Healey and others hustle to score a women’s hoop team, possibly from Connecticut

Mass General Brigham is proud to have five hospitals nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report. This honor reflects our commitment to enhancing patient care, teaching and research, and taking a leadership role as an integrated health care system. Thank you to our hardworking staff across the system who make a difference in our patients’ lives every day.

Whatever division there was between the world of government and politics and the sports universe has been trampled back and forth so much that it now looks like the first base line after a Little League doubleheader.

Beacon Hill is settled into its leisurely August pace and Gov. Maura Healey's public schedule has been seasonably light. But a report in the Globe this week revealed that the governor has been hard at work behind the scenes on an issue that went from a mere blip on the radar a year or two ago to the governor's front burner: landing a WNBA team for Boston.

"There's a lot that I'm working on, there's a lot of stuff happening in the world, and I've got to tell you that for the last month, as I've gone around at every single event, somebody comes up to me, and the one thing they say is, 'Let's go get that W team, we want to see the WNBA here,'" the governor told the Globe.

She added, "To me, this is where everybody is."

Herself a former professional women's basketball player, Healey is reportedly holding conversations with basically everyone as the league seemingly resists a proposal that would see the Connecticut Sun moved to Boston by 2027. The WNBA, which has been around for decades but is now seeing its greatest surge in popularity and financial viability, faces a slew of other cities that have applied for franchises and is reported to favor a potential expansion franchise being introduced in Boston at a later time.

"Basically everyone" means former Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, who has offered a total $425 million to buy the Sun and relocate the team to Boston, and the Mohegan Tribe that owns franchise now. New Celtics owner Bill Chisholm, WNBA officials, and the NBA are also in on the talks, the Globe said.

The governor's pitch touted "just how sports-crazy Boston and this region is." For as much as Massachusetts loves sports (and, crucially, winning at sports), we also seem to like to mix sports and politics. Though maybe not what a former sports-fan governor "would describe as governing stuff," Healey's WNBA dealmaking efforts have lots of precedent in sports crazy Massachusetts.

KPMG found Applegreen’s financials do not meet MassDOT’s goal to sustain or increase revenue, while Global Partners’ proposal does. Yet, MassDOT still chose Applegreen and is now rushing a secretive 35-year lease, handing critical public infrastructure to the foreign company, ignoring conflicts of interest and public records requests, risking $900M in guaranteed rent. Taxpayers deserve transparency, oversight, and accountability before this billion-dollar deal is finalized.

The Baker administration was part of prying away the Pawtucket Red Sox from Rhode Island and using the team (and the construction of a brand new ballpark) as a centerpiece of efforts to revitalize a large swath of downtown Worcester. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has her hands in two stadium deals now: one where she has partnered with a professional women's soccer team to rebuild White Stadium and the other in which she is negotiating on the other side of the table from Robert Kraft, who wants to move his New England Revolution soccer team to the Everett side of the city limits.

Kraft was a central player in a lot of the stadium-politics drama that played out here in the 1990s -- a decade during which the Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics moved into the Fleet Center (now called TD Garden), and the future sites of Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots home games were topics of great debate.

There was debate over a "megaplex" that would combine a major sports stadium with a large-scale convention center as early as 1992, according to News Service archives, two years before Kraft bought the Patriots. Beacon Hill politicians were already focused on keeping the Patriots in Massachusetts (the team was thought to be on the verge of moving to St. Louis under the previous steward), but things escalated when Kraft joined Connecticut Gov. John Rowland for a 1998 press conference announcing that the region's NFL team would soon call Hartford home.

Of course, Kraft walked away from a $374 million plan to move the team to Hartford and, as the News Service reported in 1999, Beacon Hill was activated by reports that NFL leaders had placed calls to Boston business leaders expressing fears that "TV ad revenues would fall if the Patriots played in the Hartford television market instead of Boston." It wasn't long before the Legislature passed a $72 million loan package to help Kraft improve the surrounding infrastructure necessary for a new stadium in Foxborough and keep the Patriots in Massachusetts.

Pagliuca and Healey are keeping their fingers and toes crossed that the bid to move the Sun from Connecticut to Massachusetts doesn't follow a similar trajectory some 25 years later.

