When the new legislative session kicked off on January 1, Sen. President Karen Spilka (D-Ashland) expressed interest in taking up a suite of transparency reforms to “build upon the Senate’s commitment to an open and transparent process of legislating.”

The talk about transparency and legislative process reform from both Spilka and Speaker Ron Mariano seemed to be a result of the overwhelming public support for Question 1 last year (i.e., the Auditor’s ballot question about auditing the Legislature) and of the negative press the Legislature got for not finishing on time. In response, a group of 30 organizations called on the House and Senate to adopt a robust package of pro-transparency, pro-democracy, pro-participation reforms.

Yesterday (Thursday, February 6), the Senate released its rules proposals for the 2025-2026 session. These rules both include and build upon past proposals from the Senate.

The Senate, for example, has supported making committee votes and testimony public since 2019. Following the 2016 update to the public records law, the House and Senate established a commission studying whether the Legislature and Governor should remain fully exempt from public records law. The commission dissolved with no agreement, but the Senate members of the commission released their own proposals, including these measures.

However, the new rules attempt to bypass the intransigence from the House by requiring that the votes Senators take in joint committees, such as whether or not to advance a bill out of committee, be posted online. The Senate already does this for Senate-only committees. The Senate’s proposed rules would also require that written or in-person testimony received by Senate members of a joint committee be provided publicly online, with an email or online portal established to facilitate this.

The Senate’s proposed rules would also direct the Senate Ways and Means Committee to make bill summaries available online for legislation reported favorably out of the committee. This makes a useful resource already available to all senators available to everyone. Legislative language is often inscrutable given the jargon involved with changing the Massachusetts General Laws, and bill summaries help regular people get a better sense of what is happening in the legislative process.

The Senate also proposed several changes to the joint rules (i.e., the rules that govern House-Senate committees):

• Joint Hearings But Not Joint Votes: There has been buzz in recent weeks about whether or not joint committees would end up splitting into separate House and Senate committees with separate hearings, etc. The Senate’s proposal keeps joint hearings (saving advocates and the public the labor of having to attend twice as many hearings) but allows for Senate members to vote on Senate bills and House members to vote on House bills. As the House outnumbers the Senate in joint committees, House opposition can lead to committee stalemates or otherwise slow bills that Senators wish to advance.
• Increased Hearing Notice: The Senate’s proposed joint rules would guarantee five days (one business week) of notice before a hearing as opposed to the current 72 hours. We have advocated for a two-week notice (given how many people need that much lead time to take time off work), but this is still an improvement and is something the Senate has advocated for in the past.
• An Earlier Reporting Deadline: The Senate’s proposed joint rules would require joint committees to report bills out by the first Wednesday in December of the first year of a session as opposed to the current February. This would allow for year one to focus on hearing bills and year two to focus on passing them, pushing back on backlogs and bottlenecks.
• Open Conference Committee Meetings: The Senate’s proposed joint rules would require the full first meeting of a conference committee to be open to the public and the media. This would bring more transparency to the process and create a better sense of what each chamber is fighting for, although all of the meetings should be public — not just the first.
• Conference Committee Report Time: The Senate’s proposed joint rules would require a full calendar day between when a conference committee report is filed and when the report is acted upon to allow legislators and members of the public more time to review legislation before votes are taken. Currently, they can vote just a few hours after text is released, all but guaranteeing that few people will have read it.
• Bill Summaries in Joint Committees: The Senate’s proposed joint rules would require bill sponsors to submit comprehensive bill summaries to the joint committees holding hearings on the legislation, to be made publicly available with the bill. This helps members of the public, the press, and the rank-and-file better understand what proposed bills would do.

These changes would all make a more transparent, inclusive, and informed legislative process. However, one other change would normalize recent bad habits. The Senate’s proposed joint rules would allow for conference reports (the compromise text negotiated by the House and Senate when they differ on a bill) to be filed and debated after the July 31st deadline for formal session. This allows for more work to be pushed after election season and after legislators are regularly meeting, meaning less input and less accountability.

