Letter: The Home Rule Process is Broken

The home rule process is broken

Jonathan Cohn, “Letter: The Home Rule Process is Broken,” Boston Globe, December 13, 2024.

The Senate’s refusal to take up Mayor Michelle Wu’s home rule petition to shift the city’s tax burden is a damning indictment of the home rule process in Massachusetts (“Wu’s defeat could put her on defensive: Tensions high with Senate, business leaders,” Page A1, Dec. 11).

Whenever a Republican Legislature in another state tries to block its liberal capital city from passing its own laws, liberals in Massachusetts are rightly outraged. But our Commonwealth beat those other states by almost half a century, reinforced repeatedly in the years since by Boston’s business class, who rallied behind Proposition 2½ in the early 1980s and against rent control in the early 1990s.

If the petitions from cities and towns to pass their own laws can’t even get a vote at the State House — and this is just one of a few examples from this session, including rejected petitions on real estate transfer fees and rent control — the fundamental mechanisms of democracy are not working.

Jonathan Cohn

Policy director

Progressive Mass

Boston

Op-Ed: A right turn for Democrats is a wrong turn

Jonathan Cohn ad Henry Wrotis, “A right turn for Democrats is a wrong turn,” CommonWealth Beacon, December 1, 2024.

IT’S THAT TIME of year again. And, no, Mariah Carey, we don’t mean Christmas; we mean the annual tradition of conservative- and centrist-leaning Democratic operatives blaming the left for any of the party’s losses. 

The title of Liam Kerr’s recent article, “The politics of subtraction,” is ironic given that his whole premise is that the Democratic Party should subtract from its agenda and abandon constituencies. It is a misdiagnosis that the party would be wise to reject. 

Kerr blames Vice President Kamala Harris’s unfortunate election loss on the progressive positions she took on questionnaires five years ago. Reading his article, one might be surprised to learn that a majority of Americans oppose the expansion of fracking and a majority of Americans support Medicare for All. Progressive policy positions are not something to hide from. Indeed, the progressive policies put forth by the Harris campaign this year were overwhelmingly popular, but many voters didn’t know she was supporting them. 

So what lessons should we learn from the election? Although the full picture will only become clear after the voter file analyses and autopsy reports are completed, we shouldn’t wait to draw some critical lessons. 

This election saw voters abandon the Democratic Party either to former president Donald Trump or simply to the couch. Indeed, in cities like Boston, the decline in Democratic presidential votes far exceeded any increase in votes received by Trump. This speaks to a dissatisfaction, disappointment, and disillusionment that the party must address. 

Although, by various metrics, the economy under Biden has been strong, voters don’t experience the economy through national macroeconomic statistics, but through everyday transactions. Given that grocery prices have gone up significantly over the past few years due to pandemic-related inflation and corporate greed, housing costs continue to grow, and inflation-adjusted wages have not fully recovered from the pandemic, many people feel that they are no better off than they were four years ago (and a societal commitment to forgetting the nightmare of the 2020 pandemic certainly doesn’t help).

Voter dissatisfaction with higher prices has led to the ousting of incumbents across the globe, and the Democratic Party lacked a deep enough well of trust or good will with the electorate to buck that trend. 

As progressive stalwarts like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have emphasized, that lack of trust or goodwill stems from the party’s history of not delivering on its promises to working people. Democrats were able to accomplish a lot given their narrow congressional majorities in 2021 and 2022. The irony is that it was the opposition from the type of conservative or centrist Democrat that Liam Kerr is promoting that caused the party to narrow its agenda.

Democrats failed to muster sufficient votes to raise the federal minimum wage (which has been flat since 2009), to make an expanded child tax credit permanent, to create a public health insurance option, to lower the eligibility age for Medicare, to enact a national paid leave program, or invest in a universal child care system, even though progressive electeds and advocates fought hard to preserve these aspects of Biden’s 2020 platform. 

As pollsters like Anat Shenker-Osorio have pointed out, many swing voters simply don’t believe Democrats will fight for the things they say they support (so often the case here in Massachusetts), and even worse, they don’t take the Republican Party seriously about what it supports (a well-documented—see here and here—and stress-inducing reality).

