EV infrastructure lags and four more stories: The Saturday Send - June 5, 2026

 

The Saturday Send

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Welcome back to the Saturday Send, a weekly digest of stories from CommonWealth Beacon that you may have missed. This week, Jordan Wolman looks at why, nearly four years after receiving millions through a federal EV infrastructure program, the Commonwealth hasn’t built a single charger, despite being roughly 2,000 chargers short of its estimated needs. Plus, proponents of a ballot measure to create the strictest statewide rent control in the country are scrambling to find a way off the ballot; a House bill would permanently limit the power voters awarded the state auditor to probe the Legislature; the Mass. inspector general warns that county sheriffs’ budgeting is rife with “chaos”; and the House joins the Senate in a crusade for stronger data privacy in Massachusetts.    Check out those stories below, and, as always, thanks for reading. — The CommonWealth Beacon team

Massachusetts’s slow adoption of EV chargers through federal program is ‘mystifying’ to transit advocates By Jordan Wolman While Massachusetts ranks fourth in the country for charging ports per capita after a sharp increase in installments over the past few years, the state is still about 2,000 charging ports short of what it estimates it needs.

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Rent control backers scrambling to find legislative road away from the ballot By Jennifer Smith and Chris Lisinski Organizers then went public Tuesday afternoon with what they touted as a compromise: limiting rent increases to no more than 10 percent per year, only in cities and towns that opt in.

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Transparency fight escalates as House votes to limit its exposure to audit, public records requests By Chris Lisinski The House’s top Republican described the controversial bill as an “[expletive] sandwich with extra pickles.”

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Mass. inspector general faults sheriffs for using private bank accounts By Chris Lisinski Punctuating a months-long political feud, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said lawmakers, the executive branch, and sheriffs alike need to make changes to leave behind the “chaos” that consumed budgeting at the county law enforcement offices.

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House wades in on data privacy: ‘Your data belongs to you.’ By Jennifer Smith “Without exaggeration, we are living through the largest unregulated extraction of information in the history of civilization,” said Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, of Pittsfield, on the House floor.

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Lessons from Boston on Mass. school segregation lawsuit 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 […] LISTEN NOW

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