Driscoll Files Amendment to Expand Gateway City Eligibility

OCTOBER 30, 2025

As part of Senate debate over the FY25 Supplemental Closeout Budget, Senator Bill Driscoll (D-Milton) offered amendment #33, which expands eligibility for Gateway Municipality status. The intention is to allow similarly situated communities to gain access to critical funding sources. 

Currently for a municipality to be eligible for Gateway Municipality status it must:

• Have a population greater than 35,000 but less than 250,000

• Have a median education attainment (Bachelor’s Degree or higher) below the state average

• Have a median household income below the state average

As it stands now, the Gateway list has not been updated since 2013. As such, there are communities that should be added to the Gateway Municipality list, further unlocking funding source opportunities for their community. Conversely, some communities that have remained on the list since 2013 no longer meet the necessary criteria. 

To rectify this issue, the amendment seeks to charge the Executive Office of Economic Development with the responsibility to review the criteria and census data following each federal census to produce a list of municipalities that meet the criteria. It also allows municipalities to request a mid-decade review of their status to determine if they meet the criteria since the previous census. 

The amendment would also add additional eligibility requirements and expect that municipalities meet the thresholds of some of those requirements, rather than all. This would allow the Secretary of Economic Development the discretion to designate municipalities as “similarly situated,” if they were to meet some, but not all, of the Gateway Municipality eligibility requirements.

Although the Senator ultimately withdrew his filing of the amendment, his goal was to start a conversation focused on how to best help local partners and further economic equity in the Commonwealth. 

The Senator’s related bill, S. 297 – An Act relative to gateway municipalities, was filed this session and is before the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies. This bill seeks to make similar updates to the Gateway Cities Statute. The Senator will continue to pursue these necessary updates.

Randolph, which the Senator has represented since 2017, first as a Representative, is considered a "similarly situated" municipality but has never fully qualified as a Gateway Municipality. The experience working with Randolph to access Gateway status and the accompanying benefits led to these fillings.

See CommonWealth Beacon’s Lawmaker representing Randolph seeks to loosen Gateway City eligibility criteria by Hallie Claflin for reporting on these efforts by Senator Driscoll. 

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