April 2, 2025
Dear Governor Healey and Lt. Governor Driscoll:
On behalf of four of the state’s leading business associations – the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Business Roundtable, and Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation – we write to thank you for your work in the prior legislative session to advance the Commonwealth’s competitiveness. As the 2025-2026 legislative session gets underway, that work continues, and we want to express our same, urgent focus on ensuring that Massachusetts can compete in an increasingly uncertain global economy.
Massachusetts remains a beacon for innovation, educational excellence, cultural vibrancy, and values. At the same time, the national and global economies are more competitive than ever. People make tough choices every day about where to raise a family, build a career, or start a business, and employers make decisions about where to hire, to locate, and to invest. We want to make sure our state continues to compete for these people and businesses and that their decisions lead them to Massachusetts.
The recently concluded legislative session brought with it notable accomplishments to improve the state’s competitive position, thanks to your leadership. Beginning with $1 billion in tax cuts, ending with nearly $10 billion in bond authorizations for housing and economic development, and with important achievements on issues like pay equity, childcare, and energy siting and permitting, the Legislature and the Healey-Driscoll administration took aim at issues directly impacting the Commonwealth’s long-term success. However, we also recognize the work necessary to make Massachusetts a place that is affordable and attractive for residents and employers is never finished.
The rapidly changing landscape in Washington poses new and critical threats to the foundations of our economic success. Massachusetts is at the intersection of education, research, and innovation; a combination that brings new technologies to the world and prosperity to our communities. Federal actions impacting higher education, research funding, immigration, DEI, and international trade will do harm to our members broadly, but are particularly dangerous to the Commonwealth’s continued success.
As we head into the new legislative session, we look to partner with you to build upon the momentum of this past session and protect the state from negative federal impacts. It is our hope that coming together around a framework of competitiveness oriented towards protecting Massachusetts’ strengths will lead to continued collaboration and progress as we pursue our shared goal of making Massachusetts a highly desirable place to live, work, and do business.
To frame this agenda for the new session, we highlight three critical challenges before us: 1) the cost of living and doing business; 2) external threats to our core strengths; and 3) troubling outmigration trends, particularly of working-age adults. It is with these overarching challenges in mind that we prioritize our organizations’ shared policy goals.
As a baseline, a continued focus on housing and transportation, which underlie much of the state’s competitiveness strategy, must be prioritized while, at the same time, identifying specific opportunities and threats to the state’s workforce, economy, and fiscal health. We also collectively agree that equity must be foundational, and that the state’s values, social climate, and quality of life are a competitive advantage.
We respectfully offer four areas of focus for the new session that we collectively view as critical to continuing our shared work on addressing the state’s competitiveness. As the legislative session proceeds, we will identify specific policy initiatives within each of these four priority areas and work collaboratively, with each other and with you, to advance them.
By focusing on growing and maximizing the state’s labor force, supporting core economic sectors, viewing policy through the prism of cost, and maintaining strong public finances, Massachusetts can thrive in a challenging environment. It is incumbent on us in the business community to work collaboratively with each other and in partnership with government to collectively build upon the momentum of this past session and carry it into 2025 as we continue to address the state’s competitiveness. Our four organizations are coming together in that spirit of collaboration to offer a framework for action and a roadmap for our continued work together.
Sincerely,
cc: Secretary Yvonne Hao, Executive Office of Economic Development
Secretary Matt Gorzkowicz, Executive Office of Administration and Finance
Secretary Lauren Jones, Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development