BOSTON — Two weeks before the policies are set to expire, the House and Senate took the first steps Monday to once again temporarily extend pandemic-era laws allowing remote access for public meetings in Massachusetts.

The latest extension of the five-year-old policies, some of which were first put in place via an executive order issued by Gov. Charlie Baker as COVID-19 triggered a global pandemic, could reach Gov. Maura Healey’s desk Thursday.

In a statement announcing House-Senate agreement on the issue, Senate President Karen Spilka suggested the extension might not be the last word on the subject of remote meetings this session.

“I have heard loud and clear from my colleagues, and the communities we represent, that hybrid meetings have increased access, engagement, and transparency in local government, and I look forward to the Senate passing this extension to June 2027 on Thursday, and then working in our chamber to enact a permanent hybrid meeting law,” the Ashland Democrat said.

The House Ways and Means Committee began advancing a bill (H 62) on Monday that would keep in place language granting public bodies flexibility to hold meetings virtually or in hybrid formats, as well as measures lowering the number of people necessary for a quorum at Town Meeting and allowing representative Town Meetings to be held with remote participation.

Those COVID-era policies are set to expire March 31, and the bill would push that sunset date until June 30, 2027.

Municipal leaders have been urging Beacon Hill to keep remote and hybrid meeting options in place permanently, arguing that they have boosted civic participation and made it easier for local governments to manage operations.

Healey offered her own plan to permanently enshrine the option for hybrid public meetings as part of a local option tax bill she filed in January, but the House Ways and Means Committee produced the new extension bill as a report in part on an unrelated spending bill (H 55) Healey filed to spend about $1.3 billion in surplus income from the state’s surtax on high earners.

Government boards in Massachusetts were granted the ability to meet without a physical quorum of members present and without affording public access to the physical meeting locations under an order Baker announced on March 12, 2020 — two days after Baker declared an emergency in Massachusetts and one day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

In the five years since, it has become the norm for most public meetings to have at least some option to follow along remotely and the number of government bodies that regularly livestream their meetings has significantly increased.