Click through for a review of the historic SJC Lunn decision, Gov. Baker’s proposal to overturn it, Safe Communities Act and the foot dragging of Massachusetts Democrats.
The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same….Unless
Taking Beacon Hill by surprise, House Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill) announced his resignation from the House of Representatives last Wednesday, to take a position at the corporate lobbying firm ML Strategies in September.
Dempsey, a conservative Democrat who has overseen the drafting of several austerity budgets, was widely viewed as next in line for Speaker of the House. He also played a leading role last session in weakening the solar incentive bill and the omnibus energy bill, and sided with the big business group AIM on the Equal Pay bill, Noncompetes, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
One of ML Strategies’ clients is Wynn Casinos–perhaps a reason for a last minute addition to the FY18 budget allowing casinos to serve drinks until 4 a.m. Needless to say, Progressives in Massachusetts will not be missing him.
A New Way on Ways & Means?
Ways & Means is by far the most powerful committee. Any legislation that involves public money must go through both the W&M in both the House and Senate. In that space, W&M can—and sometimes does—change legislation, with zero transparency or democracy. Any policies that require funding can be rendered ineffective by W&M’s level of funding for it, too.
These Ways and Means Committees are not required under the Legislature’s rules to report out any bill that is referred there. Therefore the Committees are frequently graveyards.
And, yeah, Ways and Means Committees write the budget. As they say, whoever holds the purse strings holds the power.
Over the weekend, Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez (D-Mission Hill) was named the next chair of the committee. Sanchez represents one of the most progressive districts in the state. What does this mean for the committee?
In our scorecards for the last two legislative sessions (188th, 189th), Sanchez fared modestly better than Dempsey and Speaker DeLeo. Each case, the difference was a result of Sanchez standing up for the rights of undocumented residents. And unlike Dempsey, Sanchez is a co-sponsor of the Safe Communities Act.
However, beyond those votes, Sanchez has a history of voting in lockstep with the Speaker, right or wrong. And his name is missing on the list of co-sponsors of key bills this session–from the $15 minimum wage to paid family and medical leave to single payer health care to ending mandatory minimum sentences. And under his chairmanship of the Health Care Financing Committee, the House has not taken the necessary steps to improve the quality and reduce the cost of care. Last session, Sanchez as the House chair sent single-payer legislation to study.
How will Sanchez be as the new chairman of this most powerful committee? Will there be a new spirit of transparency, collaboration in this new tenure? We’ll find out.
With his ascension to this powerful position, the role of progressive organizers within his district–like the great activists at JP Progressives–becomes even more important to the state as a whole.
Stepping Stones and Musical Chairs
As noted above, the Ways & Means Chairmanship is often seen as a stepping stone to the Speaker’s office. Although the House has abolished term limits for the Speaker, DeLeo may ultimately choose to retire. And it’s important to make sure that the next Speaker has a progressive vision for the state.
A strong coalition can be built, as noted by Rep. Russell Holmes (D-Mattapan):
Now is the time for the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Women’s Caucus to be strong and united in our selection of the next speaker of the House. We should not do this individually; we should do this together so our voices are heard.
We couldn’t agree more. If the Progressive Caucus is to exist in more than name, then it should take on a more assertive role in shaping the direction of the State House.
Apparently, Speaker DeLeo doesn’t agree. In the committee shakeup that followed Sanchez’s promotion, DeLeo stripped Holmes of his vice chairmanship of the Joint Committee of Housing. Two years ago, DeLeo stripped Rep. Jonathan Hecht (D-Watertown) of a vice chairmanship after Hecht spoke out against abolishing term limits.
The centralization of power in the Speaker’s office has been a hurdle to the progressive legislation that would make Massachusetts live up to its liberal reputation.
If DeLeo stays at the helm for another four to five years, progressive legislators need a plan to push the Speaker for a bolder legislative agenda to invest in our schools and infrastructure, reduce inequality, reform our broken criminal justice system, model a transition to clean energy, protect and expand the rights of marginalized populations, and on and on. And if they don’t have a plan, then activists need to make them.
Four to five years is a long time. For persons suffering under injustice and insecurity, two is a long time, too.
But progressives, both inside and outside the State House, need to think long-term as well. The caucuses described by Rep. Holmes could place their support for the Next Speaker behind one person, and dramatically alter the future of progressive legislation. While the very rapid ascension of Sanchez to W/M chair puts him on an important stepping stone towards speakership, it is not by any means a fait accompli, and certainly the rank and file have the option of exercising their power for larger progressive goals.
This would take discipline, focus, and an ability to put the Common Good ahead of individual legislators’ narrow self interests—which too often are reduced to fears of conservatives’ wrath, and almost never liberals’ disappointments. It would be a glorious thing to see; there are moments of stepping up and changing the narrative—this is one of those for House Progressives (and every caucus whose aims have been stepped over for austerity budgets and corporate comforts).
At the very least, or, less inspiringly, come up with a key set of issue priorities, expectations, and rules reforms that the leading contenders for the next Speaker of the House would commit to.
Given that the House has already sought to water down or stop even very modest progressive policies in recent years, the stakes could not be higher.
Do MA Dems Stand for Women’s Rights in the Workplace Or Not?
The 190th legislative session has been off to a slow start on Beacon Hill. Beyond the pay raise, and the budget process, the Legislature has not been doing much in the way of, well, legislating.
