Chris Lisinski
State House News Service

A disproportionate number of eviction filings in Boston involved households of color during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report published by the housing justice group City Life / Vida Urbana.

By examining Massachusetts Trial Court evictions case data, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning researcher Ben Walker found that from Feb. 28, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021, evictions were filed at more than twice the rate in neighborhoods where a majority of renters are people of color than in neighborhoods where most renters are white. Seven out of 10 eviction filings in Boston involved properties in Census tracts where a majority of renters are people of color, though only 47 percent of the city’s rental housing is in those neighborhoods, the report found. Tracts where a majority of renters are white hold 43 percent of Boston rental housing and involved 30 percent of eviction filings.

Filing an eviction case is an early step in the process and does not always translate into a removal. Massachusetts had a state moratorium on executing evictions in place from April to October 2020, and a U.S. Centers for Disease Control federal moratorium remains in place through June 30, 2021. Gov. Charlie Baker launched a $171 million eviction diversion program when he allowed the state moratorium to expire, and a major boost from federal stimulus funds has since pushed the total amount of support available to Massachusetts renters affected by the pandemic to $968 million. City Life / Vida Urbana advocated unsuccessfully last year for legislation that would have kept the state moratorium in place alongside a rent freeze for a year beyond the end of the pandemic.

In the report released Thursday, it touted a new bill (H 1434 / S 891) that would again pause no-fault evictions during the state of emergency and recovery, and require landlords to pursue rental assistance before evictions and protect vulnerable tenants from being removed due to COVID-related debts.

“When we fight for housing justice, we’re fighting for racial justice,” Alex Ponte-Capellan, a housing justice organizer with the group, said in a statement. “That’s because evictions disproportionately and unjustly impact Boston’s neighborhoods of color, destabilizing whole communities and pushing families into poverty, physical and mental health struggles, unemployment and often homelessness.”

Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) shared new and previously unreleased data from the U.S. Department of Education on the extent to which millions of student loan borrowers would benefit from up to $50,000 in student debt cancellation. Senator Warren requested the federal data in an April 2, 2021 letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

“New Education Department data show that canceling $50,000 of student loans would erase the debt entirely for 84% of borrowers. I’m looking forward to making the case in my Senate Banking Subcommittee hearing later today about why President Biden must cancel student debt,” said Senator Warren.

In February, Senator Warren and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer led their colleagues in reintroducing their bicameral resolution outlining a bold plan for President Biden to tackle the student loan debt crisis by using existing authority under the Higher Education Act to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for federal student loan borrowers.

The data show that 36 million borrowers would be completely relieved of their debt burdens if President Biden uses his existing authority to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt. For comparison purposes, cancellation of up to $10,000 in debt would relieve only 15 million borrowers of their debt.

Furthermore, under the $50,000 plan, out of the 36 million borrowers who would be relieved of all their debt under the $50,000 plan, 9.4 million are currently in default or delinquent.

There are presently 4.4 million borrowers, with $211 billion in debt (an average of nearly $48,000 per borrower), who have had student debt more than 20 years after graduation. Another 10.7 million borrowers, with $458 million in total debt, have had student loans for more than a decade.

Senator Warren is one of the nation’s leading voices calling for student debt cancellation, systemic reforms to make college accessible without taking on debilitating debt, and stronger protections for borrowers against predatory for-profit practices.

Today, Senator Warren will host her first hearing as chair of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy. The hearing, “The Student Debt Burden and Its Impact on Racial Justice, Borrowers, & The Economy,” will examine the student loan debt crisis in our country.

In March 2021, Senators Warren and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) applauded the passage of their Student Loan Tax Relief Act as part of the American Rescue Plan. The provision makes any student loan forgiveness tax-free, ensuring borrowers whose debt is fully or partially forgiven are not saddled with thousands of dollars in surprise taxes. During her time in the Senate, she has helped return tens of millions of dollars tax-free to students cheated by for-profit colleges.

The City of New Bedford has established a deadline of Friday, April 30, 2021 for prospective recreational marijuana businesses to submit Host Community Agreement (HCA) applications to the Planning Department for the first round of review. All applications must include a certificate of compliance with local zoning and a demonstration of site control, among other materials.

In 2018, the City of New Bedford established administrative procedures to implement the state law allowing for the retail sale, processing, and cultivation of recreational marijuana. Under these procedures, prospective recreational marijuana businesses are given an opportunity to submit Host Community Agreement applications. An advisory committee then periodically reviews applications and recommends selected applicants to the Mayor based on a variety of factors. Finally, selected applicants are invited to begin negotiations with the City toward a Host Community Agreement.

