branch will take up its own version of the bill in “short order,” and then House and Senate Democrats will have to iron out any differences before sending a final version to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.

“This $2.8 billion supplemental budget will close the books on the fiscal year 2023. With a net cost to the commonwealth of $1.69 billion, this legislation will allow us to end FY23 in a balanced and fiscally responsible manner. A majority of the items contained in here are deficiencies that we need to pay or reauthorizations of past appropriations,” House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said. “But the area that has received the most attention over the past few weeks is the request from the governor to make further appropriations to our emergency family shelter system.”

The House bill (H 4167) would authorize the $250 million infusion into the shelter system that Healey requested nearly two months ago, before the governor announced that she was capping the emergency shelter system at 7,500 families.

The House bill establishes requirements on how the additional appropriation can be used.

“We are proposing to provide the governor with her request of $250 million, but it is no blank check,” Michlewitz said.

Of greatest note is the House requirement that $50 million of the $250 million to go toward “the identification, acquisition and operationalization of a state funded overflow emergency shelter site or sites” for families placed on a shelter waitlist.

Out of the remaining $200 million for emergency assistance shelters, the House bill would direct $75 million toward reimbursing school districts for the costs of enrolling new students who recently arrived, $18 million for temporary shelters, $12 million for clinical and wraparound services, $10 million for resettlement agencies, $6 million for municipal support, $6 million for shelter staffing needs, $5 million for workforce authorization programming and $3 million for family welcome centers, according to a bill summary.

“While we wait for Washington to get its act together, we must confront the issues that are on the ground. And that is a shelter system that is being asked to house significantly more families than it was designed for,” Michlewitz said.

He added, “Our municipalities and school districts are taking the brunt of the day-to-day life of housing these families and providing children with the education and the needs that come with that. And that has left us in the Legislature, as well as many in the public, struggling to get answers on what is going on each and every day in our own communities. Despite these questions and frustrations, we have always provided the resources needed to manage the crisis.”

The House budget chief said he expects the $250 million outlay will get the state’s shelter system through the next winter months and into the spring. An initial $325 million allocation for shelter costs is expected to run out in January.

“To be clear,” he said, “we face some hard decisions and choices ahead for 2024 and beyond.”

During his introductory speech on the House floor Wednesday, Michlewitz asked fellow representatives to center their debate “around the facts that are before us today, and not misinformation that has casually been thrown around recently.”

“These families who have come to the commonwealth are [legally] here while their asylum process is underway,” he said.

Debate was fairly limited Wednesday afternoon. After Michlewitz’s intro, the House went into a lengthy recess as leadership chose which of the 61 amendments would be adopted as part of two consolidated mega-amendments. The first of those bundles, made available after 4 p.m., dispensed with 36 amendments but did not necessarily incorporate them into the supplemental budget. The second consolidated took care of what was left.

Rep. Paul Frost put one of his amendments up for consideration on its own after it was slated to be rejected in the first consolidated package. The Auburn Republican’s amendment would require that a family or pregnant person live in Massachusetts for at least one year before becoming eligible for emergency shelter. It included exceptions for domestic violence situations, natural disasters and more.

“I think that’s a fair amount of time to say that you’ve been here, that you’ve been participating in the community and that if you do need emergency shelter, then you could have it,” Frost said. “And if you want to discuss or further amend or debate lowering that figure to six months or whatever, I’m willing to talk. But the fact is it can’t be 45 minutes, it can’t be a day, because it won’t stop. They’ll continue to come and be sent here. And it’s not their fault, I understand that. They’re going where they’re told, they’re going where other groups are sending them because they’re told they will be taken care of.”

Rep. Alice Peisch of Wellesley argued against Frost’s amendment, telling representatives that she does not think it would survive a court challenge or that it would actually staunch the flow of migrants to Massachusetts.

“I certainly appreciate the concern that gives rise to this amendment. However, the better approach, I believe, is that that has been proposed by the Ways and Means Committee with respect to requiring that the administration set up an overflow site or sites within 30 days and, if they do not, then the cap will not go into effect,” Peisch, the House’s assistant majority leader, said. “It seems to me that that is the better approach. And I think that that is one that we have put forward due to, unfortunately, the lack of clarity that we have been given to date by the administration with respect to what happens when families start to arrive once that 7,500-family cap has been reached.”

Frost’s amendment was rejected on a 28-126 vote that broke mostly along party lines. Democrat Reps. David Robertson of Tewksbury, Jonathan Zlotnik of Gardner and Colleen Garry of Dracut voted with the Republican caucus.

Though the shelter funding got the bulk of the attention, most of the money in the budget bill — about $2.1 billion — would go toward MassHealth for “caseload adjustments.” It also includes nearly $300 million for a reserve to fund collective bargaining agreements with state employees and $10 million in additional flood relief for municipalities hit by severe rain events this summer.

House budget writers also picked up the loose ends of a July supplemental budget — including $100 million for pension obligations related to an early retirement program, $75 million for special education reimbursements and $60 million for a DTA caseworker reserve — that didn’t already make it across the finish line.

A House Ways and Means Committee spokesperson said the bill would authorize spending from both the state’s general fund and a “transitional escrow fund” full of one-time relief dollars. The legislation empowers the administration to decide how much money to draw from each source, the spokesperson said.

House Speaker Ron Mariano previously said Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Rodrigues were negotiating the terms of the final supplemental budget before it emerged in either branch, but Michlewitz downplayed that notion this week.

“We had some discussions, but this is — I don’t want to speak for the Senate. This is the House’s version of what we think is the right step to be taken,” he said of his private talks with Rodrigues.

Senate President Karen Spilka pledged Monday that her branch will take up the supplemental budget in “short order” following discussions with lawmakers. There’s no Senate formal session scheduled this week, though Senate Democrats plan to meet in a closed-door caucus on Thursday morning.

Both branches must conclude formal lawmaking sessions for the year by Nov. 15 under legislative rules, though the possibility exists that the supplemental budget could move during informal sessions that any single member could derail.

The Healey administration’s latest response to the shelter crisis associated with migrant arrivals also came with an announcement that another 75 National Guard members are being activated to assist at emergency shelters, on top of the 300 members already deployed.

The United Way plans to administer a $5 million grant program as part of the partnership to provide funds to community organizations, faith-based groups and volunteer organizations to stand up short-term, overnight shelter sites. But it’s unclear how many people could seek overnight relief at those future sites and where they will be situated throughout the commonwealth.

Applications for the grants, which use federal money, will be available later this week, Emergency Assistance Director General Scott Rice said at a press conference Tuesday. Healey’s administration previously partnered with the United Way of Central Massachusetts to create the Massachusetts Farm Resiliency Fund following major flood damage.

“We hope community-based organizations will take deep advantage of this financial assistance available to them to offer temporary shelter for our shelter system,” Rice said. “And of course, as the state puts these new supports in place, we continue to ask the federal government to act to address the federal issues, to include the need for large-scale overflow sites for families. My top priority, first and foremost, will always be the safety and well-being of families and the people of Massachusetts, and all of us together to meet this challenge of working on this situation in the future.”

The launch of the grant fund comes hours after the House Ways and Means Committee advanced a $2.74 billion supplemental budget bill that includes the $250 million that Healey requested in September amid ballooning demand for the emergency shelter system.

The allocation carves out $50 million for the creation of a state-funded overflow emergency shelter site — or sites — for eligible families who are wait-listed to existing emergency shelters. Under the House’s proposal, Healey’s cap on the shelter system would be revoked if an overflow space isn’t operating within 30 days.

Officials expect Massachusetts to hit the administration’s imposed cap of 7,500 families in the emergency assistance shelter system — which Healey said Monday reflects the shortage of physical shelter space and human service providers — on Wednesday or Thursday, Rice said.

As of Tuesday morning, there were 7,439 families housed in emergency shelters, and more than half of those individuals are children, Rice said.

Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll did not attend the press conference, and they had no public events on their schedule for Tuesday. A Healey spokesperson said the governor “has a full schedule today.”

The governor’s expanded use of the National Guard will support efforts at emergency shelter sites, such as helping with access to food, transportation, and medical care, as well as legal clinics to expedite the work authorization process for migrants. Rice said there’s a legal clinic scheduled for the week of Nov. 27, which is in addition to the clinic the administration is running next week with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The administration said prospective sites include communal gathering spaces with restroom facilities and heat, such as community centers, school buildings, and places of worship. Grants could be used to support staff and supplies like cots, blankets and food. While Healey’s office has said the administration is spending $45 million each month to handle the surge of migrants, Rice said the $5 million grant fund “will go a long way” as a “number of community partners” are stepping up their support efforts.

Rice said he didn’t know how many overnight shelter sites could be created through the grant program, as he deferred the question to the United Way.

“We have positive indication that we have a lot of community partners that have the capacity to help,” Rice said when asked whether people could end up seeking shelter at Logan Airport or at hospital emergency departments.

Bob Giannino, president and CEO of United Way of Massachusetts Bay, said the money provides an “important early start” for the state to expand its short-term shelter capacity as winter approaches. The types of overnight shelter options, such as hotels and motels, are still being ironed out as providers determine the spaces they can offer to families, he said.

Giannino said United Way doesn’t know how many people could be accommodated. He called the developing plans a “heavy lift” and said the hope is to shelter “thousands” of families.

“We’re literally days into crafting this work, and so we’re confident that we’re going to be able to put up some locations in order to work on transitional needs that our families and migrants have,” Giannino said.

The House Ways and Means Committee opened a poll Tuesday morning on a $2.74 billion supplemental budget (H 4090) that matches the dollar amount of Gov. Maura Healey’s mid-September shelter funding request, but adds specific requirements on how the money would be distributed, including $50 million for the creation of an “overflow site” for families who are waitlisted for a traditional shelter placement.

If the state fails to create that location within 30 days after the bill is enacted, the legislation would instruct the Healey administration to revoke its declared capacity limit of 7,500 families “until said overflow site or sites are secured and operational.”

The bill also calls for the administration to provide a 60-day notice if officials want to cap how long a family could stay in emergency assistance shelter, a step Healey said last week is under consideration.

Most of the spending in the bill — about $2.1 billion, with a net state cost of $800 million — would cover “MassHealth caseload adjustments,” according to a committee summary. The legislation also features nearly $300 million for collective bargaining agreements with public employees, $100 million for pension obligations, $75 million to support schools facing additional special education costs, $60 million for a Department of Transitional Assistance caseworker reserve and $10 million in flood relief for municipalities.

Representatives on the House Ways and Means Committee were given until 10:45 a.m. to register their position on the proposal. House Speaker Ron Mariano said Monday he plans to call a vote on the supplemental budget Wednesday.

Venturing into the shelter crisis after months of effectively letting Gov. Maura Healey call the shots, House Democrats are newly flexing their legislative muscle by seeking to prevent the governor from capping the number of families in shelters unless she also stands up some kind of alternative for those stuck on the waitlist she plans to deploy.

The House Ways and Means Committee released a long-awaited $2.74 billion spending bill (H 4167) that combines new shelter funding and policies with a bevy of appropriations, including the action needed to close the financial books on fiscal year 2023.

Representatives will be asked to vote on the spending bill on Wednesday, one week before both branches must conclude formal sessions for the year under legislative rules.

Emergency Shelter Funding

The bill would authorize the full $250 million injection into the shelter system that Gov. Maura Healey requested nearly two months ago while setting additional requirements on how the money can be used.

