The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly of the House Budget

Late last night, the MA House passed a much-delayed budget for FY 2021.

Let’s dive in.

The Good

The House last night voted to pass a slimmed down version of the ROE Act, which — although not as comprehensive as the ROE Act — has been celebrated by reproductive rights advocates as a major step forward.

The amendment, which passed 108 – 49, would do the following:

  • Expand access to abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases of a lethal fetal diagnosis, allowing pregnant people facing serious medical obstacles to their pregnancy to make the decision that’s best for them in consultation with their doctor and receive care here at home.
  • Allow 16 and 17 year olds to make their own decisions about abortion care without having to go before a judge.
  • Streamline access for those under 16 years old by allowing remote hearings, eliminating the need for young people to travel to a courthouse and stand before a judge.

How did your state representative vote? Find out here.

11.12.20 House Vote on ROE

Want to thank them if they were one of the 108 YES votes? You can do so here.

The Bad

If we want to have an equitable recovery from the pandemic and the related recession, we need to invest in our public schools, our public infrastructure, our public health system, and our social safety net in all its forms.

And that requires money.

Unfortunately, the MA House hasn’t gotten the memo. The House budget fails to deliver on the promises made in the Student Opportunity Act last year and shortchanges public services across the state, especially public transit.

Legislators had a chance on Tuesday to push back against these cuts and vote to raise additional revenue.

Unfortunately, the House voted 127 to 30 against doing so.

In a time when the billionaires in our state keep getting richer, these representatives overwhelmingly voted against a common-sense amendment from Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) to tax unearned income (income from non-retirement investments and other forms of asset ownership, such as stocks, bonds, and dividend and interest income) at a higher rate than earned income (income from wages and salaries, as well as pensions, annuities, 401k, IRAs, and other similar retirement accounts). Unearned income goes overwhelmingly to corporate shareholders and other high-income individuals, and a modest increase could generate significant sums of money to fund public services.

Here was the vote.

The Ugly

If you follow the news, you know we’re in store for a dark winter, as COVID-19 case numbers and death tolls are expected to rise.

Low-wage workers are our first line of defense against COVID-19, but they are feeling the greatest economic impact of the outbreak. Healthcare and long-term care workers, janitorial workers, food service workers, child care workers, municipal workers, adjunct faculty, gig workers, and others on the front lines are critical to supporting our communities during the OVID-19 outbreak.

But many of these front-line workers are struggling economically and lack basic economic protections including adequate paid sick time. No one who is sick should feel like they have to go to work or else they will lose their job. That’s bad for the economy and bad for public health.

Unfortunately, even though a super-majority of state representatives signed onto a budget amendment to grant two weeks of job-protected emergency paid sick time, the House punted, choosing to leave workers behind again. Emergency paid sick time didn’t even get a vote or a debate.

Want to tell your representative how you feel? Find their information here.

We plan to keep fighting — for better results in the Senate next week and better results in the session next year.

Your State Rep Probably Took a Bad Vote Yesterday. But They Can Take a Good One Tomorrow.

If we want to have an equitable recovery from the pandemic and the related recession, we need to invest in our public schools, our public infrastructure, our public health system, and our social safety net in all its forms.

And that requires money.

Unfortunately, the MA House hasn’t gotten the memo. The budget that it’s currently debating fails to deliver on the promises made in the Student Opportunity Act last year and shortchanges public services across the state.

Legislators have a choice of whether to invest in an equitable economic recovery or accept a dangerous trajectory that leaves the most vulnerable behind.

Yesterday, 127 state representatives chose the latter, voting against a common-sense amendment from Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) to tax unearned income (income from non-retirement investments and other forms of asset ownership, such as stocks, bonds, and dividend and interest income) at a higher rate than earned income (income from wages and salaries, as well as pensions, annuities, 401k, IRAs, and other similar retirement accounts). Unearned income goes overwhelmingly to corporate shareholders and other high-income individuals, and a modest increase could generate significant sums of money to fund public services.

Here was the vote.

You should let your legislator know what you think of their vote. But there’s an opportunity for them to do better.

Your representative may have voted the wrong way yesterday. But they can still take progressive votes if the following amendments are brought to the floor.

