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❄️Snow to the west! But also rain, with highs in the 40s. Sunset is at 4:12 p.m.
It’s Giving Tuesday, which means nonprofits are asking you to add charitable donations to your holiday spending. Some local organizations are entering the fundraising push feeling nervous that more people have less money to give.
Darrel “Slim” Williams, executive director of the nonprofit Heal the Hood in Jamaica Plain, said his organization has raised $15,000 this year — less than it did last year. But they’ve actually seen more people give, just in smaller amounts.
“We’ve had an increase in community support, as many people chipping in as possible to make sure that we should sustain throughout these times,” Williams told GBH’s Trajan Warren. “We need a village and the village is us. And over here at Heal the Hood, though we might not be a fully funded organization, we’re funded in love.”
Four Things to Know
1. With voters signaling they no longer want to require students to pass the MCAS test to graduate, state officials are exploring alternatives. One proposal, unveiled yesterday by Gov. Maura Healey would require every graduating high schooler to submit a capstone or portfolio project to their teachers — and pass some non-MCAS tests.
The tests would “give students an objective look at their own progress,” said state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Pedro Martinez. The capstone projects and portfolios, meanwhile, would offer another way for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.
2. One provision tucked into the end-of-session budget Gov. Healey signed into law last week changes the process for legally changing your name. Until now, people had to pay to publish a public notice in their local newspaper. That requirement is now gone, and name-change court records will be kept confidential.
“The name change process had become really burdensome, expensive, slow and stressful for pretty much everyone, but particularly for transgender and nonbinary people,” said Polly Crozier, GLAD Law’s director of family advocacy. “Particularly for transgender people, nonbinary people, people who might be survivors of domestic violence; publishing a notice in a newspaper really feels kind of scary and invasive.”
3. Have something to say about the $4.5 billion plan to replace the Bourne and Sagamore bridges? Now’s your chance: the public comment period on the project is open until Jan. 5, 2026.
Construction on the new Sagamore bridge is scheduled to start in 2028, while the state is still working to secure funding for the new Bourne Bridge.
4. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas: yesterday brought tree lightings at Copley Square and the State House. The big Boston Common tree lighting ceremony is set for Thursday at 6 p.m.
And the SoWa Winter Festival — the annual indoor holiday market in the South End — is officially open for business. “When people step away and do all their shopping online, there’s a disconnect there,” said vendor Marianne Janik, owner of the jewelry brand Calli b. “What this does is it brings people out to see what people are doing, and everything’s unique.”
The road ahead for 2026 ballot questions
By Katie Lannan
Tomorrow marks the next hurdle for ballot campaigns hoping to put their issue before Massachusetts voters in 2026. Campaigns filed more than 40 ballot questions this year — a record number. Those won’t all make it before voters: we’ll have a better idea of how many are still in the mix after supporters file the voter signatures they’ve collected with the secretary of state by Wednesday.
It’s a heavy lift to gather those thousands of necessary signatures, so the field will narrow. But House Speaker Ron Mariano says the overall number of questions bothers him and makes him wonder about how easy it is for special interest groups to write up a question they favor, pay professional signature-gatherers, and essentially buy a new law.
Mariano says this idea, and his wariness about it all, was one of the topics of conversation when he met privately last week with state Senate President Karen Spilka and Governor Maura Healey. Healey didn’t weigh in when the three of them talked to reporters after their huddle, but Spilka raised her own related issue: she said that sometimes what looks like a grassroots campaign can be financed by interest groups, and that voters deserve more transparency.
It’s worth noting that state lawmakers tend not to be too jazzed about ballot questions as a concept. Mariano has been vocal about this over the years, arguing that you get better policy through the deliberative process of the professional Legislature and all the vetting involved there.
But the flipside of that is advocates — or interest groups, depending on how you look at it — often end up going to the ballot when their issue can’t get traction in the Legislature, either because of inaction or because it’s a policy that state legislators just don’t like. There are ballot questions proposed this election cycle on matters that have been idling on Beacon Hill for years, like rent control and tax reductions. Others take that frustration with the State House further and propose reforms to legislative operations.
So what’s next? Your elected officials have a chance to intervene. The petitions that clear this week’s signature deadline will be sent in January to the House clerk. The Legislature can then pass a proposed ballot law on its own or negotiate with campaigns and try to strike a deal that satisfies the backers. That’s how we got the state law that gave Massachusetts both a $15 minimum wage and paid family and medical leave.
Lawmakers are also looking at a bill to make ballot campaigns report their donations and spending monthly. Right now, there’s an eight-month window where no campaign finance reports are required. Supporters of the bill, like the pro-democracy advocacy group Common Cause, say people and entities from inside or outside Massachusetts could spend wildly during that time trying to influence voters, with no way to know in real time.
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