Six-State Roundup 5: March 17, 2026

Welcome to your Six-State Roundup. Every week, we’ll be gathering the most interesting happenings from across Yankeedom and bringing it right to your inbox — including politics, the arts, culture, and other ephemera worth noticing. The first few weeks will be free, after which our roundups will be available to our paid subscribers.

Don’t blame the groundhog — New England is cold once again this week, as we see a return to near-freezing temps throughout the region. They’ll likely stay there for the coming week, with scattered showers and wintry mixes inland.

Connecticut:

• Housing woes — Governor Ned Lamont (D) and the state legislature are passing legislation to control rent increases in the state.

  • The Housing Committee passed a bill that would allow fair rent commissions to restrict rent increases to five percent or the increase in CPI, whichever is higher.

  • This comes amid a larger push by lawmakers to control the cost of living in the state.

• ICE out of the polls — Democratic lawmakers are proposing a suite of bills that would prevent ICE and other federal law enforcement from intimidating voters at the polls this upcoming election cycle.

  • One bill would prevent ICE from detaining people nearby polling places.

  • Another would massively expand the right to absentee voting in the state.

  • Republicans are sounding the alarm, claiming fears of ICE intimidation are overblown.

• Panopticon — New Haven’s school bus camera ticketing program is now online.

  • The city has installed speed ticket cameras on all 330 of the city’s school buses.

  • More than 800 tickets were sent out in one week, each worth $250 in fines.

Maine:

• ICE in Maine — Maine has joined a group of other states demanding that ICE not be sent to polls in 2026.

  • The state joined eight others in a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security nominee and U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullins (R-OK) requesting assurances that federal law enforcement would not tamper with polling places in their states.

• Making up for money — Maine legislators have advanced two bills that would provide hundreds of millions of dollars for healthcare and food aid to make up for cuts from Congress and the Trump administration.

  • One bill would allocate $250 million for healthcare, and another would establish a contingency fund to be used if SNAP is ever disrupted again.

• Data factory — A planned data center in Jay may be canceled due to a possible ban on data center construction in the state.

  • Data center investors have expressed concern about the bill, but have also experienced pushback from local residents concerned about data center construction.

Massachusetts

• Sunshine policy — State Auditor Diana DiZoglio continues her streak of high-profile fights with the legislature.

  • DiZoglio is spearheading a ballot initiative to improve public access to legislative and executive records, since Massachusetts’s public access legislation is some of the worst in the nation.

  • Lawmakers excluded their records from the bill, and DiZoglio is now butting heads with the state house to get their records out into the open.

• Legal gridlock — The state senate is challenging attempts to push for legislative transparency in the state supreme court.

  • The move comes amid attempts by State Auditor DiZoglio and others to get the voters’ seal of approval on legislative transparency ballot measures.

  • The senate is arguing that ballot initiatives to force them to reveal public records and reform their stipends are a violation of constitutional separation of powers.

• Public/private — The state supreme court ruled that charter schools are subject to public records laws.

  • Mystic Valley Regional Charter School had claimed that they were immune to records requests and were a private entity, failing to respond to over ten documents requests.

  • The chair of the school’s board celebrated the ruling, saying the point of the litigation was not to establish Mystic Valley as a separate entity but rather to define its legal status.

  

New Hampshire:

• Legislative death — Breaking with precedent, the state house killed dozens of bills in one go at the end of the state’s legislative session.

  • Faced with a backlog of bills, house Republicans decided to condense the approval process, meaning that many Democratic bills were sunk.

• Right to Compute — House Republicans passed a bill enshrining a “right to compute” into state law.

  • The bill essentially protects Granite Staters’ right to create “any combination of logic gates (i.e. AND, OR, NOT),” and seems to be preempting data center bans and AI regulation.

  • The bill was pushed forward by ALEC, a conservative lobbying group.

• In good health — SchoolCare, a nonprofit health insurance risk pool, is attempting to collect $1.57 million in extraordinary costs from the City of Portsmouth.

  • SchoolCare insures educational employees in over 90 towns in the state, and is requesting extra funds from communities to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall.

  • Portsmouth is arguing that the payment is not legal, and its counteroffer to pay the requested amount over two years has been rejected.

Rhode Island:

• I want my money back — Governor Dan McKee (D) has asked the Trump administration to refund taxpayers $770 million, or about $1,751 per person, as recompense for President Trump’s now-overturned tariff program.

  • U.S. Senate Democrats have also demanded that the administration send the money back to taxpayers.

• Old souls — Two Democrats in the state house have proposed a bill that would create an office to advocate for the elderly.

  • The proposed Office of the Elder Advocate would address age discrimination, disparities in benefits, and other issues that are of importance to older Rhode Islanders.

• Windy state — Rhode Island’s long-delayed Revolution Wind offshore turbine project is now delivering power to the grid.

  • The project will hit full capacity later this year.

  • The turbines will deliver enough electricity to power 350,000 homes across Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Vermont:

• More money, more problems — Governor Phil Scott (R) signed a bill that would increase the state’s budget by more than $100 million in the middle of the fiscal year.

  • The move comes in response to funding cuts for social services from the federal government.

• Gun control — A hotly debated gun control provision was voted out of a state house committee in a party-line vote.

  • It would bar people from owning guns while they’re in court-ordered mental health treatment.

  • The provision served as a poison pill for Republicans in the committee, who were otherwise willing to vote in favor of the gun control bill.

• Pricey Stowe — Stowe residents voted to double its local taxes on retail sales, rooms, meat, and alcohol from 1% to 2%, but is facing an uphill battle to secure needed approval from the legislature.

  • The increase comes as the community seeks to capitalize on rising tourism, rather than increasing property taxes.

  • Legislators fear that approving Stowe’s increase would pave the way for other towns in Vermont to do the same.

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