Emergency Paid Sick Time 

Urge your state representative to support Amendment #231 — Emergency Paid Sick Time, which would provide ten additional work-days (80 hours) of job-protected emergency paid sick time for immediate use during the COVID-19 outbreak to workers not covered by federal emergency paid sick time protections.

Strengthening Reproductive Rights

Amendment #759 — Improved Access to Health Care would remove medically unnecessary barriers to abortion care. It doesn’t contain everything from the ROE Act, but it contains many vital provisions and would be a significant step forward. Voters have made clear that reproductive health care matters, and with abortion and other health care under threat from an anti-abortion Supreme Court, it’s time for Massachusetts to act.

You can also join the ROE coalition in a phone bank tonight or tomorrow night.

Find your state representative’s contact information here.

Massachusetts House Votes Down Proposals to Help Renters, Promote Affordable Housing

When Governor Charlie Baker sent an economic development bill to the MA Legislature, he included his “Housing Choices” legislation, which had been stalled as a standalone bill. The “Housing Choices” bill addresses one aspect of Massachusetts’s affordable housing crisis: the fact that new construction is relatively rare in the suburbs due to the prevalence of single-family zoning. If you can only build one housing unit per lot, it makes it more difficult to respond to a growing population or growing demand. Currently, zoning changes (such as those that would approve multifamily housing construction) require a 2/3 approval from local government. Baker’s bill, which the MA House retained in their economic development package, would lower that to a simple majority.

The need for more supply, though, is just one part of the problem. There is no guarantee that the new supply would be affordable, nor that the new supply would not push up rents for current tenants, thus running the risk of displacement. There isn’t even a guarantee that any new housing will be built at all (it’s a removal of a barrier rather than promise of new construction).

That being said, as an MIT researcher recently noted in CommonWealth Mag, all this means is that we need to think comprehensively when we approach the affordable housing crisis: we do need zoning reform, but we also need stronger protections for existing tenants. Tenant protections will not address the need for supply: only new construction can. Zoning reform will not address displacement: you need tenant protections for that. This was also an essential takeaway of the book Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty on the housing crisis in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the MA House voted down efforts at striking such a balance.

Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) filed and roll-called three amendments to strike a better balance.

First was his amendment 34, which would have enabled municipalities to impose transfer fees on real estate transactions to fund affordable housing. Cities like Boston, Somerville, and Nantucket have filed home rule petitions in order to be able to do so because state law prohibits them from doing so on their own. To be clear, this amendment would simply allow municipalities to pass their own laws to address the affordable housing crisis–and to craft whatever exemptions to the transfer fee’s application as they see appropriate.

The House voted 130 to 29 against it. 9 state reps endorsed *the very same bill* but voted NO here: Barrett, Driscoll, Garballey, Gonzalez, Keefe, Khan, Livingstone, Miranda, and Santiago.

The only argument put forth against it on the floor was from Rep. Ken Gordon (D-Bedford), who said that there is already enough money for affordable housing (false) and that a transfer fee would hurt low and middle-income homeowners (also false, given the allowance of exemptions).

He also filed and roll-called an amendment that reflected the text of his Tenant Protection Act, which would remove the prohibition on rent control and enable municipalities to pass other tenant protections, such as just cause eviction ordinances or limitations on condo conversions. Again, simply allowing municipalities to pass their own laws in response to the affordable housing crisis.

The House voted 136 to 23 against it. Five legislators who co-sponsored the very same bill voted against the amendment: Devers, Hawkins, LeBoeuf, Miranda, and Santiago.

7.27.20 House Vote on RC

Finally, Connolly filed and roll-called an amendment to lower the threshold for approval of inclusionary zoning ordinances to a simple majority. Inclusionary zoning, i.e., the requirement that a certain percentage of new construction meet an affordability threshold, was not included in the list of zoning changes that would no longer need a supermajority.

Given that many suburbs don’t want to build housing at all, there is likely not a rush to adopt inclusionary zoning, but if a suburb were so forward-thinking, it should be able to.

The House voted 139 to 19 against allowing that. Again, five representatives who co-sponsored *the same bill* voted against it: Gentile, Hawkins, Hendricks, LeBoeuf, and Livingstone.

