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Boston's Morning Newsletter
Mass. voter ID ballot campaign falls short on needed signatures
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And happy first night of Hanukkah. Local elected officials and Jewish leaders will gather on the Common around 4:30 p.m. today to light the city’s giant, 22-foot-tall menorah. (It’s not quite the largest menorah in the world, but it’s among the tallest in New England.)
While we prep the perfectly crisp latkes and await the high-scoring offensive display that tonight’s Patriots-Steelers game promises, let’s get to today’s news:
Coming up short: Massachusetts could have a pretty busy election next fall when it comes to ballot questions. But the effort by conservative activists to put a voter identification requirement proposal on the ballot seems to have missed the cut. Joanne Miksis, one of the organizers behind the voter ID ballot campaign, says they submitted roughly 40,000 signatures to Secretary of State Bill Galvin ahead of the state’s filing deadline yesterday — tens of thousands short of the 74,574 signatures needed to advance.
- The initiative — which proposed requiring voters to show photo ID or sign an affidavit attesting to their identity before casting a ballot — joins the push to repeal the state’s ban on rent control as one of the questions that couldn’t gather enough signatures to move forward this fall. Miksis says the “grassroots” effort had no outside funding and did not have paid signature gatherers like other ballot campaigns. “An eye-opening experience for our team for sure,” she said in an email. “Having $$ gets the job done.”
- Moving ahead: As we reported last month, six other ballot campaigns say they have collected more than enough signatures to advance (though we won’t officially know until Galvin’s office reviews them). Galvin said it might take longer than the usual three weeks “due to the unusually high number of petitions being filed,” including five different versions filed by the Uber- and Lyft-backed ballot campaign to reclassify app-based drivers from gig workers to independent contractors.
Runner-up: Massachusetts’ Vineyard Wind won’t technically be the first operational offshore wind farm in the U.S. after all. New York’s South Fork Wind project (about 35 miles east of Montauk Point) has become the first commercial off-shore wind in the U.S. to begin sending electricity to the grid, its developer announced yesterday. They beat Vineyard Wind to the distinction by a matter of weeks.
- The South Fork project reached the milestone after finishing its first turbine. While Vineyard Wind has actually fully installed five turbines, they still need to do more testing before sending electricity back to land. They’re aiming to start later this month.
A 54-year-old New Hampshire man is facing manslaughter charges after a deadly crash at a work site yesterday afternoon in Waltham. Officials say that Waltham Police Officer Paul Tracey and an unnamed National Grid worker were killed after the driver crashed their pickup truck into the site on Totten Pond Road. Police say the suspect then stole a police car and fled the scene, but later crashed it. He was eventually arrested, after a foot pursuit.
Stoughton is the latest Massachusetts community that will lose a health care facility. Steward Health Care announced yesterday it plans to shut down the New England Sinai Acute Long-Term Care and Rehabilitation Hospital by this coming April.
- The Dallas-based company — which is the country’s largest for-profit hospital operator — says it’s lost $22 million from the hospital because nearly three-quarters of its patients pay via Medicare and Medicaid. Hospital staff plan to try to move patients to another facility within 25 miles of the site.
The Boston City Council officially passed its proposed ban on guinea pig sales in pet stores, and Mayor Michelle Wu plans to sign it, according to her office. The ordinance will add guinea pigs to the city’s ordinance that bans the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet shops. That means you’ll only be allowed to get them through shelters or animal rescue groups, like the MSPCA (which has dozens up for adoption). The ban will take effect 90 days after Wu signs the ordinance.
Did you notice a faster Green Line trip yesterday? The MBTA says it removed 12 slow zones during the nine-day downtown partial closure that ended this week — two more than originally planned. T officials also say they shortened two slow zones on the E branch.
P.S.— Gov. Maura Healey is live on Radio Boston today at 11 a.m., and we want your ideas for questions! Send them through our text club.
