State Of State Themes: Education, Child Care, Transportation, Affordability

Gov. Maura Healey hinted Thursday that her upcoming State of the Commonwealth address will highlight her desire for “historic investments in education and child care,” as well as a focus on improving transportation infrastructure across the state.

Ahead of her first State of the Commonwealth scheduled for next week, Healey told an industry group of certified public accountants that she’s planning to focus on familiar themes such as affordability of life in Massachusetts as well as a few more specific issue areas.

She said a top priority in 2024 is securing legislative approval of a five-year, $4.1 billion housing bond bill packed with policy reforms that she filed in October, and described her team as “laser-focused” on achieving economic growth with an economic development bill, which has not yet been filed.

“We want to also as well make historic investments in education and child care, which I think people have come to understand and see the business imperative in child care and finding a way to lower child care costs. So you’re going to her about that,” Healey said during her appearance at a virtual conference hosted by the Mass. Society of CPAs.

She quickly added that she’ll give a “significant focus” to the topic of education because “there’s some things that we’re doing well and there’s some things that we’re not doing well.”

“You’re going to hear about a focus on basic infrastructure — you know, roads, bridges, public transit,” Healey said. “We need to take steps to make necessary investments. It’s foolish how we end up paying so much more and so many times over because we haven’t made the investments in infrastructure that we need to make. We’re certainly seeing that now with the flooding, with the storm damage.”