Tag: Maura Healey

It is in this context that businesses, particularly manufacturers, have become skeptical of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s legal action against ExxonMobil as a centerpiece of her efforts to combat global climate change. Along with her counterpart in New York, she is breaking new ground by using state police power against a business to achieve a public policy goal. The latest twist and turn in Healey’s inquiry is that the US Supreme Court has now asked Healey to explain why her investigation of ExxonMobil’s climate change activities is a legitimate use of her authority. This investigation is part of a multi-front effort to use courts and lawsuits to circumvent Congress and drive climate change policy. drive divestment from Exxon, [and] drive Exxon and climate change into the center for the 2016 election.” These same lawyers have also been behind lawsuits that towns and counties have been filing in the past couple of years to make ExxonMobil and other energy companies pay for sea walls and infrastructure projects to deal with impacts of climate change. Sending a civil investigative demand to a private business is a powerful law enforcement tool. Now, all eyes are on the Supreme Court. Justice Ruth Ginsburg, writing for the court, explained that suing energy producers over climate change is not the proper way to set American energy policy. The question for the court this time is whether Healey has the jurisdiction to conduct this investigation. If the court takes the case, it could help curb politically motivated litigation against the private sector.

The future of politics in Massachusetts is female. I’ve thought that for a while, but Ayanna Pressley put an exclamation point on that sentence Tuesday night. You’ll recognize that as Pressley’s campaign slogan, but it also should be the rallying cry of an entire movement, led by a formidable troika of Pressley, Maura Healey, and Michelle Wu. They are the epitome of impatient women, and Massachusetts politics will never be the same. ), when she ran for state attorney general. Like Pressley, Healey trounced her opponent on her way to becoming the nation’s first openly gay AG. While the stalwarts of the Democratic Party backed Capuano, Healey and Wu stood their ground with Pressley, bringing not only their clout but a constellation of supporters and donors. But let us not forget the biggest queenmaker of all: Barbara Lee, the Cambridge philanthropist who has bankrolled female candidates for two decades, including early support for Pressley, Healey, and Wu. Lee got political because she wanted to change the face of leadership, and she thought if she could elect more women to office that would inspire young girls and women to become leaders in every arena. In many ways, Lee wanted to solve a problem summed up in the mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” After 20 years and a historic win from Pressley, Lee can start altering her message: “You can be what you do see.” Shirley Leung is the interim Editorial Page Editor.

If only Donald Trump were party to the deal to shut down Mount Ida College and turn the 74-acre campus over to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Healey also announced an investigation into Mount Ida president Barry Brown, the board of trustees, and assorted Mount Ida officials as to whether they breached their fiduciary duties. Brown, a longtime professor at Suffolk Law School, was appointed provost of that university in 2008 and became acting president in 2010. He took the Mount Ida job in 2012. After Brown and Jason Potts, Mount Ida’s chief financial officer, ducked the Senate hearing on Wednesday, Senator Kathleen O’Connor Ives, the chair of the committee, threatened to subpoena them. But to borrow from Macbeth, the shock expressed in the aftermath of this deal so far boils down to “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” According to Carmin Reiss, the chair of Mount Ida’s board of trustees, the school’s administrators knew in 2017 that they were at the financial “point of no return.” That didn’t stop Mount Ida from admitting students or taking their money. “We’re confident we’ll do just fine in that review,” she said after the Senate hearing. While Mount Ida deserves scrutiny, no one should forget the other party to this deal: UMass. What happened at Mount Ida is unconscionable. But UMass and the state’s top political leaders didn’t try to stop it.