BOSTON (WHDH) – Boxing Day was no holiday in the Massachusetts Legislature, where lawmakers advanced a laundry list of bills that would expire without action in the next six days.
The House and Senate returned to action Thursday and shipped more than a dozen measures to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk, most of them local bills affecting individual communities or public employees.
The branches also pushed a couple dozen other proposals forward in the pipeline, tackling topics ranging from school bus cameras to bus-only lanes.
Some of the bills that moved Thursday had been idling for months, while others more recently stepped into the spotlight.
That latter category includes a time-sensitive proposal Healey filed last month to exempt passenger vehicle offenses before Sept. 30, 2005 from counting toward commercial license ineligibility, a move prompted by upheaval that put hundreds of Bay Staters at risk of losing their commercial driving privileges.
The Senate approved its version of the bill (S 3002) Thursday, and each branch now needs to take one more vote to send the package back to Healey for her signature.
Senators also brought forward their redraft of another Healey bill (S 2797) that would rename the Executive Office of Elder Affairs as the Executive Office of Aging and Independence, something the governor first proposed in May.
Thursday’s action included three bills newly advanced by the Senate Ways and Means Committee reforming the Massachusetts Insurers Insolvency Fund (S 3003), dealing with licensure for dental hygienists who have practiced for at least five years in another country (S 3004) and allowing installation of school-bus traffic cameras (S 3005).
Under the camera bill, cities and towns could choose to install monitoring devices on school buses to record nearby vehicles that fail to stop. Any images or video could only be obtained for purposes other than enforcement of failing to stop, or defending against such an allegation, by a court…