Under Massachusetts law, all applicants for state license to operate recreational marijuana businesses are required to secure a Host Community Agreement with the city or town in which respective businesses are located. Once applicants have received state approval, applicants must also obtain a local license (where required) and a Special Permit from the local planning department. No date has been established for future round of application review in New Bedford; prospective recreational marijuana businesses are encouraged to submit their applications for consideration in the current (second) round of review.

Currently, South Coast Apothecary LLC, to be located at 115 Coggeshall Street, has submitted a Special Permit to the Planning Board, which will be considered at its April 14 meeting.

For more information visit: https://www.newbedford-ma.gov/planning/guidance-establishment-marijuana-facilities/.

Colin A. Young
State House News Service

Nearly 1.5 million people in Massachusetts are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and almost 3 million vaccine doses have been administered here, but a potentially more contagious mutant form of the virus first identified in Brazil is now spreading through the state.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control counts 58 cases of the P.1 COVID-19 variant, which is thought to be more contagious and able to reinfect those who have already defeated the coronavirus, in Massachusetts — more than any other state in the country. This weekend, researchers from MIT’s Broad Institute and Harvard released data detailing 54 of the Massachusetts cases of the P.1 variant, which was first identified here in a Barnstable County woman who tested positive for COVID-19 in late February. They found that 43 of the 54 P.1 cases were likely connected to one superspreader event.

“While our understanding of the increased transmissibility of the P.1 variant is still unfolding, the large cluster of identical and nearly identical genomes – a pattern of genetic diversity consistent with superspreading – highlights the ongoing risk of rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2, and in particular for more transmissible lineages,” the researchers wrote. “The extent of community transmission of P.1 in Massachusetts and across the US is currently unknown, however, it is likely that the P.1 variant is already or will soon be circulating in communities and ongoing surveillance will be critical to understanding the trajectory and impact of the P.1 variant.”

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported 2,263 new cases of COVID-19 and announced 30 recent COVID-19 deaths on Saturday, raising the state’s total case count to 605,055 and the death toll to 17,281 people. There were 707 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Saturday’s update from DPH. Figures that would have been reported Sunday will be released Monday afternoon, DPH has said. Though there was no reporting of new cases and deaths Sunday, DPH did report that the number of people fully vaccinated in Massachusetts had climbed to 1,478,520 with 3,904,179 total vaccine doses administered.

The following was posted to New Bedford Mayor John Mitchell’s Facebook page:

“Since I took office nine years ago, I’ve had a standing weekly appearance on WBSM, in which I take questions from the host and the listening audience about the issues facing the city and region. For the last five years, that appearance has been on The Barry Richard Show. I have been committed to the appearance because doing so serves important public purposes. Being subjected to tough, but fair questions on the minds of listeners serves to hold the occupant of the Office of Mayor accountable to his or her bosses — the 100,000 residents of New Bedford. Disagreements of course are inevitable and common, and sometimes intense, but a healthy exchange of ideas can deepen the public’s understanding of matters affecting their families, enable them to sort out fact from fiction, and, in an era in which confidence in government has been severely eroded, build public trust. The program serves these purposes so long as the discussion remains civil and respectful. New Bedford’s residents deserve nothing less.

Unfortunately, my appearances the last several months have become less beneficial to our residents. All too often, they have been marked by the host’s frequent berating, interrupting and talking over my responses, and unwillingness to allow for a constructive conversation. Although frequent criticism of me comes with my job as mayor, the show has reached a point where the public is deprived of a healthy exchange of viewpoints, and topics important to our residents are being crowded out of the discussion. Many of you shared similar concerns in emails and phone calls to my office this past week, and you are right. Accordingly, I have informed WBSM’s management that I am ending my regular appearance on The Barry Richard Show, which I was asked about and discussed on the air with Phil Paleologos this morning. This is personally disappointing to me, and I don’t come to it lightly, but I believe it’s in the city’s best interests.

I remain committed to using all the platforms available to me, including radio appearances, to provide the residents of New Bedford the information they need to have a productive relationship with their municipal government.” – New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and FEMA announce today a partnership to expand access to the COVID-19 vaccine by bringing 6,000 federal doses daily to the Hynes Convention Center vaccination site, for a total of 7,000 doses per day when combined with the state’s current allocation.

This Community Vaccination Center (CVC) program will be open to the public, with additional services available for the most disproportionately impacted communities in Suffolk County, starting March 31.

