As tax-cut ballot battle looms, Healey sees risk. Business leaders see relief | Bay State Briefing

John L. Micek

Mon, March 16, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC

10 min read

Good Monday morning, everyone.

Want to get someone on Beacon Hill really fired up? Ask them about this fall's ballot question that would trim the state's 5% income tax down to 4%.

It won't take long before budget writers and policy wonks start making predictions of fiscal catastrophe if the proposal (which happens to poll spectacularly well ) becomes the law of the land.

"It's a terrible thing to do and it's counterproductive to economic success and Massachusetts' competitiveness," Gov. Maura Healey said during an appearance last week before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

"It's $5 billion (lost)," Healey told Chamber CEO Jim Rooney. "It's two-thirds of education funding in the state. Imagine that? It's all of the economic development grants that people get. It's a significant percentage of local aid."

"You know, taking that revenue away from the things that are helpful and part of our economic success doesn't make any sense," she concluded.

The Mass. Opportunity Alliance would beg to differ.

The group, which represents a constellation of business interests, dropped polling data last week that it argues further underscores the need for trimming the income tax precisely because it will keep the state competitive and economically viable.

More than 9 out of 10 respondents (92%) to the survey of 153 business owners said the savings from an income tax cut would help them manage their expenses more efficiently.

That included 93% of so-called "pass-through" entities, or businesses that avoid corporate taxes by having their owners report profits, losses, and tax liabilities on their personal tax returns. You'd recognize them as LLCs or "S" corporations.

Three-quarters of respondents said an income tax cut would increase their ability to hire new employees, including 78% of those "pass-through" entities. And more than 9 out of 10 (91%) said an income tax cut would make them more inclined to make long-term investments in their business in Massachusetts.

The survey is "further evidence of what we have been hearing every week from our 4,000 members: sales are down and costs are up due to the affordability crisis in Massachusetts," Jon Hurst, the president and CEO of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, a part of the MOA, said in a statement.

The alliance isn't fooling around on the tax question. It's poured $1.6 million into its effort to get it passed so far, setting up what's likely to become an even more costly fight as the state moves into the thick of the 2026 campaign season.

Healey stayed on message during her appearance before the chamber.

"We're ... driving economic competitiveness to create jobs," Healey told Rooney last week as she boasted about her Competitiveness Council , co-helmed by Harpoon Brewery CEO Dan Kenary.

Healey also bragged, as she often does, about the $1 billion tax cut bill she signed into law in October 2023 that she says delivered real relief to renters and older Bay State residents.

The tension between those positions also puts Healey into something of a box as she seeks reelection to a second term. She'll have to explain why some tax cuts are good while others are not.

More than half of the respondents (51%) to a University of New Hampshire poll earlier this month said they approved of Healey's job performance as she heads into the thick of campaign season.

But nearly 3 in 10 (28%) put the economy, followed by housing (24%), atop their list of concerns in that same poll. Bay Staters were more likely to cite the cost of living as their top concern in 2025 than they were in 2024, according to the poll.

Healey acknowledged that challenge during her speech to business leaders, bluntly noting that "we're a high-cost state, OK?"

Forever the former Harvard point guard, she said that teamwork between policymakers, residents and the business community was the key to navigating those challenges.

"It's all about teamwork, different positions," she said. "Everybody's got a role to play. Some of you, I need to box out. Some of you, I need to throw an elbow. Some of you, I need to make a nice pass. And some of you, I need to hit a bucket."

To further torture the metaphor, the new poll clearly shows business leaders would prefer the state to jump out to an early lead and stay there, rather than waiting for the buzzer-beater.

"It is time that our state leaders engage in some serious cost-of-living and cost of doing business introspection, and make it a priority to make the affordability of raising a family, retiring, and employing residents on Main Street their top priority," Hurst, of the retailers' group, said.

It's not yet half-time in campaign season. But that doesn't mean the play clock is irrelevant.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., holds a news conference on rising gas prices outside a Mobil gas station on Friday, March 13, 2026.Screen Capture

Markey: Trump's out of gas on Iran

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey used a stop outside a gas station in Malden last week to take a double-shot at President Donald Trump over rising prices at the pump and the Republican administration's opposition to alternative energy.

Americans are "being turned upside down at the pump and having money shaken out of their pockets," Markey, D-Mass., flanked by energy and transportation advocates, said during the Friday news conference.

A gallon of gas cost an average of $3.47 a gallon statewide last week, an increase of about 56 cents a gallon from the month before, according to AAA data. That's still well below a historic high of $5.07 a gallon in June 2022, according to the same data.

Dan Gatti, a transportation policy expert at the Acadia Center, said the joint U.S./Israeli campaign in Iran and the ongoing war in Ukraine underscore the same problem: The world remains too dependent on fossil fuels.

