Gov. Maura Healey answers questions from reporters outside the Health Policy Commission's cost trends hearing in a Suffolk University building on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Photo by Same Drysdale | State House News Service

The state’s lawsuit against Milton is slated to head to the Supreme Judicial Court in the fall, but Gov. Maura Healey said in an interview this weekend she doesn’t want to wait that long and hopes that other communities considering defying the state’s multifamily zoning law will instead work with the state.

“I’ll say this, I don’t want to wait for the courts, and I certainly don’t want to get into it with communities. As a state, as governor, we’re here to support communities,” Healey said in an interview with WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller that aired Sunday. “The fact is this, Jon, the reason that young people are leaving the state, the reason that employers can’t expand in the state, the reason other companies aren’t going to come to Massachusetts, is because housing costs are so high.”

The governor did not suggest another way to resolve Milton’s non-compliance during the interview.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell in February filed a lawsuit against Milton and its building commissioner after town voters rejected a zoning plan that would have complied with the MBTA Communities Act, which requires cities and towns near T service to adopt zoning that allows multifamily housing by right in certain areas. The Supreme Judicial Court plans to hear the case in October, Justice Serge Georges ruled last week, saying that the case raises questions that ought to be settled or else they will keep popping up.

Zoning has long been the domain of municipalities, contributing to lagging housing production in some places, and cities and towns seldom give up local control willingly. Healey didn’t answer directly when Keller asked whether she was “prepared for a long, politically nasty battle with cities and towns over the issue of local control,” but she did address the topic in an interview with WBUR last week.

“We’re not looking to take away local control at all. But we are looking for everybody to realize that if we don’t meet this moment and work together — and every community can do it in different ways, there’s flexibility out there — we’re going to see people leave the state and we’re going to suffer for that,” Healey said. “Massachusetts is a great, great place to live to raise a family to grow a business — if you can afford to live here.”

Healey also told Keller in Sunday’s interview that she will “have to take a look at” the possibility if granting exemptions from aspects of the MBTA Communities Act. As a growing municipal resistance has cropped up in other towns that face an end-of-the-year deadline to comply with the law, at least one, Wrentham, has already asked the governor for “a waiver or modifications” to its requirements.