One small bit of progress was the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which passed the House unanimously last month. The bill requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodation” for pregnant women and nursing mothers (such as more frequent breaks, less strenuous duties, and the ability to sit down on the job) provided that they don’t cause “significant difficulty or expense.”This new bill is not as strong as the one introduced last session—which Speaker DeLeo and others in the Democratic leadership, doing the bidding of powerful business interests, blocked. Like much progressive legislation, the bill died in committee. The 2017 bill resulted from negotiations between women’s advocacy group MotherWoman and the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM). And although it was watered down to get AIM on board, the bill was nonetheless a positive development for women across the Commonwealth.
But because of the House’s standard lack of transparency, it was almost watered down even further.
As the Globe reported on Thursday, the powerful Ways & Means Committee quietly changed one word in the bill in committee before it went to a vote:
But it emerged from the House Committee on Ways and Means for a full vote on the floor with the word “knowingly” added at the beginning of that sentence. The language passed in the House without anyone noticing the change, and now the bill awaits a vote in the Senate.
It’s an addition that advocates for these pregnant worker protections say creates a serious new layer of what a worker would have to prove if she felt there was discrimination in her denial of a job. To prove an employer acted “knowingly” requires direct evidence that the employer knew the applicant was pregnant and denied them a job because of it — a much higher standard of proof.
Neither sponsors of the bill nor key advocates, who helped negotiate the legislation, were notified. AIM claimed to have not been behind the change–though it was clearly done in their interest.
Mass Dems Platform Gets Bolder – Can We Turn it into Policy?
If a platform is adopted and no legislators are there to enact, it, did it make a sound? Yesterday, the Massachusetts Democratic Party adopted a new platform. Back in March and April, Progressive Mass worked with Our Revolution Massachusetts and the Progressive Democrats of America – MA on a list of recommendations to make the platform more progressive.
The good news is that a number of them got in.
Here’s a run-down of new platform additions that were called for in the joint document:
Education
- Free education is a human right, and therefore public education from high-quality universal preschool and full-day kindergarten through higher education and vocational training should be free to all residents
- Fixing the public education funding formula to fully fund high-quality public education for all students
- Ending the state’s punitive use of high-stakes testing
Immigration
- Becoming a sanctuary state, where all immigrants and refugees feel welcome and safe in all communities of the Commonwealth
- Eliminating policies that make local and state officials responsible for the enforcement of national immigration laws
Labor and Workforce
- A decent living wage for all workers and a $15 minimum wage that is increased and indexed to inflation
- Strong laws to combat wage theft and misclassification of workers
- Paid family and medical leave insurance that allows all employees to take job-protected paid leave to recover from a serious illness or injury, to care for a seriously ill or injured family member, or to care for a new child, and prohibits employer retaliation against workers who take time off under these conditions
- Fighting for anti-discrimination laws to make sure that employers don’t take advantage of workers, employees receive fair compensation for their hard work, corporations obey the law, and employees are able to be their most productive in a safe work environment free from harassment.
Public Safety and Crime Prevention
- Comprehensive criminal justice reform that includes the removal of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crimes, giving the judge discretion with the sentencing in these cases
- Ending the militarization of police
Voting and Democracy
- Offering automatic voter registration
- Ensuring early voting in all elections
And yesterday, two additional recommend planks got in as part of one of ORMA’s floor amendments: mandatory de-escalation training for police an end to for-profit prisons.
It’s a testament to the hard work and commitment of activists who showed up at platform hearings, submitted testimony online, and went to the convention that these got in. Give yourself a pat on the back!
But the important part comes next: holding elected officials accountable to the stated ideals of the party.
Democrats hold ~80% of the seats in both houses. However, as I wrote recently for CommonWealth, this hasn’t always translated into progressive policymaking.
To my opening question, the answer depends on the activists (ALL OF US), who need to make sure that Beacon Hill hears loud and clear that the time is now (indeed, yesterday) to put such professed values and ideals into concrete policy.
Resisting Trump’s Extreme Immigration Policies with the Safe Communities Act
By Heather Busk, Progressive Watertown
“When Mexico sends its people, it’s not sending its best…They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
That is a direct quote from our current President. In his dark view of the world, the United States is under assault by a horde of dangerous immigrants unleashing a wave of violence against hapless citizens. There’s only one tiny problem with this view-it’s completely false.
It should come as no surprise to see once again that Trump and his henchmen live in an alternate reality.
Contrary to Trump’s hysterical fever dreams, immigrants (undocumented or otherwise) do not commit violent crimes any more than other groups. This deserves reiteration, because our beliefs have been warped by decades of television and movies pushing this false narrative. If immigrants are so much more dangerous, why did violent crime decline by 34% from 1994 to 2005, while the foreign born population increased by 71%? The national crime rate has dropped sharply over the last few decades, including in areas where the number of undocumented immigrants grew significantly. Areas with a larger immigrant population (including undocumented) have lower crime rates, after controlling for other factors. They have incarceration rates below native born Americans. So whatever our immigration policy is, it should reflect the fact that the undocumented are not responsible for this nonexistent crime wave.
