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☀️Sunny day, with highs in the 50s. Sunset tonight is at 7:28 p.m.

Lawmakers in the State House are diving headfirst into budget season, deciding which services will be available in Massachusetts and how our tax dollars will be allocated. The next few months will likely be filled with State House rallies and testimony sessions where people advocate for their concerns, alongside closed-door negotiations where priorities are determined. Lawmakers will unveil proposals and bills, some of which will become law and many of which won’t. It’s a lot for people to keep up with, especially as this year has already seen legislators trying to manage without relying as much on federal funds.

Our job is to give you news about what matters to you, so I would like to know: what questions do you have about the state budget process? What would you like to know more about? Reply to this email or send a note to daily@wgbh.org and we will do our best to answer your questions and navigate the ins and outs of budget season.

Four Things to Know

1. Build-a-Budget: Leaders in the Massachusetts House unveiled a $61 billion budget proposal yesterday. Their proposal would increase spending by 6% from this year’s budget, and it would not include any new taxes or fees.

Some highlights: language requiring landlords, not tenants, to pay broker’s fees if they’re the ones hiring real estate brokers; $5 million for an immigration legal assistance fund; and a 7% increase to the attorney general’s office “to ensure that AG [Andrea] Campbell can continue to push back against unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump administration,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said.

2. You may have seen video of federal agents smashing car windows to detain a man in New Bedford on Monday. The man detained, 29-year-old Juan Francisco Méndez, is a Guatemalan immigrant who has no criminal record and had already applied for a change in immigration status. He is being held at Strafford County Correctional facility in New Hampshire. Francisco Méndez and his wife had called their immigration attorney and asked agents to wait for her to arrive.

“It’s a complete violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said Adrián Ventura, executive director of Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores. “They didn’t let them wait for an attorney — and they weren’t lying, they had one. Agents wouldn’t show them an order signed by a judge. They didn’t respect their right to remain silent.”

3. Primary care is hard to find in Massachusetts: In a 2023 study by the state’s Center for Health Information and Analysis, 41% of people said they had a hard time accessing medical care and the most common reason was that they could not get an appointment at a doctor’s office or clinic. Now a new state task force is looking at laws and policies that might help address that.

“When we call for change, we generally mean that other people have to change,” said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, the state’s undersecretary for health. “But in order for the primary care crisis to eventually serve people in the way that we would all like, each of us and all the institutions that we represent will have to do something in order for the status quo to actually make way.” If you have questions or concerns for the task force, you can email them at MA-PCTF@mass.gov .

4. People in Rockport have had their car windows and mirrors smashed. The responsible party? Woodpeckers. “They’re big, they’re mean and they don’t like their reflection,” Rockport resident Devin Mock said. John Herbert, director of bird conservation with Mass Audubon, said he believes one bird might be causing all the damage. It’s pileated woodpecker mating season, which means male birds have elevated testosterone levels and are trying to keep other males away from their territory. “With birds, they don’t perceive glass or mirrors well. And when they see their reflection in a mirror, they don’t see it as themselves. They see it as another woodpecker,” Herbert said.

If you have larger car mirrors, you may want to cover them up with some fabric while your car is parked. And remember: Birds will be birds. “I’m sure my neighbors would tell a different story, but they’re just birds. They’re doing their thing, you know?” Mock said. “It’s nature. What are you going to do?”

Why Massachusetts is still in a drought

Massachusetts has been in some level of drought since August. Even though the state got regular snow this winter and plenty of rain in the last few weeks, the northeastern portion of the state and Cape Cod are both in a significant drought, and the rest of the state in a mild drought.

“Drought is a long-term condition; it’s not something that responds or happens quickly because of a particular rainfall event or the lack of rainfall over a short period of time,” Vandana Rao, co-chair of the Massachusetts Drought Task Force, told GBH meteorologist Dave Epstein. 

The Boston area got 11.63 inches of precipitation since Jan. 1, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, just under the NOAA-calculated normal total of 12.72 inches for the same time period in the last 30 years.

A relatively rainy last two months have helped, Rao said, but “we’re certainly still in a deficit.” Part of the issue is what happens when that rain hits the earth. If the ground is still frozen, water won’t seep into it as effectively. So the top few inches of soil might feel extra wet and muddy, but water isn’t penetrating deeper into aquifers.

“What is important to know from a hydrological perspective is how much of that water has really made its way into the rest of our systems,” Rao told Epstein. “How much has come, has seeped into the ground, how much is in our streams and how much in the atmosphere?”

The state’s water experts are hoping to get back to “relatively normal rainfall” soon.

“We don’t have a crystal ball, but we know that with the way the climate is changing, we’ll be experiencing more of those extremes,” she said. “More floods, more intense rain, as well as more droughts.”

If you’d like to do your part, you can try taking shorter showers, fix leaks around your home and pick some native plants that don’t require as much water, if you’re looking to plant anything in your spring garden.

Listen to Dave Epstein and Vandana Rao’s full conversation here.