The overwhelming reception for the bill was positive, said Senator Rebecca Rausch of Needham, the committee’s co-chair. “The base has a lot of really strong pieces in it,” she said. “I’m looking forward to digging in further and to building upon it."

While working on this bill, Rausch and her colleagues collected the plastic trash that accumulated in their office, demonstrating the mountains of waste generated on a daily basis. There was so much plastic, when her children came into the State House during a day off from school, they “built a kindergarten-sized human completely out of plastic trash,” she recalls. “We called him Plastic Pete.” Rausch brought Plastic Pete out to the floor of the Senate and to a press conference in advance of a debate on the bill, as a “warning” to her fellow policymakers about its necessity. “I think people don’t want to become Plastic Pete,” Rausch says.

“Budget week is always a really intense, but also fun time in the Senate because we’re all together, and we’re all striving to achieve a common goal," said Rausch. She condemned the Trump administration’s “big beautiful bill,” which she has dubbed the “barftastic blunder bill,” and described as “a horrible stain on the history of this country."

State Sen. Becca Rausch said, “When Kate is involved, I never worry because it’s always done right. Every single time. We will miss your caring heart, your sense of humor, and your unwavering commitment to excellence.”

“We are incredibly grateful to Congressman Auchincloss, Senator Rausch, and all those who have helped preserve this cornerstone of Medfield’s heritage,” said Dick Judge, chair of the Kingsbury Pond Grist Mill Committee. “Preserving the mill has been a true community effort over many, many years.”

“I’ll be very frank, right, having done this role and for a number of years now … nobody ever wants to pay more taxes. So where would we get $3 billion for this?” Rausch asked.

State Senator Rebecca Rausch, a Needham Democrat, filed an amendment to a Senate spending bill that would scrub candidates’ street addresses from ballots amid other sweeping changes, including barring the state from making public a range of personal information, including the marital records, property tax records, and cell phone numbers for elected officials, their immediate family members, judges, and others.

The bill calls for the Department of Labor to adopt strategies that can prevent heat exhaustion or heat-related injuries for workers who are outdoors, most of which Sen. Rebecca Rausch says could be overlooked. “It’s getting hotter and it’s getting more dangerous for outdoor workers, and we don’t have any at the moment state or federal OSHA standards for protecting our outdoor workers from heat illness,” said Sen. Rausch.

“Absolutely, this is going to have a chilling effect on candidates considering running for office,” Senator Rausch told Playbook. “And it’s going to have, I would anticipate, an even more significant chilling effect on people with marginalized identities,” she added, pointing to both the rise in political violence and a reported increase in antisemitic incidents in the state.

Specifically for Bellingham, I’ve filed an amendment to allocate $65,000 for improvements to the senior center for the parking lot. I also submitted a number of statewide amendments to supplement mental health, regional recovery services, scientific research, and more