Merrill Lynch has hired a veteran Morgan Stanley manager to help oversee branches in Connecticut, western Massachusetts and portions of New York. 

Jairzinho “Jazz” Skair joined Merrill as a market manager overseeing offices in Hartford, New Haven, Springfield, Glastonbury, West Hartford, Farmington, Mystic, Guilford, Southbury and Ridgefield, a Merrill spokesperson confirmed. He reports to Central Shoreline Connecticut Market Executive William Cholawa, who returned to the thundering herd in 2024 after around a decade at UBS. 

Skair had most recently been a branch manager for Morgan Stanley in Hartford, according to his LinkedIn. He had started his career in the legal department at UBS Wealth Management USA in 1998 and served in a number of finance, sales and management roles, including branch manager in Westport, before joining Morgan Stanley in 2023. 

“I had the opportunity to work closely with Jazz during my time at UBS and saw firsthand his passion for coaching, developing people, and driving results,” Cholawa said in a LinkedIn post announcing the hire. “He is a servant leader who believes in being Authentic, Present, and Useful, and those principles are reflected in the way he leads and supports others.”

A Morgan Stanley spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. 

Merrill and its wirehouse peers have been shuffling and poaching field leaders as they seek to bolster recruiting in an increasingly competitive market. 

To that end, Merrill said it had hired two father-son teams with a combined $560 million in client assets. Both joined on June 17. 

Roy Savarick and his son, Evan, joined Merrill from Wells Fargo Advisors where they managed around $280 million in assets, according to the Merrill spokesperson. They generated around $2.3 million in annual revenue. 

The elder Savarick, a 44-year industry veteran, is based in the firm’s Florida Tropics market led by Jason Edelmann. Evan, who has 12 years of experience, works in New York City from Merrill’s Park Avenue office led by Joe Doonan. They had joined Wells in 2022 from Morgan Stanley, according to BrokerCheck records. 

Separately, Brandon K. Pribyl and his sons, Tobey and Bailey, joined Merrill from Baird Private Wealth Management. They had around $280 million in assets and are based in Davenport, Iowa, according to the spokesperson.

The team, which generated around $1.9 million in annual revenue, is part of the Mid Land Market led by Will Cohen. The senior Pribyl had spent the first decade of his career at Merrill. He was not registered between 2009 and 2016 when he joined with Baird, according to BrokerCheck.
(Updated with clarification on the market manager role.)

The recent rain in Maine is easing the drought that parts of the state have been experiencing since the fall.

Scott Dean, a Spectrum meteorologist, said much of Maine has been at least “dry” for several months. Parts of the state, including Portland, Bangor and Bar Harbor, are under a “moderate” drought. 

Much of the country is also experiencing a drought, Dean added. The Southeast is seeing extreme levels of drought, and the West coast has been under a drought for years. There are many factors that go into this, including climate change, weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña and other factors. 

And, when an area does experience drought, it can become a feedback loop. With less moisture in the ground and atmosphere, the drought can “feed upon itself,” Dean said. 

“It takes a while to get into a drought and it also takes a while to get out of one,” Dean said.

But, the rainy days in Maine have been alleviating the drought, Dean said. And, the trend is likely to continue — the forecast is predicting above average levels of precipitation for the next three to four weeks.

“Hopefully, we are continuing to head in the right direction as the drought has eased in these areas,” Dean said.

In fact, if these rains do continue, Maine could come out of the drought sometime this summer.  

Massachusetts voters will not have the opportunity to decide whether to end a decades-long ban on rent control after the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled Tuesday that it must not appear on the November ballot, citing the exemptions for religious organizations included in the question.

The SJC ruled that the initiative petition “impermissibly” relates to religion and religious institutions – something the Massachusetts Constitution states cannot be involved in the initiative petition process.

It’s the second ballot initiative struck down by the SJC in less than a week where the high court cited errors made by Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, with justices issuing an opinion in May on a third ballot initiative regarding legislative stipends they said should not have been certified the AG’s office.