This rhetoric about criminals serves as a distraction from the large number of people without criminal records who have also been deported. Maribel Trujillo, a mother of four US citizen children, a business owner who has lived in the US for 15 years, was deported in April. In Lawrence, five were arrested when they appeared for scheduled meetings with USCIS, some of which were to begin the green card process. None of the people in these examples had a criminal record, and this is not unusual. The number of deportees without criminal records has more than doubled during Trump’s time in office, to more than 10,800 so far. By the end of Obama’s term, the official deportation policy was “Felons, not families” yet even under this policy, many of those deported had no criminal record. Far from being a champion of the undocumented, Obama oversaw the deportation of 2.4 million people, more than any previous president. Trump wants to go even further, and his administration’s policies expand the deportation priority from criminals to potentially anyone.
In this cold discussion of “immigration enforcement,” we must never forget the human face of it–families broken apart. To keep families whole, and to make sure that the job of the police is to keep us safe, not deport our neighbors, Massachusetts should become a sanctuary state.
The Safe Communities Act would:
- Prevent state and local government from using their resources to aid in the enforcement of immigration law. It does allow the use of houses of corrections to hold people in ICE custody, provided the use is reimbursed. This will allow potential deportees to remain closer to home, closer to their families and legal aid. Detainees who are sent to remote locations are on average held months longer before deportation or release.
- Prohibits law enforcement from asking about someone’s immigration status, except as required by law or as necessary to investigate a crime.
- Prohibits law enforcement agencies or the RMV from contributing information to federal attempts to register people on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or national or ethnic origin. In other words, we won’t help make the infamous Muslim registry.
- Prohibits law enforcement from detaining or arresting anyone solely for immigration purposes, and prohibits any state or local personnel from acting as immigration agents.
- Prohibits the honoring of detainer requests and requires that the determination of bail ignore the detainer. Detainers are requests for local law enforcement to hold people who have been arrested an extra 48 hours, if they are suspected to be undocumented, giving ICE a chance to come pick them up. To be clear, under the proposed law, an arrested person would not be released early because of immigration status, it would simply stop them from being held past their lawful release time because of a detainer request. This is consistent with how criminal justice works for citizens. Many arrests are made for minor crimes that do not carry a long jail time as punishment, and many charges are dismissed. Furthermore, not everyone arrested is guilty-don’t forget, “innocent until proven guilty.” For those charged with more serious crimes, law enforcement and the courts will, as always, consider the severity of the alleged crime, flight risk, and other factors before deciding whether to release them and how much to charge for bail. So people who likely pose a danger to the public will not be released, just like now.
- Requires that the person in local custody must give consent for a DHS agent to interview them. Requires that they be informed of their rights if an interview is requested. (It’s hard to exercise your rights if you don’t know what they are). If they ask for an attorney, no interview may take place without the attorney’s presence.
Proponents of strict immigration enforcement often argue that breaking immigration law is breaking the law, and lawbreakers should be prosecuted. But step back a second. Do we hold people in prison for months for jaywalking? No. That’s breaking the law too, so why not? Because we follow the principle of “the punishment should fit the crime.” Along those lines, the punishment for jaywalking is typically a small fine. To address lawbreaking, we have a range of possible responses, including prison, probation, rehabilitation programs, or fines. For those who break immigration law, the choices don’t have to be either deport or do nothing, and as a society we need to have a conversation about what the appropriate policy is.
Being undocumented simply means you are in the country without permission. (Far from the dramatic border crossing we may envision from movies, most undocumented entered the country legally but overstayed their visas. The largest group of those who overstay are Canadians). For those who have been here for a long while, deportation means the disruption of an entire life–losing a job, losing a home, and being separated from family. To me, that seems like far too harsh of a punishment for failing to file paperwork.
The undocumented may not be citizens, but that does not mean they should have no civil rights protections–human rights do not depend on where you were born or where you live. They aren’t given as many protections in immigration proceedings, but the courts have repeatedly affirmed that they at least have a right to due process.
To avoid levying a punishment much more severe than the crime warrants, the individual circumstances of each potential deportee should be considered. If they have strong ties to the US such as a spouse or children who are US citizens or permanent residents, deportation should not be done lightly. In the case of individuals who have committed crimes, that means looking at the severity of their crime to decide whether it warrants deportation and whether their expulsion would have a large disruptive effect on the local community. (Is it really better for society if children lose their parents for a minor non-violent crime?) Now compare this nuanced approach, which addresses our border security and public safety needs without neglecting civil rights, to what Trump wants to do.
During his campaign, Trump swore to deport all 11 or so million undocumented immigrants. Later on, he relented and promised to deport “only” the two or three million that he believes are criminals (although it’s disputed if there are that many with a criminal record, and many of those have a record for a minor crime), but his actions as President have hewed closer to his original position.
He may be a pathological liar, but so far he really does seem to be trying to keep many of his campaign promises. To this end, he has signed a few executive orders on immigration. Among other things, he calls for the building of the notorious wall along the border, the building and staffing of detention centers, the hiring of 5000 more border patrol agents, and he instructs the attorney general to have federal prosecutors prioritize offenses somehow connected to the border (diverting resources away from other pressing concerns). More directly relevant to Massachusetts, he gets local jurisdictions tangled up in enforcing federal immigration laws by calling for the cooperation of state and local governments in enforcing those laws, deputizing local and state law enforcement to act as immigration agents, expanding who is considered a priority for deportation, and ordering that federal funding be cut off to sanctuary jurisdictions.
We don’t have to guess how this will turn out–these policies have been tried before. Essentially, he is reinstating and reinvigorating two programs that have a troubled history of civil rights abuses, namely Secure Communities and 287(g) agreements.
