Checking in on Gov. Healey's promises and goals, one year later

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Gov. Maura Healey’s first State of the Commonwealth address is tonight at 7 p.m. You can listen live on 90.9 starting at 6:45 p.m. or tune in on our website.

As with all “state of the [fill in the blank]” speeches, there’s a very good chance Healey will make some policy announcements and goals. Do you remember last year, when we gave you a list of the promises she made during her inaugural address? WBUR Today, like Pepperidge Farms, remembers.

Here’s a look at the list, with a check (✔️) for items she’s fulfilled and an X (❌) or a question mark (❓)  for items still on the to-do list.

✔️ Create a secretary of housing in her cabinet: Say hello to Ed Augustus.

❓ Identify state property that can be turned into rental housing: In progress. Healey filed a sweeping $4.1 billion bill to boost housing production that would start this process, but the State House has yet to act on the legislation.

✔️ Reduce costs for first-time homebuyers and renters: Partial check. Renters can save up to an additional $50 in taxes each year thanks to an expanded tax deduction that was part of the tax cut deal Healey signed in October. (Yes, it’s not much, but it technically fulfills half of that promise.) The big $4 billion housing bill we just mentioned above also includes money to provide assistance and fund home-building for first-time homebuyers, but that’s still TBD.

✔️ Expanded child tax credits: A big check. Those were also in the tax deal.

✔️ Expanding child care support for families and pay for caregivers. This is both a check and an incomplete. Healey’s first budget included some money to help child care providers, but advocates say the industry is so broken that more needs to be done. So, just yesterday, Healey announced she’ll include a raft of permanent investments to make child care more affordable in her fiscal 2025 budget.

✔️ Free community college for students over 25 without a degree: Check.

✔️ Fund the Student Opportunity Act Status: Check.

✔️ Improve mental health care and food security for students: The current budget includes funding for universal free school lunches. Healey has also dedicated money to youth mental health.

✔️ Appoint a new MBTA GM: Best of luck, Phil Eng.

✔️ Hire 1,000 new T workers in the first year: Promise kept-ish! While the T did hire more than 1,000 new people, it netted 730 full-time equivalent hires once you factor in the people who left in the last year.

✔️ Form an interagency task force to get more federal highway funding: Check. Healey tapped Quentin Palfrey to head up the effort to tap the pool of federal funds, which the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said could amount to $18 billion.

✔️ Equity audit of every state agency: Check. Healey made the order within days of her speech.

❌ Double our offshore wind targets, quadruple our energy storage deployment: We’re marking this incomplete because, while saying you’re going to double a target is fine, some the projects already penciled into those goals aren’t penciling out.

❓ Electrify the public fleet: In progress. Healey has created a new office to help manage this conversion through 2040. (Some advocates have been disappointed in the state’s previous efforts around electrification.)

❓ Put a million electric cars on the road by 2030: Still in progress, but the state would have to massively pick up the pace to meet this goal.

✔️ Create cabinet-level climate chief position: Melissa Hoffer was a nominee before Healey was sworn in, and by October had issued her first major report on the state of the state’s approach to its climate goals.

✔️ Commit 1% of state budget to environmental and energy agencies and triple the budget of the Clean Energy Center: Check.

❌ Create thousands of clean tech jobs and build a “climate corridor” across Mass. to bolster clean tech business: This is another technical incomplete because it’s not really something you can grade pass/fail. It may be impossible to say when such a corridor is in place, since it’s always going to be a work in progress.

P.S.— Don’t worry if you miss Healey’s speech tonight; we’ll have a quick debrief on any announcements or news she makes during the address in tomorrow’s newsletter.