Conference Committee

The bill would ban hand-held cell phone use while driving.

The Conference Committee could not reach an agreement before the Legislature began it's August recess.

BOSTON (AP) - The new fiscal year begins today and Massachusetts lawmakers have yet to approve a new state budget. A six-member committee made up of members of the Massachusetts House and Senate failed to agree on a single compromise budget on Friday as the clock ran down on the 2017 fiscal year...

Boston (AP) - After a week of sharp divisions and heated rhetoric over the future of the Massachusetts' recreational marijuana law, it's now up to a conference committee of six legislators to try and sort everything out. The panel will try over the next week to resolve differences between a House bill that infuriated pro-marijuana activists by proposing a major overhaul of the voter-approved law,

(Boston) AP - House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement on a final version of a bill designed to address the state's deadly opioid addiction crisis. The bill would limit initial opiate painkiller prescriptions to a seven-day supply and set an evaluation requirement within 24 hours for overdose victims seeking help at hospital emergency rooms...

(Associated Press) - Mass. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is prodding state lawmakers to agree on a final version of a wide-ranging bill designed to address the state's deadly opioid addiction crisis.   Baker told reporters on Wednesday that the ``clock is ticking'' and that every day that goes by another four people die in Massachusetts from opioid-related overdoses. ...

A Southcoast lawmaker, Mattapoisett Democrat William Straus,  has been named to a conference committee to resolve differences between the House and Senate verisons of a State Transportation bill.  Both branches this month approved legislation that calls for $500-million in transportation spending...