When cynicism prevails, Republicans benefit. That, as well as the persistence of prejudices in this country that Republicans can stoke to their advantage, can explain why progressive ballot initiatives can routinely win despite voters electing Republicans. 

Here is what we believe Democrats should take away from 2024: 

Name Whom You’re Fighting Against, Not Just What You’re Fighting For: The Democratic Party too often adopts a villainless politics that presents solutions for problems that it will not diagnose. For voters to trust that you will fight for them, they need to know who you are fighting against. Trump is always clear about whom he is fighting, although this always involves perniciously displacing blame from his corporate backers onto the immigrant community. But Democrats need to be clear as well.

If prescription drug prices are too high, name the drug companies that are profiting from those high prices. If grocery prices are too high, name the companies who are gouging consumers. If wages are too low, name who is keeping them too low. If workers are facing layoffs—we’re looking at you GM—name the incredible profits that corporations are making. The Democratic Party’s desire to raise money from the very industries that it promises to rein in creates a contradiction that will always result in muddled or muted messaging. 

Don’t Cede Anti-Systemic Critique to the Right: In contrast to Kerr’s idea that Democrats lost by too closely embracing the left, Harris frequently highlighted her endorsement from prominent Republicans, touting endorsements from various high-ranking members of past Republican administrations and most notably doing campaign events with former congresswoman Liz Cheney (including one at the birthplace of the Republican Party in Wisconsin).

According to exit polls, such steps failed to secure significant crossover votes, but what they did succeed at is reinforcing Trump’s faux populist persona. Counterposing Trump against the Republican Party helps bolster his attempts to paint himself as against the “elite” or the “establishment.”

The problem with Donald Trump has never been that he is not like other Republicans but that he is just like them, supportive of the same unpopular agenda of tax cuts for the rich, including rollbacks of protections for workers and the environment, and cuts to vital services on which people depend. 

Deliver — and Make Sure to Tout Your Wins Loudly and Clearly: In his piece, Kerr also highlights that Democrats in deep blue states like Massachusetts need to better model good governance. On that point, we would agree, although we find it unclear why he implies that progressives, who by no means control the Massachusetts State House, shoulder the blame. 

Kerr offers little in the way of solutions, but we are happy to do so. If Democrats want to regain the trust of voters they lost and strengthen the loyalty of their base, then they must show how the government can and will work to improve their everyday lives. 

Massachusetts can do that by raising the minimum wage to be a living wage so that no one has to work two jobs to make ends meet; by ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality, free public education from pre-K to college; by investing in our public transportation system so that it is the world-class system we deserve; by investing in innovative approaches to our housing crisis like social housing and allowing communities to stabilize rents; by finally passing Medicare for all (which has been languishing in the Legislature for decades despite repeated majority support in local ballot questions); and by accelerating our transition from fossil fuels toward a green energy economy.

And to show what true, progressive blue-state governance looks like, our Legislature can do all this in a way that is transparent and accountable to the public, as opposed to the closed-door, top-down model of policymaking that so often dominates on Beacon Hill. 

Letter: Mass. leaders needed to do more

Marianne Rutter, “Letter: Mass. leaders needed to do more,” Newburyport News, September 22, 2024.

To the Editor:
I, like many Massachusetts voters, was excited for our state to finally have a Democratic governing trifecta (Governor, Senate, and House) again. However, when seeing the productive legislative sessions in other new Democratic trifectas like Michigan or Minnesota, I can’t help feeling disappointed.

As has become the unfortunate norm on Beacon Hill, the House and Senate ran out the clock after midnight on July 31 with a long list of unfinished business, leaving unaddressed many important priorities like economic development, climate change, and bills to address the Steward crisis, as well as many common-sense bills that never advanced far enough to come up for a vote. Massachusetts citizens shouldn’t need to wait until 2025 until these important issues are addressed.

Our Legislature’s over-centralization of power, inertia, and complacency will require deep cultural change (or the shocks of election losses). Even worse is a trend not commonly on view for the average voter: there has been a striking decline in basic deliberation and accountability in the Legislature, with both chambers taking fewer than half the recorded votes they did just a few sessions ago.

