Healey Called Noah Kahan on a Red Rotary Phone. The House Let It Go to Voicemail.

Remember when Gov. Healey picked up a red rotary phone on stage to "dial" Noah Kahan about capping ticket resale prices? Cute bit. The House passed its $2.35 billion closeout budget 152-0 on Wednesday, and the ticket cap wasn't in it.

Healey's plan, and separate Senate language, would cap resale prices for concerts and live events at 110% of the original price, per MASSterList. Ways and Means chair Aaron Michlewitz says similar language is already in an economic development bill the two chambers are negotiating, so putting it in the closeout budget would be "a little duplicative." Translation: not dead, just parked.

The resellers are already lawyering up in their heads. The Ticket Policy Forum, which represents six marketplaces including StubHub and SeatGeek, sued last week to block a cap in Washington, D.C., and its director, Brian Berry, wouldn't rule out doing the same here. His argument: if a ticket was $100, you can't resell it for more than $110, but "that doesn't stop the box office from charging $300 for that same ticket the next day."

Look, he's not entirely wrong that the face value is part of the problem. He's also the guy whose members make money on the markup. Both things can be true. Anybody who's tried to see a show at the Garden lately knows the system is broken somewhere. The question is just who gets blamed for which piece.

What we still don't know: whether the cap survives the economic development bill negotiations, whether the Senate moves the closeout budget when it comes back Monday, and whether Massachusetts ends up in court over this the way D.C. did.