This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.

Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

☀️Sunny but still cold, with highs around 30.

Welcome to another week. Thank you to all the readers who shared their ideas on how to make the Massachusetts housing market slightly more sane. If you missed any editions, you can catch up on Sam Turken’s full reporting on why building housing in Massachusetts is so complicated here , and check out what your fellow GBH Daily community members had to say right here. 

Know someone who might like this newsletter? Invite them to sign up .

Four things to know today:

Secret $180,000 payout: A state inspector general investigation found that Everett’s mayor, Carlo DeMaria, was improperly paid $180,000 in “longevity payments.” The Office of the Inspector General said the idea originated with the mayor himself: a bonus for each completed term. DeMaria, currently serving his sixth term, denied the allegations: “I have worked too hard and too long as a public servant in the City of Everett to stand by while the Inspector General attacks my integrity and the integrity of the members of my Administration,” he said in a statement.

Broken fire alarms, blocked exits, and mice: That’s what federal investigators found at Boston Housing Authority properties. They randomly selected 36 units for inspections in 2023 and found issues in 86% of them , according to a report released late last week. The Boston Housing Authority says it has already come up with ways to address those problems, such as revamping its inspection process and switching work orders to a digital system.

The percentage of people seeking behavioral health or substance use care at hospitals who end up staying in emergency rooms for 12 hours or more because of a lack of available beds has risen, from 31.3% in 2020 to 38.8% in the first five months of 2024, according to research from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. Though there are fewer people seeking hospital care, occupancy rates are going up because patients end up staying for longer.

Gladys Vega, executive director of La Colaborativa, a social services organization in Chelsea, said she got a death threat from a person who walked into the organization’s building, spent an hour and a half there and took photos. There are now three police details keeping an eye on the organization’s buildings, she said. “It’s unnecessary, because that money can be going for our ESL classes, citizenship classes, etc. that I need to take care of my community,” Vega said.

Republicans ramp up attacks on Boston as Mayor Wu prepares to testify before Congress

In two days Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will go before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington to testify about immigration enforcement in the city. Ahead of the hearing, the committee released a video with footage of President Donald Trump, a copy of a burning U.S. Constitution and an assortment of bleak headlines.

“I cannot recall seeing a comparable video released before congressional testimony in the past,” GBH politics reporter Adam Reilly said. “... It almost has a pro-wrestling aesthetic to it.”

What about immigration enforcement specifically will lawmakers ask Wu about? Reilly said it’s possible that there will be questions about what Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said in an interview with WCVB last month.

“I would say it was actually pretty innocuous,” Reilly said. “He said the BPD is limited by state and local laws when it comes to cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and the city is. But that limit has its own limitations.”

A 2017 ruling from the highest court in Massachusetts bars local law enforcement — like the Boston Police Department — from working with federal authorities on cases where the only issue at hand is a person being undocumented. They can collaborate when there are threats to public safety, but are otherwise prohibited from getting involved in immigration raids. Boston has an ordinance called the Trust Act that lays out similar guidelines. Being in the U.S. without a proper immigration status is considered a civil violation, not a criminal one.

“So the only thing state and local law do not let Boston do is hold people in so-called civil immigration detainers which, again, are inquiries from the federal government which say that the feds might want to deport someone and they want them held because they may be here illegally,” Reilly said. “ The BPD doesn’t care when it comes to crime about your immigration status. If you are a victimizer, they want to track you down and apprehend you. If you are a victim, they want to protect you regardless of whether you’re undocumented or not.”

But that’s not the narrative that has spread, according to Reilly: “I saw a lot of headlines that just fundamentally misrepresented what he said. People tweeting, ‘Boston police commissioner says he won’t deport violent criminals from the city. Come and get him, Tom Homan.’ And that’s just a fundamental misrepresentation of what he actually said.”

Reilly will be reporting live from Washington on Wednesday. Check out a full preview of the hearing here.