Maura Healey’s Record: Billions Wasted, People Leaving, and Excuses All the Way Down

Massachusetts voters handed Maura Healey the keys to Beacon Hill in 2022 expecting results. She ran as a competent progressive — former attorney general, tough on corporate crime, ready to lead. Two-plus years in, the results are in. Rising costs, billions in sketchy spending, fraud scandals piling up, and a steady stream of residents loading up moving trucks and getting the hell out of the state. That’s the Maura Healey record.

With Healey now gearing up for a 2026 reelection campaign and touting “affordability wins,” it’s worth cutting through the spin and looking at what she’s actually delivered.

The Migrant Shelter Disaster That Cost Taxpayers Over a Billion Dollars

Massachusetts has a right to shelter law — one of the only states in the country with a mandate like this. Under Healey’s watch, it became a blank check. The state burned through more than $1 billion housing migrants in hotels, motels, and emergency shelters, with no ceiling in sight.

It wasn’t just the money. It was how the money got spent. State auditors flagged unlawful no-bid contracts with shelter vendors. Reports surfaced of violence, drug use, and chaotic conditions at shelter sites. Vendors cashing in on those no-bid deals were caught handing out cushy subcontracts to their own people. Local communities absorbed the overflow while Beacon Hill kept signing the checks.

Healey’s response to every piece of criticism? Blame Washington. Blame Republicans. Blame the federal government. Anyone but herself. Even some progressives — her own political base — publicly described parts of her shelter policy as “Trumpian” for its lack of transparency and accountability.

Buried in the state budget alongside the shelter programs: $259 million-plus in additional housing costs, millions more for immigrant legal services, and line items that somehow kept ballooning no matter what. Working families in Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton — they saw none of that money. They just got handed the bill.

SNAP Fraud: A Warning She Sat On

The federal SNAP program — food stamps — was being defrauded in Massachusetts. The Biden administration sent warnings. Healey’s team shrugged, pointed at the pandemic, and let the problem drag on long past any reasonable excuse.

The fraud wasn’t a mystery. It was documented. It continued because nobody in her administration was minding the store. When critics raised alarms, the playbook was predictable: deny, delay, and eventually announce an investigation once the damage was already done and the press wouldn’t let it go.

For a governor who built her entire brand on her credentials as the state’s top law enforcer, letting documented fraud run unchecked for years is a remarkable failure. But it fits the pattern.

The MBTA, MassDOT, and the Scandal Conveyor Belt

If there’s one thing consistent about Healey’s administration, it’s that the scandals keep coming. Not one-offs — a pattern.

• MBTA overtime abuse — Employees banking astronomical overtime payouts while T service continued to degrade. Commuters furious. Taxpayers on the hook. Management asleep.
• MassDOT maintenance depot fraud — Fraud revelations at transportation maintenance facilities raised serious questions about whether anyone at the top was paying attention to anything.
• No-bid contract abuse — From shelter providers to state vendors, the pattern of bypassing competitive bidding keeps repeating across multiple agencies and departments.

Healey’s response every time is the same: she expresses the appropriate outrage, promises accountability, announces a review. Then the next scandal drops and the cycle starts over. When the same types of failures keep surfacing across different departments, that’s not bad luck — that’s a management culture that tolerates it.

People Are Leaving Massachusetts — And It Keeps Getting Worse

You can spin a lot of things in politics. You can’t spin a moving truck.

Massachusetts consistently ranks in the top five states for outmigration. People — especially working families, young professionals, and retirees on fixed incomes — are leaving for Florida, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and anywhere else their paycheck actually goes somewhere. The demographic drain is real, it’s measurable, and it’s accelerating.

The reasons aren’t complicated:

• Housing costs that are completely out of reach for average earners — median home prices in Greater Boston and across much of the state have become a cruel joke for anyone not already wealthy
• Energy prices among the highest in the entire country, hitting both households and small businesses
• State tax burden that takes an ever-growing bite — the millionaires’ surtax was sold as targeting the rich, but its ripple effects are being felt by business owners and middle-class families alike
• Overall cost of living that makes saving for a home, a car, or retirement feel completely out of reach for anyone earning a normal wage

Critics have called the outmigration the “ultimate indictment” of Healey’s leadership. When your residents are voting with their feet, no amount of press releases changes that verdict.

Healey’s answer has been a string of housing announcements — splashy press conferences, bold headlines, ribbon cuttings. For the families actually getting crushed right now — people who grew up here, whose parents grew up here — it amounts to nothing. Too little, too late, with no real urgency behind it.

The Judicial Nomination Nobody Wanted to Call What It Was

In 2023, Healey nominated her former romantic partner, Margaret Clancy, to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court — the state’s highest court, with a lifetime appointment. The administration’s line was that Clancy was simply the “most qualified” candidate and the relationship was irrelevant.

Maybe. But in what world does nominating your ex to the highest court in the state not raise legitimate questions about judgment and insider access? In Massachusetts, it barely made a dent in the news cycle. Anywhere else, it would have been a weeks-long scandal.

It’s consistent with how her administration operates: one set of accountability rules for everyone else, a different standard for the people in her inner circle.

The 2026 Campaign: Fighting Trump Instead of Fixing Massachusetts

With reelection on the horizon, Healey is running the same play Massachusetts Democrats always run: make it about national Republicans. Anti-Trump messaging. Federal overreach. “We’re protecting Massachusetts values from Washington.” The whole script.

It’s a playbook that works in deep-blue Massachusetts, and she knows it. But it’s also a dodge — a deliberate choice to avoid a conversation about what she’s actually done here. When your state is bleeding residents, when fraud is running through your agencies, when working families can’t afford to stay — the answer isn’t more Trump attacks. The answer is to actually govern.

Her poll numbers with independents have been sliding. Even in a state where Democrats have a massive structural advantage, voters who aren’t partisan loyalists are starting to notice the gap between the headlines and the reality they’re living every day. She’s still the heavy favorite in 2026. But the vulnerabilities are real for anyone willing to make an honest case against her record.

The Bottom Line

Maura Healey excels at exactly three things: campaigning, writing press releases, and pointing fingers at Republicans when things go wrong. Running a state government that actually delivers for regular Massachusetts residents? The record tells a different story.

Billions poured into shelter programs riddled with no-bid contracts and fraud. SNAP abuse ignored until it became embarrassing. Transportation scandals stacking up year after year. Housing costs spiraling out of control while working families leave the state they grew up in. A judicial nomination that smelled like exactly what it looked like.

This isn’t progress. It’s managed decline dressed up in good PR.

Massachusetts voters in 2026 have a real choice: buy the spin for another four years and watch the state keep losing people and becoming less livable — or demand a governor who actually focuses on Massachusetts problems instead of using them as a backdrop for national political theater.

The people who couldn’t afford to stay aren’t waiting for the press releases to improve. They’re already gone.

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