7.27.20 House Vote on Inclusionary Zoning

MA Senate Votes Down Efforts to Protect In-Person Voting, Streamline Mail Voting

Earlier today, the Massachusetts Senate voted 40 to 0 for a bill to protect our fall elections during the pandemic. 

Like the bill passed by the House, the bill contained a number of important provisions:

  • Sending an application to vote early by mail to every registered voter for both the September 1 primary election and the November 3 general election
  • Ensuring all applications and ballots sent by mail include prepaid return postage
  • Ensuring that ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted (but for the general election only)
  • Allowing voters to apply to vote by mail through an online portal and enabling any voter who wants to vote absentee to do so this year
  • Expanding early voting for the primary and the general

The Senate embraced some opportunities to strengthen the bill during debate today but, unfortunately, rejected others. Here’s a rundown of what happened. 

THE GOOD PART I: VOICE VOTES 

The Senate adopted several important amendments via voice vote: 

  • Disability Access – Part I: Sen. Cindy Creem’s Amendment #2, which requires that Secretary Bill Galvin submit a report to the Legislature within six months after the bill’s enactment on how he can make voting more accessible for voters with disabilities, especially with regard to online voting.
  • Disability Access – Part II: Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz’s Amendment #7, which requires the necessary accommodations for voters with disabilities so that they can vote by mail without losing their right to a secret ballot 
  • Absentee Ballot Request Portal: Sen. Eric Lesser’s Amendment #3, which strengthens the language around the online absentee ballot request portal that Secretary Galvin has to create. In particular, it eliminates the requirement for a voter’s signature (which is redundant given the need for a signature upon submission of the ballot), adds language that the system shall apply to the primary if feasible, and eliminates “to the feasible” to the requirement that the system be operational by October 1 (i.e., creating an affirmative requirement for its operationality, rather than a mere suggestion).
  • Designating the Mailing Address for a Ballot: Sen. Adam Hinds’s Amendment #10, which requires that early-voting-by-mail applications contain space for voters to designate the mailing address to which a ballot should be sent (Think: people who have chosen to quarantine somewhere other than where they are registered to vote) 
  • PPE at the Polls: Sen. Joan Lovely’s Amendment #18, which requires Galvin to issue regulations around the use of personal protective equipment at the polls (the bill had merely used the vague language of “appropriate clothing” to this end) 
  • Extending the VBM Application Deadline: Sen. Jo Comerford’s Amendment #33, which extends the deadline for vote-by-mail applications (changing it from the seventh day before the election to the fourth day before the election) 

THE GOOD PART II: UNANIMOUS RECORDED VOTES 

The Senate voted unanimously in favor of two amendments: 

Equity & Access when Making Changes to Polling Locations: Sen. Jamie Eldridge’s Amendment #20, which moves up the deadline for changing a polling location from 15 days before the election to 20 days before the election, and requires municipalities to publicly evaluate and report on whether such change would have a disparate impact on access to the polling place on the basis of race, national origin, disability, income, or age.

Public Education about Changes the 2020 Elections: Sen. Becca Rausch’s redrafted Amendment #23, which requires Secretary Galvin to conduct a public awareness campaign to inform voters about the bill, requires municipalities to take recorded votes if they choose to change polling locations, and requires that voter information booklets be sent out no later than October 5 for the general election (and that they explain that voters who have already applied to vote by mail for the general need not do so again).

THE BAD: REJECTIONS OF KEY IMPROVEMENTS TO THE BILL 

However, the Senate also voted down several important amendments. They rejected, via voice vote, Sen. Harriette Chandler’s amendment to increase the number of early voting days for the primary to match those offered for the general election. 

Strengthening the Protections for In-Person Voting: The Senate voted down Sen. Jamie Eldridge’s Amendment #24 (Guaranteeing Safe, Accessible, and Fair Elections For All), which strengthened the language around safe in-person voting. The underlying bill creates no deadlines for regulations, no requirement for public input, and no requirements for municipalities themselves to plan for the fall elections, and it also leaves out important elements of safe in-person voting.