In the near term, the Legislature should do something simple: come back into session and finish their work. The economic development bill has important policy components, such as keeping high school seniors out of adult prisons and strengthening our public health infrastructure (both in the Senate bill), and we shouldn’t have to wait until next year to start all over again. The same for climate legislation: Mother Nature doesn’t wait, and neither should the Legislature. We need robust legislation that centers environmental justice and includes a clear plan to transition away from gas.

Going back into session will mean the Legislature will do what it is supposed to: deliberate, legislate, and vote.

Sincerely,
Marianne Rutter

LETTER: What is wrong with our Legislature?

Lynn Nadeau, “LETTER: What is wrong with our Legislature?,” Marblehead Current, September 8, 2024.

To the editor:

What is wrong with our Massachusetts Legislature? The basic function of a legislature — passing laws — seems too difficult for them. The most recent two-year session has left important bills unpassed. This impacts every issue area that people care about: housing, criminal justice, economic development and climate.

The Legislature has egregiously failed to agree on a climate bill that would combine the omnibus bills passed in each chamber.

Over the last two years, we citizens have learned about proposed bills, attended briefings and hearings, weighed in with our state representatives and senators, and yet still, after two years, we are left right back where we started. The Legislature has failed to come to an agreement on siting and permitting of clean energy projects, on addressing plastic pollution, on plans to accelerate our transition away from gas, and on gas company profiteering by rebuilding remain stuck in limbo or outright dead.

It’s been frustrating for citizens and environmental groups to keep informed and to communicate with Representative Armini and Senator Crighton and then have the bosses in the Legislature fail to bring bills up for a vote. What is wrong with the Massachusetts Legislature? It’s well-paid, well-staffed and full-time. But its productivity and functionality are among the worst in the nation. The Senate president and House speaker control their respective chambers and dole out chairships and other sinecures. In exchange, they insist on vote secrecy, fealty and unanimous votes. The industrial lobbyists must be chortling all the way to the bank. We get to vote on a question on the November ballot to require the auditing of the Legislature by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office. Let’s vote for the Auditor’s Office to find the bloat and dysfunction!

Lynn Nadeau

Op-Ed: “In narrow Decker win, a pointed message to her and Legislature”

Jonathan Cohn, “In narrow Decker win, a pointed message to her and Legislature,” CommonWealth Beacon, September 22, 2024.

When it comes to elections, history is told by the winners. Months of intense campaigning, voter engagement, policy and strategy debate, and more fall out of the picture, and we just look at the ending check mark of victory, no matter how close or how commanding a margin. 

But that view can often conceal as much as it reveals, and the recent Democratic primary for state representative in the 25th Middlesex District in Cambridge, pitting longtime incumbent Marjorie Decker against challenger Evan MacKay, is a perfect example. 

One can look at the final, certified result and say that — yet again — incumbency rules in Massachusetts. One can even spin it as a resounding affirmation of the incumbent candidate’s theory of change – work your way into leadership, close ranks, enforce State House building norms and power structures, and then use that to cultivate the good will to pass some bills while closing the opportunities for others. 

But with Decker emerging from a recount as the victor by just 41 votes, one can also look at the race another way, since if a mere 21 voters changed their minds, we would be telling an entirely different story.  

Viewed in such a way, another narrative takes hold. Rep. Decker had the support of US Sen Ed Markey, Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll, US House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and a majority of the Cambridge City Council. She can lay claim to 12 years in the Legislature and 14 on the Cambridge City Council, with notable accomplishments. She spent almost four times as much money as her challenger, and had many more organizational endorsements. In spite of all that, her victory margin out of the roughly 7,000 votes cast amounted to just over 0.5 percent.  

MacKay, a former Harvard Graduate Student Union president and current teaching fellow, had a clear message: Too much of the State House’s business is being done behind closed doors, controlled by too few people, and we are suffering because of it. That toll includes the policies not passed to address the housing crisis, the climate crisis, widening inequality, and much more. Corporate interests will always be able to find their way into a closed door in a way that regular people never can.  

Voters expect more from their elected officials. They expect them to express the same views in public that they do in private. They expect them to be transparent, accessible, and responsive, rather than shielding information that would be publicly available in other states. And they expect that, here in Massachusetts, we should be using our second-largest-in-the-country Democratic supermajority of any legislature to deliver on the wide array of policies that could improve the everyday lives of the people of the Commonwealth.  

