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GOP rivals blast Massachusetts Gov. Healey on shelter spending, data change

Matthew Medsger, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey’s rivals on Sunday blasted her in response to Boston Herald reporting that the administration had stopped sharing certain information about the state’s shelter system.

According to the trio of conservative candidates, spending $978 million on the state’s Emergency Assistance shelter system in fiscal 2025 is tantamount to an indictment of the Healey administration’s ability to manage the state’s other problems.

Former Baker administration Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Mike Kennealy said the governor “continues to fuel this crisis.”

“Just shy of one billion dollars wasted because the governor has been asleep at the wheel. She’s now taking a victory lap for moving migrants from hotels into government-subsidized apartments and calling that a solution. It’s not — it’s an insult to taxpayers and every Massachusetts family struggling to get by, and frankly, it’s offensive,” he said.

Brian Shortsleeve, the former chief administrator and acting general manager of the MBTA under the administration of former Gov. Charlie Baker, said news that the state government no longer publishes a regular accounting of how much the state is spending to shelter homeless families and pregnant women — just because a state law mandating the data reporting has expired — is an outrage, but hardly the only unsolved problem at the moment.

“It is outrageous that Maura Healey doesn’t want us to know how much of our money she’s spending on migrants. This, on top of the shady Mass Pike service plaza deal, the Mercedes cab contract, and the failure to audit the Legislature. When I’m elected, people will get answers from every agency including the governor’s office,” Shortsleeve said.

Kennealy piled on, suggesting that the state is spending nearly a billion dollars to house migrants “while veterans sleep on the streets, the Cape fights for Sagamore Bridge funding, schools can’t afford proper air conditioning, courts can’t afford to properly function, and municipalities struggle to stay afloat.”

“Maura Healey’s priorities are so backwards it’s offensive to every hardworking resident of this state,” Kennealy said.

Mike Minogue, a South Hamilton CEO and major GOP donor who launched the Bay State’s newest campaign for governor earlier this month, said that part of the problem is that spending on the shelter system — like the rest of state spending — has gone unaudited despite a new state law giving the state auditor authority to look into Legislative affairs.

“Taxpayer dollars have been misused for years. Enough of using hard-earned taxpayer money on benefits for illegal immigrants, political kick backs, and antiquated systems. We need the audit Bay Staters voted for. We need to shine light on the problem to really find the solution,” Minogue said in a social media post.

 

The GOP candidates’ remarks come after the Herald revealed that, through the last seven reports released since fiscal year 2026 started July 1, Healey administration officials stopped including key sections showing real-time data on how much the taxpayers paid for to house thousands of migrant families, for the various programs designed to move families out of shelter, and municipal support requirements such as the impact on local school districts.

In place of that information, the administration now only notes that the Legislature approved $276 million in this year’s state budget for the shelter system, as well as the average amount spent on families in shelter each week and the total amount of cash spent from a shelter reserve fund.

The since-changed biweekly reports were first launched in 2023 after Healey declared a state of emergency in the Bay State due to the number of newly arrived migrant families turning to the shelter system for housing. Massachusetts is alone among the 50 states in guaranteeing a right to shelter to pregnant women and families with small children.

In a note included in the Sept. 22 shelter report, administration budget and housing officials write that they “have completed reporting requirements established by that line item.”

“Reporting on activities that are no longer ongoing, such as hotel shelter or spending from past fiscal years, may be found in previous biweekly reports,” the administration said in the reports.

The governor’s office did not provide a new comment on the shelter costs or the assertions of the GOP candidates, instead referring the Herald to a previously issued statement by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

In the statement, an administration spokesperson told the Herald that under the Gov. Healey’s leadership the state’s shelter system as undergone several major reforms, “such as a capacity limit, length of stay limit, residency requirements, and background checks,” which they say “have successfully reduced caseloads and costs.”

“We expect fiscal year 2026 costs to be hundreds of millions of dollars less than fiscal year 2025,” the spokesperson said.

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©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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