By Bob Katzen

“Far too many Massachusetts residents have experienced the pain of being excited to buy tickets to see their favorite singer or sports team, only to realize that resale prices and fees have driven up the cost to outrageous levels. How about when you do purchase tickets from a reseller, only to get to the venue to realize the seller never actually transfers them to you? Enough is enough. We are taking action to lower ticket resale prices so Massachusetts fans can better afford to see their favorite performer or team.”

—Gov. Maura Healey on her newly filed bill that includes capping the resale price of concert tickets at 110 percent of the price of the face value of the original ticket and limiting the service fees and charges that can be imposed by ticket resellers like StubHub, to no more than 10 percent of the total price.

“Literacy development does not end in third grade, and our policies should reflect that reality. Reading is the gateway to learning in every subject and nearly every opportunity that follows, but for too long, adolescent literacy has been treated as an afterthought. When students cannot access grade-level texts, they are locked out of rigorous learning, college pathways and economic opportunity. The good news is that this challenge is solvable — but only if we commit to supporting literacy development beyond the early grades.”
—Jennie Williamson, state director for EdTrust in Massachusetts, on her release of a new report, “Beyond the Early Grades: The State of Adolescent Literacy in Massachusetts,” which finds that nearly 150,000 students in grades six through eight and ten are not meeting grade-level expectations in English language arts, with especially troubling disparities for Black and Latino students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities and students from low-income backgrounds.

“Too many people do not realize they have money waiting for them. By visiting these centers, we are making it easier for seniors to search for and claim what is theirs.”
—State Treasurer Deb Goldberg announcing that her Unclaimed Property Division has helped seniors recover $385,000 in property including forgotten checking and savings accounts, uncashed checks, stocks and dividends and more, by holding more than 20 outreach visits at senior centers across the state to reunite forgotten property with its rightful owners. Accounts are generally considered abandoned and turned over to the state after three years of inactivity. You can search for unclaimed property for free at http://www.findmassmoney.gov or call the Unclaimed Property Division’s live call center at 1-888-344-MASS (6277).

“Consumers have a right to expect that the companies entrusted with their most personal information will protect it. This settlement reinforces security requirements for the remaining 23andMe data, maintains consumers’ right to delete their information and makes clear that companies cannot cut corners when it comes to data privacy. I will continue to hold companies accountable when they fail to protect consumers and their sensitive information.”
—Attorney General Andrea Campbell and a coalition of 42 attorneys general, announcing an $18 million settlement, including $387,218 for the Bay State, with the bankruptcy trustee for 23andMe, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service that used saliva samples to provide personalized reports on a person’s ancestry, trait and health risks. The settlement resolves allegations stemming from a 2023 data breach that compromised the genetic data of 6.9 million customers worldwide.