Democrat Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has tripled the budget the Bay State is spending on its migrant shelters but is stonewalling requests for an accounting of how she has spent the previous $1 billion on migrant housing.
One case, for instance, finds that the state shelled out $16.3 million to rent out a Boston hotel to house illegals. However, after being asked where the money went, the state did not reveal to whom that multimillion-dollar payment was made, according to the Boston Globe.
This contract is not the only one with details blacked out after the paper filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
“The secrecy is extreme even in Massachusetts, a state with a poor track record of providing government records for public scrutiny,” the Globe added in its report:
Governor Maura Healey’s administration has broken with government accountability norms by withholding key information about some contractors and has shuttered the shelters from public view, even as the state tripled its spending on migrant and homeless family services. Without transparency, it is difficult if not impossible for watchdogs to ensure that taxpayer money isn’t wasted and to verify that vulnerable families are safely housed and getting appropriate care.
The paper added screenshots of some of the FOIA pages showing that entire pages of information have been blacked out, keeping the information away from the prying eyes of the people of the state.
State officials, though, claim that the secrecy is necessary to safeguard the “privacy” of the more than 7,000 families of illegals that are being given millions in free government support courtesy of the Massachusetts taxpayers.
Healey spokesperson Karissa Hand pointed, in particular, to protesters who have demonstrated at shelters in opposition to the state’s support of migrants. Without proof, Hand called the protesters “hate groups.”
“Hate groups have repeatedly located shelters and used this information to threaten, intimidate, and terrorize shelter residents and staff,” Hand said as she excused the state’s censorship of the budget reports.
Whatever their reasons, the Globe also noted that other cities and states have been far more forthcoming in their financial reports, including infamously corrupt ones, such as Chicago and New York City.
Expenditures are mounting for migrants in other areas in the Bay State, as well. In July, State Senator Michael Moore (D) and Republican Minority Leader Bruce Tarr sent a letter to the Healey administration warning that the state has been paying expenses even for migrants whom private citizens have sponsored under the federal Humanitarian Parole Program, the Boston Herald reported at the time.
“In the absence of any action from the United States government to support communities providing housing, food, and support to migrant families during the recent immigration crisis, Massachusetts taxpayers have been footing the bill,” Moore and ten other state senators said in a statement. “It is plainly unfair that taxpayers are supporting individuals who are here under a program that requires, under penalty of perjury, a specific person or organization commit to financially support them.”
The Globe noted that shelter operators in the Bay State have called police up to 600 times to report “serious incidents” of crime inside the state’s migrant shelters since January 2023. In many cases, fire and medical services were also dispatched to the shelters. Yet, the state has not released any records covering this multitude of calls for a police presence in the shelters and has also redacted most of the records of the calls made to a safety hotline operated by state offices.
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