"Here in New England, we spend $75 billion per year on energy and fuel, most of which is spent on oil and gas, which comes from outside our region," Gatti said. "When energy prices spike, some politicians reach for gimmicks like cutting energy efficiency programs or asking ratepayers to subsidize more fossil fuel infrastructure. But making consumers pay for gas pipelines will increase costs, not decrease them."

Markey called the U.S. military campaign in Iran "illegal" and described it as an "escalating economic disaster that is going to ripple right down into the lives of ordinary families."

"They're going to see it at the pump. They're going to see it in the price of food. They're going to see it in the prices of everything that has to be transported in our nation."

The State House in Boston was briefly hit by a power outage last week. Abby Clark

When the lights go down in the city ...

People often accuse their elected leaders of being in the dark on the stuff that matters. For a few hours last week, the metaphor became real when a blackout hit the State House.

Legislative Information Services sent an email to lawmakers and staff around 9 p.m. on Wednesday to let them know about an electrical outage. With portions of the building running on generator power, State House honchos took down Wi-Fi connectivity. The Legislature's website also was taken offline, according to State House News Service .

That meant the live feeds for House and Senate sessions weren't available on Thursday morning, which disappointed ... someone ... probably.

So what happened?

An external power line on Derne Street that feeds the State House failed Wednesday night, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance told State House News Service.

Like most things in life, however, the outage was just temporary. And service was restored by about noon on Thursday, the wire service reported.

A new study argues that a rent control ballot question would do more harm than good. Ryan Stanton, MLive.com

Monday numbers

The Greater Boston Real Estate Board and the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University have run the numbers on the economic fallout of a 2026 ballot question that would allow rent control statewide.

And they don't like what they see.

"The effects of rent control would be permanent, amounting to a sustained loss of investment for homeowners and a durably shrunken tax base for cities and towns," the analysis found.

Here's a quick look at what they found:

6%-9%:How much the residential property tax base statewide would immediately shrink if voters approve the ballot question.

14%:How much property values would decrease over a decade in the wake of its implementation.

$300 billion:The dollar value of that same decrease.

15%-20%:The projected property tax hit to urban areas and college towns.

10%:How much cities and towns likely will have to hike taxes if they don't choose to cut services.

And in Boston, the "proposed rent control rules would exacerbate existing fiscal challenges due to slowing residential tax collections and the ongoing commercial tax shortfall," analysts wrote.

State House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, speaks at a State House News Service/MASSterList event at the MCLE Conference Center in Boston on Feb. 25, 2026. State House News Service

They said it

"The auditor has repeatedly rejected that offer. The auditor's refusal makes it clear that this effort has never been about auditing the Legislature — it has been about advancing the auditor's own political ambitions."

— State House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, once again makes his feelings known (in a Boston Globe commentary) on state Auditor Diana DiZoglio's push to audit the Legislature. Voters overwhelmingly approved the plan during a statewide referendum in 2024.

A view of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, looking across Beacon Street from the Boston Common.(John L. Micek/MassLive)

Turned up to 11

Matt Berninger, frontman for indie stalwarts The National, brings his latest solo tour to The Royale in Boston on March 23 ( tickets and more info here ).

Berninger is on the road in support of his most recent solo LP " Get Sunk ‚" which was released last year. Here's the latest single, a duet with Rosanne Cash: It's " Who Loves the Sun? "

Your Monday long read

Here's one writer's ode to an influential high school librarian and how it prepared her for her future.John L. Micek/MassLive

If you are a certain kind of book nerd, then the chances are pretty good that your life was shaped by a school or local librarian who pressed a book they thought you'd like into your young hands, starting you down the road to a lifetime of reading.

Writing for The Texas Observer, Kalyn Gensic recalls one such librarian who shaped her life, and who prepared her for the book-banning battles she now faces as a librarian herself.

Here's the germane bit:

I entered this profession just as the storm clouds of the current book-banning push were starting to gather, but I enrolled in a librarian certification program hoping it would pass over me as if lamb's blood were painted on my doorframe.

And for the first three years, wishful thinking worked. No challenges. Just me and my colleagues planning programming to get high schoolers reading, inviting authors to visit, and crafting displays for all the national months and weeks and days people don't even know exist until they walk into a library.

In late summer last year, I received a message from my fellow librarians. We'd all been watching the legislative session as Senate Bill 13, which regulates school library materials, made its way into law. We arranged to meet at a local coffee shop a few weeks before school would start to discuss the bill, strategize, gnash teeth, and gird our loins. The upcoming school year had officially become uncharted territory.

That's it for today. As always, you can send comments, tips and questions my way at jmicek@masslive.com. Have a good week, friends.

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