Category: The Codcast

While several hyperlocal newsrooms have launched in communities across the state, there is an information gap forming: Many Bay State residents live in news deserts.

Starting in 2024, a group of 10 Massachusetts communities kickstarted a first-of-a-kind experiment by pledging to go fossil fuel free. But moving off gas for new buildings doesn’t preclude the utilities from needing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year upgrading the existing infrastructure by replacing pipes. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Hallie Claflin and Jordan Wolman discuss Wolman’s latest piece uncovering how gas companies have spent $100 million on natural gas infrastructure in nine of those 10 communities, roughly since they adopted their fossil fuel-free ordinances.

New Mexico is making waves, and generating questions from curious onlookers, by offering universal child care to all families. How is it funded? Is it truly universal? Are there enough caretakers to keep up with demand? And with our astronomically high child care costs, could Massachusetts achieve something similar? Jacob Vigil, the chief legislative officer of New Mexico Voices for Children, joins CommonWealth Beacon’s Chris Lisinski to dive into the policy, the grassroots campaign behind the changes, and how money from the booming New Mexican oil and gas industry played a key role.

Patrick Gilligan has a lifetime of experience in health care. One year ago, he accepted the role of CEO of Point32Health, a regional nonprofit health insurance provider. On this month’s edition of Health or Consequences, hosts John McDonough and Paul Hattis ask Gilligan to take a deep dive into the current state of health insurance. Are patients getting what they’re paying for? How are health insurers cutting costs while remaining competitive? How is market consolidation contributing to rising health care costs? And what policies might help stem the tide?

Gov. Maura Healey’s administration estimates that the state will need 222,000 by 2035 to deal withe existing need and population growth. Her new housing secretary, Juana Matias, says we can meet that goal, and joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith to talk about chipping away at decades of sluggish housing production. Matias, who was a state representative and regional administrator at HUD, talks about what she’d like to see come from the end-of-session rush and how the state can weather federal pullbacks on fair housing an public housing.

Matches in the world’s biggest sports spectacle will kick off this week across North America. With Boston as one of the host cities — seven matches will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, which will be renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup tournament — Massachusetts will be in the spotlight as it hosts thousands of international fans and will need to safely move people between the city and a stadium some 22 miles away by rail. Are we ready? And is hosting these sorts of mega-events even worth it? This week on The Codcast, Chris Dempsey, the former co-chair of “No Boston Olympics” joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman to discuss whether this time is any different from more than a decade ago when Dempsey successfully fought against Boston’s bid to play home base for the 2024 Olympics.

Massachusetts has been busing students between neighborhoods and school districts for 60 years, but segregation within the school system persists – and in some places it’s actually gotten worse over recent decades. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Dan O’Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University, about a new lawsuit brought against the state. Students and civil rights organizations want the state to step in to address segregation across school districts, and Boston’s long and fraught history of attempted desegregation may offer some lessons.

On the monthly Health or Consequences episode of The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute talk with Vicki Poulos, a senior health law attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. They discuss discuss the massive 2025 federal tax-and-spend law and its consequences for MassHealth and the Connector, what the state can do to limit coverage losses, and immigrant insurance eligibility cuts.

Dave Denison was the first editor of CommonWealth magazine and oversaw the publication of its first issue 30 years ago, in the spring of 1996. Although much has changed about the country, the state, and the organization since the 1990s, Denison and current editor Laura Colarusso discuss the enduring mission of creating a more transparent political system for the common good.

Defining the middle class is harder than it might seem – it might mean owning a home, having steady work, keeping a pot of savings, or the kids and white picket fence vision of the “American Dream.” Historian Andrew Seal, whose research and writings focus on how the middle class thinks of itself, joins CommonWealth Beacon senior reporter Jennifer Smith on The Codcast to interpret recent Bay State polling and dive into how a middle-class identity intersects with race, media portrayals, and American individualism.