One of the most significant measures would take aim at the 7,500-family capacity limit the administration set by requiring $50 million of the $250 million to go toward “the identification, acquisition and operationalization of a state funded overflow emergency shelter site or sites” for families placed on a shelter waitlist.

Under the House proposal, the administration would have 30 days after the effective date of the legislation to launch an overflow site. If officials fail to do so, the bill would require Housing Secretary Ed Augustus to revoke the limit on how many families can be in the shelter system “until said overflow site or sites are secured and operational.”

It was not immediately clear Tuesday — the same day the administration announced a $5 million grant program with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay to support overnight “safety net” shelters — what kinds of services the proposed overflow sites would provide.

The bill also calls for the administration to provide a 60-day notice if officials want to cap how long a family could stay in emergency assistance shelter, a step Healey said last week is under consideration.

Anti-homelessness advocates who have been pressing the Legislature to get involved in the emergency response praised the House’s legislation. Kelly Turley, associate director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, said the bill would “address some of the gaps we found” in the Healey administration’s waitlist plan.

“We know without intervention, families will be put on a waiting list and left without adequate shelter in the meantime,” she said.

Out of the $250 million for emergency assistance shelters, the House bill would also require $75 million go toward reimbursing school districts for the costs of enrolling new students who recently arrived, $18 million for temporary shelters, $12 million for clinical and wraparound services, $10 million for resettlement agencies, $6 million for municipal support, $6 million for shelter staffing needs, $5 million for workforce authorization programming and $3 million for family welcome centers, according to a bill summary.

Healey first signaled plans in mid-October to limit shelter capacity at 7,500 families, warning that the system could not accommodate such an unprecedented increase in demand fueled in part by newly arriving migrants.

A Superior Court judge ruled last week that the cap can move forward without running afoul of a 1983 state law guaranteeing shelter to eligible families and pregnant women.

Once the number of families in the system reaches 7,500, eligible new applicants will instead be placed on a waitlist, prioritized based on factors such as whether they have an infant or face risks of domestic violence.

The House proposal seeks to more clearly offer some kind of stopgap support to families for whom shelter space is not available, but it appears likely that at least some people will spend time on a waitlist — with all the uncertainty that entails — without the option of an overflow site.

Healey expects to cross the threshold of 7,500 families in the emergency shelter system this week. Even if the House’s proposal quickly sails into law, the administration would get 30 days to stand up overflow sites before the cap might be affected. And stretching the timeline further, there’s no indication if the Senate also supports the idea, or how feasible the Healey administration thinks it is.

Representatives plan to take up the bill Wednesday, and there’s no clear timeline for action in the Senate, though both branches need to complete formal sessions for the year by Nov. 15. If the bill is enacted as drafted, the administration would get another 30 days to stand up overflow sites before the capacity limit is affected. The first day of winter is Dec. 21.

“Requiring a commitment to a date certain with the overflow sites is very important,” said Andrea Park, director of community driven advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “There’s still some time in between where families are potentially going to be left without any place to go, but requiring the administration to work toward getting those overflow sites set up will help mitigate some of the very real damage that can happen to families in the winter months in particular.”

Lawyers for Civil Rights, the group that sued the Healey administration over its waitlist plan, said Tuesday it plans to dismiss its so-far-unsuccessful lawsuit in the coming days because the House bill has “achieved the goals of our lawsuit.”

“We are proud that the lawsuit we filed late last month helped bring about this result. Our lawsuit highlighted the plight of families and pregnant women on the brink of homelessness, particularly as winter is approaching,” the group said in a statement. “The lawsuit focused on giving the Legislature adequate time and information to evaluate the need for additional funding. In response to our lawsuit, the State issued emergency regulations on October 31, 2023, for the first time outlining exactly what changes it planned for the emergency shelter program. With that information in hand, the Legislature has responded quickly with additional funding and with new provisions to support families placed on the waitlist.”

Other Spending: MassHealth, Special Education, Collective Bargaining Agreements

While the emergency shelter funding and policies take aim at one of the most pressing crises facing state government, it also represents less than a tenth of the bill’s bottom line.

Most of the money, about $2.1 billion, would go toward MassHealth for what the House Ways and Means Committee called “caseload adjustments.”

Healey proposed that funding in a September supplemental budget. Administration officials have said the MassHealth funding effectively proposes to make payments early to smooth out the expiration of pandemic-era expanded federal reimbursements. By making what would normally be FY24 payments in the FY23 closeout, the impact from those smaller reimbursements would not be as sharp or limited to a single fiscal year, officials said.

In addition, the spending bill includes nearly $300 million for a reserve to fund collective bargaining agreements with state employees. In Healey’s original supplemental budget filed in September, she called for $200 million to go into the fund.

Thousands of state employees are awaiting those dollars, which will fulfill dozens of contracts that have, for some, have been ratified for months. Human service workers and educators who have been waiting for the Legislature to create the funding for these raises staged a rally at the State House last month.

“They were owed this five months ago, and they’re upset the raises haven’t gone through yet. They are hurting,” SEIU Local 509 President Dave Foley said at the time.

The contracts cover employees at the Department of Children and Families, Department of Transitional Assistance, Department of Developmental Services, Department of Mental Health, MassDOT, University of Massachusetts, and more.

The spending bill also includes $10 million in additional flood relief for municipalities, after severe rain events this summer impacted farms and infrastructure across western and central Massachusetts.

House budget writers also picked up the loose ends of a July supplemental budget — including $100 million for pension obligations related to an early retirement program, $75 million for special education reimbursements and $60 million for a DTA caseworker reserve — that didn’t make it across the finish line previously.

Public school districts have been sounding an alarm over increased special education costs after pandemic-era federal grant dollars expired. Some communities have said they will have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even a couple million dollars, more this year to serve the same amount of students, due to a sizable increase in tuition that schools pay to special education providers.

Healey and lawmakers have steered some money to districts facing this lofty bill in previous supplemental spending and the fiscal 2024 budget, but the House’s plan to direct the large $75 million amount to special education reimbursement was left on the cutting room floor in July.

The House bill also takes another swing at language that would allow the state to renegotiate a hydropower transmission project to try to breathe life back into a stalled renewable energy proposal.

The language, which was included in the House version of the July spending bill, would open the door for Avangrid and electric distribution companies to renegotiate part of their 2019 contract to bring hydropower to New England from a generating station in Quebec.

The renegotiations would likely mean that savings for Massachusetts utility ratepayers would not be as large as originally projected, but the process would help revive momentum for the New England Clean Energy Connect proposal.

The hydroelectric power that NECEC would bring represents about 18 percent of the total energy load in Massachusetts, according to the Department of Energy Resources. Some lawmakers have looked to advance hydropower as the state’s nascent offshore wind industry struggles to get off the ground and deadlines for emissions reductions targets inch closer.

A House Ways and Means Committee spokesperson said the bill would authorize spending from both the state’s general fund and a “transitional escrow fund” full of one-time relief dollars. The legislation empowers the administration to decide how much money to draw from each source, the spokesperson said.

Closeout Budget Delay

The spending bill emerged from House Ways and Means several weeks after Comptroller William McNamara’s deadline to file an important report assessing the state’s financial health.

McNamara is required by state law to complete the Statutory Basis Financial Report (SBFR), which summarizes state government revenue and spending for each fiscal year, by Oct. 31. It can’t be completed until the governor signs into law the closeout supplemental budget to turn the page on the fiscal year.

The Legislature has been consistently late the past several years in completing the closeout budget. The comptroller’s office typically requires about three weeks to put this report together after the closeout budget is approved by the governor.

After the comptroller’s office, the report heads to the independent auditing firm contracted with the state, CliftonLarsonAllen. These financial reports are essential to creating the state’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report — which is required by the federal government of all 50 states. It’s used by bondholders, bond markets and rating agencies, and it can affect the state’s bond rating.

McNamara sent a letter to Healey and the House and Senate Ways and Means chairs on Nov. 3 informing them of the missed deadline, and said his office was waiting on the enactment of the final supplemental budget.

“The Office of the Comptroller, with the cooperation of financial professionals statewide and our external audit firm, has taken every preparatory step possible. Given the complexity of state finance, including the need to execute transactions that may be included in the final budget, as well as the time required for the external audit firm’s review, approximately three weeks will be required for issuance after the enactment of the final supplementary budget,” he wrote. “Therefore, even given an optimistic timeline for enactment by the Legislature, and for consideration and signing or return by the Administration, the report is unlikely to be issued before December.”

Last year, the SBFR was issued on Dec. 23.

McNamara says in the letter that the SBFR and ACFR are “the only independently reviewed and audited sources of comprehensive information on state finance for the citizens, taxpayers, and residents of the Commonwealth” and reminded them that “bond buyers and debt rating agencies, as well as the federal government” are awaiting the report.

“Fortunately, although report timing has become a recurring problem, the financial condition of the Commonwealth reflected in the reports has been consistently sound,” McNamara wrote, though he warned that delays could have impacts in future years where there is a less positive financial picture.

He continued, “I am sincerely respectful of the prerogatives of elected officials in both branches, to address the complex issues of budgeting with care, but I believe earlier completion of every fiscal year is an achievable goal.”

The decision followed an emergency court hearing on Tuesday, during which Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston argued that the administration was “undermining” the state’s right-to-shelter law and did not fulfill a requirement that Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus give the Legislature a required 90-day notice of the major policy shift.

Squires-Lee’s decision means that the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities may begin turning away families from shelter when the state reaches 7,500 families in its Emergency Shelter system, which is expected to happen this week.

The judge wrote that the plaintiffs — three families in or looking to find housing in the shelter system represented by Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston — did not have the standing to enforce the 90-day notice, and said that it is up to the Legislature.

“The notice proviso is intended to afford the Legislature the opportunity to appropriate additional funding for the program. The evidence before me, however, is clear — more than a month ago, the Governor specifically requested additional appropriations for the emergency assistance program and the Legislature has failed to act. In these circumstances, the predicate purpose of the 90-day proviso has been fulfilled; and, in all events, it is for the Legislature and not the clients of the program to enforce any claimed non-compliance,” she wrote.

This is a developing story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest updates.

Carl-Hens Beliard, a member of Worcester North High School’s state championship-winning basketball team who was just beginning his freshman season on Salem State’s varsity team, was killed while driving his car on Forest Avenue, near the school’s campus, just before 1:30 a.m., the school said.

The governor talked about having recently met Beliard when she and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, herself a former Salem State basketball player, had the North High team in to visit.

“We met Carl and we took pictures with Carl, and he was the only senior on that state championship team. He leaves a mum and a younger sibling, and it’s incredibly, incredibly sad; heartbreaking, heartbreaking. There’s more to learn about the circumstances, of course, but my heart goes out to all who’ve been affected by gun violence, who continue to be plagued by gun violence, senseless gun violence that we see in our communities, particularly among young people,” Healey said. “It’s something that we have to do everything we can to address. My thoughts are with their families right now. And I just wanted to take a moment just to acknowledge that.”

The Worcester Telegram included a photo in its coverage Wednesday that one of its photographers took of Driscoll and Beliard during the visit in April.

During an unrelated stop in Worcester on Wednesday afternoon, Healey also acknowledged the death of 19-year-old Randy Armando Melendez Jr. of Southbridge, who was killed in a shooting early Saturday morning at Worcester State University.

In both a live interview on “Java with Jimmy” and a morning press conference, Wu laid out the latest changes at Mass. and Cass, the epicenter of the region’s substance use disorder, mental health, and unsheltered homelessness crises. Wu and the city’s Coordinated Response Team Director Tania Del Rio spoke to reporters on Atkinson Street, where the city has been busy since Monday clearing out encampments and connecting people staying there to services and shelter.

