Massachusetts lawmakers are creating a commission to study a possible 2024 summer Olympic bid. The senate last week passed a resolution to create a nine-member commission to review logistics like where over 16,000 athletes would stay and how they’d get around. Eric Reddy leads Boston 2024, a private group that jump-started the Olympic planning process earlier this year. He imagines Boston would be the face of the games but the whole region would act as host.

“You know, if this didn’t fill heads and beds from Provincetown to Pittsfield, it would be very surprising,” says Reddy.

Director of Athletics at Holyoke Community College, Thomas Stewart, says if Massachsetts got the games, the venues for some events would be no-brainers. Rowing would be assigned to the Charles River and basketball to the TD Banknorth Garden. But he says there’s a chance volleyball could draw spectators out west near its birthplace of Holyoke.

“They get a lot of people to watch the volleyball competition. Certainly you could seat 9-10,000 people in the Mullins center,” says Reddy. “It maybe could go to Mass Mutual Center. Unless they’re looking for a piece of real estate out here to build the Olympic stadium in.”

The legislative resolution calls on the commission to hold its first meeting no later than September 30th of this year, but it still needs approval from the state house.

A Massachusetts nurses union wants voters to place a limit on the number of patients under the care of each nurse. Union nurses have been urging lawmakers to pass staffing legislation for over a decade. It hasn’t happened so they’ve introduced a ballot initiative. The proposal would set a 4 patient maximum for nurses in medical and surgical units and limit intensive care nurses to two stable patients. President of the Massachusetts Nurses Association Donna Kelly-Williams says at some hospitals, nurses are assigned more patients than they can handle — which can be costly.

“Urinary tract infections pressure sores or bed sores that are extremely painful,” Kelly-Williams adds.  “That involves months of treatment if those are not prevented.”

A representative from Baystate Health says patient outcomes at his company’s hospitals have improved over the past five years without setting a patient limit for nurses. And he says hiring more nurses could mean more expensive insurance premiums for patients. Tim Gens with the Massachusetts Hospital Association — says that investment wouldn’t guarantee higher quality care overall.

“If you mandate the certain magic number for registered nurses’s — that affects the ability for there to be sufficient other professionals,” Gens says. “Doctors or pharmacists or lab techs that are also a critical part of the care giving team.”

The nurses are trying to get the proposal on the November 2014 ballot.

The parent company of Vermont Yankee says it will eliminate around 30 jobs at the Vernon nuclear power plant. Entergy spokesperson Terry Young says that’s about 4 percent of Vermont Yankee’s current workforce.

“Just one position here and one position there in different departments.” Young says. “So there’s really not one single area, it’s really across the board.”

Young says the company is reorganizing its plants. He says current employees who are qualified for new positions will be selected for those jobs by the end of the year. And he says workers who aren’t chosen will be offered severance packages. Entergy will also be eliminating 30 jobs in Massachusetts and 110 in New York.

More than a dozen F-15 fighter jets are joining the usual runway activity at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The jets are normally based a few miles west at Barnes Airport in Westfield. The runway there is undergoing repairs. Lieutenant Colonel James Bishop says the F-15s can go supersonic.

“These are big fighters and they’ll take off sometimes in multiple ship formations,” Bishop says. “And so for the four to six months that they’re expected to be here it will be noisier in the area. Some of the surrounding towns you’ll hear them coming in and going out particularly.”

Bishop says the jets will fly training missions in the area. They will also be used for a security mission on Cape Cod. He says keeping them in Western Massachusetts most of the time makes sense because the 120 crew members already live here. The F-15s will start training missions on Thursday. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Massachusetts lawmakers gathered in Springfield today collecting testimony on ways to overhaul public housing. Earlier this year, Governor Deval Patrick filed legislation that would consolidate the state’s 240 local housing authorities into six regional authorities. Tom Connelly is head of Massachusetts’ chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. With such tight housing budget, Connelly agrees some level of consolidation is necessary.

“We are not resistant to this concept. In fact, there are already 35 local housing authorities who voluntarily have gotten together and joined forces to serve residents in a more effective manner.”

Connelly supports an alternative bill that would require small housing authorities to collaborate with larger authorities if they’re under-performing. Chair of the Amherst Housing Authority, Connie Kruger told lawmakers she isn’t satisfied with either plan.

“Local is not always better. Centralization or regionalization is also not always better. “

Kruger wants the governor and opponents of his bill to come up with a compromise that would allow local housing agencies the chance to creatively share their staff and housing stock. Two more hearings on the issue are scheduled for mid-September.