Gov. Maura Healey pledged to make transparency a centerpiece of her administration. But when it comes to One Commonwealth — a so-called dark money nonprofit she and her allies launched to advance her housing agenda — Healey has refused to disclose its donors, or call on the group to do so. The law doesn’t require it.

WBUR found two anyway: Peckham Industries, a New York road paving firm that’s won millions in state contracts from Healey’s transportation department, and DraftKings, the sports betting giant her administration regulates. Neither has any obvious stake in Massachusetts housing policy.

“It immediately rings bells,” said Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor at UMass Boston and an expert on campaign finance laws. “What does DraftKings care about housing? What does a paving company care about housing? They don’t. But this is a way to curry favor with a politician — in this case, the governor.”

Known as 501(c)(4)s under the federal tax code, nonprofits like One Commonwealth are sometimes called dark money groups because they can raise unlimited money without disclosing their donors. The groups cannot donate directly to candidates, but they can produce independent political ads, register voters and donate to other groups, including super PACs.

Dark money nonprofits have dominated national campaigns since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the door for the groups to spend money on politics.

But WBUR found that there’s been an uptick in the number of these nonprofits focused on influencing state and local politics.

Since 2024, at least 10 organizations have popped up as 501(c)(4)s, according to federal and state records. In the past, only a handful of them started each year.

WBUR discovered eight through IRS records, and two more through filings with the secretary of state’s office in Massachusetts. Because IRS filings for new groups can lag, the real number could be higher.

“What we’re seeing is an increase in the political power of special interests at the expense of everyday residents,” said Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.

“Voters deserve to know who’s trying to influence our elected leaders,” he said.

Inside One Commonwealth

One Commonwealth’s 2024 tax filing offers a glimpse into what are typically black-box political funds that are becoming more common in Massachusetts politics. The filing also raises questions about the group’s ties to the governor’s political operation.

According to the document, One Commonwealth raised $748,000 from undisclosed donors in its first year. Half of that money was raised by a fundraising specialist, Megan Gillis, who was paid $20,000 by the nonprofit.

Gillis is also a finance director for Healey’s reelection campaign, according to her LinkedIn profile. In other words, the same person helping raise money for Healey’s campaign was also paid to solicit donors for One Commonwealth.

“ We don’t know where the money’s coming from, but there’s no doubt that the people on the inside know,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at the watchdog OpenSecrets.

“Voters deserve to know who’s trying to influence our elected leaders.”

Geoff Foster, Common Cause

Gillis didn’t return multiple requests for comment.

One Commonwealth was created to rally support for the MBTA Communities Act, a controversial zoning law intended to create more housing that’s faced pushback from some towns.

The nonprofit has other ties to Healey’s political operation. Lynda Tocci, who is listed as One Commonwealth’s president on its tax filing, worked as a senior advisor to Healey’s 2022 campaign.

Gemma Martin is listed as the treasurer of Healey’s recently-launched reelection campaign and has held the same role for the nonprofit, state business records show. Treasurer of One Commonwealth was not a paid position, but her firm, Chick Montana Group, has been paid by both groups. Martin declined to comment.

Kate Kelly, executive director for One Commonwealth, told WBUR that the group’s mission is to “support efforts to make housing more affordable across the Commonwealth” and “adheres to all applicable laws and regulations governing nonprofit social welfare organizations.”

Kelly said that as of 2026, no one from Healey’s reelection campaign is employed by the nonprofit and that the group doesn’t advocate for a specific candidate or campaign. (That could require registering with the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance and potentially disclosing its donors.)

Healey’s office declined to answer questions from WBUR about One Commonwealth. In December, a WBUR reporter asked the governor whether she actively solicits donations for the group; she referred questions back to the nonprofit.

So far, Healey and her aides have refused to name the contributors to One Commonwealth or call on the nonprofit to disclose them.

But sometimes donors reveal themselves.

As WBUR first reported, the sports betting giant DraftKings disclosed to state gaming regulators that it contributed $50,000 to One Commonwealth last year.

Now WBUR has found another donor through campaign finance and IRS records: Peckham Industries, a New York-based road construction company. The firm donated $10,000 to One Commonwealth in 2024 — $5,000 through a family foundation and $5,000 from the company’s federal PAC.

Peckham Industries has a long history of contracting with local and state governments across the Northeast. Under the Healey administration alone, its Massachusetts subsidiary Palmer Paving has won at least four MassDOT pavement and street resurfacing contracts worth more than $25 million, according to state procurement records.

The firm was the lowest bidder on the competitively bid contracts, and there is no evidence the donations influenced the awards.