“As you can see, tents continue to come down when individuals are moving into their placements and packing up their belongings and then accessing that [city] transportation. Once the last tent does come down, we will make sure that the street is cleaned and that there’s some more of the services just to kind of ensure that this area is how it should be,” Wu said. “But that won’t be the end of our efforts by any means.”

Of the roughly 80 people without housing who had been living at Mass. and Cass, Wu said, 52 had already moved into a shelter unit as of Wednesday morning and another 25 people are just waiting to pack up and make the move to confirmed shelter of some kind.

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WATCH: Mayor Michelle Wu gives update on tent clearing efforts at Mass & Cass

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“There’s a lot of miscellaneous needs that people need to fulfill before they complete that placement,” Del Rio said. “We will be providing storage, transportation, or whatever it is else that people need; whether it be basic needs, or whatever it is. People do have a variety of things that we’re helping them with.”

In addition to the 77 people who have either moved into shelter or have shelter arranged, Wu said another nine people have already identified housing or plan to reunify with family or friends, and seven others will get a final shelter placement once the city’s triage team knows more about availability.

Del Rio said the estimate as of Tuesday was that there were still seven people in need of a placement and that the city was working with at least a few holdouts. No one had yet “full out declined” a placement offer from the city, she said.

“Outreach workers are back out retriaging whoever’s present in the encampment at this point, making sure that they’re provided a shelter, or a destination, before we close the street and we close the encampment today,” Del Rio said.

The Boston City Council last week approved an ordinance that will allow police to remove tents and tarps throughout the city, with a specific focus on Mass. and Cass and nearby Atkinson Street. Wu proposed the directive in August, saying that the tents shelter illegal activity such as drug dealing and human trafficking, as public health concerns and violence grew in the area this summer.

The mayor said that about 200 people regularly congregate in the Mass. and Cass area, but that the “majority have housing … but they’re there for community or to feed substance use or prey on those who are in active substance use.” The most recent estimate of unhoused people at Mass. and Cass was about 80 people, she said.

Wu said the city has no firm timeline for clearing Atkinson Street — “There’s not a time where if something isn’t totally wrapped up, then all…everything’s gonna get knocked down. Our plan is to complete the moves that are scheduled,” she said — but also emphasized that the city’s work to address homelessness, drug addiction, and quality of life concerns is not limited to Mass. and Cass.

Mobile outreach teams that have been busy at Mass. and Cass are already fanning out citywide “to provide the safety and support in any neighborhood of Boston that needs it,” Wu said. She said several mobile response teams are already assigned to different areas slightly outside the Mass. and Cass area to be available in the coming days.

Wu said on “Java with Jimmy” that the mobile outreach teams will be focused on Clifford Park, Ziegler Street, Newmarket Square, Southampton Street, Moakley Park, Andrew Square, and South End/Harrison, in addition to citywide outreach teams.

“This is a challenge, a series of challenges all overlapping that no city is able to just say, ‘OK, we’re done and moving on.’ It will take a tremendous amount of sustained effort, it will take continued outreach and adjusting our own processes and staffing and programs along the way,” Wu said. “We’ve made progress at every phase and today will be hopefully the next step that we’re taking, a big one for the city but it will take sustained effort.”

The mayor added, “And we will expect to see other tents pop up in different parts of the city that we will look to connect people as quickly as possible and then take down those tents. But there is no magic wand to being able to say, ‘Now the city is in a bubble and and we’ve moved on.'”

At an emergency court hearing Tuesday afternoon, Judge Debra Squires-Lee sought more information from Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston, who filed the lawsuit against Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities and Secretary Ed Augustus, and Assistant Attorney General Kim Parr, who represented the administration.

Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston filed the class action lawsuit on Friday, seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the state from “undermining” its right-to-shelter law by implementing a cap on the number of people the state’s shelter system can accommodate, essentially no longer guaranteeing housing for qualified families protected under the law.

The Healey administration projects the system will not “have enough space, service providers or funds to safely expand beyond 7,500 families,” and Parr said they expect to hit that number by the end of the week.

LCR argues that state law requires an opportunity for public input before state agencies make changes to benefits programs, and that for the Emergency Assistance program in particular there is a specific requirement that the Legislature be given 90 days notice in advance of any changes. No such formal notice was given, LCR Attorney Jacob Love said.

The administration filed an emergency regulatory amendment just before the court hearing, which gives Augustus the ability to set a hard cap on the number of families that can be housed. 

Squires-Lee sought more information from Parr relative to the cost of continuing to accept every qualified family into shelter for the 90-day duration of giving notice to the Legislature, and additionally said she wanted to give LCR an opportunity to read through and respond to the administration’s new regulations. Lawyers will file additional affidavits over the next day, they said, before the judge makes her decision.

A bill filed by Rep. Steven Owens (H 3393) would launch a pilot program allowing up to 10 municipalities to install a limited number of cameras to monitor for certain traffic violations, such as failing to stop at a right light or blocking an intersection.

Cities and towns would need to present crash data at proposed locations and consider the social and racial equity impacts of the cameras before launching the system. The bill would also require pictures of the back of a car, not the front, which Owens said would prevent drivers from being racially profiled.

Owens, a Watertown Democrat, told his colleagues that “the time has really come for Massachusetts to join the 26 other states that allow some sort of automated traffic enforcement.”

“You guys know that the traffic is back post-pandemic. Drivers are as aggressive as ever. Lately, I talk to people, and when I asked them, ‘Do you think drivers have gotten worse since we’ve gotten back from the pandemic?’, everybody seems to agree,” Owens said at a Transportation Committee hearing.

Baker included a local-option red light camera system — with no cap on the number of participating communities — in a road safety bill he filed in April 2021. The bill itself died without a vote in the Transportation Committee, though some pieces such as a minimum passing distance between motorists and cyclists or pedestrians made it into a law Baker signed just before leaving office.

Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance, praised several components of Owens’s bill, including its maximum fine of $25 and language preventing fine revenue from being used to pay for operating the cameras, which she said could “create a cycle of revenue generation.”

She spoke on behalf of a coalition that also includes WalkMassachusetts, the Sierra Club, Safe Roads Alliance, Transportation for Massachusetts and the Boston Cyclists Union.

“Generally, we feel that the bill that you have before you is designed to ensure that this type of camera enforcement is first and foremost used as a tool to reduce dangerous driving behavior and has several good provisions to reduce any potential harms or abuses that we have seen in other communities that use cameras,” Thompson said.

New approaches could include: requiring that landlords inform potential renters of a property’s flooding history, piloting a program to insure low-income families, capturing federal money to retrofit buildings to reduce risk and re-imagining the Interstate 90 redevelopment through Allston/Brighton.

“The reality is that climate change is here now, we don’t have any doubt about that,” said Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who co-sponsored a public hearing Monday on stormwater management and flood hazard mitigation. “This is our new reality — increased frequency of intense rainstorms. In Allston/Brighton, heavy rainfall flooded Commonwealth Ave., it shut down the T and we had cases of below-grade apartments flooding.”

The state’s most recent Statewide Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan identified flooding from precipitation, coastal flooding and erosion due to sea level rise, and high heat as the most significant hazards to Massachusetts as state government prepares for extreme weather events that are becoming more common and more intense.

“This is the year that changed everything. We saw frosts, floods, extreme heat, and fires devastate our communities,” Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer said earlier this month. “These weather events are only expected to increase.”

Advocates who testified at the hearing Monday said Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps are out of date, and that inland and coastal neighborhoods were susceptible to out-of-control stormwater damaging infrastructure.

Emily Norton, president of the Charles River Watershed Association, said her organization has concerns over the project proposed to redevelop the Allston I-90 viaduct, one of the main arteries into Boston.

The city and the state have long aimed to replace the aging highway bridge with two ground-level highways, to align rail tracks and build an MBTA/commuter rail station that would serve as a transit gateway to metro west, and to add a pedestrian boardwalk at roughly the same elevation next to the Charles River.

It’s been over a decade since discussions on the project started, and estimates of a nearly $2 billion cost would rely in large part on federal funding.

Norton said her association hired Geosyntec consultants to look at several proposed models for the redevelopment, and found that the design to bring the highway down to ground-level, “as currently conceived, had the most risk of flooding, the most stormwater pollution and the least amount of park space.”

Reducing the number of lanes on the Mass. Pike would mitigate some of that flood risk, she said.

“We’ve been advocating, looking at reducing the number of lanes. And I’ve been called crazy for saying that — I don’t think it’s crazy. You could look at those zipper lanes or whatever they’re called, where on rush hour one way you have more lanes. Something to be creative, so that you’re not creating more of a flood risk for your residents. That is what we believe this project does,” Norton said.

During a 495/Metro West Partnership advocacy event earlier this year, Rep. Hannah Kane of Shrewsbury pointed to the idea of trimming a lane on the Pike as a potential issue. “The reality is we can’t go down from four to three lanes because of the volume of traffic,” she said in April.

Anne Herbst, an environmental planner who co-authored a report for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council on “the increasing threat of stormwater flooding in greater Boston,” told the committee that Massachusetts is one of only 15 states that has no state-level requirement to disclose flood history when selling property.

New York state passed a law in June requiring landlords to attach a flood history and risk notice in residential leases. Herbst encouraged city councilors to adopt a similar measure.

“This can be especially important for tenants in basement apartments, where flooding is more likely and flood insurance is not provided under the National Flood Insurance Program,” she said.

Councilor Kendra Lara, who chairs the Environmental Justice, Resiliency & Parks Committee that held Monday’s hearing, said she sees a quick route to require landlords to share flood information with renters.

“I’m also the chair of the Housing Committee here on the city council, and one of the things that we’re working on to finish before this year is over is a renters’ Bill of Rights,” Lara said. “This idea that would require landlords to reveal flooding history, I think that is really ripe to be included in a renters’ Bill of Rights.”

She said there was “an opportunity here to codify that immediately.”

Herbst also recommended that Boston look at a pilot project that New York City started to provide affordable flood insurance for low- and moderate-income residents.

“Many low-income residents are priced out of flood insurance for rents and in basement locations, flood insurance is not even available,” Herbst said.

New York began a 12-month trial period starting in February to give up to $15,000 in emergency grants for qualifying households following a major flood event. The parametric insurance is covered by Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, to fund the rapid cash payments to families.

“Flood insurance is really more targeted to a homeowner who needs to rebuild their home. But if you’re a renter who has flooded, you may have much more immediate needs that you can’t meet, in terms of medications, where are you going to stay tonight? How are you going to get to work if your car’s been flooded?” Herbst said.

Lara said she was “really interested” in exploring a parametric insurance program.

“We had a massive pipe rupture in my district on Heath Street last year that displaced half a dozen families, people who were renters. The city had to cover a lot of their hotel rooms for months. They didn’t have insurance, it wasn’t going to be covered,” Lara said.

Advocates also recommended Monday that councilors look to FEMA to help support mitigation projects.

A 2021 federal law provides funding for states to establish revolving loan funds matched by FEMA grants, specifically targeted towards underserved communities. Herbst said only seven states and Washington D.C. have taken advantage of the program so far, but that D.C. proved the federal emergency agency will consider local grants as well.

The FEMA grants have provided 75 percent of the cost to retrofit buildings in low-income communities, she said.

“I think that’s a really important strategy, and I think it’s realistic that there’s funding out there to do that,” Herbst said.

