Passing the Prison Moratorium and Ending Life without Parole Go Hand in Hand

Prison

Massachusetts Judiciary Joint Committee

Testimony for S.1979/H.1795 and An Act to Reduce Mass Incarceration, (S.1045 / H.1821),

Caroline Bays, Watertown Massachusetts

Dear Chairs Eldridge and Day,

Thank you for hearing my testimony today on S.1979 / H.1795, an act that would establish a five-year moratorium on building new prisons. 

I am usually before you as a Watertown city councilor or as a board member on behalf of Progressive Massachusetts. But today I  am here on behalf of my dear friend who has spent the last 16 of his 35 years in prison. 

Six years ago, I had a life-changing event when I was asked to visit this young man who was experiencing a mental health crisis. As a result, I have seen up close how dysfunctional, counter-productive, and destructive prisons are to the human beings who live within those walls. 

Prisons no longer even pay lip service to rehabilitation; they are designed purely for punishment. They no longer try to help people get back on their feet and become productive members of our society. The stories I have heard–the danger, harm, cruelty, and viciousness he has experienced are destructive not just to him but to our society and who we are as a state. 

Prisons as they are currently structured do not make us safer–they make us less safe. And we are harming the most vulnerable members of our society–people who need help. We are putting people who are mentally ill in prison; we are putting people who are addicted to drugs in prison; we are putting people who are experiencing dire poverty in prison. 

Since when did we decide that it was morally right to treat those who need our help as criminals and deny them the support and treatment they need? Whom does it help? This is cruel to those impacted and actually decreases our safety. 

In addition I also ask you to support An Act to Reduce Mass Incarceration (S.1045 / H.1821). These bills go hand in hand because ending life without parole and the imprisonment of people who committed crimes when they were teenagers not only counters everything we know about human development, it unnecessarily imprisons people who are perfectly safe to release back into the community. In addition these sentences are disproportionately imposed on people of color.  Please pass these necessary next steps in order to create a more just and equitable society.

I urge you to help us look for solutions that will benefit everyone–the incarcerated people and the general public. We have an opportunity to truly change how our society manages public safety. The creation of prisons has not only failed to end crime, by disconnecting people from their families, education, jobs and societal support, mass incarceration has actually been responsible for an increase in criminal infractions. Let’s be the state that shows how to end this cycle of incarceration and create solutions that really do lead to healing – of individuals and our community.  Thank you for your time.

Time to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Renewable future

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Barrett and Members of the Senate Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy:  

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to S.2135/H.3237 (Gomez, Williams, & Ramos): An Act establishing a moratorium on new gas system expansion.

This summer has been an ongoing series of warning signs of the need to take bold and comprehensive action on climate change. Earlier this month, from July 3 to July 6, we experienced the four hottest days on record globally. We have seen extreme flooding hit neighboring states as well as our own, and the same for the dystopian impacts of raging wildfires in Canada.

This should serve as a wake-up call that our response to climate change, despite recent progress, is not enough. We have known for many years now that the majority of fossil fuels must be left in the ground if we are to have even a chance of staying within safe boundaries of global warming.

The state has a commendable goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, but we will not be able to reach that if we continue to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in the Commonwealth.

These bills would establish a moratorium on new gas system expansion. The moratorium, which would last at least through 2026, would create time to work out a plan for what a just transition looks like and would prevent us from rushing into new infrastructure that, if we are to meet our own goals, cannot and will not be used.

Pipelines are built to be used, and we should avoid creating the lock-in effect for unsustainable fuels that are harmful to human and environmental health.

We need to say farewell to fossil fuels and give our full embrace to the suite of policies needed for an equitable and ecologically resilient future.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Let’s Support Open Government with Transparency and Hybrid Meeting Access.

Hybrid-Meeting-Access

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Collins, Chair Cabral, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.3040 / S.2024: An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings (Rep. Garlick & Sen. Lewis) and S.2064: An Act extending the public records law to the Governor and the Legislature (Sen. Rausch).

Modern Open Meeting Access for All

Since early 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legislature has suspended provisions of the Open Meeting Law to enable public bodies to carry out their responsibilities remotely, with virtual access and participation by the public. As in-person gatherings were able to safely restart, many public bodies have shifted toward hybrid meetings, enabling both in-person and remote attendance by both officials and the public.

Such hybrid meetings have been a boon to public participation. Remote access has removed obstacles facing working people, parents of young children, other caregivers, people with disabilities, people with limited transportation, among many other populations who may not be able to travel to a city or town hall or spend hours waiting for their time to speak. Yet retaining a robust in-person component recognizes the value of in-person discussion and deliberation to democracy and ensures that unreliable Internet access, common in rural and low-income urban areas, is not a barrier to participating in our democracy.

Although the Legislature recently extended the option for hybrid meetings until 2025, we should not be relying on piecemeal extensions but instead reform Open Meeting Law for twenty-first-century democracy and technology. H.3040/S.2024 provides a path for doing so, recognizing both the importance of open government and the needs cities and towns face in making that a reality.