Peckham Industries’ CEO, Damian Murphy, said the firm and its charitable foundation make donations to support issues important to its employees and their families. He said the firm’s contracts with Massachusetts were won through a “robust competitive process.”

DraftKings, meanwhile, also has significant business interests before the state. The Boston-based company’s sports betting operation is regulated by Massachusetts gaming authorities. It’s also facing a serious threat to its revenues from a sports betting bill moving forward on Beacon Hill.

The Bettor Health Act would ban bets on a player’s performance and wagering during live sporting events. It would also raise the tax rate on sports betting revenue from 20% to 51%. Healey hasn’t taken a public position on the measure, which recently advanced out of a House committee on a 5-0 vote.

A spokesman for DraftKings didn’t return multiple emails seeking comment.

The growing controversy surrounding online sports betting is an example of why politicians might prefer donations to 501(c)(4)s, according to Saurav Ghosh, a senior attorney at the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center. He said a direct donation to a candidate carries political risk.

“Their opponent might say, ‘Look at my opponent in this race — they’re getting huge amounts of money from the sports gambling industry,’ ” said Ghosh.

“By doing it through a 501(c)(4), their fingerprints are wiped away,” he said. “The candidate who benefits from their support knows. But the public, when they’re deciding who to vote for — they’re deprived of that information.”

One Commonwealth’s 2025 fundraising remains almost entirely unknown. DraftKings’ $50,000 is the only donation that year the public knows about.

A dark money powerhouse

Dark money spending in federal races reached a record $1.9 billion in 2024.

A surprisingly large share of that money flowed through a commercial office building on the North Shore. In Beverly, Charles Gantt runs a Republican consulting firm called Bulldog Compliance, which helped set up and run more than a dozen 501(c)(4) groups backing President Donald Trump and other conservative candidates and issues. Collectively, the groups raised $488 million during the 2024 electoral cycle, IRS records show.

Calls and emails to Gantt at Bulldog Compliance weren’t returned. But records show his clients aren’t only national.

Gantt is also listed as the treasurer for four recently-formed 501(c)(4)s aimed at influencing Massachusetts politics, according to state records.

A pair of groups are involved in statewide ballot initiatives. Another is a nonprofit called the Boston Policy Institute, which sparked some controversy after publishing research reports critical of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s policies.

In 2024, the think tank raised and spent around $380,000, according to IRS records. Executive Director Gregory Maynard declined an interview request from WBUR but he told the Commonwealth Beacon in 2024 that anonymity was needed so backers don’t alienate City Hall.

Democrats like Wu have also benefited from dark money. In last year’s mayoral race, the Green Advocacy Project, a California-based 501(c)(4), steered $200,000 into Bold Boston — a super PAC that backed Mayor Michelle Wu against Josh Kraft — making it the group’s single largest donor.

Local and state elections are far less expensive than federal ones, which means big checks from undisclosed donors can have more impact. Ballot initiative campaigns, in particular, have become attractive targets for these types of nonprofits, according to campaign finance experts.

“Right now we are seeing a flood of money trying to influence the outcome of statewide ballot questions,” said Foster, with Common Cause Massachusetts.

For example, dark money is driving an effort to roll back recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts. All $1.55 million raised last year for a possible 2026 ballot question seeking to repeal the state’s cannabis law came from SAM Action Inc., a Virginia-based 501(c)(4) that doesn’t disclose its donors.

The group’s CEO, Kevin Sabet, declined to answer WBUR’s questions about its funding, only stating that its donors are “parents and families” who have been harmed by marijuana.

SAM Action also provided nearly all the funding for the Coalition for Safe Communities, a Massachusetts 501(c)(4) that opposed the legalization of plant-based psychedelics when the initiative was on the ballot in 2024.

Foster said ballot questions are a key part of how the Massachusetts Constitution intended to empower citizens.

“But that process is jeopardized when large, wealthy special interests — from in-state or out-of-state — come in and use money to influence public opinion,” he said.

WBUR used ProPublica data on IRS returns for nonprofits.

“It really stems out of the growing need to address affordability in Massachusetts,” Peters said. “MP3 is a unique way of bringing together the local payers and providers in this market to address affordability and access challenges.”

Peters first got involved in health care policy as an aide in the House of Representatives. She later went to work for the Health Policy Commission, and then for Charlie Baker’s administration, as health and human services undersecretary. She was appointed to lead CHIA, a state agency that collects and crunches industry data, in late 2022, and left CHIA earlier this year.