The city has already started taking action on one of the recommendations MAPC made in its spring report, moving towards imposing a stormwater fee for homeowners and using that fee to incentivize green infrastructure on private property.

“A dozen MAPC communities have adopted stormwater utilities that charge property owners a stormwater fee to support system improvements. MAPC should continue to support municipalities in adopting stormwater utilities and encourage fee structures and programs that provide financial incentives and support for property owners to reduce impervious surfaces and infiltrate stormwater on site,” the report says.

The city will begin hearings on the new stormwater fee in December, Boston Water and Sewer Chief Engineer John Sullivan said, with implementation planned for April.

At first, he said, the fee will be under $10 a month and property owners will get a reduction in their sewer fees.

“But as we go forward, we have to figure out how we can equitably apply that across all properties,” Sullivan said. “The good news is there’s an incentive credit system: if you build a rain garden … you can get up to a 30 percent discount on your fees.”

In a partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration plans to host the work authorization clinic for migrants during the week of Nov. 13. Federal officials will be onsite to collect and process work authorization paperwork.

The administration announced Monday morning that the state plans to organize appointments and provide transportation from shelter sites to the clinic, which will take place somewhere in Middlesex County.

“We are glad that the Biden-Harris Administration is hosting this clinic with us, which will help process work authorizations as efficiently as possible. Many shelter residents want to work but face significant barriers to getting their work authorizations,” Gov. Healey said in a statement. “This clinic will be critical for building on the work that our administration has already been leading to connect more migrants with work opportunities, which will help them support their families and move out of emergency shelter into more stable housing options.”

Paul Belham, owner of Bell’s Powder Coating in North Attleborough, recently told North TV that he is trying to hire as many of the migrants living in town as he can because finding labor is incredibly difficult.

“I want to put 10 more on, but we’re waiting for the government to get the working papers. And that is the slowest process I’ve ever seen,” he said earlier in October. “And not only that, with Washington not having a speaker, they can’t vote on a bill to expedite these things. So they’re going to be sitting in hotels forever until Congress or whatever you want to call it in D.C. gets off their ass and fixes it, you know? I can’t blame the state because the state really has nothing to do with it.”

The work authorization clinic is part of a multi-pronged initiative to move more families out of state shelters as the emergency assistance system nears the 7,500-family limit that Healey has set. After that point, which the governor said she expects to come around Nov. 1, unhoused families may not be guaranteed shelter in Massachusetts.

On Friday, Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of three families the organization said are “on the brink of homelessness.” The suit seeks an emergency court hearing and a temporary restraining order to stop the state from “undermining” its right-to-shelter law, the group said.

Healey declared a state of emergency around the emergency assistance shelter system situation in August and announced Oct. 16 that the state’s system was reaching capacity. Since August, the governor has been calling on the Biden administration to expedite the work authorization process for new arrivals to the country and to help states like Massachusetts pay for the additional costs of sheltering the influx of people fleeing other countries.

The Department of Homeland Security sent a team of experts to Massachusetts earlier in October to assess the migrant situation, but state officials including Healey have said they don’t expect the federal government will actually come to the rescue of Massachusetts.

“I know the cavalry isn’t on the other side of the hill,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said this month.

In a statement Monday morning, a White House official said the work authorization clinic in Massachusetts is a mark of “continued support” of Massachusetts.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting local jurisdictions hosting recently arrived migrants and we will continue working with our partners in Massachusetts in the coming weeks and months,” Biden spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said. “Just this month, President Biden submitted supplemental funding requests to Congress which address a series of national priorities, including grant funding for jurisdictions hosting migrants and funding for accelerating the processing of work permits for eligible migrants.”

The White House said that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services will put additional personnel to work and make process improvements as part of an effort to decrease the median processing time for work authorization paperwork from 90 days to 30 days for applicants who made an appointment on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app and are, unlike asylum seekers, eligible for to work immediately.

The feds said they will also strive to cut processing times for applications associated with Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan applicants to 30 days.

The White House added that it will stay in close contact with Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and their teams to coordinate on best practices and potentially more federal support in the coming weeks and months.

While the Inspectional Services Department notices went up, across town at Boston City Hall the city’s top cop warned that there would be an increased police presence in the area, which has become the center of the state’s opioid epidemic.

“Anyone who has any interest of coming into the area to do any type of criminality, I want to caution this, in a sense, that it’s been perceived that it’s been an area of permissiveness more recently,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a press conference. “We’re going to have a heavy police presence throughout the area. And you know, with an increased police presence, I can promise you there’ll probably be an increased enforcement presence in the area.”

The Boston City Council on Wednesday approved an ordinance that would allow police to remove tents and tarps throughout the city, with a specific focus on the intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue.

Mayor Michelle Wu proposed the directive in August, saying that the tents shelter illegal activity such as drug dealing and human trafficking, as public health concerns and violence grew in the area this summer.

The measure was approved 9-3, with Councilors Ricardo Arroyo, Frank Baker and Kendra Lara voting against it and Councilor Julia Mejia voting present.

The council made some amendments to the ordinance, eliminating a $25 fine for those who refuse to comply and requiring that the city offer transportation to shelters.

Wu said the new plan to address the area focuses on removing tents because a small number of the hundreds of people who gather around Mass. and Cass every day are actually using the makeshift structures as housing.

“We are seeing hundreds more people drawn to this area every day,” she said. “And based on continued outreach and continued conversations. We know that the majority of people on Atkinson Street on any given day do not live there and have housing. Some are seeking services, but many are there to buy and sell drugs. And many are taking advantage of our residents who are struggling with mental health, homelessness and substance use. As a result, we’ve seen an increase in violent incidents and trafficking, all of which are concealed and made more challenging to address by structures like tents and tarps.”

People struggling with addiction and experiencing homelessness began congregating at Mass. and Cass, which lies at the intersection of the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods, in the last decade partially because of addiction and housing services in the area.

There have been a handful of police sweeps to try to address the “tent city”, starting under former Mayor Marty Walsh and again in January 2022 under Wu.

Wu has stressed that this new strategy is not “trying to replicate” the “so-called ‘law enforcement sweeps’ in the past” that she said were not successful.

Over the past few months, city outreach teams and service providers have developed relationships with people living in the area to connect them with shelter or treatment options, she said. Based on individuals’ needs, those who are living on the street at Mass. and Cass will be provided transportation to low-threshold shelters, general shelters, treatment programs, or will be reunified with their families, the mayor’s office says.

Storage will be provided for people’s personal belongings and city staff will maintain a real-time inventory of available sleeping space.

Wu said the city has nearly 200 units of low-threshold housing — spaces that provide counseling and case management services for people with histories of substance use disorder or who are chronically homeless.

To date, she said, more than 170 people have transitioned through low threshold housing and are living on their own. More than 130 people are housed at such sites, where they receive medical treatment and job counseling as well as case management services.

As part of the city’s new approach, the Boston Public Health Commission will open 30 temporary transitional beds at their campus on Massachusetts Ave. These beds will be given to individuals who currently live in the Atkinson Street encampment and are actively engaged in services with the commission’s case management teams. The beds will only be available until individuals can be placed in an open low threshold spot or move on to permanent housing themselves.

Additionally, the city partnered with Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program to open a temporary site for clinical services on Albany St., according to the mayor’s office. 

“Our teams will only take action to remove a tent when individuals are offered shelter, transportation to shelter and the opportunity to store personal belongings,” Wu said. “We are building out our infrastructure citywide to be able to reach residents in need, not just in one part of the city near Mass. and Cass, throughout all of our neighborhoods, and the staffing will reflect that from our public health, public safety and outreach teams.”

She continued, “As we speak, written notices in 11 different languages are being distributed to people living in the Mass. and Cass area just to make sure that everyone understands fully what is happening and has clarity on the timelines and can make the best preparations.”

A manhunt is underway for 40-year-old Robert Card, the suspect in the killings Wednesday night at a restaurant and bowling alley.

“So many people right now are going to be in need of grief counselors, are going to be in need of mental health services,” Healey told reporters at the State House on Thursday morning. “And I know the people of Massachusetts will step forward and support the great people of Maine … in this time.”

The governor added, “We just need to step up and show our solidarity in terms of comfort, and in terms of support in this time, in the weeks and in the months ahead.”

Law enforcement is in communication with Maine officials and “will remain at the ready to engage and support Maine in all ways,” the governor said.

“I want to be really clear: At this time, there’s no connections we are aware of between the alleged shooter and Massachusetts,” she said. “Obviously if people see something, they should say something.”

The Massachusetts State Police concurred. “At this time we are aware of no confirmed nexus between CARD and Massachusetts,” the State Police said in a statement at around 12:40 p.m. Thursday. “We continue to monitor all available intelligence and will update our local law enforcement partners and the public of any developments that affect our state.”

A Massachusetts state trooper assigned to the bomb squad and his K9 partner have responded to the Lewiston, Maine, area in the officer’s capacity as an ATF task force officer, the State Police said.

Massachusetts State Police Colonel John Mawn has also been in contact with Maine counterparts about mutual aid, the State Police said, adding that “the full complement of Massachusetts State Police assets stand ready for deployment if requested, as necessitated by the evolving investigation and fugitive apprehension mission.”

The State Police said their fusion center was “gathering and processing a large amount of continually evolving information.”

As part of a “standard proactive deployment,” the State Police deployed several patrols to the Massachusetts-New Hampshire state line Wednesday night to be on the lookout for the suspect’s white Subaru.

“There was no intelligence that suggested the suspect had fled toward Massachusetts. The vehicle was later located abandoned in Maine,” the State Police said. 

Healey declined to comment on Maine’s gun safety laws and speculate on whether the tragedy could have been prevented.

“Today I am focused on extending support, in all ways, to the people of Maine — to the families affected by this devastating atrocity,” Healey told reporters. “I have ordered that flags be flown at half-mast here in Massachusetts in solidarity and mourning, and in memory of those lost by this terrible incident.” 

The U.S. and Massachusetts flags are being lowered to half-staff at all state buildings in Massachusetts beginning Thursday and through Monday, Oct. 30.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Healey said she spoke with Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Wednesday night to offer support.

Healey’s office also urged people in Massachusetts to “remain vigilant and call 911 to report suspicious activity. Anyone struggling with their mental health can call or text the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Help Line at 833-773-2445 or chat online at masshelpline.com for real-time clinical assessment. Anyone who is experiencing emotional distress or thoughts of suicide and needs someone to talk to can call 988 for free, confidential emotional support.”

READ: Latest coverage on shootings in Lewiston and the search for Robert Card

Students rallied in front of the student union at 2 p.m. before marching to the Whitmore building to meet with administrators to present their demands. They remained inside the building after hours, in spite of “multiple verbal warnings” that the building was closing at 6 p.m., the university said in a statement. UMass Police arrested 56 UMass Amherst students and one UMass Amherst employee, the university said.

“Our goal is to let the school know, let the administration know and let the chancellor know that we have a say in what our university is giving money to,” said Arsema Kifle, a founding member of the UMass Dissenters, a student group supporting demilitarization that helped to organize the protest. “If we were satisfied, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Protestors were responding to a statement Reyes made to the campus on Oct. 10 condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel.

“The attack on Israel by Hamas, with the kidnapping and murder of civilians — acts of terror which we vehemently condemn — and the escalation of the conflict to all-out war have led to untold suffering and tremendous loss of Israeli and Palestinian life,” Reyes wrote in the Oct. 10 statement.

The UMass Dissenters group demanded Reyes condemn the Israel Defense Forces’ retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, and acknowledge Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for decades.

