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Majority Of Proposed Mass. Ballot Questions Clear First Major Hurdle

picture of Your Vote Counts pin
Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley  has given a constitutional OK to most of the ballot questions activists hope to put before voters next year.

One of the 28  questions moving forward is an effort to repeal the expansion of the state’s sales tax to computer and software services.  Michael Widmer , president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation says it strikes at the heart of the state’s  technology driven innovation economy

Questions setting nurse to patient staffing ratios, raising the minimum wage, and cutting the state’s sales tax could also make it to the ballot, if supporters can collect the signatures of more than  80,000 registered voters. Five questions were rejected including one to outlaw casino gambling in Massachusetts and one to require labels on genetically  modified food.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.