This legislative session saw fewer bills and fewer votes than any in recent history. I have sometimes described the avoidance of votes by the Massachusetts House and Senate on issues with even the slightest bit of contention as an incumbent protection racket, but that paints only a partial picture. The incumbent protection racket that exists in both chambers is only designed to help the most conservative members, those who do not want to show their constituents just how out of step they are. It does not help anyone else.  

Progressives like Rep. Decker will be good team players for House leadership by voting against — and speaking on the floor against — measures like making committee votes publicly available, even though they know that their districts would disagree. They will be good team players and vote for regressive tax packages that their districts would be unhappy with. And they will sell watered-down bills as monumental progress, knowing, again, that their districts would want more but that their conservative colleagues want even less.  

As an incumbent protection racket for conservative legislators, this functions smoothly.  

But how about for progressives? This same system actually does them a grave disservice.

I know from putting together a legislative scorecard each year and actively following the behind-the-scenes moves of the Legislature that the vast number of representatives who will vote lockstep with the Speaker actually have quite a bit of ideological diversity as individuals. But because the House doesn’t allow, or at least actively discourages, taking recorded votes, there is no way for progressives to show that they are actually fighting for what their constituents care about. This flattening benefits conservatives; it does not benefit progressives.  

Progressives are also the ones who shoulder the burden of legislative inertia. Rather than pass the type of ambitious housing and climate policies that would have helped bolster Decker in a hard-fought race, House leadership protected conservative members and special interests and hung her out to dry, just like they did to former representative Jeffrey Sanchez, a Jamaica Plain lawmaker who chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, but was sent packing six years ago by voters in his district. 

Many legislators have been grumbling about the chaotic and unproductive end to the formal legislative session back in July, when so many bills were left on the table. The status quo of the Massachusetts State House has not been working for the people of the Commonwealth, but it isn’t working for rank-and-file legislators either.

If legislators want to see a different outcome — and perhaps enjoy a more relaxing summer two years from now when they face reelection — it’s time to start thinking and acting differently. 

Jonathan Cohn is policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. The group endorsed MacKay in this month’s Democratic primary.

Letter: “Legislature is dominated by one party. Sherborn woman wonders why it can’t pass bills”

Jennifer Debin, “Letter: Legislature is dominated by one party. Sherborn woman wonders why it can’t pass bills,” MetroWest Daily News, September 14, 2024.

To the Editor:

The lack of action by our elected representatives in the Massachusetts Legislature is frustrating and unacceptable.

We have a Democrat for governor, as well as Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, yet so very little happened this session and that seems to be the pattern. When compared to a state like Minnesota that also has a Democratic trifecta, our record of passing bills is abysmal.

It is ridiculous that most will be re-elected again and again in spite of very few accomplishments. At the very least, they need to be continually called out for their inaction on behalf of Massachusetts residents and hopefully then be faced with primary challengers.

When I was a School Committee member, I ran in a contested race. We had a well attended debate. This is healthy and good for democracy. My School Committee position was uncompensated; in fact, I often had to pay a baby sitter in order to attend meetings.

I took my position extremely seriously, and gave it my all to serve on behalf of our townspeople. I feel that too many legislators are forgetting why they are there. They are our voices and they have failed to pass highly popular and pressing bills that affect us all, such as the dire climate bill, not to mention the numerous potential policies that are quietly “sent to study.”

We need and deserve true leaders who will take action and not merely play act their roles. 

Jennifer Debin

Sherborn

Letter: How our state Legislature has failed us

Norman Daoust, “How our state Legislature has failed us,” Cambridge Day, September 3, 2024.

How has our state Legislature failed us? Let us count the ways.

Failed to include the local option transfer fee, the tenant opportunity-to-buy policy and a rent control local option in the Affordable Homes Act.

Failed to pass an economic development package, clean-energy siting bill and halt on gas infrastructure expansion; a bill to allow supervised drug-consumption sites; and a ban on the sale of cellphone location data.

Failed to include voter access reform to delink a municipal census from voter registration in the state budget (even though it passed in the Senate).

Never made it out of committee: same-day voter registration; Make Polluters Pay legislation; and Medicare for All in Massachusetts.

