We’re rounding up some of the highlights of the week from Massachusetts state government, drawn from our feed of AI-generated transcripts that’s available at Legislata.
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Well, it was an absolutely rammed week on Beacon Hill before the August break. I had to zoom out my screen to get all of them into one screenshot.
Hearings this past week
There are too many hearings to detail in a single newsletter, so I’ll just pick out a few things that jumped out to me and I recommend that you go to Legislata and read the full transcript for more.
The Joint Committee on Housing held a hearing that talking about instability and support for the most vulnerable populations. While it wasn’t the main point of the hearing, it was remarkable that zoning was only mentioned once, despite the recent publication of the Massachusetts Zoning Atlas that received considerable press attention. In fact, zoning was a more central issue at the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government, where everything from deadlines on zoning permits to the historical use of fairgrounds were discussed.
The Special Commission on Agriculture in the Commonwealth in the 21st Century held a public hearing. One interesting quote jumped out from Senator Mike Barrett on the idea that the divide in political discussion between urban and rural obscures an important part of where agriculture happens in Massachusetts: “The suburbs used to be rural places, and they all contain farms. All eight of my communities contain working farms, not as many as we would like, but they all contain them. And they all attract strong support especially from folks who are politically active. And yet, in this report, the word rural appears dozens and dozens of times quite appropriately. The word urban, meaning cities, occurs 37 times quite appropriately. The word suburban appears once.”
National cultural debates were touched on at the Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development, where Sen. Cyr testified from the South Yarmouth Library to prevent political interference in public libraries (while presumably violating the quietness of the library?).
All of the transcripts are available at Legislata if you want to read more or set up any keyword alerts. We’ll be back next week for another set of roundups for the following.
Coming up next week