Wednesday January 22, 2025

Speaker Ron Mariano

24 Beacon St.

Room 356

Boston, MA, 02133

Senate President Karen Spilka

24 Beacon St.

Room 332

Boston, MA, 02133

Speaker Ron Mariano and President Karen Spilka,

The citizens of Massachusetts have made it clear: we expect our legislature to be transparent, democratic, and accountable to its constituents. 

We write to you as advocates and concerned citizens who have a vested interest in such a legislature. Building on a rich democratic history that pre-dates our federal democracy, Massachusetts ought to be a leader in just democratic rule and civic action. Instead, national rankings in recent years place us towards the bottom with regards to public ease of access to information, competitive elections, and financial transparency.  

Massachusetts distinguishes itself by being the only state in the entire country in which all three branches of government hold themselves exempt from public records law. This means that for most citizens of the Commonwealth, their municipal governments and town meetings are held to a higher standard of transparency and accountability than their state representatives and elected officials.

Calls for transparency and accountability in recent years have also been paired with demands for a democratization of power structures within the General Court. Testimony from former representatives confirms that meaningful debate– even outside of the public eye– is increasingly rare and openly breaking ranks is punished. The vast majority of Democratic representatives vote with leadership 100% of the time. These realities run counter to key democratic principles, which hold that open and robust processes of lawmaking, including disagreement, are essential to produce the best outcomes and ensure proper representation. 

Concentrating the meaningful work of lawmaking in fewer and fewer powerful hands benefits paid lobbyists and corporate interests at the expense of grassroots advocates and everyday citizens. It also creates bottlenecks– a fact that was made all the more evident in this most recent legislative session. The first year of the 193rd session saw a record low number of votes or bills passed. At the July 31st deadline, advocates and rank-and-file electeds alike were left blindsided by the failure of nine major bills that had taken months to construct because negotiations stalled in closed-door committees, away from the eye of the public and fellow electeds. 

While the legislature made commendable progress on these bills in informal sessions, it was at the cost of representative democracy. Informal sessions are poorly attended and most lawmaking was in closed-door conference committees. The overwhelming majority of outstanding legislation since July then passed without a recorded vote. 

Regardless of the ultimate passage of versions of these bills, the fact remains that the processes by which they were passed exemplify the legislature’s existing problems with transparency, accountability, and democracy. The public’s demands for reform continue not in spite of but in no small part because of the events of the most recent session. 

In the wake of the recent national election, we need Democratic officeholders to focus on rebuilding public trust in government and the ability of government to deliver for people. Essential to rebuilding that trust is a robust and open process where people feel that they can participate and that if they participate, they will be listened to.

We were encouraged to hear in both of your opening remarks last week that you are considering transparency reforms as a serious priority in revising the legislature’s rules. Although rules changes alone will not suffice to truly correct the power dynamics and climate at the State House, they are a tool by which the legislature could be made immediately more transparent. To make a meaningful difference, such rules changes must increase transparency of multiple phases of the legislative process. Piecemeal changes that do little to tackle the deep underlying problems will not sufficiently respond to the public need for reform. 

As advocates, we have clocked years of experience helping fellow citizens navigate the legislative process, participating in discussions about process reform, and generating ideas about what it would take to make it the democratic, accountable, and transparent legislature it ought to be. Building upon this experience, we offer the following list of rules reforms to serve as a benchmark for meaningful change. 

These changes would improve public access to information, increase opportunities for public engagement in the legislative process, create a more robust and open committee process, provide legislators with more time to read bills and amendments, and share power. Taken together, they constitute necessary steps along the path towards the very legislature which the people of Massachusetts have clearly demanded.

While you discuss and adopt changes to the legislative process, we also stress the importance of not adopting any that would, in fact, take us backwards in terms of transparency and public participation. Any normalization of last session’s practice of extending conference committees past July 31st in the second year of session would further limit the ability of rank-and-file legislators and constituents to make their voices heard in the legislative process and is unacceptable. 

