Massachusetts
Massachusetts political contributions from Nantucket wind farm developer scrutinized
As Nantucket continues to reel from the Vineyard Wind turbine blade failure, critics are raising concerns around how the project’s parent company, Avangrid, has donated thousands of dollars in campaign money to state elected officials.
A Herald analysis found that employees who list Avangrid as their employer have made 217 donations totaling $57,677 to dozens of state and local campaigns since March 2018, two months before the Baker administration selected a Vineyard Wind bid for contract negotiation.
Notable figures include project supporters Gov. Maura Healey receiving 38 donations totaling $16,425 since 2018, and state Sen. Julian Cyr, a Democrat whose district represents the Cape and Islands, collecting 17 contributions for $3,036 since 2021, according to the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
While the donations represent minuscule portions of Healey and Cyr’s cumulative campaign funds, sharply less than 1%, respectively, critics argue the electeds are putting their interests with Avangrid ahead of their constituents.
Vineyard Wind, a venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, continues to clean up debris — a mix of foam and fiberglass pieces of various sizes — on Nantucket and the surrounding area in the aftermath of the turbine blade failure.
“Campaign donations have bought their support for a project that makes very little sense at this point,” said Paul Diego Craney, a spokesman for watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Elected officials should think objectively on policy decisions, but in this case, their judgment is getting blinded by the campaign donations they are receiving.”
The Healey campaign declined to comment.
The $3,036 that Avangrid employees have donated to Cyr since 2021 counts for 0.4% of the $688,518 in contributions he’s received in that time, the senator told the Herald.
Cyr highlighted how Massachusetts campaign finance law limits the maximum contribution a candidate can receive per person per calendar year to $1,000.
“By capping contributions, we ensure that the voice of every voter matters, rather than allowing those with deep pockets to dominate the political landscape,” the senator said in a statement Saturday. “This promotes fairness, transparency, and trust in our elections, ensuring that our representative democracy is truly for the people, not for those who can spend the most.”
Christopher Lauzon, a Barnstable resident and Republican candidate running for Cyr’s seat, called the Vineyard Wind situation “one of the biggest disasters to hit the Cape and Islands since Hurricane Bob.”
“It’s having devastating environmental and economic impacts,” Lauzon said of the Vineyard Wind blade failure in an interview with the Herald on Friday.
“Senator Cyr has been completely MIA on this issue,” the candidate continued, adding how he visited Nantucket last weekend to speak with island residents. “They are not happy. They feel like they’re being ignored.”
An analysis of Cyr’s social media activity since the blade broke apart on July 13 showed that the senator has not made any posts relative to what many Nantucket officials and residents are calling a crisis.
Healey also hasn’t made any social media posts about her response.
In a July 16 post on X, Cyr included a link to his monthly newsletter. In it, he highlighted a trip he made with Healey to the Vineyard Wind warehouse facility on June 6 and a celebration of “Global Wind Day” at Craigville Beach in Barnstable a week later.
“Vineyard Wind has demonstrated a commitment to the Island,” Cyr wrote in the newsletter. “I am proud to have played my part in working to forge the partnership between Islanders and the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind installation, and I’m excited to see this effort create a whole host of good in our community.
Healey, during her trip with Cyr, remarked, “To all of the workers, contractors, the people who financed and so many others, thank you for bringing this home. We were serious when we said we were going to make a big bet on wind. It’s where we need to go.”
Lauzon is taking exception to how Cyr has collected five contributions totaling $1,300 from his former chief of staff, Patrick Johnson, who currently serves as Avangrid’s director of public affairs.
Johnson donated five other gifts to Cyr for $1,101.38 under prior employment.
“When you get into the thousands of dollars it does add up. That’s significant,” Lauzon said. “Honestly, it presents a conflict.”
Cape Cod Concerned Citizens highlighted how it “holds the strong opinion that the pattern of campaign contributions that is publicly available for all to see reveals a giant grift that is poisonous to the democratic process and silences the voices of Cape Cod constituents.”
Cyr stood firm with how he makes his “decisions and votes based on what I believe is best for Cape Codders and Islanders, not for any political contributors.”
“I have been all in on clean energy, including offshore wind, but I am clear-eyed that can only happen if we get it right,” Cyr told the Herald. “That means doing right by the local people and communities who host these projects. Anything else is unacceptable.”
During his employment with Avangrid, Johnson has contributed to roughly 25 other campaigns including $500 to Healey, $825 to Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and $900 to Rep. Jeffrey Roy, the House chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee.
“Avangrid always supports the ability of its employees to exercise their rights and participate in the political process,” company spokesperson Leo Rosales told the Herald in a statement Sunday, “including supporting public officials on important issues like clean energy and climate policy.”
GE Vernova, the designer, manufacturer and installer of the turbines, has pointed to a “manufacturing deviation” and not an engineering design flaw in the failure of its wind turbine off the coast of Nantucket. An initial third-party environmental analysis of the disaster has found the debris from the 351-foot blade to be “inert, non-soluble, stable and non-toxic.”
Vineyard Wind is prohibited from generating electricity from any of its turbines and building any additional towers, nacelle and blades, under a federal order.
The company is permitted to “install inter-array cables and conduct surveys outside of the damaged turbine’s safety exclusion zone,” the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in a Friday release.
Nantucket officials, in a Friday update, highlighted how they met with the state for the first time on Thursday to discuss the state’s “monitoring and response efforts.”
The Biden administration restarted permitting for Vineyard Wind 1, the subject of a federal appeal, in February 2021, just a month after the president took office. GE Vernova has installed 24 turbines to date.