“The protestors’ specific demands do not align with the university’s publicly stated positions and policies,” a university spokesperson wrote in a statement.

Dozens of students crowded outside of the building late into the evening while campus police officers arrested those who participated in the sit-in and escorted them into an awaiting van. Students led chants while they waited for officers to finish their arrests, shouting “1-2-3-4, we don’t want your dirty war” and calling out to nearby officers, “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”

Officers guided protestors in groups of five out of the building over the span of five hours, and protestors left with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. They were taken to the campus police station, where many waited in a holding cell until early Thursday morning. By 7 a.m., all students had been released, and many were scheduled for arraignment Thursday at Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown.

Protestors said they will return to the Whitmore Administration Building Thursday afternoon and plan to remain there until their demands are met.

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that the UMass Amherst protest was one of several held at public and private colleges in Massachusetts on Wednesday as part of nationwide walkouts and rallies to support Palestinians. The paper said similar demonstrations were also held at Harvard Divinity School, Smith College, University of Massachusetts Boston and Tufts University.

Gov. Maura Healey, Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano were in agreement after a private sit-down that the state’s shelter system is being pushed to its limit by a steady influx of immigrant families arriving from other countries and that something needs to be done. But firm answers about what will happen to families in need of shelter and whether Massachusetts will be violating its right-to-shelter law if it turns a family away were elusive.

“Well, I know that we’re looking with it. We had some discussions about it. The concern is that the space is at a premium, there just seems to be no more space and I believe that options are being looked at right now. So we’ll be continuing discussing this and working with the administration,” Spilka said.

Asked about “legislative options,” the president said, “We’re open to possibilities. We haven’t fully discussed that though.”

Spilka said Beacon Hill leaders at their Monday afternoon meeting discussed the question of what will happen to the first family that Massachusetts turns away. But, she said, “There’s still, details are being worked out.”

Mariano said his impression “is we have to do something” and said he is “willing to listen to any potential solution that may bring this influx of folks under control.”

Healey’s office said it will provide more details before Nov. 1 about what will happen to families turned away from shelter. But initially, it said, families will be assessed for emergency assistance eligibility and will receive a health and personal safety screening. If there is no capacity that night in the state shelter system, the Healey administration said families “will be placed on a waitlist maintained by our administration and will be provided information about shelter alternatives and community resources.”

Neither Spilka nor Mariano said whether they believe it is legal for Massachusetts, which is the only state in the nation with a statutory obligation to provide shelter to unhoused families and pregnant women, to turn people away from the emergency shelter system as Healey last week announced the state will do as soon as the end of the month.

Last week, Healey said about half of the more than 23,000 individuals in the state’s shelter system are new immigrants. She added that children make up about half of the state shelter population, which included about 7,000 families. She said the state will only be able to support 7,500 families and that she expects “to hit that limit at the end of the month.”

“The fact of the matter is we have reached our limit with capacity — the physical infrastructure, places to house people. We’ve reached our limit with personnel — the number of service providers,” Healey said Monday. She added, “So we’ve reached capacity when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to personnel, and when it comes to funding — you’re all well aware of the amount of money that has been expended to care for new arrivals. While we put forward more additional money through a supplemental budget proposal, that’ll be the subject of discussion. But I think the important point here is that Massachusetts has done its job and so many have come together to make that possible.”

Healey requested $250 million in a supplemental budget bill to help manage the shelter system crisis in mid-September. Mariano has repeatedly said the House wants more information about the actual costs of sheltering migrant families before it can act on the governor’s request. The state is still spending about $45 million per month to shelter immigrants, the governor said Monday.

Asked whether the migrant money is holding up that supplemental budget — it is the fiscal year 2023 closeout budget, which previous state comptrollers have insisted should be done in September to allow them to meet an Oct. 31 deadline to file a key annual financial report — Mariano said the House has “a couple of options around the migrant money.”

“We can separate it out and still do a supp on the close-out,” he said. “It’s in the process of negotiations, but it’s not holding up the supp.”

Mariano clarified that House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues have been negotiating the terms of a final supplemental budget before either branch has considered it. Generally, the House and Senate each pass their own versions of a bill and iron out the differences after the fact.

The speaker said the branches are taking the pre-conference route “because it’d be far more efficient to do that and we would be able to take care of some items that need to be taken care of immediately.”

Mariano said the House does not have a timeline for its consideration of the supplemental budget.

Campbell charged that Meta has broken Massachusetts law “by purposefully designing their applications to addict young users, and actively and repeatedly deceiving the public about the danger posed to young people by overuse of their products.” The suit against Meta and Instagram is to be filed in Suffolk Superior Court. Campbell’s office said the misconduct alleged in the suit “affects hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who actively use Instagram.”

“Meta has preyed on an entire generation of young people for profit. On its Instagram platform, Meta secretly deployed design features and mechanisms that deliberately exploited young peoples’ still-developing brains and adolescent vulnerabilities. They did so in order to override the young person’s ability to self-regulate their use,” Campbell said. She added, “The company knew exactly how these design decisions could and would hook young people to the point of addiction and yet continue to use them, and in many cases, rejected using feasible alternatives that they knew would mitigate harm to our young people. And they did all of this with profit in mind, not people, not young users.”

Campbell specifically called out as problematic Instagram features like “the infinite scroll,” near-constant notifications and alerts, autoplay for stories and reels, features she said are designed to create a sense of a fear of missing out, and a slot machine-type tactic called intermittent variable rewards.

Much of the complaint Campbell is filing in Massachusetts court “relies on material that currently is subject to impoundment in the Superior Court,” her office said. But it said that internal documents, including a trove released by a former employee, “reveal that Meta purposely made its platforms addictive to children and teens knowing that children and teens were being harmed in the process.”

The complaint alleges that young people in Massachusetts are “induced into using Instagram for multiple hours a day (and in lieu of other activities like homework or sleeping)” and in an addictive manner that they might not be able to self-regulate. It also claims that Meta’s conduct “has placed an undue burden on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including burdens to school systems and increased heath care expenditures, to address the mental and physical health harms that Meta has contributed to in Massachusetts youth.”

“Research demonstrates that, for adolescents, after one hour of social media use per day, mental health steeply declines: decreases in happiness and self-esteem occur alongside increases of self-harm, depression, and behavioral challenges,” the attorney general’s office said. “Research also shows that habitually checking social media can alter the brain chemistry of adolescents, changing the brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishments, with implications for long-term psychological adjustment.”

In response to the lawsuit filed by Campbell as well as the federal suit filed in California, Meta pointed to actions it has taken to address concerns over its platforms’ effects on young people. It highlighted how it makes Instagram accounts created by anyone under 16 private by default, tools that remind teenage users to take a break from social media, parental controls, technology meant to help prevent suspicious adults from engaging with teens, and a ban on content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.

“We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is spearheading the federal lawsuit that Massachusetts and 32 other states have signed onto, said that he always meets with a company he might sue “to see whether or not there can be a amicable settlement.” In the case of Meta, he said Tuesday on a Zoom press conference with other attorneys general, “that was not something that was able to happen, so we are filing this lawsuit seeking remedies.”

Two years ago, then-Attorney General Maura Healey announced that she was co-leading a nationwide investigation into Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, for providing and promoting Instagram “to children and young adults despite knowing that such use is associated with physical and mental health harms.” The attorneys general said they were investigating whether the company violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.

The investigation was to especially zoom in on “the techniques utilized by Meta to increase the frequency and duration of engagement by young users and the resulting harms caused by such extended engagement.”

Days after he revealed that most of the nearly brand-new rails on the extension need to be widened, Eng told agency overseers the contractors responsible for the project have proposed tackling the problems in 10 to 14 nights of work starting around Nov. 1.

Green Line Extension Constructors, the joint venture that built the 4.4-mile expansion, suggested shutting down service on the rails from 9 p.m. each night until 5 a.m. the following morning during that span, Eng said. Regular service would resume each day following the overnight work.

Eng said his team is still reviewing the proposal and has not yet committed to it.

“This is not going to be something that continues on for months and months, or even longer. It is something that can be addressed in a matter of weeks,” Eng told the MBTA’s Board of Directors.

An MBTA spokesperson said there’s no estimate available yet for how much the repair work will cost. Both Eng and Gov. Maura Healey signaled last week they want the contractors to foot the bill.

The work would involve removing bolts that hold down one side of the rail, filling those holes with a substance like epoxy, measuring and drilling new holes about a quarter-inch away from the initial hole, and then resecuring the rails, ties and tie plates at a proper width.

Some board members voiced concerns that redrilling holes into the wooden ties that run perpendicular to the rails or into the ground itself could trigger other infrastructure issues.

“We have got to get this fixed, right? Like, there’s no room for error here,” said Mary Skelton Roberts, the city of Boston’s designee on the board. “So are we sure that with the adjustment, this is not going to create an unstable track or create a bigger problem down the road?”

Eng said the proposed regauging is “typical industry practice.” Asked if the process might shorten the lifespan of the ties, Eng replied, “We are reviewing that.”

“If this is the proposal that we accept, that will be part of the decision and review of how we ensure that the public investment is properly protected,” he said.

Issues with the Green Line Extension infrastructure suddenly upended travel last month. The MBTA slashed travel speeds on about a mile of the system to 3 mph, warning the rails were too close together — less than 56 and one-eighth inches apart, the threshold below which slow zones are necessary — to support normal operations.

Crews widened the rails in those affected areas, and Eng announced last week that after a deeper review of the project’s history, his team now believes rails are too close together on about 50 percent of the Union Square branch and 80 percent of the Medford/Tufts branch.

Those rails are more than 56 and one-eighth inches apart, so not quite narrow enough to warrant speed restrictions, but they are still tighter than the project standard of 56 and a half inches, Eng said.

The construction standard gave a tiny bit of wiggle room, allowing the rails to be one-sixteenth of an inch wider or narrower than the target, which Eng said is a “very tight tolerance.”

“A lot of times, you’ll see in these types of contracts plus or minus an eighth [of an inch],” Eng told the board. “But this was one plus or minus one-sixteenth.”

“Which is nothing, right?” asked board member Bob Butler.

“If you were to take a credit card and look at a credit card, it’s probably a good visual,” Eng replied. “It shows you how minute the tolerance is.”

Although Eng said he only learned of the Green Line Extension problems “recently,” he said some MBTA officials knew before either branch opened to riders that some of the pre-built materials delivered to the agency for installation would be too narrow.

An inspection report dated April 2021 warned that rail ties and pre-installed tie plates had too tight a gauge. Eng said Tuesday that MBTA officials at the time addressed “those localized situations,” but did not broaden their scope to look for similar issues elsewhere.

“That’s where I believe that the prior management should have reviewed, [done a] deeper dive — do we have a bigger issue than just at one location? Is this something that we have with delivery, is this something that we have with installation?” Eng said. “It should have really been at that point where we paused, took a look to see if we need to reject the ties.”

Without mentioning former Gov. Charlie Baker by name, both Healey and Eng have pointed the finger at his administration. Jim Conroy, a spokesperson for Baker, told WCVB last week that the Republican governor’s office “was never informed of the gauging issues with GLX.

“The Green Line Extension project was on track to never get built when the Baker-Polito Administration first took office and while these setbacks are massively inconvenient for riders, the project itself will deliver enormous benefits for the greater Boston area for decades to come,” Conroy told WCVB.

TTwo MBTA employees who had senior roles on the Green Line Extension project departed the agency last week, according to a T spokesman, who declined to name the individuals.