Improving Public Access to Information 

1. Make committee votes public: all votes taken in House, Senate, and joint committees, including electronic polls, should be made publicly available on the Legislature’s website on the page of the relevant bill.
   1. This helps everyday people better understand the mechanics of the legislative process, as a bill moves forward from filing to passage. 
   2. Non-binding ballot questions on this issue have passed in 36 House districts over the years with an average of 87% of voters in support.
   3. A majority of US state legislatures already publish such votes, including states like California, Connecticut, Maine, and New Jersey.
   4. The technology to do this already exists, as Senate Committees post such votes. 
   5. A committee vote should include a list of those who vote in the affirmative, those who vote in the negative, those who opt to reserve their rights, and those not voting. 

2. Make testimony submitted to committees public: all testimony submitted to committees should be made public, with appropriate redactions for sensitive information
   1. Seeing the arguments being put forth both for and against any piece of legislation provide a clearer picture of why a bill is or is not advancing and what is at stake. It increases the ability of everyday people to participate and empowers rank-and-file legislators to understand what is happening outside of their given committees. 
   2. This is already standard practice in such states as Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin. 
   3. The technology to do this already exists, as the House did so during the police reform debate in 2020. 

Increasing Opportunities for Public Engagement in the Legislative Process

1. Provide adequate notice of hearing schedules
   1. Several committees have played a leadership role in improving public access to hearings by establishing a clear hearing schedule, with dates and topics designated. All committees should adopt this practice and should post such a schedule by April 1st of the first year of the legislative session. 
   2. House, Senate, and Joint committees should be required to announce the full details of said committee hearings, replete with brief summaries of the bills being heard, with at least two weeks’ notice.  
   3. This would improve the accessibility of committee hearings to working people, so that it is truly possible for all citizens to participate in the legislative process and offer testimony. 
   4. The recent advances in hybrid hearings have been an important and much-appreciated tool to expand participation, but many people are unable to change their work schedules on just a few days of notice. 

2. Limit the number of bills per hearing. 

1. Public hearings are a critical opportunity for everyday people to make their voices heard in the legislative process; however, when too many bills are heard at the same time, hearings can get inordinately long, making a 3-minute testimony into a full-day affair. 
2. All testifiers should be able to make their voice heard, and the best way to ensure this is to limit the number of bills per hearing to a reasonable number. The current 50-bill limit in Joint Rule 1D is too high. A limit of 20 bills per hearing would be more reasonable and provide greater focus. 

3. Provide speaking order for hearings to testifiers. 

1. This is common practice in some, but not all, hearings. When people are traveling from across the Commonwealth and losing or adjusting wages at hourly jobs to testify in person because of the importance of an issue for them, they should be able to have an approximate understanding of when in a multi-hour hearing they might speak. 

4. Guarantee of the Ability of Incarcerated Individuals to Testify at Hearings

1. Hybrid hearings have allowed for expanded accessibility of hearings in myriad ways, including enabling incarcerated individuals to testify at hearings. This began in the summer of 2023 when women from MCI-Framingham were able to testify on the prison moratorium bill.
2. When legislators craft policy, they need to hear from those most impacted by such policy decisions, and the inclusion of incarcerated individuals’ voices is vital, especially around prison conditions and the criminal legal system.
3. The Legislature must ensure that this right to testify is preserved and that there is no limit on the number of incarcerated individuals from any facility who are able to testify at a given hearing, the same right afforded to the general public.

Creating a More Open, Robust, and Timely Committee Process

1. Require public committee markup sessions. 

1. The public is not able to see how and why a bill changes from its filing to its report out of committee. To empower all members of a committee to affect legislation and to build public trust in the decision-making process, committees should hold public markup sessions as they used to decades ago. Votes to report legislation favorably, report legislation adversely, or send legislation to study should occur only in such sessions. 