The amendment would have required Bill Galvin to issue a draft guidance on Safe, Accessible, and Fair In-Person Voting by June 29, make such a guidance  available for public comment for at least ten days, and have a final guidance posted online by July 17. The amendment provided a thorough list of what the guidance should cover: 

  • (a) consideration of the layout of polling locations, including six-foot markers and proper signage in and outside of the polling site, to facilitate physical distancing throughout the voting process, including while voters are standing in line (inside or outside the polling location), when entering the voting area, while voting, while casting their ballot, and exiting, ideally through a different door than the entrance.
  • (b) expansion and redesign of polling locations to accommodate physical distancing throughout the voting process, or, when necessary, the relocation of polling locations to protect health and safety, keeping in mind that closing familiar polling places and contraction in the number of polling locations should be a last resort and only to be used when other preparedness measures cannot adequately ensure safe voter participation.
  • (c) implementation of curbside voting for voters with physical or health limitations;
  • (d) the protection of poll workers with personal protective equipment, adequate access to cleaning supplies throughout the day, access to hand-washing and bathrooms with adequate soap, water, and disposable paper towels, and appropriate distancing measures;
  • (e) voter access to hand-washing and bathrooms with adequate soap, water, and disposable paper towels;
  • (f) outreach, recruitment, and training of additional and reserve poll workers to ensure that the burden of administering the in-person election does not fall on poll workers at greater risk from COVID-19, and to guard against the possibility that a shortage of poll workers could compromise the administration of the election and the health and safety of voters.
  • (g) expanding public awareness and participation in early voting and absentee voting to reduce lines;
  • (h) expanded outreach on alternatives to in-person voting for those populations identified by the department of public health to be at great risk from COVID-19.

The amendment also requires cities and towns to have their own election preparedness plans no later than 30 days before the election. 

Only 16 senators voted for this common-sense amendment, and 23 voted against it. 

Senate Vote on SAFE Amendment on safe voting

Elections Committee Chairman Barry Finegold argued that the amendment was covered by Sen. Joan Lovely’s Amendment #18 (which merely changed the words “appropriate clothing” to “personal protective equipment”) and that Secretary Galvin has already committed to much of the amendment’s content. He probably even gave a pinky swear! 

Streamlining the Vote-By-Mail Process: The Senate also rejected an amendment from Sen. Diana DiZoglio (#28, Providing for a uniform early voting/absentee ballot) to streamline the vote-by-mail process by creating a standard form for absentee ballot requests and early-vote-by-mail requests. Such a change would reduce possible voter confusion and make the jobs of poll workers simpler. 

As Sen. DiZoglio noted, if the bill treats taking precaution related to COVID-19 as a valid excuse for not being able to vote in person on election day, then the distinction between an absentee ballot application and an early-vote-by-mail application is a meaningless formality, not a substantive difference. 

Only 14 senators voted for this common-sense amendment, and 25 voted against it.

Senate Vote on Streamlining VBM

MA House Votes Down Important Voting Protections

Yesterday, the MA House voted for a bill that took some important steps, but contained some glaring omissions. Here are some of the key parts of the bill.

  • Sending an application to vote by mail to every registered voter for both the September 1 primary election and the November 3 general election
  • Ensuring all applications and ballots sent by mail include prepaid return postage
  • Ensuring that ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted (but for the general election only)
  • Allowing voters to apply to vote by mail through an online portal and enabling any voter who wants to vote absentee to do so this year
  • Expanding early voting for the primary and the general

However, there were major omissions. And most reps passed on an opportunity to address them.

As noted above, the requirement to count every ballot postmarked by the election only applies to the general, not the primary. (The House ruled an amendment to do so, filed by Rep. Maria Robinson of Framingham, as “out of order.”)

The bill reduced the 20-day voter registration blackout period to a 10-day blackout period. But with our primary happening on move-in day, housing instability high, voter registration drives impossible this summer, and physical voter registration forms hard to come by, that does not address the fundamental reasons why we need Election Day Registration. Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (D-Northampton) filed an amendment to authorize Election Day Registration and to create a streamlined online registration process, but the House voted it down. You can see the vote below.

6.4.20 House VOTE on EDR

The House also voted down an amendment from Rep. Tami Gouveia (D-Acton) to strengthen the protections for safe in-person voting, such as spelling out clearly what Galvin needs to do and requiring municipalities to have preparedness plans. Her amendment would have also required 25+ days of notice for changes in polling locations. (An amendment that increased the notice in the underlying bill from 10+ days to 15+ days passed, but 15 days is still too short).