MP3 members include Boston Medical Center and its WellSense plan, Mass General Brigham and MGB’s eponymous health plan, UMass Memorial Health and its Medicare Advantage plan, along with Baystate Health, Health New England, and Fallon Health (slated to be acquired by MGB).

Missing for now are the state’s two biggest health insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Point32Health. (Lora Pellegrini, who heads up the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, representing Point32Health among other insurers, says she looks forward to working with Peters if she should reach out.)

Peters sees opportunities in payment reform by rewarding providers for high performance, improving data sharing, and streamlining administrative processes. The MP3’s work, Peters said, can also complement the efforts of a task force Governor Maura Healey set up in January to address health care costs.

“It’s fair to say that the status quo is not working,” Peters said. “The idea is let’s break through the traditional silos and divisions that in my view have often stood in the way of real progress. … This gives us the opportunity to start rolling up our sleeves and implementing some of these solutions now.”

John Barros is getting the band back together — under the giant roof of the Menino Convention & Exhibition Center.

Barros served as a top aide in Marty Walsh’s administration, as Walsh’s economic chief. After several years working in real estate, Barros was tapped by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority board in January to be its interim executive director.

Now, Barros is bringing in some old friends from City Hall to help.

On Thursday, the MCCA announced three top-level appointments, all of whom once worked at City Hall for Walsh. General counsel Ashley Carvalho joins in May from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, taking over for Kevin Scanlon, who recently left to join the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Meanwhile, Joyce Linehan joins as the MCCA’s chief of staff, and Celina Barrios-Millner will be its chief of economic opportunity.

It’s a City Hall reunion over at 415 Summer St. in South Boston. That’s particularly true once two former Walsh advisers who joined before Barros arrived are factored in: John Towle, director of government affairs, and Broad Institute chief financial officer Emme Handy, the MCCA board chair.

Linehan might be the most well-known around Boston of the new arrivals. As Walsh’s former policy chief, she has spent much of her post-City Hall time working on special projects with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Among Linehan’s last big initiatives with Barros at City Hall: the “All Inclusive Boston” campaign. Using federal pandemic assistance funds, city officials worked with Colette Phillips’s PR firm, the Proverb ad agency led by Daren Bascome, and the tourism bureau now known as Meet Boston, to paint a diverse picture of the city.

Linehan hopes to continue similar work with Barros, to help the city bounce back after the pandemic and improve the way it’s viewed by outsiders. As a Dorchester native, she knows that diverse aspects of her home city often get overlooked.

She arrives at a tumultuous time: Barros’s predecessor, Marcel Vernon, left in December amid a dispute with the MCCA board, and the convention center authority remains under pressure to show it’s improving the diversity of its management ranks and suppliers.

Linehan knows the Boston celebrations around the US bicentennial in 1976 helped put the city on the map as a tourism destination, and is hopeful the MCCA can play a key role in rekindling some of that magic as celebrations for the 250th roll out this year.

What a memorable way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Entrepreneur Matt George had asked Nasdaq management to pick March 17 as the day for the autonomous aviation startup he leads, Merlin, to fly into the public markets. As a result, Merlin employees trekked to Manhattan to ring the exchange’s opening bell that morning, as a crowd of St. Patrick’s revelers gathered for the annual parade outside.

“Because of our Boston roots, we tried to make sure we were listing on St. Patrick’s Day,” George said afterwards. “Nasdaq gets to decide when we list, and we lobbied them hard for St. Patrick’s Day.”

And with that, Merlin became the first tech company of the year from the Boston area to go public. Several biotechs have held initial public offerings during this slow time, and a local telehealth startup called Uberdoc went public on a Canadian exchange on Wednesday.

Merlin didn’t go public via the traditional IPO route, nor did Uberdoc. They both merged into publicly traded shell firms, known as special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. In Merlin’s case, it teamed up with a SPAC created by New York investment firm Inflection Point, and Inflection Point chief executive Mike Blitzer joined Merlin’s board.

“It’s exciting for the team,” George said. “I think it should be hopefully exciting for Boston.”

The Charles River Regional Chamber has gradually grown its ranks over the years, rising to the top five biggest chambers of commerce in the state from 20th just over a decade ago.

It could be poised to rise in the ranks yet again, now that the Brookline Chamber of Commerce’s board members have decided to dissolve their organization, with the bigger chamber next door adopting its members and at least two of its traditions.

Charles River president Greg Reibman had reached out to Chris Mutty, the Brookline chamber’s executive director, with an open invitation to join, if the time became right, several times over the years. Apparently, in December, that time had arrived.

“It was always something I thought would be good for the businesses in Brookline,” Reibman said. “This is not a takeover. … It’s a deliberate choice to help their members land somewhere strong.”

