Episode 205: Saving Daylight, Saving Packies?

3/17/2022-- Happy St. Patrick's Day from all of us at The Horse Race! Steve and Jennifer discuss the return of the in-person St. Patrick's Day breakfast, happening this Sunday. It's an almost annual tradition of Massachusetts politicians gathering and making jokes at one another's expense for what Jennifer describes as "basically a big Irish roast." Plus, big news coming out of the U.S. Senate-- a bill passed that would make Daylight Saving permanent, ending the ritual of turning the clocks forward and backward and gracing us all with an extra hour of daylight in the winter. The development has Sen. Ed Markey who proposed the bill "walkin' on sunshine." The Census undercount also made headlines this week. So far the U.S. Census Bureau has only released the national numbers, but if the nationwide undercount scales down proportionately to the state level, what could that mean for Massachusetts? Boston Indicators' Luc Schuster drops by The Horse Race to answer that question and more. For one thing, Luc says, "It would mean we missed almost 47,000 Latinos living in Massachusetts." Finally, Matt Murphy of the State House News Service explains the proposed changes to our liquor license laws, brought to lawmakers by the Massachusetts Package Stores Association. It would effectively double the number of allowable licenses any one retailer can hold to 18 by 2031, but also reduce the cap on licenses for the sale of all alcoholic beverages from nine to seven. But it faces severe opposition from many food industry groups.