Massachusetts could face billions in lost federal revenue and heightened economic risk under the second Trump administration, a budget expert warned lawmakers Thursday, but he emphasized that a broad economic downturn could deal the hardest blow.
Next time it may not be so easy for Boston’s mayor. And given current market trends, not only will there almost certainly be a next time, and it won’t be long in coming, either.
The deal between Mayor Michelle Wu and four business groups will see commercial property tax rates rise, but not by as much as previously feared.
Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn dramatically scuppered attempts to bring a last-minute compromise on city commercial property tax rates up for a vote Wednesday afternoon. Councilors plan to meet Friday to take another vote.
Boston commercial property tax rates will be going up next year to help ease homeowners’ tax bills, but not by as much and not for as long as business groups had originally feared.
A business coalition offered a compromise deal Friday that would have seen property taxes on commercial buildings rise, but by less than what Boston’s mayor wanted.
It’s been Beacon Hill’s favorite buzzword for the last few years and “has been kind of discussed to death,” as one policy expert put it, but a discussion among business leaders Wednesday put a fine point on the complexity of the competitiveness conversation.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so a new scorecard from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation is putting numbers to the state’s competitiveness problem as Beacon Hill continues to grapple with the issue
Sources say the side-meetings grew out of concern about the slow pace of the task force and frustration with the Healey administration’s push for a “tool kit” of revenue options rather than a curated list of preferred options.
Sometimes crisis creates opportunity: a chance for the real estate industry and both city and state political leadership to come together and create a new and better economic engine room for Massachusetts.
A new analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation wades into the debate over Boston commercial property taxes, arguing the city’s downtown faces long-term challenges just as bad or worse than other major American metros.
A business-backed group wants the state legislature to resolve a projected funding gap at the MBTA this year, saying the high stakes include Boston’s recovery from pandemic impacts and the safety and reliability of the heavily-used transit system.
The MBTA has made significant progress at hiring new employees in recent months, but analysts still see “considerable obstacles” in the path ahead, especially given the added costs of building out the workforce.
At $4.12 billion, Gov. Maura Healey’s housing production bond bill proposes a huge step up in state spending on affordable housing production over the next five years. But a fiscal watchdog group says it’s not yet clear how the state will be able to pay for the spending in future years.
Massachusetts faces a huge question mark about how to fund the future of transportation in the commonwealth. Gov. Maura Healey gets first crack at laying out an answer next month.
The financial and policy analysts at the Mass. Taxpayers Foundation have mapped out how “the path to a safe and reliable transit system just got a lot longer” thanks to a ballooning price tag for bringing the MBTA’s infrastructure into a state of good repair.
One expert said the data “just jumps off the page how much housing has to be a central driver of the domestic outmigration we’re seeing.”
Boston and other cities stand at the precipice of significant disruption from the evolving nature of work, climate change and AI. We need to think big and go fast to avoid being left behind.
Lawmakers could combine virtually every tax relief measure proposed in divergent House and Senate bills and still keep the price tag close to the impact each branch’s budget-writers anticipated next year, a new report suggests.
The “red flags are waving” across Massachusetts, with housing, transportation and migration patterns continuing to trend in the wrong direction, according to a new report.