Secure Communities was established under Bush in 2008 and was repealed by Obama in 2014 after strong criticism of the program. Under it, when someone was arrested, their fingerprints were sent to ICE to do an immigration check. If the fingerprints matched someone ICE believed to be deportable, they would issue a detainer request, asking that law enforcement hold the person for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release so that ICE could have time to pick them up. It sounds innocuous, unless you delve into the results as revealed by a study of the program from 2008 to 2011.
First of all, families were broken apart. Through 2011, 83,000 families with US citizens were affected by the program, and 39% of those deported had citizens in their family.
The fraction of people deported with no criminal record or with arrests for a minor crime grew significantly when Secure Communities was in force: 45% had committed serious crimes, but 29% were accused of minor offenses, especially traffic violations, and 26% had no convictions. This means that more than half had a history of only minor offenses or no crime at all. In Massachusetts it was worse–in 2013, 55% had no criminal record whatsoever. ICE triumphantly pointed to the growing fraction of “criminal aliens” it deported under Secure Communities, but most of that increase was due to an increasing proportion of people deported for breaking immigration or traffic related laws.
This suggests that when ICE had to expend its own resources to track down undocumented immigrants, actual threats to society were prioritized. But when local law enforcement had done the work for them, they jumped at the opportunity to deport anyone, even if that person was not dangerous. Safe Communities, in contrast, will help keep the focus on dangerous criminals.
Under Trump’s executive order, once again peaceful, productive members of society are being indiscriminately deported. We must protect our neighbors. By refusing to cooperate at the local level, we will reduce the number of people deported, and lower the number of families broken apart.
Secure Communities has a poor record on respecting due process. Potential deportees, in principle, are typically supposed to get a hearing where a judge will determine their fate. They are also allowed a lawyer, although the government will not pay for it. We have a perverse system where because breaking immigration law is considered a civil rather than a criminal offense, there is no right to a lawyer, even though they are treated very much like criminals.
Under Secure Communities, only about half even got a hearing and of those only a quarter had a lawyer (compared to 41% in other immigration court proceedings). For many, this is essentially conviction for a crime without the oversight of a judge and without legal representation.
Without a lawyer, they are far more likely to be deported. Without legal counsel, some may not realize that they have a way to stay in the country, for instance through claiming asylum or if they have family who are US citizens or permanent residents. Instead, they may be pressured to voluntarily remove themselves and bypass the hearing process. It’s easy to be intimidated when you’re locked up, possibly hundreds of miles from your family, and without anyone there to give you advice except your jailers. Safe Communities will ensure that fewer people are chewed up by this extrajudicial system.
Even more egregiously, the detainers are issued for people who are suspected of being deportable, and ICE routinely gets it wrong. According to one estimate, in 2011, 1-2% of Secure Communities detainers were against US citizens. Over a few years, this amounted to approximately 3,600 citizens illegally held. Permanent residents and visa holders also have protections against arbitrary detention and deportation. Holding citizens and other legal residents like this amounts to punishment without conviction for a crime.
What’s more, local jurisdictions have been held financially liable for improperly holding people under Secure Communities, for settlements of tens of thousands of dollars. The federal government has not reimbursed them for this cost. An Oregon judge ruled that a detainer does not give local jurisdictions probable cause to hold someone. It does not have the same legal force as a warrant, which has to be reviewed by a judge. Safe Communities would protect municipalities from being sued for obeying Trump’s order.
Under 287(g), local jurisdictions enter into agreements to take on some immigration enforcement duties. In the jail-based version, it expands Secure Communities by allowing local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of those they arrest rather than waiting for a request from DHS. In Massachusetts, the Bristol and Plymouth County Sheriff’s Offices and the Department of Corrections have entered into such agreements. Trump wants to return to a task-force model, where law enforcement could act as immigration agents out in the community as well. This model was previously discontinued because it was an inefficient use of resources and encouraged racial profiling, with Latinos over-represented among those arrested.
In addition, one key principle of good policing is that the police and the communities they serve should trust each other. The police should be seen as the ones who keep us safe, not our adversaries. If they take on the duties of immigration officers, this trust will be undermined, as the undocumented will be be afraid to go to the police for fear of being deported. Information they have about crimes will go unshared. Victims will decline to report the crimes against them, and criminals will continue to walk free. This obsession with immigrants distracts from addressing the actual causes of crime and will make us less safe, not more. Indeed, there is some evidence that sanctuary jurisdictions are safer than comparable non-sanctuary jurisdictions.
Federal immigration law is the law of that land, but there is no reason that local police should be required to help. There are many federal laws that local and state police do not work to enforce, instead leaving it to federal law enforcement. Why should immigration law be any different? The Department of Homeland Security, with a budget far greater than anything at the local level, can do its own work instead of robbing badly needed resources from local authorities. Communities that have entered into 287(g) agreements have faced financial hardship because of the added immigration duties, and the added cost has come without improved public safety.
Under Safe Communities, law enforcement will continue focusing on dangerous criminals, and continue to leave immigration law enforcement to federal authorities.
Some have expressed fear about becoming a sanctuary state because of Trump’s threats to cut off federal funding in retaliation, in a transparent attempt to bully us into compliance. There is some good news on this front. It is unclear if he can legally do this, and recently some courts have ruled that he cannot, so it may be an empty threat.
