Innovate, Educate, Elevate

Federal regulation has grown into something almost impossible to fully grasp. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations now runs over 180,000 pages, compared to just 10,000 pages in 1950. States have not fared any better. Ohio’s code recently surpassed 17 million words. At that scale, checking every rule against current law to see what is outdated or contradictory is not realistic. Therefore, almost nobody does, and the rules keep piling up. In the past some states have attempted to arduously tackle the problem by hand. For example, former Massachusetts’ Governor Charlie Baker launched a “regulatory review” effort in 2015 that ran through 2017. Many other states have attempted similar reviews over the years. Reviewing an entire regulatory code, however, is slow and labor-intensive, and many of these earlier efforts ended up incomplete.

Amid our recent harsh winter, Governor Maura Healey issued an immediate reduction of electricity bills by 25% across the state and a 10% gas bill reduction. However, these are temporary relief measures, as Massachusetts is forced to reconcile how it will address its aging infrastructure, fuel constraints, and the cost pressures placed on consumers. Currently, Massachusetts’ retail electricity cost ranges from about $0.28-$0.32/kWh, which is about 40-60% higher than the US national average of $0.20/kWh. It is also a sharp increase from Massachusetts’ last recorded rate of $0.23/kWh in 2023, according to Pioneer’s DataLabs, which placed Massachusetts fourth highest nationally. Utilities company Eversource Energy has examined the increase in residential gas bill prices since 2015, breaking down bill components into four categories: maintenance and infrastructure, Gas System Enhancement Plan (GSEP), public benefits that support state-mandated programs (i.e. Mass Save), and supply. While each component has shown increases over the past ten years, public benefits rose 200% and supply related costs rose 175%.

BOSTON – On the heels of last week’s unprecedented state Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decision removing a widely supported income-tax reduction measure from the November ballot, a new Pioneer Institute study finds that Massachusetts taxes a far larger share of lower- and middle-income households’ earnings compared to red and blue competitor states. The Commonwealth’s personal exemption remains at just $4,400 for single filers and $8,800 for married couples filing jointly—levels that have not changed since 2008 and have declined in inflation-adjusted value by 55 percent. If rates had been adjusted for inflation, they would have saved tax filers an additional $861 million in 2025. Current rates shield far less income from Massachusetts taxpayers than many competing and neighboring states.

Urban school reform was working. Did antiracism break it? We have sought to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in public education for decades. For us, that means a diverse staff, a multicultural curriculum, inclusive school communities where children feel known and heard, and most importantly, academic achievement for all students. In the 2010s, new schools dedicated to educational equity were posting striking results. When the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University examined student outcomes from 2015 to 2019 in 29 states as well as Washington, D.C., and New York City, it identified some 200 charter school networks serving urban areas that were closing — or even reversing — longstanding achievement gaps in reading, math, or both.