Last week, the SJC struck from the ballot a measure that would have gradually lowered the state income tax, citing a “misleading summary” authored by Campbell’s office. The SJC sided with Campbell on three other challenges to ballot initiatives certified by her office.

But even with the Attorney General’s office committing errors on three of six ballot initiative certifications, Campbell is defending her staff, and even calls it a “great record.”

“We have 47 (ballot initiatives) that we approved, we have 44 we certified. We had six challenges, and we got three wrong. I think that’s a great record,” Campbell said when asked by the Herald if the her qualifications, as well as those of her staff, should be called into question.

“That just tells me we have more to do to be better. Any institution, whether it’s media outlets or any industry, if they can get it 100% right every time…that doesn’t happen. We own these mistakes, I own these mistake, and now we’ll move forward to improve our process to get it right the next time,” she said.

When it comes to the rent control decision, Campbell had certified the question for the ballot. She reacted to the court’s ruling to block it shortly after it was posted by the SJC .

“We got the rent control initiative, we certified it. But we, of course, have to respect the court’s decision which was against us, and we got that wrong,” Campbell admitted during her monthly appearance on GBH radio Tuesday morning.

Campbell went on to say that her office attempted to explain in its summary, which appeared on the petition used to gather required signatures to qualify for the ballot, that religious institutions would be exempt from the law, if it were to pass.

The exemption for religious organizations controlling rental units was part of the language of the original petition.

“The court disagreed and said that even a minor reference to religion was not appropriate for a valid initiative, and we were just reviewing this. Obviously the decision just came out, and I think it was only the second time that the court has broken this standard, so it’s not like it happens frequently,” she said.

The plaintiffs, whom the SJC sided with in its ruling, claimed the petition should be disqualified because “religion is a factor in the application of the law,” citing a legal precedent that is key to the court’s ruling.

“The petition … concerns a generally secular subject matter — rent control. But, by including an express exemption for facilities operated solely for religious purposes, the petition impermissibly makes religion “a factor in [the petition’s] application.” And in order to enforce the proposed law, the exemption would require the government to determine if a facility is “operated solely for . . . religious . . . purposes,” and then make an enforcement decision based on the facility’s religious purpose (or lack thereof),” Justice Frank Gaziano in the SJC decision. “Further, the petition would confer preferential treatment on religious institutions by allowing them to increase rent prices, while limiting rent increases for secular facilities.”

The AG’s summary of the proposal stated that the rent control measure “would not apply to … units operated for educational, religious, or non-profit purposes.” Campbell had certified the question for the ballot, using a process that she has called “stupid” and said needs to be “revamped.”

Several other organizations involved in the fight for and against rent control are weighed in on the ruling, with rent control proponents calling it  “disappointing,” and opponents celebrate.

“This decision is a massive disappointment after all the work that thousands of volunteers and advocates in every corner of the state put into qualifying our rent control initiative for the ballot, but it’s far from the end of our campaign to protect Massachusetts renters from excessive rent hikes,” said New England Community Project Executive Director, who also chairs the Keep Massachusetts Home campaign, adding that the plaintiffs were financed by  “equity-backed real estate investment corporations.”

Housing for Massachusetts – a nonprofit organization against the rent control initiative, called it “the nation’s most extreme” rent control proposal in a statement celebrating the ruling.

“Today the Supreme Judicial Court confirmed that the nation’s most extreme rent control proposal was unconstitutional. While we firmly believe that Massachusetts voters were prepared to vote ‘no’ in November, today’s decision puts the issue to rest and protects our housing pipeline and our communities from the proven damage that rent control inflicts,” the organization said. “We are incredibly grateful to the countless small property owners, real estate professionals, elected officials, and community leaders who supported our coalition, and we look forward to working together to create more homes and tackle affordability through real policy solutions.”

The rent control question was the last of this year’s ballot questions still pending with the SJC.

Meanwhile, the SJC also ruled this week to allow a question to move forward that would switch the state’s primary election system to an all-party primary, proving to be a significant influence on what voters will decide on in the November election.