Beyond this, do we want to be complicit in something we know is wrong? Do we want to help ICE break apart families and ruin lives? There is little we can do to stop federal agents from deporting people, but at least we can refuse to help. Even federal resources are limited, and by refusing to help, we can reduce the number of people who are affected, and can keep the focus on deporting dangerous criminals.
People who come here illegally not to hurt anyone, but to build a better life for themselves and their families should not be hounded as dangerous criminals for doing so. At the minimum, they should have some kind of due process protections before deportation. Draconian measures such as Trump’s planned mass deportations will tear at the very fabric of our society. They cannot not be done without egregiously violating civil rights, damaging the economy, ripping families apart, and weakening the protections that are so vital to a democracy.
Trump wants to go farther than deporting dangerous criminals: his two influential advisers who wrote the orders, Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon, have publicly revealed that they want all immigration to this country curtailed.
Trump has a history of seeing how far he can go, of testing the reaction to his policy proposals, and then backing off to something a little more moderate when there was too strong of a backlash. During his campaign, he repeatedly made extreme policy suggestions, and when too many people got angry, he denied ever saying anything so outrageous, instead blaming the “lying media” for making up stories (despite the documented evidence to the contrary). If we give in on this, he will likely keep coming back with ever more extreme policies. It is better to resist now, rather than wait until his policies are even harsher. So far Trump has focused on terrorism and illegal immigration, but if he gets the chance he will go after legal immigrants as well. Let’s make him afraid to try.
Targeted Increases, Widespread Austerity: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Senate Budget
Last week, we recommended 13 budget amendments for the Senate debate. What happened to them?
The Good
To start off with the good news, five of them were adopted. The Senate budget now includes greater funding for the Community Preservation Act–and thus more money for affordable housing and green and open space (Amendment 286), the Department of Environmental Protection (Amendment 790), workforce training to help those involved with the criminal justice system (Amendment 883), and the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation, which helps provide access to justice for more low-income residents (Amendment 896).
And in a unanimous vote of 38-0, the Senate passed Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz’s amendment (Amendment 75) to put the Foundation Budget Review Commission’s recommendations into statute, which puts the House of Representatives on notice of its support for the identical bill S.223, which is part of our 2017-2018 Legislative Agenda. The formula the state uses to provide local aid to schools relies on outdated assumptions from 1993, resulting in chronic underfunding. The music on the radio isn’t the same as it was in 1993; our assumptions about the cost of education shouldn’t be the same either.
The Bad
But some of the results were less inspiring. The Senate rejected–without recorded votes– amendments to expand the earned income tax credit (Amendment 16), to increase funding for family planning services (Amendment 507), to increase funding for affordable housing programs for those with disabilities (Amendment 641), and to increase funding for partnerships between universities and prisons that contribute vital reentry services (Amendment 906).
And then four amendments were withdrawn: Sen. Jamie Eldridge’s amendment (Amendment 23) to repeal a tax cut for the mutual fund industry (which could have brought in $143 million per year in additional revenue), Sen. Joan Lovely’s amendment (Amendment 389) to repeal the outdated, punitive law that prevents parents from receiving welfare assistance for children born after that parent started receiving assistance from the state, Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry’s amendment (Amendment 645) to increase assistance for individuals experiencing homelessness, and Sen. Eric Lesser’s amendment (Amendment 1025) to allow municipalities to put questions on the ballot to raise additional revenue for regional transportation projects.
The budget ultimately passed unanimously, as is both common and reflective of a lack of ambition, and will now go to conference.
The Ugly
Although we are grateful to see some of these targeted funding increases get into the budget, the pattern of chronic underinvestment we highlighted last week remains a problem. If we want our Commonwealth to work for all residents, then we need to grapple with the revenue shortfalls faced year after year and end the hold of conservative anti-tax dogma.
Don’t Mistake Weak Tea for Coffee: Doing Real Criminal Justice Reform
By Heather Busk, Progressive Watertown
Governor Baker, along with the Massachusetts House Speaker DeLeo and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, recently announced “An Act Implementing the Recommendations of the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Review”. Sounds like it will reform criminal justice in Massachusetts, doesn’t it? Don’t be fooled by the name-it falls far short of true reform. It may even be an attempt to undercut progressive efforts to bring about real change.
The act lets inmates earn time off of their sentences if they participate in educational, vocational or rehabilitation programs, up to a reduction of 35% of the maximum term. Mandatory minimums governing opiates and crimes related to violence, illegal gun possession, or involving a minor are not eligible for sentence reductions. It also expands parole and pretrial services.
To be clear, the act is a good step and should be heartily supported. But we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves too much for taking one step when there are miles left to go.
The bill implements one recommendation of a study on criminal justice reform begun in 2015. The report was envisioned as a comprehensive study of the Commonwealth’s criminal justice system. It was supposed to identify all of its many problems and their causes, and make recommendations how to solve them. Opponents of change would no longer be able to claim, as they had for years, that the problems didn’t exist or that we didn’t understand the causes. Under its original scope, it would look at how people got entangled in the justice system, how they were treated while incarcerated, and outcomes after they were released. Instead, in an opaque back room process, the focus of the study became on only the last part, namely how to reduce recidivism. The rest was deliberately ignored, perhaps as a tactic to delay further action.
