Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey says the state is starting 2025 on strong footing after what she considers a year of passing historic legislation. Recounting past accomplishments, her State of the Commonwealth address Thursday touched on everything from transportation to emergency overflow shelters to primary care shortages.
Now halfway through her first term as governor, Healey used her annual address as a time to spotlight some of the biggest bills of 2024 signed into law, and what’s to come.
Healey spoke for about an hour, with the first half featured a list of credits and acknowledgements for what got done last year – free community college for most all residents, heavy investments in early child care, and multi-billion dollar housing bond and economic development bills.
Rolling out those bills in 2025, as well as others like a climate bill packing permitting reform and new clean energy procurement language, will be part of this year’s push, as will addressing the state’s emergency shelter system.
“These last two years, we've also taken on some tough, unexpected problems, including a massive influx of people into our emergency shelter system - an influx due to a failure of federal border control and a nationwide housing crisis,” Healey said. “I want to be absolutely clear: we're dramatically reducing costs, we have and we will prioritize Massachusetts families. In 2025 we'll get families out of hotels for good.”
A mid-December report on the Emergency Housing Assistance Program found at least 3,200 families in the Emergency Assistance shelters were considered migrants, refugees or asylum seekers.
With about 6,300 families currently enrolled in the EA shelter system as of Jan. 16, the system itself has been costing the state around a billion dollars to support. The governor vowed to bring the number of families using the system down, while also calling on the federal government to fix part of the issue “at the source by passing a border security bill.”
The governor also announced actions are being taken in the face of the MCAS test being dropped as a high school graduation requirement, a move passed via ballot question that the governor says she will respect, while pursuing a way to “evolve to a new” model for high school excellence in the state.
“We need a high, statewide standard. Students, families and employers need to know what a diploma represents and without that baseline, you know what happens: it's always going to be the most vulnerable students who don't get what they need,” Healey said. “For that reason, I'm directing a statewide graduation requirement council that will include teachers, colleges, employers and students to develop recommendations for a permanent high standard.”
Other big-ticket items mentioned include plans and initiatives announced by Healey in the run-up to Thursday night. That includes a plan to invest $8 billion over the span of a decade to improve roads, rail and bridges across the Commonwealth.
Work on the I-391 viaduct in Chicopee got a shout out, as did other projects in the Pioneer Valley, like ongoing construction on a new veterans home in Holyoke as Healey touched on the HERO Act passed last year.
Also pertinent to western Massachusetts – primary care shortages. Amid recent reports continuing to show residents struggling when trying to find new primary care physicians and waiting long periods to even see one, Healey said finding ways to remedy the situation is on the priority list.
“I know I'm going to direct my administration to shift health care resources to the front lines. What do I mean by the front lines? I mean primary care!” she said to applause in the House chambers. “If we focus on primary care, we're going to get rid of a lot of other problems that become a lot more complex and hard for people and families, and also a lot more expensive. I'd love to build a whole army of primary care providers to be out there across our state, so that when you call for an appointment, you're actually going to get one. You'll get the care that you need where and when you need it.”
The governor also says expect her upcoming budget proposal to lean on efficiency. Actual figures have not yet emerged, with officials saying the it will be filed in the days ahead.
“We're going to be building new homes, new labs, new data centers, new manufacturing plants - we got to power it all. So we've got to go out and get after it,” Healey said, referencing the state’s own pursuit of clean energy. “250 years after we started a revolution, it's Massachusetts’s moment again. We'll lead the commemorations of America's founding, we'll fire up our tourism economy, we'll shine a light on our revolutions today, the ideas, the solutions that continue to make our world a better, freer place.”