Failed to pass bills out of conference committee so they could be voted on by the entire body: hospital oversight (given the Steward hospital fiasco, how could they fail to bring this to a vote?); a climate bill; drug pricing bill; a Raise-the-Age juvenile for possession of a firearm; and a Plastics Reduction Act.

Stuck in Ways and Means are a moratorium on construction of prisons and jails and expanding the public-records law called the Sunlight Act to cover the governor and state Legislature.

It’s guaranteed that other bills you care about also were never passed.

By effectively taking the final five months of the legislative session off, the likelihood of additional bills passing is minimized.

If you believe our state Legislature has failed you, contact the speaker of the house and president of the Senate as well as your state representative and senator and let them know the bills you want passed.

Norman Daoust, Raymond Street, Cambridge

Letters: Mass. lawmakers need something: a shove? a prod? a heave-ho?

“Letters: Mass. lawmakers need something: a shove? a prod? a heave-ho?,” Boston Globe, August 31, 2024.

That ‘special session’ can’t come soon enough

Massachusetts is one of the few states that has a full-time, year-round legislature. So why does that elected body repeatedly leave everything for the last minute? Perhaps it’s that the hyper-centralized power of the leadership means that everything gets decided by such a small number of people that things move very slowly. Perhaps it’s that the Legislature’s rules make it almost impossible for the public to know what is going on in committees, so inter-chamber negotiations are able to stall in the shadows. Perhaps it’s because the power brokers in each chamber place the securing of leverage over the other above getting needed legislation passed.

It’s good that there will probably be a “special session.” Hopefully lawmakers, in addition to the long-delayed economic development bill to improve our competitive position, will also pass measures to help keep juvenile offenders who are the age of high school seniors out of adult prisons and to strengthen our public health infrastructure. We also need to see the climate bill pass: Mother Nature doesn’t wait, and neither should the Legislature. We need robust legislation that centers environmental justice and includes a clear plan to transition away from gas.

Come on, lawmakers, do your job!

Steven E. Miller

Cambridge

Give lawmakers deadlines, spread over the session, for each bill

The conclusion of the Legislature’s formal session a month ago left me in some distress. So many good bills were left unfinished. The Legislature failed to complete its actions on climate (clean energy development), economic development, hospital oversight, and drug prices.

Although majorities in both the Senate and House wanted the bills to pass, differences between the versions passed by the Senate and House had to be hammered out in conference committees.

Usually the existence of a deadline, like July 31, would concentrate legislators’ minds and be a spur to action for getting the bills passed. In this case there were multiple bills, all with the same deadline, and with only two main decision-makers, the Senate president and the speaker of the House. It was impossible for the bills to make timely progress through these bottlenecks.

To avoid this, it would be sensible to assign each bill an individual deadline. Bills go through several stages before they become law, including committee hearings and three separate readings in both the House and Senate. The assignment could be made when the bill is first reported out of committee, when the complexity of the issue and possible points of conflict will have been identified.

Each deadline should be reported publicly, and residents, advocates, and lobbying groups could push the legislators to meet that deadline. Deadlines should be spread out so that the Legislature has a good chance of meeting them all.

Martin G. Evans

Cambridge

Letter: Missed Opportunities: Why the Legislature Should Reconvene

Jason Brown, “Missed Opportunities: Why the Legislature Should Reconvene,” West Roxbury Bulletin, August 22, 2024.

To the Editor:

Like many Commonwealth voters, I was hopeful the new Democratic trifecta would lead to significant legislative progress this year. However, when comparing the General Court’s legislative session to the productive ones in Michigan and Minnesota, it’s hard not to feel disappointed.

The Legislature struggled to pass bills that had broad support in the last session. The SAPHE 2.0 bill, which would strengthen public health infrastructure, passed both chambers unanimously in 2022 before being vetoed by our former Republican governor. Similarly, a moratorium on new prison and jail construction had wide support, but met a similar veto. It would have made sense for the Legislature to prioritize these bills at the start of this session. Instead, the prison moratorium has yet to see a vote, and SAPHE 2.0 remains stuck in conference committee, with clear support only from the Senate.

The Legislature’s complacency and over-centralization of power require deep cultural change. But in the near term, the General Court should do something simple: reconvene and finish their work. The economic development bill and robust climate legislation, especially with environmental justice at their core, can’t wait. The environment won’t wait, and neither should the Legislature.