Mutty blamed rising costs and the increasing demands of effective advocacy and programming as reasons for the move, and noted that Reibman’s chamber is financially stable with a strong regional presence. Mutty will join Reibman’s team for the transition, based in Needham, bringing it up to eight people.

The Brookline chamber has about 150 members, the vast majority of them small businesses. Their memberships will roll over into Charles River memberships, expiring at the time their previous memberships would have ended. Reibman agreed to keep running Brookline’s annual First Light holiday shopping promotion along Harvard Street, and to continue its annual Chobee Hoy award, in honor of the real estate broker and civic leader who died in 2024.

The Charles River chamber, which adopted its current name in 2021, got its start in Newton and has grown to encompass Needham, Wellesley, and Watertown. Brookline happens to be the first community that’s not along its namesake river. But Reibman has an explanation for that.

“The Muddy River [in Brookline] is a tributary to the Charles River,” Reibman said, “so we’ve got that one covered.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.

Both are appealing. Who doesn’t favor more affordable rents or lower taxes?

But both are bad ideas even though they attempt to address real economic challenges posed by the state’s high cost of living. Like most simple answers to complex problems, they would only make matters worse.

The rent initiative, backed by labor unions, would discourage new construction, which is essential to keeping a lid on lease rates. It would also decrease property values, putting a strain on municipal budgets.

The tax cut, pushed by business groups, would take a large bite out of state revenues, forcing difficult decisions about which services to eliminate.

Here’s a quick primer.

What it would do: Filed by Homes For All Massachusetts, a coalition of housing groups, the initiative would peg allowable annual rent hikes to the rate of inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index), with a cap of 5 percent.

Landlords would be barred from raising rents after a tenant leaves. Owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units would be exempt, as would new buildings during their first 10 years. Cities and towns couldn’t opt out.

The initiative would “protect tenants from big corporate investors who unreasonably increase rents, while allowing local landlords to earn a reasonable profit and enabling new construction to address housing shortages,” said Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts.

Several big labor unions have endorsed the measure, including the SEIU Massachusetts State Council and the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Why it won’t work: Backers designed the proposal to sidestep the obvious flaw of rent control: that it chills new construction. Hence the 10-year exemption for new buildings.

But most apartment projects in Massachusetts take years to finance, permit, and build. Developers calculate their payoff over several decades, and a rent cap waiting at the end of year 10 changes the math.

The deeper problem is high rents in Massachusetts are a supply problem. There are not enough apartments and rental homes.

Not only do rent caps discourage new construction, they may encourage landlords to convert rental units to condos or reduce their investment in existing properties.

Moreover, evidence shows rent control can have unintended consequences.

A working paper examining St. Paul, Minn.’s 2021 rent control ordinance, which was less severe than the Massachusetts proposal, found that property values fell 6 to 7 percent. The losses were driven largely by lower expected future rents being priced into valuations.

That kind of decline ripples through municipal budgets. Cities facing shrinking tax bases typically respond by raising rates, cutting services, or both.

“It would be catastrophic for the economy,” said Tamara Small, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate trade group.

What it would do: Reduce the state levy on personal income to 4 percent from 5 percent, phased in over three years.

The initiative would put money into people’s hands and make sure the government is not growing faster than residents’ ability to fund growth, according to Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a business-supported think tank that filed the measure.

“This is about making Massachusetts a place where people want to stay,” he said. Pioneer estimates the tax cut would lead to the creation of as many as 48,000 jobs and spur economic growth that would offset the loss of tax revenue within a few years.

According to backers, which also include the Massachusetts High Tech Council and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the net annual revenue impact during the three-year phase-in period would be about $680 million. Following full implementation, state revenue growth would increase as an economic boost from lower taxes kicked in.

Why it won’t work: Tax cuts can modestly boost growth as consumers and small businesses spend the extra money. According to a report by the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, the median household tax bill would shrink about $1,250 each year.

But the economic boost won’t fully recoup lost revenue. Claims that cuts “pay for themselves” are not supported by the weight of economic evidence.

According to the Tufts report, the tax cut would result in a much bigger hit to state revenues than estimated by the initiative’s supporters: $5.1 billion a year when fully in place, or about 10 percent of total state tax receipts. The state Department of Revenue issued a similar estimate.

“A cut of this size would more than offset the revenue gains from the millionaires tax and imperil efforts to balance the state budget and sustain core government programs moving forward,” the Tufts report said.

Massachusetts has a real cost-of-living problem, and voters aren’t wrong to demand action. But these ballot proposals offer short-term gratification without fixing the underlying problems.

Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.