What a week!
Looks like Maura is kicking off the fall by doing what she does best — delivering for Massachusetts. Since your support has been so important in powering her work, we wanted to give you a quick rundown:
When she took office, Maura said the biggest challenge facing Massachusetts was housing. She got to work, passing the biggest housing legislation in Massachusetts history and working across the aisle to create programs like the MBTA Communities Law, helping cities and towns across the state kickstart the new development we need to bring down costs for everyone.
Well this week, Maura and AG Andrea Campbell announced that an overwhelming number of communities across the state are saying yes to housing - that’s 75 cities and towns already, and counting.
And it’s not just housing. When Steward Health Care announced bankruptcy due to mismanagement, patients and healthcare professionals across Massachusetts were in danger of losing their care and their jobs.
This week, Maura and her team led the effort to remove Steward Health Care from the state and save 5 hospitals by transitioning them to new operators, protecting access to care for hundreds of thousands of patients and saving more than 13,000 jobs. We still have work to do, but this was an important step and the beginning of a new chapter in Massachusetts.
Maura is making history on education, too. One policy that Maura proposed while running for Governor was MassReconnect — her plan to make community college free for people over 25 without a degree. After she delivered, the results were startling. We saw a nearly 45% spike in students ages 25+ enrolling in community college. The jump was so big that it drove an 8% overall enrollment growth across Massachusetts community colleges, reversing a decade of declines. So Maura made history again.
This week Maura joined with legislators and other partners to celebrate the launch of MassEducate, her historic investment in higher education that builds on the success of MassReconnect to provide free community college to students of any age.
This program will give thousands of new students transformative opportunities to advance their careers, and boost our economy by giving employers access to the workforce they need to keep investing in Massachusetts.
When we talk about how Maura is building a stronger Massachusetts, this is what we mean. She’s investing in education, strengthening our economy, and taking on the cost of living. There’s a lot of work left to do, but she’s making progress every day, and we’re so grateful to everyone on Team Massachusetts for your support in making a brighter future possible.
If you care about the progress she’s making and are able to donate to help sustain her work, you can chip in at the link below!
Thanks for reading!
-Team Healey