2. Publish committee reports with summaries, rationales, and other information. 

1. Committee staff are already doing impressive work compiling information on a bill, so that information should be made available to all legislators and the public. It helps rank-and-file legislators better understand what is happening in other committees and the public to better understand legislators’ rationale behind bills and to understand what those bills would do and how they might benefit. 
2. Bills reported out of an “issue area” committee should be accompanied by substantive reports with a) a summary of the bill; b) a summary of the arguments advanced pro/con at the bill hearing and in written testimony submitted; c) a list of organizations and individuals that testified pro/con on the bill; d) a list of organizations and individuals that met or otherwise communicated with the Committee Leadership. And when a bill gets reported out of a committee like Ways & Means or Third Reading, those reports should also include an explanation of any changes made to the bill.
3. A gold standard of such reports is the California state legislature. Other legislatures that make public the summaries of bills in committee reports include Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon.

3. Start hearings early and move up the reporting deadline. 

1. In our neighboring states in New England, committees are already scheduling or hosting hearings. As the urgency of action rises due to the incoming Trump administration, Massachusetts must be able to act quickly and flexibly to respond to threats. This requires an expedited hearing timeline, with hearings not delayed until the summer, fall, and winter, but occurring on a robust timeline starting March 1st in parallel to the budget process, not after. 
2. The reporting deadline for committees (Joint Rule 10 deadline) should also be moved up, from its current date in February of next year to December 19 of this year, matching the last date of possible formal sessions for the calendar year. By reporting bills out earlier, the Legislature would more clearly set the agenda for the second year of work and guard against future bottlenecks. 

4. Expedite process for bills reported out favorably in the prior session. 

1. Committees put significant work into bills that get reported out, with conversations with advocates, experts, and the public, but if those bills do not get passed, then they start right back at square one in the next session. This slows down the legislative process and requires significant duplicative work. 
2. Refiled bills that were reported out last session should have hearings by July 31 of the first year of the session. 

5. Require Conference Committees to meet in open session. 

1. Conference Committees should be meeting in the open, providing an opportunity for the House and Senate members to lay out the clear rationale for their respective chamber’s preferences on a given bill. 
2. This openness benefits both rank-and-file legislators and the public, who are left in the dark for months as Conference Committees can sometimes last up to a year. 

Provide More Time to Read Legislation 

1. Provide at least 72 hours to read bills. 
   1. When the legislative process gets rushed, the odds of drafting errors rises, even under the best of intentions. 
   2. With ample time before receiving a bill and floor debate, legislators, experts, advocates, and engaged community members then have the opportunity to more thoroughly evaluate a bill, and legislators will better understand what they are actually voting on.
2. Provide at least 30 minutes to read floor amendments. 
   1. During floor debates, amendments are routinely redrafted or consolidated/bundled. Legislators should be granted the courtesy of at least a half hour to read the text of what is being brought to the floor. 

Adopting these reforms in the upcoming rules debate will be an important step forward in creating a more open and transparent legislative process. However it is not the end. We also urge you to comply with the audit requested by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio. The State Auditor’s power to audit the legislature was confirmed by 72% of voters and the majority of voters in every city and town in Massachusetts. Improving public confidence in the Legislative process must entail respecting the clear will of the voters. 

We look forward to working together towards our shared commitment to a legislature that is transparent, accountable, and democratic.

Sincerely,

350 Mass / Better Future Project 

Act on Mass 

American Federation of Teachers – MA 

Asian American Resource Workshop 

Berkshire Environmental Action Team 

Boston Catholic Climate Movement 

Climate Action Now, Western MA 

Climate Code Blue

Community Action Agency of Somerville

Fairmount Indigo CDC Collaborative

Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution Climate Task Force 

Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility 

Families for Justice as Healing

Food & Water Watch

Homes for All Massachusetts 

Massachusetts Climate Action Network 

Massachusetts Peace Action 

Massachusetts Sierra Club 

Mass-Care: the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care

Our Climate 

Our Revolution Massachusetts 

Pipe Line Awareness Network for the Northeast, Inc.

Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts

Progressive Massachusetts 

Reclaim Roxbury 

RESTORE: The North Woods

Save Massachusetts Forests 

Springfield No One Leaves 

Third Act MA 

Trees as a Public Good Network 

UU Mass Action