Vineyard Wind 1 is planned to grow to 62 turbines that are expected to have the capacity to generate 806 megawatts, enough electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses across the state, according to state officials.
Avangrid has either begun construction on or is in review of other wind farm projects in the Nantucket Sound, which Barnstable residents are fighting against.
“The offshore wind industry is critical to our ability to combat climate change and produce clean, affordable energy,” a spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs told the Herald, “and the Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to delivering these benefits to our residents.”

Massachusetts
Massachusetts orders DraftKings to pay $934K after it botched MLB parlay bets
A costly sportsbook screwup left DraftKings on the hook for nearly $1 million after Massachusetts regulators ordered the payouts tied to a botched MLB parlay scheme.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission voted 5-0 on Thursday to reject DraftKings’ bid to void $934,137 in payouts stemming from a series of correlated parlays placed during MLB’s 2025 American League Championship Series, according to Bookies.com.
A Massachusetts customer wagered $12,950 total across 27 multi-leg parlays on Toronto Blue Jays player Nathan Lukes, exploiting an internal DraftKings configuration error that allowed the bettor to stack multiple versions of the same bet into one wager.
DraftKings told regulators the bets should never have been accepted and argued the patron acted unethically by taking advantage of an obvious error.
Commissioners flatly rejected that argument.
The wagers were tied to DraftKings’ “Player to Record X+ Hits in Series” market during the seven-game ALCS between Toronto and Seattle.
Because of a misclassification inside DraftKings’ trading tools, Lukes was incorrectly labeled a “non-participant” rather than an active player.
That designation disabled safeguards designed to block bettors from parlaying correlated outcomes from the same market.
As a result, the bettor was able to combine multiple Lukes hit thresholds — including 5+, 6+, 7+ and 8+ hits — into single parlays, functionally creating an inflated wager on Lukes recording eight or more hits at dramatically enhanced odds.
The bettor also added unrelated, high-probability legs, including NFL moneyline bets, to further juice payouts.
Lukes ultimately appeared in all seven games and finished the series with nine hits, clearing every threshold.
Of the 27 parlays placed, 24 hit cleanly. Only three lost due to unrelated college football legs involving Clemson, Florida State and Miami.
During a heated exchange at Thursday’s commission meeting, DraftKings executive Paul Harrington accused the patron of fraud and unethical conduct.
Commissioners bristled. One of them, Eileen O’Brien, blasted DraftKings for casting aspersions on the bettor without evidence and said the situation did not meet the standard of an “obvious error.”
“An obvious error is a legal and factual impossibility,” O’Brien said. “This is an advantage that the patron took.”
She added that DraftKings’ internal failures — not the bettor’s conduct — created the situation.
“We need to seriously consider giving voice to the consumer and getting their half the story,” O’Brien said. “The compulsion to pay will in fact encourage compliance.”
Other commissioners echoed that view, emphasizing that it is the operator’s responsibility to ensure the integrity of its markets.
The commission noted that DraftKings acknowledged the root cause was internal — a configuration failure within its own trading tools — and not the result of a third-party odds provider or external data feed.
Upon discovering the error, DraftKings pulled the affected markets, left the wagers unsettled pending regulatory guidance and implemented corrective fixes.
The company said no other Massachusetts customers were impacted, though the same issue appeared in two other jurisdictions.
The Post has sought comment from DraftKings.
Massachusetts
Deadline nears for Massachusetts Health Connector enrollment
SPRINGFIELD — With just days left before the Dec. 23 deadline, state and local leaders are urging uninsured residents to enroll in health coverage through the Massachusetts Health Connector to ensure they’re protected in the new year. The cutoff applies to anyone who wants coverage starting Jan. 1.
The Health Connector — the state’s official health insurance marketplace — is the only place residents can access financial assistance and avoid misleading “junk” policies that often appear in online searches, according to a statement from the agency.
Officials say the enrollment period is especially critical for people without job-based insurance, gig workers, newcomers to the state and anyone seeking affordable, comprehensive health plans.
At a press conference Wednesday at Caring Health Center’s Tania M. Barber Learning Institute in Springfield, health leaders emphasized that most people who sign up through the Connector qualify for help paying premiums through its ConnectorCare program.
Audrey Morse Gasteier, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, said the state has spent nearly two decades committed to ensuring access to health care and offering the most affordable coverage possible for everyone.
”And despite the federal challenges, we continue to do everything we can to offer coverage to everyone who needs it. Now is the time for people who don’t have coverage to come in, apply, and find out what kind of plan for which they qualify,” she said.
Open enrollment also gives current members a chance to review their coverage, compare options and make changes.
Recent changes in federal policy have caused shifts in coverage and higher premiums for many Massachusetts residents, creating uncertainty and concern, said Cristina Huebner Torres, chief executive vice president and strategy and research officer at Caring Health Center.
“During times like these, trusted, local support becomes even more essential, and our Navigators have been on the very front lines, helping residents understand their options, maintain coverage, and navigate a complex and evolving system,” Huebner Torres said.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts woman charged with DUI after Simsbury crash
SIMSBURY, Conn. (WTNH) — A Massachusetts woman was arrested Wednesday and charged with DUI after a crash in Simsbury, according to police.
The crash happened at around 2:15 p.m. on Hartford Avenue and Elm Street. Police responded to reports that one of the operators of the vehicles was unconscious, later becoming conscious.
Upon arrival, police found that operator, who was identified as 39-year-old Allison Beu of Southwick, Massachusetts, outside of her vehicle and interacting with the other involved parties.
The two occupants in the other vehicle were not transported to the hospital.
Beu was charged with DUI and failure to drive in proper lane.
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