Still, the report made valuable recommendations on how to tackle this important issue, including:
- sentence reductions for completing anti-recidivism programs and better monitoring of the performance of such programs
- making the parole process more efficient (it typically takes an outrageous 200 days between being awarded parole and actually getting released)
- more community supervision and behavioral health care for parolees.
Out of the many recommendations, Baker’s act only implements a few of them.
Reducing recidivism is a worthy goal and absolutely should be supported, but it entirely ignores many other vital issues. Criminal justice in Massachusetts is actually fairly harsh, especially for a state that prides itself on being progressive. Did you know you can lose your driver’s license for many offenses completely unrelated to driving, including failure to appear in court, nonpayment of child support, even graffiti? Did you know you can be held in solitary confinement for up to a decade?
There are many other problems waiting to be addressed: mandatory minimums awarding excessively harsh sentences, the struggle of anyone with a criminal record to get a job, racial profiling, police violence, the school to prison pipeline, overuse of solitary confinement, harsh sentences for juvenile offenders… the list goes on. Surely such a supposedly blue state can do better.
The governor’s bill will help with a few issues-it will help lower recidivism, reduce sentences for some prisoners, and by releasing people early it will reduce the prison population and spending on prisons. That’s all good, but it isn’t enough.
It only deals with people who are already incarcerated. This does nothing to prevent people from entering the system to begin with, and ignores the troubling racial disparities in incarceration rates.
Bottom line, mandatory minimums need to go, and the bill is not a replacement for repeal. The harsher sentences from mandatory minimums mean that more people are in prison than need to be, robbing them of parts of their lives and costing taxpayers extra money. Allowing early release for some inmates still leaves them fully in place for people convicted of some drug offenses and other crimes. Beyond that, mandatory minimums rob judges of the discretion to take mitigating circumstances into consideration. Even the fear of receiving a long sentence because of a mandatory minimum helps prosecutors pressure defendants into accepting harsher sentences than they would otherwise get. This may make the prosecutor’s job easier but it does not serve justice.
Another major sticking point with the bill is the requirement that inmates participate in education and rehabilitation programs to qualify for sentence reductions. There is nothing wrong with this idea, but it depends on programming being available, and such programs are often the first to be cut if there is fiscal tightening. In the long term, funding for such programs will come and go as the political winds shift, and when the funding goes, those minimums will once again trap inmates in prison for longer than necessary.
In addition to the Justice Reinvestment Act, which is a comprehensive reform bill, there are a number of related bills that tackle criminal justice. Together, they will:
- reduce sentences and remove mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug crimes
- restore judicial discretion in sentencing
- increase the use of parole and post release supervision
- expand educational programming, both within and before prison
- reduce court fees and prevent someone from going to prison if they can’t pay the fees
- expand the use of treatment for drug related crimes
- reform juvenile justice
- limit the use of solitary confinement
- reduce racial profiling by requiring reporting of data on who the police stop, and why they are stopped
- require police to wear body cameras
- root out the underlying causes of crime by allowing funding for community youth and jobs programs.
That is what true criminal justice reform looks like. Compared to that, the governor’s bill is pretty unimpressive.
Instead of doing the hard work of building support for true reform they have simply picked one modest and politically easy measure to wrap up, put a bow on it and say that they given us “Criminal Justice Reform”. Sorry kids, this birthday gift is sure to disappoint. Let’s keep the pressure on for real reform.
You can learn more by coming to Progressive Watertown’s event next Saturday, May 6, “Why Criminal Justice Reform Matters”. It will feature a panel discussion by one of the sponsors of the Justice Reinvestment Act, Representative Will Brownsberger, the Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan, and other experts.
College Students Work to Put a Price on Carbon, All of Us March
By Heather Busk, Progressive Watertown
Off the coast of New England, warming waters may have led to the collapse of the cod fishery that gave Cape Cod its name. In our daily lives, however, the effects of climate change have been harder to notice. The average temperature and precipitation patterns have changed even here in Massachusetts, but such shifts are masked by day to day and yearly variations. To change that perception, and to build support for carbon pricing, several student organizations from local colleges and universities hosted a viewing of the episode “Priceless” of National Geographic’s “Years of Living Dangerously” and an expert panel discussion afterwards.
Tufts Climate Action, Emerson Eco-Reps, Fossil Free MIT, DivestNU and the Boston University Environmental Student Organization organized the event as part of the #PutAPriceOnIt campaign.
The episode looked at places where the effects of climate change have been far more dramatic than what we’ve seen in Massachusetts, so far.
In the mountains of California, the pika, this adorable little creature:
may go extinct. They overheat easily, and as warming has made the lower reaches increasingly uninhabitable, they’ve fled to higher and higher elevations. But the mountains are only so tall, and if the temperature continues to rise, they will soon have nowhere left to go and will die out. They’ve already lost more than a third of their habitat in Nevada and Oregon. Other animals living in these sky islands are similarly threatened.
Kenya’s Ambroseli National Park endured a terrible drought from 2006 to 2009, one of the worst in generations. Hundreds of elephants starved to death, including 200 babies and at least 60 of the matriarchs. The population declined by more than 20%. In the words of one of the park staff, “There was dust and nothing else.”
The drought also triggered an increase in poaching. Some farmers killed elephants to protect their crops. The hungry elephants, in their desperate search for food, encroached on nearby farms, eating and trampling on produce. Other farmers turned to the ivory trade to replace their drought-stricken livelihoods.