Eng said Tuesday he made “organizational changes” to the Green Line Extension’s hierarchy because he “did not believe that the prior team and some of the folks that were still on that team took the appropriate action at the appropriate time.”

He tapped Maureen McDonough, the T’s chief of capital program support, to take over as acting Green Line Extension program manager. Eng said McDonough has experience managing “large-scale projects” and a background in construction, adding that she would help not only fix the Green Line Extension’s tracks but identify “how we can improve our processes moving forward.”

“We have many projects, and we have to deliver these projects in a different manner,” Eng said. “Projects always have issues that arise. It’s a matter of tackling them when you identify them, and tackling them in a timely manner so we don’t end up having to do this after service is running and after the public is already enjoying that service.”

Members of GLX Constructors include Fluor Enterprises Inc., The Middlesex Corp., Herzog Contracting Corp. and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc.

News came last week that more than half of the track on the T’s new 4.4-mile Green Line Extension into Somerville and Medford is too narrow, and will need to be “regauged” to increase space between the two rails.

Healey’s appointed MBTA general manager, Phil Eng, said he only was informed of the problem “recently,” though senior officials under former Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration may have known about the problems as early as 2021.

“What’s important is that it was not disclosed, and it was really not addressed,” Healey said to reporters Monday when asked if her administration has any answers as to why the problem was not disclosed. “That is something we’ve been really clear about. Under the prior administration, senior management at the T, for whatever poor judgment, made the decision not to disclose identified failures, and then made the poor decision not to address those failures prior to the opening of the Green Line Extension.”

The Union Square branch, which was opened in spring of 2022, needs to have about 50 percent of its track regauged; and the nascent Medford/Tufts branch, which opened in December last year, needs repairs on about 80 percent of its track.

Healey said Monday that Eng informed her of the issue “as soon as … [he] discovered those deficiencies.”

“We’ve been transparent with the public about not only the disclosures and the failure to disclose, but also the fixes, and I’m confident that General Manager Eng — as he has at every turn so far in his tenure — will make sure that those issues are addressed and remedied. That work is underway,” Healey said.

The Boston Globe reported that two people with senior roles on the extension project were no longer employed at the T as of Thursday.

Asked by a reporter if there is anything else her administration did not know about from the prior administration or if the T was trying to find out if there was anything else not disclosed, Healey took the opportunity to tout some of the progress she says has been made at the T during her time in office. She mentioned the creation of new positions such as chief safety officer and an officer in charge of station conditions, as well as the hiring of about 1,000 employees.

The Mass. Taxpayers Foundation estimated in April that the T needed to hire 2,800 workers by April 2024 in order to maintain system operations, and Eng predicted in August that the T is on track to hire about 1,300 new employees by the end of the year.

“It’s hard to speak to what you don’t know about,” Healey responded to the reporter. “I will say this, that every effort has been made to make sure that with this administration, we have a team in place that understands its responsibility, and takes that responsibility seriously.”

Gov. Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell issued joint guidance Monday for colleges admitting new students, calling on campuses to comply with the court’s ruling while still advancing diversity efforts.

The guidelines say institutions can “look beyond traditional measures such as grades” to a more “holistic view” of a person, which could include race.

Asked by the News Service what this looks like in practice, Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said many colleges and universities have added a question to their application where a student can discuss how their race impacted their life.

“A student can talk about any sort of circumstances in their life, including race, that have helped shape who they are. It might be related to an incident, it might be related to an ‘aha!’ moment in their lives. Students are allowed to talk about that in or rather, colleges are allowed to ask questions about that of students. And then students are free to go the distance in talking about whatever aspect they would like to, including race,” Tutwiler said.

Still, the administration’s guidance warns, “Institutions may continue to collect data based on race and ethnicity, and other aspects of identity, but institutions may not provide an advantage to an individual applicant solely and specifically on the basis of the data collected about their race.”

“It is simply wrong to suggest that every student in Massachusetts or in this country begins from the same baseline. They don’t, that’s a fact,” Healey said at an event at UMass Boston on Monday. “It is also wrong to assume America provides a level playing field for all students. It doesn’t; we don’t; we never have. It’s also wrong to believe that colleges and universities don’t need to be intentional about how we increase diversity, equity and access.”

The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs this week declined to approve the project’s environmental impact report. Instead, the state ordered the casino company to submit an updated version that includes “a comprehensive response” to public comments that EEA said “raise serious concerns about the level of parking proposed by the project, question the methodology used to estimate parking needs for the project change, and request further analysis and consultation to ensure that mitigation commitments are commensurate with the increase in impacts proposed.”

Encore parent company Wynn Resorts is seeking to construct a new development across Broadway from its resort casino to host a dedicated poker room, a second sports betting parlor, a relocated nightclub, a theater, a comedy club, parking garage and more. That initial phase of a larger redevelopment plan would be connected by a pedestrian bridge to the $2.6 billion casino that opened in 2019.

Joe Delaney, the Gaming Commission’s chief of community affairs, told gaming regulators Thursday that the proposal won the approval of the Everett Planning Board last week, but that others in state and local government “have been pushing back a little bit on the amount of parking that’s being provided” and that Encore will need to submit more information before a key state environmental approval could be granted.

“The key issues, as you might imagine, revolve around traffic. So it’s really parking and traffic,” Delaney said. He added, “You know, they like to see parking limited somewhat so that people use public transportation. So that’s an issue that still remains, and there are some other issues around the general traffic mitigation.”

On Monday, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper determined that the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) that Encore submitted for the expansion “does not adequately and properly comply with [the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Act] and its implementing regulations, and therefore requires the filing of a Supplemental FEIR” that addresses specific concerns.

Tepper wrote that the proposed expansion “will add significant new traffic to the area and proposes to increase the number of parking spaces (all free of charge) to almost double the level proposed for the original project” and said its approval “could set precedents for future development in the surrounding areas, which the City of Everett has proposed to develop as a ‘destination district.'”

Encore already has a parking garage with 2,914 on-site spaces and also has another 800 parking spaces available off-site, according to the Gaming Commission.

The first phase of Encore’s planned expansion includes the construction of a seven-story parking garage with 2,137 spaces — of which 450 spaces will replace the parking lot that is on that land already and 1,687 spaces will be new. Future phases of the casino company’s plans call for two more parking garages, according to Tepper’s decision letter.

The secretary also points out that only 1,445 of the 2,137 parking spaces to be constructed in the first garage are actually needed to accommodate the first phase of Encore’s expansion and that the first garage “is proposed to partially meet parking needs in future phases” of construction.

“While I acknowledge that a gaming establishment could be viewed to be unique, construction of a 2,137-space parking garage offered free of charge (with the exception of special events, discussed below) appears unprecedented for developments of similar size proposed in dense urban areas like Everett and surrounding municipalities,” Tepper wrote. “Consistent with comments from the City of Somerville and City of Boston, the Supplemental FEIR should provide further justification for the parking needs.”

In a letter to Tepper commenting on the environmental impact report for the Encore expansion, Boston city officials said the Everett development proposal includes some measures that contribute to solutions for the “regional transportation challenges that converge in this area” like expanding transit service for employees and customers, but that other aspects of the plan “run counter to not only those same mitigation measures, but also economic development and climate priorities that hinge on reducing travel by personal vehicles.”

Boston and Somerville both argued that Encore’s plan includes too much parking and took issue with the way that the plan calculated what it considered necessary. Somerville specifically asked for a maximum of 1,928 parking spaces and said Encore’s plan “uses illegitimate methods to calculate its proposed parking supply, inventing inflation factors such as ‘operational capacity factor’ and ‘parking inefficiencies factor’ to justify the addition of 517 parking spaces.”

About 92 percent of Encore patrons arrived at the casino site by either their personal vehicle (57 percent) or a taxi/ride-hailing (35 percent) service in 2021, according to a chart included in Tepper’s letter. The new plan aims to reduce that percentage to about 77 percent — 45 percent for personal vehicles and 32 percent for taxis/ride-share.

“In the face of a duel [sic] climate and congestion crisis, it is unconscionable for a development of this magnitude to move forward with the expectation that such a vast majority of trips will be made by vehicle,” Metropolitan Area Planning Council Executive Director Marc Draisen wrote. He added, “In its current form, this very substantial project is likely to have very damaging impacts on our climate and our environment and will negatively impact our emission reduction goals, primarily due to the proposed number of (mostly free) parking spaces.”

In its comments to Tepper, the Mass. Department of Transportation commended Encore for reducing the number of parking spaces it is seeking by 452 spaces since an earlier version of its plan. MassDOT said that it would “continue to encourage the Proponent to reduce parking to encourage mode shift,” but also acknowledged that a shortage of parking could lead to other problems in the congested area.

“We understand that it is also important to right-size the amount of parking spaces and ensure any shortage of parking does not result in an increase of rideshare trips, which could then exacerbate traffic operations at the Project’s site drive on Broadway and spillback to nearby intersections,” the agency wrote.

The Gaming Commission has already removed some hurdles from Encore’s path to expansion, but Delaney said Thursday that the commission will still need to “amend the gaming license and then the operations certificate, and amend the section 61 findings.” Section 61 relates to potential damage to the environment from a project and the steps taken to avoid or minimize the damage.

Commissioner Brad Hill asked Thursday if there was any opportunity for the Gaming Commission to be involved in the transportation planning aspect of the review.

“What I’ve seen over the last couple of years since COVID — locally in the city and other places across the nation — is these good plans that want to push people to public transportation are good in thought. But once the plans are laid out, they don’t always get the results that they wanted because people don’t trust public transportation,” Hill said. “So when I see that people are trying to be pushed to public transportation and I see people not using public transportation, a red flag goes up in regards to a plan that people think might work, but then ultimately don’t. And then we come back and we get criticized because the traffic is so bad, in this case around the casino.”

MBTA General Manager Phil Eng, who was hired in April by Gov. Maura Healey, announced that an ongoing review determined roughly 50 percent of the Union Square branch and 80 percent of the Medford/Tufts branch will need to be “regauged” to increase the space between the two rails.

Eng said he learned the extent of the problems “recently,” but that other officials at the MBTA were or could have been aware about narrow tracks in 2021, or as early as 11 months before the first portion of the expansion opened to riders.

The problems appear linked to metal plates that connect the rails to the wooden ties that run perpendicular. Those plates — which were pre-installed off site before the rails were delivered to the MBTA — are too close together in many areas, Eng said.

In April 2021, the MBTA received an inspection report from a firm named Terracon warning that tracks in a railyard set to be used for the extension were too narrow, Eng said. It appears that MBTA officials at the time did not view that report as a red flag and did not respond by taking a closer look at the space between rails on actual construction sites.

More than a year later in November 2022 — when the Union Square branch had already opened and the larger Medford branch was about to open — a scan found 29 locations where rails were so narrow that trains would not be able to safely run at full speeds, plus a “significant portion” of tracks where the gauge was tighter than construction standards but not bad enough to warrant slow zones. The T fixed those 29 defects at the time, Eng said.

“There was tight gauge in this yard facility. That was back in April of 2021, We also had other reports in November of ’22 that indicated the widespread need to address more than just these isolated conditions,” Eng said. “Back in April of 2021, it’s my belief that it could have been, it should have been more proactively investigated prior to opening, prior to installing what we’ve done.”

It’s not clear why MBTA officials did not address the issue earlier. Steve Poftak served as MBTA general manager from January 2019 until January 2023, and Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration oversaw the T. 