6.4.20 House Vote on Safe

Like how your state rep voted? Don’t like how they voted? Let them know.

Why did reps vote against these common-sense measures–especially reps that say they support Election Day Registration in other cases? Many of the Republicans simply don’t care about protecting the franchise (unfortunately, some Democrats too). But for most Democrats, they care more about staying in the good graces of an authoritarian House Leadership than they care about their progressive values. And it’s up to you — their constituents — to change that.

The House Just Voted Down Three Important Transparency Amendments. How Did Your Rep Vote?

Former Sierra Club lobbyist Phil Sego was once quoted as saying, “Don’t mistake what happens in [the Massachusetts State House] for democracy.” Our legislative process is deeply flawed and designed to avoid public accountability.

Yesterday, your representative had a chance to take the first step toward changing that. Amendments were introduced that would have required:

  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read the final language of any bill they’re voting on
  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read any amendment submitted on the floor that they’ll be voting on
  • Hearing testimony (for/against) a bill and all votes taken in committee to be publicly available.

All three amendments were filed by progressive stalwart Rep. Jon Hecht (D-Watertown). We explained why they’re all so important here.

The first amendment would have ensured reps have at least 72 hours to read a bill before they have to vote on it. It failed 55-103. (Quick guide: To find out how your rep voted, look at the Y = yes, N = no, or X = absent to the left of their name). 

House Vote - Amendment 1 - 2019 Rules

The second amendment would have ensured that reps have 30 minutes to read any amendment filed on the floor before having to vote on it. It was voted down 47 to 111.

House Vote - Amendment 2 - 2019 Rules

NB: The text of both amendments would have allowed the House to waive the requirement for a 2/3 vote. So if something was non-controversial, it wouldn’t be creating unnecessary delay (the unnecessary delays being all too often of House Leadership’s own making).

Finally, the third amendment would have required the publication of hearing testimony (for/against a bill) and any roll call vote taken in committee. It was voted down 49-109.

We should all be able to agree on these commonsense measures. In fact, Mass Fiscal Alliance supported this amendment along with Progressive Mass – probably the only time we’ve agreed on anything.

We have to wonder what the representatives who don’t support such obvious transparency and accountability requirements are hiding.

Let Your Rep Know You’re Watching

Please send an email to your rep now. If they voted yes, a message of thanks will serve as reassurance that this was the right decision. If your rep is a no vote, they deserve to hear your opinion on that. Receiving this positive or negative feedback will be a factor in their decision making when the next vote comes up.

Find Your Rep’s Email Address, Phone #, and Social Media Handles Here.

If they voted yes…..

“Thank you for voting in favor of amendments #1 through #3 to the House Rules yesterday. Transparency is the bedrock of democracy, and your support for a more transparent State House matters a lot to me and other constituents.”

Email your rep now.

If they voted no…

“I was very disappointed to see that you voted against amendments #1 to #3 to the House Rules yesterday. These common sense measures would have brought much-needed transparency to the State House and made sure constituents–and legislators–feel empowered to be a part of the democratic process.”

Email your rep now.

2018: Senate Scorecard in Review

A scorecard tells a story. So what story does our 2018 scorecard of the Senate tell? : A guide to the 2018 Scorecard

Criminal Justice Reform: The Senate passed a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill last fall (and easily passed the conference report). Early in the new year, the Senate made sure not to exacerbate the existing problems of the system more by striking the section of an animal welfare bill that allowed juveniles ages 14-17 to receive adult criminal sentences for animal cruelty (19-17, 37s). Countless studies show that housing youths in adult prisons only worsens recidivism and works against a goal of rehabilitation.

Democracy: Massachusetts has some of the highest voter turnout in the country due to the affluence and high education rates in the state. But those rates are hardly impressive by international standards and mask significant inequality within. In a win for democracy, the House passed Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), a reform first adopted by Oregon in 2015 (38-0, 56s). Eligible voters who interface with the RMV or MassHealth would be automatically registered to vote unless they decline. With more than 700,000 eligible citizens in MA unregistered, AVR would increase the accuracy, security, and comprehensiveness of voter rolls.