MASSterList Job Board
Director of Advocacy and Research — NEW!, Community Preservation Coalition
Enforcement Counsel, Gaming & Sports Wagering, Massachusetts Gaming Commission
Policy Advocacy and Legislative Coordinator, Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants
Executive Director, Metro Housing Boston
Digital Content Manager, Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General
Vice President of Finance & Administration, Community Foundation for MetroWest

Jobs continue below the fold — post a job

The sports world is even bleeding into the work of Secretary of State William Galvin, who serves as the top state securities regulator.

The stock trading app Robinhood said this week that its users in any state will be able in the app to essentially wager on the outcome of NFL and some college football games this year, including games involving Boston College. Betting on games involving Massachusetts colleges is prohibited in the state's legal betting scheme, but Robinhood says what it offers through its "prediction market" are event contracts that are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

"This is just another gimmick from a company that's very good at gimmicks to lure investors away from sound investing," Galvin told Reuters in March when the outlet was first to report that Galvin had subpoenaed Robinhood over its sports-related offerings.

There's a measure of irony that Galvin is the one casting a skeptical eye towards a way Bay Staters might be able to wager on the state's one big-time college football program, BC. Galvin is a BC alumnus and he lives practically next door to the school's campus in Brighton. But that proximity has led to problems -- including in the mid-90s when Galvin sued the school as a private citizen over complaints about parking for BC football games.

If you thought the deluge of analytics made sports less fun, just wait until you hear how Robinhood explains its offering: "Unlike sports betting, where the firm sets a line, event contracts leverage the power and rigor of financial market structure and are offered in a marketplace where buyers and sellers interact to set the price. Customers can access the contracts in real time and manage risk by adjusting–or exiting–their positions up to and throughout a game before a contract expires."

Cool.

Colin A. Young can be reached at

_{– Sponsored by Eversource Energy –}

Your bill is going up due to summer usage. Here’s how you can save

Air conditioners and fans are working hard as the hot and humid weather settles in across New England. In Massachusetts, customers use approximately 30% more electricity on average during the summer months to keep their homes and businesses cool, but heat waves and long stretches of sweltering weather can drive that number up even higher. No matter what electric rates are, when your usage increases, so does your bill — READ MORE

WEEKEND PLANNER

SATURDAY

NEPONSET DAY: Neponset River Watershed Association hosts Neponset Day, featuring free canoeing and kayaking. There will also be kids games, environmental and science exhibits, food trucks, ice cream and music. The event runs through 1 p.m. (Saturday, 9 a.m., DCR Neponset II Park, Corner of Granite Avenue and Hill Top Street, Dorchester | More Info)

UKRANIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY: Ukrainian Independence Day celebration includes a flag-raising ceremony. There will also be local Ukrainian vendors and businesses, as well as local nonprofits helping Ukraine. Event runs through 5 p.m. (12 p.m., City Hall Plaza, 1 City Hall Square, Boston)

SUNDAY

TUTWILER ON KELLER: Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler joins MASSterList columnist Jon Keller on his weekly "Keller at Large" talk show. They discuss the debate over in-school cellphone bans, the potential for teacher strikes this year and conflict over literacy education. (8:30 a.m., WBZ-TV)

CANADIAN CONSUL GENERAL ON NBC: Consul General of Canada in Boston Bernadette Jordan sits down with reporter Matt Prichard. (9:30 a.m., NBC 10)

LOUIJEUNE ON OTR: Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune joins Ed Harding and Erika Tarantal on WCVB's weekly political talk show. Democratic political analyst Mary Anne Marsh and Republican political analyst Ginny Buckingham will join after for the roundtable discussion. (11 a.m., WCVB)

MBTA SERVICE CHANGES: A new fall schedule takes effect on the MBTA, bringing later service every day on several bus routes and more frequency on several subway lines. Starting Sunday, bus trips will extend about an hour later into the night every night on the Route 23 from Ashmont to Ruggles, the Route 28 from Mattapan to Ruggles, the Route 57 from Watertown to Kenmore, the Route 111 from Woodlawn to Haymarket, and the Route 116 from Wonderland to Maverick. Other routes will run more frequently during the day, as will the Red, Orange and Blue Lines. The fall schedule will also bring later weekend hours on the subway and other bus lines starting Friday, Aug. 29.

JOB BOARD

Do you have an open job you'd like to feature here? Click here to place a job board order, or email Dylan Rossiter at [email protected].