Gov. Maura Healey to speak at Annual Meeting

After finishing an eventful first year as governor, Maura Healey will address local officials from across the state during the Opening Session of the MMA Annual Meeting & Trade Show on Jan. 19 in Boston.

Healey’s appearance comes a couple days after her first annual State of the Commonwealth address and a few days before her state budget plan is due to be filed with the Legislature — and while municipal leaders await details about her local aid proposals for fiscal 2025.

Healey is also expected to address some of her stated priorities, such as housing creation and addressing climate change, as well as the state-local partnership and current fiscal conditions.

Over the past year, the Healey-Driscoll administration has been working to address housing and economic development needs, climate change, an influx of migrants and an emergency shelter crisis, infrastructure concerns, and the need for operational and safety upgrades at the MBTA, to name a few.

Accomplishments include separating the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development into two distinct offices and creating a housing secretariat; naming the state’s first-ever climate chief; launching the first “green bank” in the country dedicated to affordable housing; unveiling a $4.1 billion housing bond bill to increase housing production and promote housing affordability; launching the ResilientCoasts initiative to address impacts of climate change; and unveiling an economic development plan in early December.

During her MMA Annual Meeting address last January, just days into her tenure as governor, Healey outlined her priorities and pledged that she and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, the former mayor of Salem, would work closely with cities and towns.

“We do want to do great things,” she said. “I just want to begin with a recognition that I know things are challenging out there right now. Our job in government is to be great partners with all of you, as we work through those challenges.”

Healey emphasized the critical need to address the state’s housing shortage and urged local leaders to work with her on that priority.

“We need your partnership. We need your best ideas. And frankly, we need your courage, too,” she said. “We’ve got to be aggressive.”

In November 2022, Healey became the state’s first woman and first openly gay candidate to be elected governor, after serving two four-year terms as the state’s attorney general. She has been a frequent speaker at MMA Annual Meetings since her time as attorney general.

Raised in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, Healey came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard College, where she majored in government, was co-captain of the women’s basketball team, and graduated with honors in 1992. After graduation, she spent two years playing professional basketball as a starting point guard in Europe before returning to earn her law degree at Northeastern University School of Law.

Healey began her legal career as a clerk in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, followed by more than seven years in private practice at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. She also served as a special assistant district attorney in Middlesex County.

In 2007, she was hired by her predecessor as attorney general, Martha Coakley, as chief of the Civil Rights Division, where she spearheaded the state’s challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Under Coakley, she also served as chief of the Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau and chief of the Business and Labor Bureau. She resigned in 2013 to run for attorney general in 2014, winning her first campaign for elected office. She was reelected in 2018.

While Healey was the first woman elected to serve as governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift served as acting governor from 2001 to 2003 after Paul Cellucci resigned to become the U.S. ambassador to Canada.