Expanding Public Records Law

In the 2016 public record reform law, the Legislature created a commission to explore whether to expand the public records law to the Legislature and the Governor’s office, but that commission ended up yielding no formal report. Massachusetts remains the only state in the US where both the executive and legislative branch of state government claim full exemption from public records law. The same governing bodies that require cities and towns to adhere to strict Open Meeting Law rules exempt themselves from even a basic level of transparency. 

As other state governments understand, making executive records like calendars, emails and texts, visitor logs, and call logs accessible is key to accountability: when such documents are fully kept secret, the public is left in the dark about whom the Governor is meeting and why, and what they are prioritizing. 

The difficulty in obtaining information from the Massachusetts Legislature not only makes our state an outlier but also stifles the democratic process. The majority of states make committee votes electronically available, including states like California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon. And states like Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Oregon make committee testimony fully available to the public.

The most moneyed interests are those who benefit from closed, hierarchical systems because they will always be able to work their way behind closed doors—whereas the public and researchers are rarely so lucky.  Openness helps foster social trust: open government should be viewed as part and parcel of the work of civics education that has bipartisan support in the State House.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Let’s Learn from the Pandemic and Pass the Community Immunity Act.

Vaccination

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Dear Chair Cyr, Chair Decker, and Members of the Joint Committee on Public Health: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.2151/S.1458: An Act promoting community immunity.

If we want to be ready for the next pandemic, or even just ready for the next outbreak of a disease we thought we were decades past, we need to be strengthening and standardizing our infrastructure for immunization. We need to leave the past three years with lessons borne out in policy.

A look at our current immunization infrastructure leaves much to be desired. We currently lack full and accurate reporting on vaccination rates among young people, relying instead on voluntary surveys of schools, summer camps, colleges, and daycares. The limited data available show alarming rates of under- and unimmunized children in communities across the Commonwealth. To put that into perspective, in the current school year, more than 200 high schools, more than 200 middle schools, more than 200 elementary schools, and more than 1,600 child care centers and preschools failed to report any immunization data to state public health officials. Of the kindergarten programs that submitted data, 152 lacked herd immunity to protect against the spread of measles, and 15 lacked herd immunity to protect against the spread of polio.  

We cannot fix a problem without a full and accurate read of it, and the Community Immunity Act’s data reporting requirements are a key first step. But the bill, as necessary, goes further, with targeted education and outreach about vaccine safety and efficacy and standardization and centralization of vaccination protocols. Standardized state-level policies determined by public health officials are crucial when determining exemptions if we are to make sure that medical and religious exemptions are not abused and that local superintendents are not overburdened.

We ask that you swiftly advance the Community Immunity Act out of the Public Health Committee with a favorable report. Please help to keep all of us safe and healthy, particularly people who are immunocompromised and rely on community immunity.

Thank you for your consideration and your service to the people of the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

We Need More Housing, and We Need More Affordable Housing.

Dense neighborhood

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.1379/S.858: An Act relative to yes in my backyard and S.870: An Act to improve the housing development incentive program.

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour. [1] Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as median housing sale price in Metro Boston nears $1 million. [2] We need action, and we need to be using every tool in the toolbox to make our state more affordable for all.

If we want to see more homes, and more affordable homes, being built, then we need to reform our zoning laws. According to a recent analysis by the Eviction Lab, Massachusetts metro areas accounted for 3 of the top 10 metro areas with the most restrictive zoning laws. Such restrictive zoning laws push up costs and reinforce residential segregation: indeed, according to census data, more than 60 percent of Massachusetts’s Black population lives in just ten cities. 

The MBTA Communities law, recently passed and currently being implemented by cities and towns, can make a dent, but we need more ambitious and comprehensive policy. H.1379/S.858 would require multifamily zoning and remove costly parking mandates around public transportation, encouraging dense, transit-oriented development that is good for climate and good for communities. It would also expedite the process of converting unused state-owned land into affordable housing or vacant commercial properties into multifamily housing, among many other steps. 

We also need to make sure that we are building more affordable housing, and S.870 would reform the Housing Development Incentive Program to ensure that it actually does so. Currently, the HDIP program subsidizes units with shockingly high rents in hot markets in little need of the “carrot” of tax incentives. [3] The program needs to be refocused to where it can have clear benefits for surrounding communities and to design mixed-income housing that addresses the full range of housing needs in our gateway cities.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

[1] National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Massachusetts.” Accessed July 25, 2023. https://nlihc.org/oor/state/ma.

[2] Kohli, Diti. “The Typical House in Greater Boston Now Costs $900,000. Here’s What That’ll Buy You in the Rest of America.” Boston Globe. July 20, 2022.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/20/business/typical-house-greater-boston-now-costs-900000-heres-what-thatll-buy-you-rest-america/.

[3] https://www.masslegalservices.org/content/MLRI_HDIP_Report_12_15_22.