More transparency “than ever before” was the promise Gov. Maura Healey made to voters when it came to the issue of public records. The Cambridge Democrat vowed she would break precedent with governors past, who for decades have claimed a blanket exemption from public records law based on a 1997 Supreme Judicial Court decision, shrouding their administrations in opacity. Massachusetts and Michigan are the only states where the governor’s offices claim such an exemption...

Vaccination rates among teenagers are lagging in the same cities and towns that have suffered the most amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new report by equity advocates reveals, renewing calls for officials to prioritize the state’s most vulnerable residents with cases back on the rise. “We are nine months into the state’s vaccination program, yet we are still seeing the same inequities that plagued the program from the start,” said Dr. Atyia Martin, Co-Chair of the Vaccine Equity Now! Coalition.

Already under pressure from falling enrollment, Catholic schools are taking a heavy hit from the coronavirus pandemic with 11 shutting down in Massachusetts amid a wave of closures nationwide. “This is the largest number of closures in almost 50 years,” said Thomas Carroll, superintendent of schools for the Boston Archdiocese. “This is a pretty extraordinary moment for the archdiocese.” Catholic education has been grappling with declining enrollment and financial challenges from lost tuition f

The Fore River basin is home the largest concentration of industry south of Boston and for more than 100 years, its residents have lived in the shadow of pollution that has taken a toll on their air quality, water quality, soil and health.

With more than 3,800 new apartments and houses built in Quincy over the last decade, residents say the character of their beloved neighborhoods is being lost to development.

Developers looking to cash in on Quincy’s building boom have been throwing money into Mayor Thomas Koch’s campaign account, which he says is a sign that confidence in Quincy’s long-promised redevelopment is finally taking hold. Since 2015, about 2,500 new apartments have been built and 1,000 more are under construction now.

Hospitals are closing at a rate of more than 30 per year, but what happens when a city loses its emergency care?

Owners of nonresident Airbnb-style properties — facing a Dec. 1 deadline that could shut them down — are pushing the Zoning Board of Appeals to reclassify their buildings as “boutique hotels” or “executive suites” and are facing pushback from fed-up neighbors. Property owners have filed 10 applications to reclassify 202 residential apartments since city councilors began debating regulating the short-term stay industry that includes popular sites like Airbnb, Sonder and Homeaway in 2018. Four of

Short-term rental companies will no longer be able to exploit a loophole allowing them to convert clusters of apartments into “executive suites” to skirt a city law that aims to block investors from taking apartments off of the year-round rental market. The zoning commission on Wednesday closed the loophole in the city’s short-term rental ordinance that let investors convert apartments in 11 city neighborhoods into “executive suites” — which are exempt from the ordinance — without any public pr