iStock photo

New Sen. Lydia Edwards of Boston got her initial committee assignments Thursday and will step into the roles of Senate chair of the Community Development and Small Business Committee and Senate vice chair of the Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets, part of a shuffling of chairmanships that also fills a months-long vacancy atop one key panel.

The September departure of Sen. Joseph Boncore created the opening that Edwards, a Boston city councilor, filled after winning a special election, but it also left Senate President Karen Spilka without a chairperson for the busy Transportation Committee. Following a private caucus Thursday in which Senate Democrats ratified the changes, Spilka announced a rejiggered roster of committee chairmanships including Sen. Brendan Crighton of Lynn as the Senate’s new point person on the Transportation Committee.

“I look forward to the leadership that these new Chairs will provide to the Senate,” Spilka said in a statement.

The changes affect six committees and six senators, though it is unclear exactly how much sway the new committee chairs will have this session given that public hearing season is over and most committees had to either wrap up their work or seek extensions for specific bills by early this month.

The Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets will have all-new Senate leadership. Sen. Paul Feeney is handing the chairman’s gavel off to Sen. Nick Collins, who had been serving as the committee’s vice chair. Edwards will slide into the vice chair role that Collins held. She will also assume from Collins the job of Senate chair of the Committee on Community Development and Small Business, keeping that committee under the influence of a Boston senator.

Feeney will not be without a chairmanship, though. With Crighton taking on the top Senate job on the Transportation Committee, Feeney will take over Crighton’s former role as Senate chairman of the Joint Committee on Financial Services.

Spilka also juggled the leadership of the Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, where Sen. Michael Rush will step aside for Sen. John Keenan to become chairman. Rush will instead helm the Senate Committee on Personnel and Administration, a second chairmanship left vacant by Boncore’s departure.

Thanks to mid-term departures in his own branch, House Speaker Ron Mariano also has leadership and committee chair decisions on his plate. His majority leader, Claire Cronin, resigned to become U.S. ambassador to Ireland; his chair of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee, Rep. Carolyn Dykema, resigned this month to take a job in the solar industry; and his chair of the Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government, Rep. Lori Ehrlich, stepped down to take a job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Both branches might once again reshape their committee leadership structures about a year from now when a new Legislature gets up and running.