“Once you identify a problem, it should be brought to everyone’s attention, even if you have a solution. It’s good to know because the sooner you know, the more chance you have to address it before it becomes a much more challenging thing. To fix it as part of the punch list, per se, is more challenging because of the impact to the public,” Eng said. “If you knew in April 2021 you could have proactively avoided this, I think that it’s in everyone’s best interest that is done because you don’t want to install something and only later have to fix it.”

Eng said GLX Constructors, the joint venture of contractors that built the rail expansion, was tasked with presenting a proposal to address the track problems.

He did not say how much the additional work to widen tracks up to construction standards would cost, nor make exact what kind of impact it would have on riders.

“It’s not going to be years, it’s not going to be months. The proposal that we have is weeks, and it’s something that we’re still reviewing,” he said. “Whether it’s this type of repair or others, how do we do it and minimize the impacts to our riders? Whether it’s overnights, whether it’s early access [closures], weekends, we understand the importance of this system, including the extension, to riders and we will make sure that when we have a proposal, we’re talking publicly about this as well.”

Eng suggested GLX Constructors should foot the bill for any additional work, not the T.  A spokesperson said the agency will convene discussions with the builders as part of closing out the contract.

“This is not something that the public should be paying for, not going to pay for,” Eng said.

“The fix is not that difficult. I have faith that they can accomplish that,” he added about GLX Constructors.

Members of the GLX Constructors joint venture include Fluor Enterprises Inc., The Middlesex Corp., Herzog Contracting Corp. and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Inc., according to a report about the project from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Eng on Thursday also appointed Maureen McDonough, the MBTA’s chief of capital program support, as acting Green Line Extension Program Manager.

No other senior MBTA or administration officials spoke alongside Eng at a Thursday press conference. Neither Healey nor Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt attended the event.

“I share the public’s frustration and disappointment at the revelation that senior MBTA officials under the previous administration knew about issues with the Green Line Extension tracks years ago and did not disclose them to our administration or address them on their watch,” Healey said in a statement. “The people of Massachusetts deserve better. I applaud GM Eng for uncovering this and taking swift action to hold people accountable and demand a work plan from the contractor to fix the narrow gauges on their own dime. The MBTA is committed to fixing this and delivering the service that riders deserve.”

The problems exploded into public view last month, when the MBTA slashed speeds on about a combined mile of the Green Line Extension to 3 mph because the tracks were too narrow to safely support any faster travel.

Workers repaired those stretches in recent weeks, allowing the T to resume standard speeds across the Green Line Extension.

The project’s construction standards require a width between the rails of between 56 and seven-sixteenth inches and 56 and nine-sixteenth inches, Eng said Thursday. The threshold for slow zones is lower: anything below 56 and one-eighth inches is so narrow that it’s unsafe to run trains at full speed.

Officials said Thursday that although the entire Green Line Extension is above that 56 and one-eighth figure — and therefore able to travel safely at normal speeds — about a half-mile of track on the Union Square branch and 2.7 miles on the Medford branch have rail gauges narrower than 56 and seven-sixteenth inches, falling short of construction standards.

The $2.3 billion Green Line Extension opened in two phases last year to great fanfare and praise for project manager John Dalton. Gov. Charlie Baker claimed it as a victory after the project appeared on the brink of collapse years earlier.

Asked if his predecessors kept the problems quiet for political reasons, Eng replied, “I don’t have any indication of that. All I know is that I believe the team could have been more proactive.”

The Bay State was ahead of the pack in terms of population growth from 2010 to 2020, surpassing the national median. It was also the fastest-growing state that decade among its contiguous neighbors, according to U.S. Census data presented at a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation forum.

That flipped in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, triggering a surge of what Pew Trusts analyst Joanna Biernacka-Lievestro called “scary headlines.”

“Is it true that basically everyone in Massachusetts is just packing up and heading to sunny Florida? Well, not quite, but there is something to it,” Biernacka-Lievestro said.

Eighteen states experienced population declines between July 2021 and July 2022, she said. In 12 of those, including Massachusetts, the drop was driven by outmigration, meaning enough people moved away to outpace population growth from new arrivals and births.

More people came to Massachusetts than left it each year from 2008 to 2018, according to data Biernacka-Lievestro presented, and since then, the trend has accelerated in the opposite direction.

The emerging dynamic has become a key point in debate about a range of public policy topics, including housing costs, transportation systems, the state’s tax code and access to child care.

Tricia Canavan, CEO of the Springfield-based Tech Foundry, said the problem is “even more urgent” in western Massachusetts, which continues to lose younger Bay Staters early in their careers to other states.

“What does this mean in 20 years for the state?” Canavan said, warning that Massachusetts might struggle to stay “competitive” if its workforce continues to shrink.

Beacon Hill aimed to stem the tide by enacting a roughly $1 billion tax relief package that supporters say will make Massachusetts more affordable and competitive. Gov. Maura Healey also filed a policy-heavy housing bond bill this week that she pitched as a way to boost much-needed production and help Bay Staters find affordable homes.

Luc Schuster, the executive director of the Boston Indicators research center, said the data “just jumps off the page how much housing has to be a central driver of the domestic outmigration we’re seeing.”

“It’s a weird dynamic because we’re starting to see an acceleration of people moving out of Greater Boston, so in a sense, that’s demand going down, but it’s as housing costs continue to rise dramatically,” he said. “To me, there’s just a lot going on here, but I can’t help but think about how much more prosperous we could be if we fixed our housing problem.”

Schuster previewed findings from the “2023 Housing Report Card” his group plans to release next month, which indicated similar population losses specifically within the greater Boston region.

“The net domestic outmigration [from greater Boston] has been negative for almost a decade now, and it’s accelerated in the last two years, so that’s really disturbing,” he said.

Research from Boston Indicators found that the flow is not limited to one subset of the population ladder, either: low-, middle- and high-income residents are each leaving the area at an accelerating rate, Schuster said.

MTF President Doug Howgate, whose group was among the many voices calling for business-friendly tax relief measures to make the state a more attractive hub, warned of a potent “one-two” punch.

“It’s concerning when you see that increased decline in higher-income folks, because that is a key part of our economy — how do we make sure that we are competitive for those folks to stay here?” he said. “And at the same time, what you absolutely don’t want is higher-income folks leaving because they don’t want to be here, and lower-income folks can’t afford to be here, either.”

A new income surtax devised and advanced by Democrats and approved by voters is newly pulling more than $1 billion a year from the state’s highest income households.  Supporters say the money will help make needed investments in transportation and education while opponents of the tax have warned it may drive some people and their wealth out of Massachusetts to states with lower taxes.  

The Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners joint venture announced Wednesday that the installation of the first of 62 turbine generators that will make up the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project has been completed about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, but project officials also backed off of a prior pledge that the project’s first power would begin flowing onto the grid this month.

The completed turbine setup includes the tower, three blades, and one nacelle, the housing that contains a GE Haliade-X turbine. Fully assembled, it is “the largest turbine in the western world, with a nameplate capacity of 13 Megawatts, capable of providing power to more than 6,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts,” the company’s said.

“This is a monumental achievement and a proud day for offshore wind in the United States that proves this industry is real and demonstrates Avangrid’s steadfast commitment to helping the Northeast region meet its clean energy and climate goals,” Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said. “While this is a landmark for this first-in-the-nation project and the industry, we remain focused on the important work ahead to continue the successful installation campaign of these massive turbines and deliver the first power to Massachusetts homes and businesses this year.”

In the joint announcement of the first turbine being completed, the only reference to power beginning to flow from Vineyard Wind 1 was Azagra’s mention of “this year,” a less specific timeframe than was offered by a top project official in August. An Avangrid spokesperson reiterated Wednesday that the project’s first power is expected “this year.”

Sy Oytan, Avangrid’s chief operating officer for offshore wind, said during a tour of the project’s construction that Vineyard Wind 1 would send its first power, generated by a string of six turbines for a total of about 78 MW, onto the grid by mid-October with plans to ramp the project up to between 200 and 300 MW by the end of the year and full commercial operations of 806 MW expected by mid-2024.

Once it is fully operational, Vineyard Wind 1 is projected to generate cleaner electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts, produce at least 3,600 jobs, reduce costs for Massachusetts ratepayers by an estimated $1.4 billion over 20 years, and eliminate 1.68 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Vineyard Wind 1 is the only project Massachusetts has in its offshore wind pipeline, despite making significant moves to procure the cleaner energy generation since 2016. State officials have approved projects totaling 3,200 MW of capacity (Vineyard Wind is 800 MW of that), but developers behind subsequent wind farms said that shifting economic conditions made their projects no longer financially viable at the prices they previously negotiated and have secured state approval to terminate the contracts they signed.

The House voted 120-38 on wide-ranging legislation (H 4135) that prohibits firearms in some public spaces, expands the state’s “red flag” law, seeks to crack down on the spread of ghost guns with new registration requirements, updates the statewide ban on assault weapons, and streamlines the licensing process.

A dozen Democrats joined the full Republican caucus in opposition: Reps. Shirley Arriaga of Chicopee, Brian Ashe of Longmeadow, Colleen Garry of Dracut, Patricia Haddad of Somerset, Kathleen LaNatra of Kingston, Christopher Markey of Dartmouth, Rady Mom of Lowell, David Robertson of Tewksbury, Aaron Saunders of Belchertown, Alan Silvia of Fall River, Jeffrey Turco of Winthrop and Jonathan Zlotnik of Gardner. Independent Rep. Susannah Whipps of Athol also voted against the bill.

Representatives made a handful of changes to the more than 120-page legislation over the course of four-plus hours of debate, which alternated between impassioned calls for action to save lives and dire warnings that the measure would infringe on constitutional rights.

They unanimously agreed to an amendment making clear that the bill does not ban off-duty police officers from carrying firearms in certain restricted spaces, so long as the weapon is provided by their department. The legislation originally allowed only active, on-duty police to wield guns in those locations.

Rep. Mark Cusack of Braintree, the Democrat who filed the amendment, said it was meant “to clarify that off-duty active law enforcement officers would be allowed to carry their department-issued firearms in the following places … first, a place owned, leased or under the control of state, county or municipal government and used for the purpose of government administration, a location in use at the time of possession as a polling place and for the storage or tabulation of ballots, and third in elementary schools, secondary schools, college or university, including transport used for the students.”

House Democrats shot down without any debate an amendment from Republican Rep. Michael Soter of Bellingham that would have dramatically stripped down the bill to just a few main provisions, such as prohibiting someone who is intoxicated from carrying a firearm, restricting modifications that enable automatic fire, limiting untraceable firearms, and collecting more data about guns in Massachusetts.

Rep. Michael Day, the Stoneham Democrat who authored the landmark bill and a predecessor version, introduced the measure by rattling off a long list of past gun restrictions policymakers approved dating back to 1632, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony “prohibited individuals from carrying loaded firearms without proper authorization.”

Massachusetts has the lowest rate of firearms fatalities in the contiguous United States, but reform supporters argued Wednesday that the problem of gun violence is still potent enough to warrant additional action, particularly amid the increasing presence of untraceable “ghost guns.”

Since July 1, Day said, the state has experienced 90 shootings that killed 40 Bay Staters and injured 86 others.

“We are in the midst of a public health crisis and it is unrelenting,” he said. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough. As Abigail Adams said, we have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them. It’s time for the House to once again act in this area and ask for your support on this bill.”

House Democrats first unveiled a sweeping gun reform bill in the summer with plans to seek a vote by the end of July, but after facing pushback from opponents and questions from representatives, Speaker Ron Mariano punted the deliberations into the fall.