The Senate tried to build on past election modernization reforms even further by providing funding for early voting in the primary (35-3, 41s), although that unfortunately did not make it into the final budget.

In addition to expanding voting rights, the Senate, recognizing the essential role of an engaged and informed citizenship to democracy, voted to enact a comprehensive civics education curriculum and requirement in schools across Massachusetts (32-4, 39s) and defeated a Republican effort to weaken the bill (9-27, 38s).

Less successful, however, was an attempt to call for a limited constitutional convention focused on clarifying that the spending of money to influence elections is not protected free speech under the First Amendment and thereby enabling Congress and the states to better regulate political contributions (aimed at the disastrous 2010 Citizens United ruling). The Senate voted 23-15 to strike out the call for a convention from the underlying bill, the We the People Act, resulting in a rather modest resolution about the importance of curbing the outsize role of money in politics (53s).

LGBTQ Rights: The Senate voted 36-1 to establish a gender-neutral identity option for Massachusetts licenses, a recognition that some individuals may not identify as either male or female (54s), although the bill unfortunately later got caught up in end-of-session chaos and squabbling and did not make it through the House.

Public Safety: Massachusetts has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, but as we here at Progressive Mass stress, the question is not whether we’re doing better than other states, but whether we’re doing as much as we can.

The Legislature, learning from other states’ successes, passed legislation creating a kind of court order (Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ERPO) to temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns because they pose a significant danger to themselves or others, which can be requested by family members and law enforcement (36-1, 55s). Empowering family members, who are able to see early warning signs, to act in this way can prevent gun violence, whether mass shooting or suicide.

Housing: We supported the effort to increase the funding for the Community Preservation Act through a surcharge for documentation at the Registries of Deeds (38-0, 43s). CPA funds can be used for affordable housing, historic preservation, and green and open space.

A key item on the agenda for both House and Senate this year was regulating short-term rentals (e.g., Airbnb). Unlike what tends to happen, the Senate’s original bill was weaker than the House’s, but the Senate, thankfully, beat back an effort to reducing the possible revenue the state could raise from a tax on short-term rentals (11-26, 40s). The final bill that came out of the conference between House and Senate was stronger (30-7, 64s), but it has been stuck in limbo because of an effort by Republican Governor Charlie Baker has sought to make industry-friendly changes to the law.

Education: Massachusetts’s 25-year-old education funding formula is short-changing our schools $1-2 billion per year due to outdated assumptions about the costs of health care, special education, ELL (English Language Learners) education, and closing racial and economic achievement gaps.

The 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission recommended a path forward for fixing it. The Senate unanimously adopted a bill to implement them, only to see resistance from the House (42s).

Climate Action: The Senate unanimously passed an impressive climate mitigation and adaptation bill that would accelerate our state’s transition to renewable energy, with an eye to equity (51s), only to again face opposition in the House.

The Senate also defeated a Republican effort to constrain the state from regulating vehicle emissions standards, ostensibly because doing so would place the state in violation of federal law (7-30, 50s). With the Trump administration day after day seeking to roll back critical environmental regulations, Massachusetts needs to be taking bolder action, not creating unnecessary, self-imposed constraints.

Immigration: Despite Massachusetts’s liberal reputation, our Legislature has been historically hostile to passing legislation to strengthen protections for our immigrant community.

The Senate included four provisions from the Safe Communities Act, a bill that our members fought strongly for, in its FY 2019 budget: (1) a prohibition on police inquiries about immigration status, a prohibition on certain collaboration agreements between local law enforcement and ICE, (3) a guarantee of basic due process protections, and (4) a prohibition on participation in a Muslim registry (25-13, 45s). The Senate shortly thereafter defeated a xenophobic amendment needlessly entangling police in deportations and set us back from the Lunn v. Commonwealth decision, which set limitations on such collaboration (13-25, 46s).

Due to opposition from House Leadership, the vital Safe Communities provisions did not make it into the final FY 2019 budget, which passed 36 to 1 (57s).

Revenue: We began the session with the expectation that the Fair Share amendment (“millionaire’s tax”) would be on the ballot this November. Conservative justices on the Supreme Judicial Court torpedoed those plans, striking the question from the ballot in June.