People interested in booking an appointment at the Hynes Convention Center vaccination site should continue to pre-register at vaccinesignup.mass.gov. There will be no disruption to the appointment process with this federal expansion. The state will also coordinate additional community outreach to assist vulnerable residents with signups. Additionally, a portion of the federal doses will be designated for mobile units for areas of Suffolk County (Chelsea, Revere & Boston). The Baker-Polito Administration will provide more details on these efforts soon.

The Hynes Community Vaccination site will have interpreters available daily for individuals speaking Spanish, Mandarin, and Haitian/Creole, as well as capability to utilize telephonic translation with access to 240 different languages. The Hynes is centrally located and accessible via public transportation on the MBTA Green Line (‘Hynes Convention Center Station,’) (‘Prudential Center Station’), the MBTA Orange Line (‘Back Bay Station’ via passageways), the Commuter Rail, and major bus routes to ensure individuals with transportation challenges can access the site. Free parking is available for those with private transportation.

Additionally, MassHealth is offering new flexibilities for Non-Emergency Medical Transportation for members with access/functional needs to ensure equitable transportation access to and from the sites.

The Commonwealth, federal, and state contracted staff will be used to support the operations at this facility for the duration of 8 weeks. Along with staffing, FEMA and its federal partners will provide support through operations, logistics and vaccine allocations. The addition of the FEMA site and the resources that come with it will enable Massachusetts to further operationalize its commitment to equity, a core pillar of the state’s vaccination plan, which includes $27.4 million in CDC funding focused on the 20 communities hardest hit by COVID-19, including Boston. The state Department of Public Health is working in these cities and towns on customized plans to reduce barriers to vaccination and increase awareness and confidence in vaccine safety, joining with neighborhood health centers, local health departments, and community and faith based groups to increase vaccination.

How the Site was Selected

The Hynes site, like other federally supported sites across the country, was selected based on data analysis including the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, population needs and challenges, and available public transit options to the center. Input from state and local partners was crucial in determining the location. The Hynes site will have a vaccination output of several thousand doses per day at maximum operating capacity. One thousand doses from the Commonwealth will be increased by an additional 6,000 doses from a separate federal allocation.

“Massachusetts is a national leader for vaccines and this additional support from the federal government will help to increase access and availability to some of our most disproportionately impacted communities,” said Governor Charlie Baker. “We are grateful for the support from the Biden-Harris Administration for selecting Massachusetts to host one of these sites and for the support of our congressional delegation in applying for this program.”

The Hynes Convention Center is a well-known destination within the Greater Boston community, having been in operation since 1968. It possesses all the critical infrastructure requirements and facilities such as running water, restrooms and parking to host thousands of individuals at a time, safely and comfortably.

“The goal of establishing these joint federal pilot centers is to continue to expand the rate of vaccinations in an efficient, effective and equitable manner, with an explicit focus on making sure communities with a high risk of COVID-19 exposure and infection are not left behind,” said Acting Region 1 Administrator and Federal Coordinating Officer Paul Ford, who oversees FEMA’s operations in New England. “FEMA remains committed to helping everyone in America during this time and we will continue to work with our partners to stop the spread of this disease.”

Colin A. Young
State House News Service

Citing powers it can use when the president declares a disaster, the Department of Revenue on Friday unilaterally moved the Massachusetts tax filing deadline to conform with the postponed federal deadline of May 17. DOR said Massachusetts individual personal income tax returns and payments for the 2020 tax year that would have been due April 15 are now due May 17 under an extension automatically granted.

On Thursday, Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ronald Mariano announced that they would effectuate a delay in the filing deadline to May 17 in legislation. That now appears to be a moot point and tax preparers will not have to wait for a bill to be passed and signed to get certainty on the state deadline.

“[I]n the case of a Presidentially declared disaster, the Commissioner of Revenue … may disregard a period of up to one year in determining whether certain taxpayer actions were performed timely, including the filing and payment of individual personal income tax returns and taxes,” DOR wrote in a technical information release.

“On March 13, 2020, the President of the United States issued an emergency declaration under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act in response to the ongoing 2019 novel Coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic, triggering the Commissioner’s authority.” Even after May 17, individual taxpayers will be eligible “for an automatic extension of time to file their personal income tax returns as long as the amount required to be paid for a valid personal income tax extension is paid by May 17,” DOR said.

The announcement from Spilka and Mariano that the House and Senate leaders had agreed to insert the tax filing deadline extension into wide-ranging legislation Thursday upset some senators who complained of learning about the addition from the News Service rather than Spilka and about not having enough notice of the change.

By Matt Murphy
State House News Service

In an escalating battle over vaccinations and a full-time return to the classroom, Gov. Charlie Baker and the state’s largest teachers’ unions butted heads Thursday over the unions’ request to allow teachers to be vaccinated in schools, with the administration refusing to divert doses away from mass vaccination sites and other clinics.