The Masai people are traditionally dependent on cows, but as the climate has dried, many have shifted from a nomadic lifestyle to farming. They have had little choice: during the drought, some lost 90% of their livestock. This has led to increasing conflict between farmers and wildlife, as farmers’ fences block the migration routes of many large mammals. African elephants, hippos, and many other species are at risk of extinction if nothing is done to prevent it.
Such droughts will become increasingly common as the climate changes. Rainfall in Ambroseli has declined by 29% over the past century. California, too, has just begun recovering from a 5-year long drought that left lakes and reservoirs at their lowest levels in decades. This drought followed on the heels of another drought from 2007 to 2009. Over the past decade, California has had more dry years than normal years. That is not sustainable for a state with a large population (which also happens to grow most of the fruits and vegetables produced in the US).
The damage caused by climate change is no longer hypothetical, it is ongoing. Urgent action has been needed for decades now. But until recently, the lack of something visible to point to, something that connected to our daily lives, made it easy to push action to the future, to discount the risks and argue that any steps to fight it were just too expensive. That time is over.
We must establish carbon pricing here in Massachusetts. Carbon pricing helps people reduce their carbon emissions by adding a tax on the consumption of fossil fuels, in proportion to how much carbon is emitted from burning them. This discourages the use of carbon-heavy fuels such as coal and encourages cleaner sources such as biofuels, solar, and wind. The proposed legislation offsets the added cost by giving a rebate back to consumers and businesses.
A similar law has been quite successful in Vancouver-carbon emissions dropped by 15%, while the economy continued to thrive. Because of its success, Canada is considering carbon pricing for the entire country. Even fossil fuel companies have come out in favor of carbon taxes, perhaps, as one of the panelists speculated, because a tax would be simpler for them to implement than other potential regulations to address climate change. When even fossil fuel companies are on board, and when it has already been successfully implemented in other places, there really is no good reason not to put a price on carbon here in Massachusetts.
To make this happen, we must make it clear to our elected officials that we support strong steps to combat climate change. There are three chances to do this coming up very soon: the March for Science is happening on April 22, and the People’s Climate March happens a week later, on April 29. Both marches will take place in Washington D.C. and many other locations around the country, including Boston. After you’re done marching, you can take the message directly to your legislators during Progressive Mass’s Lobby Day, on May 3.
Now is the time to put a price on carbon. Now is the time to march. After all, as Obama once noted, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.”
When Candidates Are on a Listening Tour, Give Them Something to Listen To
TL;DR: Start thinking about what you want in a progressive governor, and start questioning and pressuring candidates and prospective candidates before committing.
One year from now, Democrats across the state will have elected delegates to go to the state party convention where gubernatorial candidates will vie with each other for the party’s endorsement.
The primary field is not settled yet—there’s some time to go, and candidates may yet emerge.
But, already, candidates and prospective candidates have begun listening tours–speaking at local caucuses, at house parties, at activist events.
When the field is settled, Progressive Massachusetts will invite all candidates to fill out our detailed candidate questionnaire, as we did in 2014.
We will ask tough questions about where they stand on the key elements of our Progressive Platform–shared prosperity, racial and social justice, open government and strong democracy, and sustainable infrastructure and environmental protection–and the Legislative Agenda that seeks to translate principles into policy.
And once they fill out those questionnaires, YOU–our grassroots members–will get to vet them and get to decide whom we endorse.
No smoke-filled rooms, just grassroots democracy.
But, the member endorsement is still a way off.
In the interim — what can you do to strengthen the field and ensure the boldest progressive platform is being talked about at every coffee, every house party?
SOME IDEAS —
We want them to understand that a progressive message is the winning one.
So get the candidates (and prospective candidates) on record about the issues that matter.
Ask them tough questions, don’t accept evasions, and see if those answers hold when they go before different crowds.
Charlie Baker has managed to coast with high approval ratings because the Legislature tries to minimize conflict, avoiding taking votes on anything he might veto and showering him with praise for small-bore accomplishments. But if we are to have a chance of defeating Baker next year, then we need to be drawing a clear contrast with an inspiring and affirmative progressive policy agenda. Not being Charlie, not being a Republican simply isn’t enough.
So what should you be asking declared and prospective candidates if you encounter them on a listening tour. Here are some ideas:
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to make the minimum wage a living wage of $15 an hour. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to guarantee health care as a right through a Medicare for All system. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to invest in our public schools to give all students the best opportunities we can. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to make public higher education tuition-free. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting comprehensive changes to our criminal justice system to end mass incarceration and inhumane practices like solitary confinement. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to protect our immigrant family, friends, and neighbors by preventing the use of state resources for a mass deportation regime. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to expand voting rights through things like automatic voter registration and Election Day registration. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to aggressively shift away from a fossil fuel-based economy to one powered by renewables like solar and wind. Do you?
Charlie Baker doesn’t stand with us in wanting to raise the revenue needed to upgrade and expand our public transit system. Do you?
A contested primary can give YOU, the voter, leverage–but only if you use it. No candidate is owed your vote. Public servants work for you, and anyone running for such an office should have to work for your vote.
And when all Democratic candidates are arguing about who’s the bolder progressive, and not who’s friendlier to some supposed centrist ideal, that’s when we will have a policy debate worth having.
