by John Osborn ·
Friday, July 10, 2026
This report was updated July 9 at 10 p.m.
The House voted 148-2 Wednesday night, July 8, to pass the $425 million, 82-page Mass Wins economic development bond bill, after the House Ways and Means Committee struck a provision that would have stripped Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley of their veto power over zoning changes at Devens. The provision had survived two earlier rounds of committee hearings before Ways and Means cut it; it was not part of Wednesday's floor vote. The bill now moves to the Senate.
Economic development bond bills are a fixture of the two-year legislative session; the governor typically files one per session. Unlike the annual state budget, a bond bill doesn’t spend money directly. It authorizes the state to borrow money, through the sale of bonds, for specific projects. That structure makes bond bills a common vehicle for policy language the governor wants enacted, not just capital spending, and for individual legislators to propose funding for projects in their own districts. Any expenditure authorized in a bond bill requires the governor’s approval.
The Devens language cleared review by both the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies and the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets. It was the House Ways and Means Committee that struck the language entirely, sending the bill to the floor as H.5562. House members filed nearly 700 amendments to the bill before the Legislature’s 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 7 deadline; none sought to restore the Devens provision.
The provision, known as Section 10A, would have amended Section 10 of Chapter 498 of the Acts of 1993, the law that created Devens. Section 10 sets out the process for changing the Devens Reuse Plan and zoning bylaws: a so-called “super town meeting,” which requires MassDevelopment and all three towns to approve any substantial zoning change at Devens. Section 10A, inserted as Section 171 of the bond bill, would have replaced that with a single combined meeting run by MassDevelopment, requiring only 50 voters total across all three towns, with no minimum from any one town and no ability to amend proposals on the floor.
State Rep. Dan Sena represents all three Devens towns, Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley. He said in a July 6 phone interview that he had lobbied against the provision, sending letters opposing the language to the Ways and Means chair and to the chair of the economic development committee. “We were lobbying to make sure that wasn’t there,” Sena said. Speaking the day before the amendment deadline, he said he knew of no effort underway to restore it. “I don’t foresee anyone trying to change that,” he said, “but of course nothing is 100 percent.”
The provision had at least one vocal supporter: State Sen. John Cronin, who represents Shirley and who sits on both the economic development and bonding committees that reviewed the bill before Ways and Means cut the Devens language. At the bonding committee’s July 2 hearing, Cronin spoke in favor of the provision directly to Secretary of Economic Development Eric Paley, who also chairs the board of directors of MassDevelopment, the agency that would have run the new combined meeting under Section 10A.
“I am supportive of it,” Cronin said, thanking Paley for his support. “There have been multiple attempts to rezone state-owned properties and state-owned buildings for productive use for housing. We need to do that. I have concerns that we’re conflating reforms to process with progress, and I hope that we can continue to partner together as a whole of government to stop talking like we’re in a housing crisis and start acting like it.”
Shirley’s Select Board raised concerns about the provision in a letter to Cronin this spring but stopped short of opposing it outright. Ayer’s and Harvard’s Select Boards both opposed the provision outright in letters to House and Senate leadership. Cronin sits on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which will take up H.5562 next if the House passes it Wednesday.
Asked for comment on the action of the House, a MassDevelopment spokesperson said the legislation remained “under consideration.” “We appreciate the House’s work on the bill and look forward to continuing to work with the Legislature as the process moves forward.”
Beyond striking the Devens provision, the House accepted 688 of the nearly 700 amendments filed to the bill before passing it Wednesday night, many of them earmarks for individual representatives' districts. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it will be taken up by the Senate Ways and Means Committee, of which Cronin is a member. If the Senate changes the bill, a conference committee—a small group of House and Senate members appointed to negotiate a single final version—would need to resolve the differences. Conference committees must be formed by July 31, but the Legislature's rules set no deadline for finishing that negotiation.
This report has been updated to reflect the July 8 passage by the House of the amended Mass Wins bill.