Anti-tax ballot initiatives from 1998 to 2002 have created a longstanding revenue crisis in this state, as vital programs are cut and the rainy day fund is regularly drained to fund basic budgetary needs. The Legislature did not improve matters this session. They reauthorizing a major tax giveaway to the biotech industry 33-5 (49s), rejecting an effort to subject these tax incentives to periodic review to evaluate whether they are actually delivering (15-22, 48s).

The Senate voted twice on creating a sales tax holiday. The first vote failed 14-24 (44s), but after the “Grand Bargain” made sales tax holidays permanent, they voted 33-6 to create a sales tax holiday in 2018 (61s). It remains a useless tax gimmick whose main outcome is draining much-needed revenue from the state.

The Senate did, however, vote to give municipalities a way to raise more revenue, authorizing them to place questions on the ballot to raise revenue for local and regional transportation projects (27-10, 62s). Many other states do this, and it provides communities a way to take action when inertia dominates in the State Legislature. The Senate passed this last session, and like before, it did not survive in the House.

Civil Liberties: Civil liberties suffered two main blows in 2018 in the Senate.

The first one came through a bill authorizing the creation of “Community Benefit District” (CBD) corporations, which could enable wealthy property owners to essentially “own” public spaces and impose fees on other property owners in the district with or without their approval, all with zero safeguards for civil liberties and equal access. The ACLU sounded the alarm, but the Senate nonetheless voted 22-15 in favor of the bill (59s). An effort to shore up tenants’ rights in the process failed 10-27 (58s).

The second one came through the Senate’s opioid bill. The Senate voted 33-4 to permit judges to civilly commit individuals suffering from addiction to a treatment facility without a hearing, until the courts open, with the patient entitled to a hearing within 72 hours (60s). People who undergo involuntary treatment in Massachusetts are twice as likely to die as people who undergo treatment voluntarily.

Economic Fairness: The Senate voted unanimously to empower the AG’s office to prosecute wage theft and holding businesses accountable for exploitative and illegal practices by their subcontractors (52s), only to see the legislation flounder in the House.

Less admirably, the Senate voted 31-6 for a a Republican messaging amendment to the budget to push racist welfare fraud myths and create burdens for small and minority-owned businesses (47s).

But back to the good: In the first time since last year’s pay raise that the Senate overrode a non-budgetary veto of the Governor, the Senate voted 32-5 to override Baker’s veto of a bill requiring that the hiring, promotion and termination of employees in custodial, maintenance, and other non-teaching positions in public schools be conducted in accordance with any governing collective bargaining agreement (63s).

They also overrode his veto of language that would prevent his administration from effectively denying vulnerable children needed welfare benefits, by unilaterally counting a parent’s Social Security Income (afforded to disabled adults who are low-income) to determine children’s benefits eligibility (31-6, 66s). And they voted down 7-30 a proposal of his to make the adoption of a more stringent calculation of benefits (counting a parent’s Supplemental Security Income in determining their children’s eligibility for welfare benefits) a precondition of lifting the punitive “cap on kids” (67s). Unfortunately, this battle happened so close to the end of formal sessions on July 31 that when Baker vetoed the provision the Legislature had insisted on (rejecting his alternative proposal), the Legislature was conducting only informal sessions, in which roll-call votes (required for veto overrides) do not take place. Massachusetts will remain one of the only states that still denies benefits to children who were born while a family is receiving state assistance.

About the Scorecard

A scorecard serves its purpose if it tells a story and informs advocacy.

As such, we prioritize votes that are contentious over those that are unanimous: unanimous votes neither tell a story nor inform advocacy. We prioritize bills and amendments that relate to our Progressive Platform and Legislative Agenda over those that do not, and we make a point of including bills and amendments for which our members lobbied their legislators.

Since legislators’ jobs are to vote, we count absences as the same as votes against the progressive position when calculating scores. HOWEVER, when legislators submit letters to the Clerk detailing how they would have voted had they been present, we will count these intentions, so long as their vote would not have alone decided the outcome of a bill or amendment. This helps us better achieve one of our main goals — informing advocacy — and acknowledges that there are extenuating circumstances behind some absences.