Healey’s taxing hack holding pen

We’ve known it all along, but now even Gov. Maura Healey’s regime is admitting the obvious.

The hacks have no clue how many foreign freeloaders are flopping in Massachusetts on the taxpayers’ dime.

That’s on top of the state’s related befuddlement, as to how much these permanent vacations for thousands of illegal criminals is draining from the working classes of Massachusetts.

The lowball number for the cost of unlimited welfare for illegals is a billion dollars a year. If it’s an over-under bet, I’ll take the over.

If the over-under is a billion-five, I’ll still take over the over.

Healey’s admission that she has no clue as to how illegals are living large on welfare in Massachusetts came this week in state-run media, the Boston Globe.

Headline: “No one can say how many migrants are in Mass.”

This catastrophe is so dire that Healey has also announced a hiring freeze, which she said was not a hiring freeze.

Of course, this “freeze” comes after an unprecedented hack hiring spree since Healey took office 15 months ago.

In the first seven months of 2023, for example, Health and Human Services added 300 paper shufflers and pencil sharpeners.

The state’s environmental agencies added more than 200 people to fight….climate change.

I wonder how much global warming they’ve halted since they went on the payroll.

How many polar bears’ ice floes were saved by these Democrats tasked with advocating, focusing, articulating, implementing, transforming, reviewing, ramping up, outlining, analyzing, etc. etc.

Just to cite you two examples of what the state’s $54 billion budget has been squandered on, besides thousands of illegal Haitians, consider the two new Melissas on the state payroll.

First Melissa Hoffer, who last year became the new “Climate Chief” in Maura’s administration, for $166,400 a year.

Since then, her Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience has completed an extremely critical 86-page report – “a call for an economic analysis of state investments needed” blah-blah-blah.

Melissa donated $1000 to Maura before she received her crucial brand-new job.

But that wasn’t enough to save the planet. Plymouth red-bellied turtles are still at risk.

So last month Maura announced another new hack holding pen – the Office of Energy Transformation.

That is going to be run by another Melissa – Melissa Lavinson, for $173,000 a year.

Before her nationwide search, Melissa II gave even more money to Maura — $1,100, in addition to $600 to Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll.

Now, sadly, there is a hiring freeze. When will the next Melissa who gives a grand to the governor get her $160,000-plus sinecure at the public trough?

Does anyone think Maura Healey is going to let any of this chaos interfere with her next top-secret romantic weekend getaway to some sunny place for shady people?

But the people who live in the affected communities don’t have the option of jetting off to Puerto Rico with their younger gal pals.

But Maura is thinking of them, from 35,000 feet up in first class. She’s suggesting that local communities be given the option of increasing local taxes, you know, like on meals, or hotel-motel occupancy.

Consider the Town of Stoughton, which is being inundated with more illegals on welfare than any other town in the Commonwealth. Of the 351 communities, little Stoughton is number six in the number of invaders. Only five cities have absorbed more.

Obviously, the town is being crushed. If Boston still had a functioning media, the plight of Stoughton would be big news. As it is, it has barely rated a mention, and then only on TV news.

Stoughton has been flooded with more than 230 illegal “families” receiving so-called emergency assistance. (Spoiler alert: the welfare emergency for these illegals will continue forever.)

Stoughton had two hotels – they have been converted into flophouses. The one motel is “being converted,” according to Ch. 5.

The town manager in Stoughton is Tom Calter, a former state rep from Kingston. He realized that with all public accommodations shut down, the town was looking at a shortfall of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, just on that one line item alone.

It doesn’t matter if you let a town increase the taxes on hotels if they’ve all been shut down to provide free housing for non-working foreigners to live in forever. Oh, and by the way, the 911 calls to the former hotels in Stoughton are way, way up.

Who could have ever predicted that?

Plus, as Calter told the state, the lack of all lodging is affecting the town’s ability to attract new industries, and “a successful medical device company” is pondering a move.

“The financial burden for the Town of Stoughton,” Calter wrote, according to Ch. 5, “is disproportionately high.

The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities responded that Stoughton is getting reimbursements in the first six months of the fiscal year of… $24,000.

Wow – 24 large!

Calter asked if the state has any plans for “making the Town of Stoughton whole financially.”

Yeah, right. So he sent a follow-up letter to Lt. Gov. Driscoll, inviting her to come on down to Stoughton.

I called Town Hall this week looking for an update on any responses he’s gotten, but Calter was on vacation. Hey, if I were responsible for the budget of Stoughton or any other city or town where these freeloaders are being dumped, I think I’d be on vacation too.

A permanent vacation. Somewhere in America.

Meanwhile, the crisis spreads. Now it’s Dennis dealing with the ominous threat of a “family transitional shelter.”

It’s for 79 “families,” mostly single moms with kids and infants (anchor babies! More welfare!).

As one Cape Codder told this newspaper:

“They are not being clear at all about who these people are. We can’t ask them where they come from.”

One thing for sure: they’re not coming from any employment agencies, or day-labor pools, or vocational schools. The newcomers must learn “life skills,” the local Americans are told, although it seems like they’ve already mastered one, which is how to live for free, forever.

The state may be falling apart, but look on the bright side. At least we have a new Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience, in addition to the new Office of Energy Transition.

Massachusetts is doing great, at least if you’re named Melissa and you gave a grand to the governor.

Breaking news from Vegas: the over-under on how much the illegals are costing the Commonwealth has just been upped to $2 billion.

I’m still taking the over.

(Order Howie’s new tee-shirt, “Cheaper to Deport than $upport!” )