A war-of-words erupted after a morning meeting between union officials, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders and Education Commissioner Jeff Riley to discuss vaccinations.

A day earlier, Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy had said the state’s vaccine rollout for teachers had been “poorly timed” with plans to bring elementary students back to the classroom full-time by April 5, followed by middle schoolers on April 28.

The meeting led to a searing condemnation from the administration of the union’s request for doses to be redistributed and administered to teachers and staff locally at schools.

“I am not going to be in a position where I take vaccine away from people who are extremely vulnerable, have multiple medical conditions and are over the age of 65 to give it to a targeted population. We’re just not going to play that game,” Baker said at an afternoon press conference.

The comments from the governor came after the governor’s senior advisor Tim Buckley issued a statement saying the administration “implores the unions to do the math,” noting the state receives just 150,000 new first doses a week.

“Diverting hundreds of thousands of vaccines to an exclusive, teacher-only distribution system would deny the most vulnerable and the most disproportionately impacted residents hundreds of thousands of vaccines,” Buckley said.

The unions, including the MTA, the American Federation of Teachers and the Boston Teachers Union, accused the administration of “pitting one vulnerable group against another” after what it described as a “cordial” meeting with Sudders.

“The administration’s mischaracterization of educators as somehow seeking to take vaccines away from the sick and elderly is untrue and defamatory,” said Najimy, AFT-Massachusetts President Beth Kontos, and BTU President Jessica Tang.

The three union leaders said they suggested using doses that had already been designated for teachers at mass vaccination sites and instead deploying them at schools where they could be administered to teachers by firefighters and nurses with minimal disruption to the school schedule.

“The administration is entitled to its opinion on how it has handled the vaccine rollout, but the administration is not entitled to their own facts. From the onset, our unions have advocated for classifying educators as essential workers and for vaccinating them at the same time as others who are eligible within the current phase of the rollout,” Najimy, Kontos and Tang said.

Baker saw the request from the unions differently.

“They were looking for their own vaccine and to not participate in the process that everyone else participates in,” Baker said.

Baker only opened the state’s vaccination program to teachers on Thursday after the White House last week urged states to begin vaccinating educators in March and began making doses available to teachers through the federal pharmacy vaccine program.

The administration then announced on Wednesday that it would set aside four weekend days in late March and early April at the state’s seven mass vaccinations when teachers exclusively could book vaccine appointments. The governor also said he was encouraging regional vaccine collaboratives to also specify days for educators.

Baker and Sudders both cited vaccine supply constraints as limiting their ability to set aside more vaccines.

“We don’t have more doses to give,” Sudders said Wednesday. She estimates teachers unable to book an appointment on Thursday through the normal system will have access to about 20,000 to 25,000 doses at mass vaccination sites on March 27, April 3, April 10 and April 11.

The administration noted that 95 percent of teachers are under the age of 65, putting them at reduced risk from COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control has said vaccinations are not a prerequiste for a return to in-person learning, and Baker said experience in Massachusetts has shown that students, particularly young students, can be taught safely in a classroom.

“Building an entirely new, exclusive, teacher-only, school by school distribution system would make Massachusetts’ vaccination system slower, less equitable and far more complicated,” Buckley said.

Baker also defended his reliance on mass vaccination sites to distribute vaccine, saying most states were using similar sites, provider organizations, pharmacy chains and community health centers to administer COVID-19 vaccinations.

“The process we’re pursuing in Massachusetts is completely consistent with the process that’s being used in virtually every other state in the county. Why? Because it’s effective, it’s efficient and it gets a lot of shots in people arms in a short period of time,” Baker said.

House Speaker Ron Mariano, who is a former teacher himself, was an early advocate for giving teachers higher priority status for vaccinations.

Asked about the back-and-forth Thursday between the governor and the unions, Mariano said the governor invited it.

“It’s a problem that was created by the administration in setting a date certain to have schools reopen and raising the issue of safety in our schools and not having a plan on how to make sure that they can guarantee that the schools are safe,” he said.

By Colin A. Young
State House News Service

The state’s cybersecurity chief warned municipal leaders of a high-risk threat to a common email system over the weekend as federal officials urge businesses and governments to protect themselves against what the White House said is “a significant vulnerability that could have far-reaching impacts.”

Secretary of Technology Services and Security Curt Wood sent an alert to local leaders Saturday to make sure cities and towns in Massachusetts that use an on-site Microsoft Exchange server were aware that state-sponsored hackers from China have been able to infiltrate the servers to steal emails, address books and other information.