Is Beacon Hill Ready to Stand up to Trump?
If you’re like us, your inbox has been swamped over the past few months with rallies and action alerts about how to fight the reactionary Trump-McConnell-Ryan agenda coming out of Washington.
Massachusetts is in position to be a leader in the resistance against Trump’s agenda–and a beacon of progressive policy for the rest of the country.
Although our Republican governor, Charlie Baker, is not going to stand up to Trump as much as he should, Attorney General Maura Healey has been at the forefront of fighting for civil rights and environmental protection, among other issues, in the Age of Trump.
And Massachusetts has the third largest Democratic supermajorities in the country, with 34 out of 40 senators and 126 out of 160 representatives. In theory, then, whether or not Baker is willing to fight Trump, the Legislature has the votes to do so.
But…
The Legislature, as our scorecards (and brand new scorecard page) show, routinely fails to live up to the ideal of what one might hope for from a Legislature this overwhelmingly blue.
Trump has created a sense of urgency among progressive voters. But, based on statements on policy and priorities, we have yet to see that same urgency from the State House.
A Beacon Hill Committee to Focus on Trump
In late March, Speaker Bob DeLeo appointed nine House Democrats to a working group to guide responses to “unprecedented actions” of the Trump administration.
The group consists of House Majority Leader Ron Mariano (D-Quincy); Speaker Pro Tem Patricia Haddad (D-Somerset); Assistant Majority Leader Byron Rushing (D-South End); House Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets Chair Antonio Cabral (D-New Bedford); House Steering, Policy and Scheduling Chair James Murphy (D-Weymouth); Public Health Chair Kate Hogan (D-Stow); Health Care Financing Chair Jeffrey Sanchez (D-Jamaica Plain); Rules vice chair Marjorie Decker (D-Cambridge), and Export Development vice chair James Arciero (D-Westford).
The working group is tasked with coming up with legislative solutions that are both “necessary and feasible.” The devil, of course, will be in the details….
…whose definitions of “necessary” and “feasible”?
…Will this group aggressively push a progressive agenda, or will they settle for the lethargic status quo?
We plan to follow the working group to the best of our abilities as it moves forward. But what do we know so far?
According to State House News Service, the group will focus on “economic stability, health care, higher education, and the state’s most vulnerable residents.”
Strong, progressive policies on all of these issues have been proposed this session. (We center our Legislative Agenda on many of them!)
Where do the working group members stand on them?
Economic Stability:
Trump, along with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, wants to make an economy that works just for the top 1%. How do we promote shared prosperity by contrast? We could do so by passing a $15 minimum wage and paid family and medical leave, for starters.
Four out of the nine–Cabral, Decker, Hogan, and Rushing–have co-sponsored the Fight for $15 bill. Six–Cabral, Decker, Haddad, Hogan, Murphy, Rushing–have signed on to paid family and medical leave.
Health Care:
Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, denying health care to millions. The task facing progressives is to improve and expand upon the Affordable Care Act with a single payer/Medicare for All system that truly enshrines health care as a human right.
So far, only two out of the nine–Decker and Rushing–have signed on to such legislation.
Trump and the Republican Congress also have their sights set on taking away women’s rights over their own bodies. Congress has already passed legislation enabling states to defund Planned Parenthood. Progressives shouldn’t stand for that. One of the members of the working group, Rep. Haddad, is a leader sponsor of the ACCESS bill, which would require insurance carriers to provide all contraceptive methods without a copay. Decker, Hogan, Rushing, and Sanchez have joined her in support of this bill.
Higher Education:
Massachusetts has been under-investing in higher education for years, leading to higher tuition costs and spiraling student debt. Trump could make matters worse by reducing funding for higher education institutions and federal student aid, as well as by encouraging the expansion of predatory for-profit institutions.
Only one of the nine–Rep. Decker–has come out in support of making public colleges and universities tuition-free for Massachusetts residents. Rep. Arciero joins her in a strong, but less ambitious, goal of debt-free higher education.
Protecting the State’s Most Vulnerable:
Massachusetts has the opportunity to stand up to the federal deportation machine by passing the Safe Communities Act, which would prohibit the use of state resources for deportation raids and limit local and state police collaboration with federal immigration agents. The TRUST Act, its predecessor, stalled in committee year after year. But the necessity of the bill grows stronger each day.
Four out of the nine working group members are supporters of the Safe Communities Act–Cabral, Decker, Rushing, and Sanchez.
We can look back to last session for insights into the working group. Four out of the nine members of the committee matched the Speaker vote-by-vote on our scorecard of the last session (Arciero, Cabral, Haddad, Hogan). Two of them were more conservative than the Speaker (Mariano, Murphy), and three were more progressive (Decker, Rushing, Sanchez).
The House doesn’t take many roll call votes, but some can be illustrative. Last July, for example, the House voted to make state-issued IDs compliant with the federal REAL ID law per request of Governor Baker (H.4488). Real ID’s strict documentation requirements make getting a state-issued ID more difficult for the young, the elderly, trans individuals, people of color, the poor, and many legal immigrants. H.4488 also forestalled efforts to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, something which–unlike REAL ID–would increase public safety.
Decker, Rushing, and Sanchez sided with Massachusetts’s vulnerable populations. The other six sided with the Governor.
Massachusetts Democrats often talk a good game about opposing Trump.
But will they put their priorities and votes where their mouths are this session?