ML Strategies

In a hearing before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on Tuesday, July 21, roughly two dozen lawmakers and a wide range of business officials, advocacy groups, non-profit leaders, and academics testified in support of a pay equity bill aimed at eliminating the wage gap between genders in Massachusetts.

After many weeks of deliberation, the Massachusetts House and Senate sent a budget to Governor Baker’s desk. This budget passed the Senate 31-5 and the House 153-1 and represents a compromise between the House and Senate versions, described in previous ML Strategies advisories.

Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, the Immigrant Investor Program, more commonly referred to as the EB-5 program, offers foreign investors an opportunity to secure permanent residency in the United States by making a minimum capital investment of $1 million per investor into a New Commercial Enterprise (NCE) that will create at least 10 jobs for US workers.

Responding to criticisms that state regulations are burdensome and make Massachusetts a more costly and less competitive place to live and do business, Governor Charlie Baker signed Executive Order 562 to simplify the Commonwealth’s regulatory regime.

In the previous Congress, we saw a burst of policy and industry attention to telehealth as lawmakers and stakeholders alike recognized the cost, quality, and accessibility benefits of telehealth.

On May 22, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously approved a $38.1 billion budget for FY2016. The Senate budget hews closely to the spending plans proposed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives in April and Governor Charlie Baker in March.

Massachusetts’ Earned Sick Leave Law, which voters passed by ballot initiative last November, is set to become effective in less than two months on July 1, 2015. On April 27, Attorney General Maura Healy’s office released proposed regulations to clarify how the ballot law will be implemented.

On April 29 the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved a $38.1 billion spending plan for FY2016 by a unanimous vote of 158-0. Over roughly 28 hours of sessions, the House dispensed with over 1,000 amendments to pass a final budget that spends $10 million less than Governor Baker’s spending plan, but closely resembles it in many regards.

The first energy bill of the 114th Congress is heading toward the President’s desk for signature.

On March 16, Massachusetts officials announced a tax amnesty program, effective immediately, to recoup delinquent corporate taxes. The program is part of a larger effort by the Baker administration and the Department of Revenue (DOR) to raise funds to close the Commonwealth’s midyear budget deficit.

Wednesday, the Baker-Polito administration revealed the details of their $38.1 billion FY2016 budget. Seeking to overcome a structural deficit, which at $1.8 billion, represents nearly five percent of the total budget, the Governor doubled down on cost-saving measures rather than raising taxes, increasing fees or drawing from the state’s rainy day fund.

In response to a number of foreign policy crises encountered over the past few years, the Obama Administration has sought a new and more aggressive approach to using sanctions to advance US global security goals.

Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito announced on Tuesday a series of proposals aimed at closing the Commonwealth’s substantial budget gap for Fiscal Year 2015. According to the current administration, even after Governor Patrick’s attempts to close the fiscal gap, a $768 million budget shortfall persists.

Yesterday afternoon, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg revealed his senior leadership team and announced which legislators he selected to lead the Senate’s special and standing committees.

In recent months, as the conversation about reforming the health care system has shifted from websites and coverage expansion to achieving greater delivery system efficiencies, cost containment, and quality improvement, the role of health care technology — specifically, telehealth, health information technology (health IT or HIT), and mHealth — is becoming an even more prevalent area of bipartisan cooperation among health care policymakers.

This morning Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo indicated that he will not support the Governor’s plan to trim the state budget to close a projected $329 million mid-year budget gap.

Last week, the 2013-2014 Massachusetts legislative session came to a close amid a flurry of activity on Beacon Hill. Lawmakers rushed to finalize and pass priority bills, working past their deadline on Thursday, sending a number of proposals to the Governor’s desk after midnight.

On Friday, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law a $36.5 billion state budget for FY2015, which is nearly $10 billion larger than the budget he proposed back in January 2014.

On July 1, 2014 the Massachusetts Senate voted for a compromise on employee non-compete agreements, and the Joint Economic and Emerging Technology Committee heard testimony on the same issue.

In a previous article, “Massachusetts Legislature Considers Unemployment Insurance Reform and Minimum Wage Increase,” we outlined the Massachusetts House and Senate’s separate plans to increase the minimum wage and reform the unemployment insurance system.