“You should take immediate and appropriate action to protect your environment,” Wood wrote, directing local leaders to a bulletin published by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and an emergency directive from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday the Microsoft breach “is an active threat” and that the Biden administration is “concerned that there are a large number of victims.” Independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported Friday that the hack had affected “[a]t least 30,000 organizations across the United States — including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments.”

The Executive Office of Technology Services and Security was not able to provide updated information Monday morning, and the Massachusetts Municipal Association was not immediately available to discuss the potential impact on cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center said the group behind the hack is HAFNIUM, a state-sponsored cyber unit that the company said “primarily targets entities in the United States across a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs.”

Cybersecurity has been a point of increasing emphasis for state and municipal officials in recent years because of the widespread shift to doing business over the internet and incidents in which cybercriminals have sought to extort cities and towns by inappropriately gaining access to municipal files, like the 2019 ransomware attack on New Bedford.

Gov. Charlie Baker pushed information technology and cybersecurity closer to the forefront of state government in recent years by creating the Cabinet-level Executive Office of Technology Services and Security in 2017 and pushing for the creation of the MassCyberCenter in 2018 to bolster the state’s cybersecurity readiness and to promote the cybersecurity economy.

Last fall, as hospitals were shoring up their cyberdefenses to protect themselves against a wave of ransomware attacks on health care facilities, Baker highlighted ransomware attacks — in which hackers gain access to important information and hold it ransom from the rightful owners — as “a persistent threat to municipalities.” The MassCyberCenter works with communities to provide assistance in developing or reviewing cyber incident response plans.

Cybercrime is also a threat to individuals. Review site Safety.com said last year that Massachusetts ranked 10th among states in terms of the financial impact of cyber incidents. Using data from the 2019 FBI Internet Crime Report, the site found that Massachusetts residents lost almost $84.2 million to cybercriminals in 2019 and that the average loss of $12,966 per victim was the fourth highest in the nation.

Late last year, Wood and EOTSS dealt with the SolarWinds hack, which federal officials said posed “a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.” Wood said at the time that there were no signs that state government systems had been compromised.

In 2019, Wood told lawmakers that the state’s computer network is “probed” more than half a billion times each and every day by entities outside the United States looking for a weak spot in the state’s cyber protections that could allow bad actors to infiltrate the state’s information technology infrastructure.

“Every day, we have attacks. Just to give you a frame of reference, we have implemented new technology in the state where we are kind of able to analyze everything that comes into the state network and I will say as of today on a daily basis we receive about 525 million probes a day from foreign soil,” Wood said in September 2019. “They’re pinging our network, they’re scanning our commonwealth network trying to find a vulnerability.”

Michael P. Norton
State House News Service

Legislative Democrats this session have been touting rules reforms to boost transparency but they’ve also shown an early aversion to holding public hearings on key bills before passing them.

The omnibus carbon emissions and energy bill (S 9) whisked to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk on Jan. 28 passed without a hearing that could have given people and interest groups an opportunity to offer public feedback on Baker’s significant objections to the climate bill, or enabled the 19 new members of the Legislature to have a say publicly on a bill that died at the end of last session after it was sprung at the eleventh hour out of a private conference committee.

Boston’s bill (H 67) to erase the possibility of a special mayoral election depending on the timing of Mayor Martin Walsh’s resignation was debated at City Hall so apparently there was no need for a state-level virtual hearing on it. The branches passed it on voice votes and Baker signed it.

This week, the House rubber-stamped an extension of vote-by-mail options (H 73) until June 30. That bill also passed without the benefit of a public hearing that might have shed light on opinions about the historic voting reform. And critical legislation addressing imminent, skyrocketing unemployment insurance rates has generated significant debate in the legislative back-channels but lawmakers still haven’t teed up Baker’s bill (H 55) for a hearing and public feedback despite its time-sensitive nature. Baker filed his bill Jan. 13.

As the two-month anniversary of the new session approaches, lawmakers do appear to be getting into hearing mode. The Transportation Committee has scheduled a March 9 public hearing on Baker’s annual $200 million local road and bridge funding bill (H 57). And the Joint Ways and Means Committee plans a March 16 virtual public hearing on the education and local aid aspects of Baker’s $45.6 billion budget bill, after an initial hearing this week that featured testimony from Baker’s budget chief Michael Heffernan and constitutional officers.

Access to public testimony and a model for reporting committee votes on bills are among the issues needing resolution as House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka look to agree on permanent joint rules to govern branch activities for the 2021-2022 session.