Mariano and his deputies resurfaced an updated version of the bill 13 days ago and brought it forward following a public hearing at the State House.

Senate Democrats have said they also want to ship a gun reform bill to the desk of Gov. Maura Healey this session. They are crafting their own measure behind closed doors and did not participate in development of the version the House approved Wednesday.

Rep. Peter Durant, a Spencer Republican who will face off against Zlotnik in a Nov. 7 special election for an open Senate seat, said he sees only “one goal” in the legislation.

“When the listening tours were going on, when we were having the informational sessions, when this bill was being written, we were all told that the legal gun owner is not the not the target here. We’re not going after them,” Durant said. “But it certainly seems to be that that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Republican Rep. David Muradian of Grafton said he understood the need for action last year to bring Massachusetts into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which struck down a concealed-carry law in New York, as well as the value of reining in ghost guns.

“Heck, if we wanted to have an honest and well-intentioned conversation around having to qualify to receive your [license to carry] or your [federal identification], I would have been open to that dialogue. Unfortunately, this legislation is an egregious infringement on all lawful gun owners, and frankly, all residents of the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Muradian said. “I have had interactions with hundreds if not thousands of constituents within my district on this matter. The resounding question remains: what is the new proposal trying to solve?”

“We’ve heard the data since July 1, but we didn’t hear how many incidents were by someone who is lawfully owning that gun and someone who is illegally possessing that gun,” he added. “That’s because the data doesn’t fit the narrative.”

Some Democrats voiced confidence not just in the necessity of the legislation, but in its constitutionality, too.

“I can assure you that every single line of this bill is in accordance with the Bruen decision, is in accordance with the Heller decision, and don’t think for a moment that this bill goes too far,” said Rep. David Linsky of Natick.

At one point, Day said some bill opponents have responded to the measure with racist “dog whistles” claiming that shootings only take place in “certain neighborhoods committed by the criminal element.”

“One caller among many callers to my office said, ‘Now, I’m not a racist, but these guns aren’t getting up to shoot themselves.’ Always good to start with ‘now, I’m not a racist, but…'” Day said. “You know what the ‘but’ is? The ‘but’ is we know that these shootings, while overwhelming in impacted communities, are not limited to them.”

The legislation became a top priority for representatives in the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, whose communities are disproportionately affected by gun violence. In 2020, the Massachusetts rate of firearm deaths among Black men was more than four times as high as among white men.

Several representatives spoke about their personal experiences over the course of debate. Republican Rep. Alyson Sullivan-Almeida of Abington, who delivered a speech from the House floor with her newborn strapped to her chest, recalled having a “firearm held to me by my abuser.”

Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, a Springfield Democrat, told his colleagues about his own encounter with tragedy.

“In 1982, Angel Rivera, a college graduate and a teacher at [the] Morgan School in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a father of two, was able to buy an illegal gun like buying candy on the street corner,” Gonzalez said. “Angel Rivera, like many others today facing a mental health crisis, took his life, leaving behind two young children. Angel Rivera was my mother’s oldest boy. Angel Rivera was my brother.”

Republicans opened Wednesday’s debate with a parliamentary objection, taking aim at the atypical process Democrats used to bring the measure to the floor.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones contended that because the Ways and Means Committee advanced the bill as a report in part of a fiscal year 2023 closeout budget, it was subject to an internal House rule requiring publication of a summary describing the amount of proposed spending.

No such “fiscal note” exists in the current document, which Speaker Ron Mariano’s team muscled forward following a single House-only committee hearing.

Jones said he expects some portions of the bill to incur significant costs, such as requiring Massachusetts State Police to inspect firearms dealers and expanding access to extreme risk protection orders.

“We do ourselves a disservice as an institution to really hold up that this isn’t going to cost anything,” Jones said on the House floor. “I get that there are people that love this bill and people that hate this bill, but for anybody to think this is not going to cost the taxpayers of the commonwealth any money — [you] cannot do so with a straight face. We should be better. We deserve better as an institution.”

House Speaker Pro Tempore Kate Hogan shot down Jones’s point of order, and Democrats lined up behind that decision in a subsequent roll call vote.

“We gotta get after it,” Healey said at a press conference in Chelsea, saying that residents across the state are feeling the pressure of a squeezed housing market marked by low inventory and high costs.

“Today is about meeting the moment. It’s about meeting the moment and the needs of residents across the state. We’ve heard you, we listened to you, and today we’re taking action and in the days ahead we’re going to need collective action and team work to get this done,” the governor said.

Healey, who has marked her governorship so far with an emphasis on competing with other states, said the housing bill is necessary to keep residents from leaving Massachusetts.

The bond bill would invest $4.12 billion into spurring production of new units, upgrading aging and neglected public housing, converting state land into housing-ready plots and tackling major housing policy changes — including offering a green light to communities who want to impose a tax on high-price real estate transactions to steer new revenue into affordable housing development.

Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus called the bill “the most significant housing legislation filed in Massachusetts since 40B, 50 years ago.” The Chapter 40B statute enables housing developers to circumvent local zoning regulations in communities that do not meet certain housing quotas, and is still controversial in many towns and cities today.

Though Healey did not attach a specific deadline for the legislation, lawmakers who will vet her plan are also under pressure to address housing affordability, and she reminded the audience that construction season in Massachusetts starts in the spring and that she hoped to make the most of new development opportunities.

“Spring’s coming. Construction starts are coming or not, dependent on our ability to work together. So let’s go. Let’s get after it,” the governor said.

Healey’s proposal would allow governing boards in cities and towns to impose a new tax on higher-price real estate transactions, with the proceeds being used for affordable housing, and features an array of other tax code and policy changes designed to boost housing construction.

It got an early vote of confidence Wednesday from a big business group.

Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which has 3,400 member companies, declared its support for the bill only minutes after the legislation was announced. 

“The development of reasonably priced housing across the commonwealth will ensure that the workers who represent the economic future of Massachusetts can live here, raise families here and become part of their communities,” said AIM President Brooke Thomson. “Virtually every employer in Massachusetts has at one time heard a valued employee say: ‘I love working for this company, but my family can’t afford a house here.’ AIM looks forward to working with the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Legislature to ensure those conversations become a thing of the past.”

The conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance protested the borrowing called for in the bill, as well as the proposed tax on home sales and the addition of “more government bureaucracies.”

“If Governor Healey wants to make housing more affordable, she needs to call on President Biden to lower interest rates, she needs to provide a way to lower property taxes, she needs to reverse the arbitrary green mandates which limit consumer choice and penalizes affordable energy options,” said alliance spokesman Paul Craney.  “The Governor is not dealing with the underlying issue of the cost of living and doing business in Massachusetts.” 

Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, said his group has “deep concerns about the inclusion of a sales tax on real estate” but otherwise applauded the administration’s “bold action to address the state’s crippling housing crisis” through more housing development.

As for the transfer tax, which supporters say would not be applied to most home sales, Vasil said, “It’s an unstable source of revenue that would cause more harm than good at a time when people and businesses are leaving the state because it is just too expensive.”

The GBREB says it has 13,000 members who work as realtors, commercial brokers, building and apartment owners and managers, and real estate finance professionals. 

Motorists who don’t comply with the state’s existing Move Over Law, which took effect in 2009, may be fined up to $100 for not moving into an adjacent lane and reducing their speed when they approach emergency or maintenance vehicles with flashing lights.

The fine for an initial “move over” offense would increase to $250 under proposals from Rep. Steven Xiarhos and former Sen. Anne Gobi (H 3479 / S 2240), followed by a $500 fine for a second offense and a $1,000 fine for a third or subsequent offense.

The proposals, which were endorsed by Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan during a legislative hearing Tuesday afternoon, call for a $2,500 fine or up to one year in prison for any violation that results in a person getting injured.

“What we really want, and what I hope as a district attorney, is never to enforce this bill, but actually to have it be the basis for an education campaign, where we’re really talking about the danger that we ask people to undergo and put themselves in front of every day — and the simple fact of looking ahead, seeing that there’s something going on in the breakdown lane, slowing down and moving left will save so many lives,” Ryan told the Joint Committee on Transportation. “This affects every one of us.”

People who commit a second or third offense would also be required to complete a program through the Registry of Motor Vehicles that “encourages a change in driver behavior and attitude about the ‘Move Over Law,'” according to the bills.

Patrick McNamara, president of SPAM, said the legislation is recognized as the Trooper Thomas Devlin bill, in honor of the 58-year-old trooper who died from injuries two years after he was struck by a car during a traffic stop in Billerica. All collisions involving first responders on roadways are preventable, McNamara told lawmakers.

“Each time I receive a call that one of our troopers has been struck on the side of the roadway, my reaction is first anger and disbelief because it’s happening again, and again, and again,” McNamara said. “It is disheartening that something as basic as slowing down and changing lanes to provide space for those who tirelessly serve and safeguard our commonwealth escapes the grasp of so many.”

Fines would rise higher under a similar bill from Rep. Kenneth Gordon (H 3329) before the committee Tuesday, including a $5,000 fine or up to one year in jail for motorists who injure another person.

Devlin’s widow, Nancy Devlin, said at the hearing that she and her four children have experienced “immeasurable losses.” Nancy Devlin said the motorist who struck her husband had veered into the breakdown lane while traveling at highway speed without hitting the brakes.

She called the $100 civil infraction “awful,” as she pleaded with lawmakers to approve tougher penalties to “help ensure that no other family has to endure what we have.”

“Please help to protect the police, fire, ambulance and tow truck drivers — help them to go home to their families,” said Nancy Devlin, joined by her two sons, at the State House. “I would never want another family to have the ending that we had.”

Committee co-chair Rep. William Straus offered his appreciation for Devlin’s testimony.

“It is beyond our ability to fully understand what has happened to you and your family and for years to come,” Straus said. “Your help today brings tons of attention to what is our responsibility to take and hopefully a message to the driving public because distracted driving has not disappeared. And it’s something that’s always been on the forefront of the committee’s attention, and I can’t thank you enough.”

A slew of family members — including children, grandparents, nieces and nephews, and ex-spouses — can already be reimbursed for providing home-based care and services to their loved ones through a MassHealth program, Sen. Jo Comerford told the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.

Comerford said her bill (S 67), plus an accompanying proposal from Reps. Adam Scanlon and Norman Orrall (H 216), seeks to tackle a “glaring omission” for spouses by broadening the definition of a family member who’s eligible to be reimbursed.

“There are people on the waiting list, as you know, who can’t get the home care they need. Allowing qualified spouses to serve as family members who provide the care will actually expand the pool of caregivers, which I imagine then would reduce the waitlist and allow more people to get the care they need to stay at home,” Comerford said at the hearing, as she noted thousands of people last spring were waiting for at-home care.

The proposal also calls on the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to obtain a federal waiver to amend the spouse coverage provision, if it’s needed, to implement the potential law, Comerford said. More than two dozen states have implemented this reform, according to the Northampton Democrat.

A prior version of the bill was reportedly favorably out of committee last session, though the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing sent it to study.

Under current MassHealth regulations, Scanlon said spouses are forced to make an “impossible choice of letting their loved one go without care or make a significant sacrifice financially to work less in order to provide that care themselves.”

“We have, of course, already decided to pay for that care anyway by a different person, so let’s let spouses fill that gap,” Scanlon said at the hearing, adding the new class of caregivers would provide continuous care to their loved ones amid steep turnover in the direct care workforce.