Progressive Mass joined 73 other groups in a letter to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy in opposition to the expansion of subsidies for burning trees for energy. Read the letter here.
Testimony: Investing in Our Commonwealth and Our Shared Prosperity
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and Members of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth. Thank you for your work on the FY 2025 budget.
In the following, we outline several key priority areas for the budget to ensure that it builds on recent progress in investing in our commonwealth.
Strengthening Our Commitment to Public Higher Education
Our public colleges and universities are essential vehicles for economic mobility of our commonwealth’s residents and economic vitality of the commonwealth itself. Studies have shown that college graduates are more likely to be healthier, earn significantly more on average, and are less likely to face job loss during an economic recession, and graduates of our public colleges and universities are more likely to stay in Massachusetts to live and work, contributing to our commonwealth and common wealth.
However, our state has been disinvesting from public higher education for the last two decades, with funding for public higher education still below its (inflation-adjusted) value in 2001. When the state reduces funding to public colleges and universities, the result is higher tuition and fees, and a growing debt burden faced by students and families.
The published in-state tuition and fees increase at public 4-year institutions in MA increased 135 percent from 2001 to 2021 after adjusting for inflation, and for two-year institutions, 81 percent, but real Median Household Income in Massachusetts only increased by 8 percent. Just between 2009 and 2021, the average student debt rose 52% for four-year graduates and 62% for community college graduates. When we close off opportunities like that for our students, we are all worse off.
As you craft the FY 2025 budget, we urge you to incorporate key provisions of the Cherish Act and the Debt-Free Future Act, such as
- Instituting fair and adequate minimum funding levels for public higher education
- Ensuring that students are able to graduate from our public colleges and universities debt-free
- Ensuring that adjunct faculty and part-time staff are eligible for state health care and retirement benefits
- Reducing wage disparities on campuses
- Increasing funding for student supports
- Investing in green and healthy buildings on campus
Fully Funding Our Public Schools
The passage of the Student Opportunity Act in 2019 was a major win for education justice in the commonwealth. We are very appreciative of recent comments that the Legislature will fully fund the Student Opportunity Act’s fourth year of implementation, keeping the law on track to be fully funded by the 2026-2027 school year. Importantly, maintaining that commitment includes fixing the Chapter 70 inflation calculation glitch that, if left unsolved, could permanently reduce school aid and prevent the Commonwealth from meeting the real-dollar targets in the Student Opportunity Act.
Full Funding for School Meals for All
We also urge you to support full funding in support of School Meals for All (Line Items 1596-2422 and 7053-1925).
The research on universal school meals is clear: participation in school meals improves academic achievement, attendance, and student behavior at school; decreases childhood food insecurity; leads to children eating more fruits, vegetables, and milk; and reduces visits to the school nurse.
With the implementation of School Meals for All, more than an additional 100,000 students participated in school lunch in October 2023 compared to October 2019 in schools not previously serving universal free meals. This program has been a success all around, and we must ensure it continues to be so.
Advancing the Common Start Vision
As a member of the Common Start coalition, we would also like to amplify the common Start coalition’s asks:
- $510 million to continue operational grants to child care providers (line item 3000-1045)
- Increased funding that makes substantial progress towards the Economic Review Commission’s recommendation of raising early education and care financial assistance reimbursement rates (line items 3000-1041 & 3000-1042)
- $75 million to increase access to child care financial assistance (line item 3000-4060)
- $20 million for the Head Start Supplemental Grant (line item 3000-5000)
The Governor, Senate Leadership, and House Leadership have all expressed a commitment to strengthening our child care and early education system, and these investments would help to do that.
Access to Counsel
Without legal representation, many tenants risk becoming homeless. Indeed, most tenants are unrepresented and face eviction alone. It doesn’t have to be that way, and an Access to Counsel program is a proven solution.
We urge the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means to include in your respective FY25 budgets $3.5 Million (Line-item 0321-1800) to start a Access to Counsel program in tandem with the full Access to Council bill language in S.864/H.4360, which provides the framework for a statewide program.
Increasing Assistance to Families in Deep Poverty
We also urge you to include a 20% increase in cash assistance grant levels (line items 4403-2000 and 4408-1000.
The maximum grant for a family of 3 with no income is only $783 a month, far below even half the federal poverty level – known as Deep Poverty – which is currently $1,076 for a family of 3. The maximum grant for an elder or person with a disability is only $401 a month. In January, Governor Healey cut the 10% grant increase that the Legislature had scheduled to go into effect in April.
Deep poverty hurts kids. It causes health and emotional damage, toxic stress, impaired school performance, and homeless and housing instability. We must do right by our neediest families.
A budget is a moral document, and we urge you to include such investments to advance a vision of a commonwealth that works for all residents.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
Say No to Uber and Lyft’s Power Grab
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
We would like to submit testimony to go on record in opposition to
- Initiative Petition No. 23-25, H4256, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for purposes of the General and Special Laws,
- Initiative Petition No. 23-29, H4257, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
- Initiative Petition No. 23-30, H4258, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for certain purposes of the General Laws,
- Initiative Petition No. 23-31, H4259, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
- Initiative Petition No. 23-32, H4260 An Act Establishing that App-Based Drivers Are Not Employees, and Network Companies Are Not Employers, for Certain Purposes of the General Laws.
Massachusetts has very clear standards for determining independent contractor standards (the “ABC test”), and Big Tech companies like Uber and Lyft have been in flagrant violation of them.
As a reminder, those three parts are (1) that the work is done without the direction and control of the employer, (2) that the work is performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business, and (3) that the work is done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work. None of these apply to gig economy work. For example, there would be no Uber and Lyft without their drivers; the claim that their companies are merely an app is a clear fallacy intended to evade the law.
Knowing that they are in violation of the law, these companies want to change it, rather than adhere to it. They are planning to spend possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that the law does not apply to them and that they, themselves, can rewrite it in order to bolster their own profits and power over workers. Indeed, they have already spent $6.6 million, most of that on signature collection for the five different versions they are putting forth. They apparently have the money to go all-out for this question but not, as they would have you believe, enough to do right by their workers.
These measures would deny app-based gig workers a living wage, benefits, legal rights, and anti-discrimination protections. The impact of these laws extends beyond just the gig economy sector itself. The ability to define away terms like “employee” and “independent contractor” sets a dangerous precedent, enabling companies across sectors to gut labor rights. Will we see restaurants claiming that the “restaurant” is only the physical building and physical infrastructure, relegating all employees to independent contractor status? Or hospitals claiming that the “hospital” is just the brick-and-mortar building, rather than the doctors, nurses, aides, and other health care workers that make it run? The list goes on.
That is not the future we want to live in, and we hope it is not one you want to live in either.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
Let’s Leave Subminimum Wages in the Past
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Committee:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
We strongly support the elimination of subminimum wages, and passing ballot initiative NO. 23-12, An Act to require the full minimum wage for tipped workers with tips on top, would accomplish that.
We are appreciative of recent efforts by the Legislature to improve living standards for working people across the Commonwealth, but tipped workers have not been able to benefit fully from recent minimum wage increases. The tipped minimum wage in MA rose to $6.75 per hour last year as a result of the last increase. $6.75 per hour. A living wage in Massachusetts, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, is $27.89—just for a single, childless adult. That means a tipped worker would need to collect three times their wage in tips just to achieve a living wage.
Although employers are supposed to guarantee that workers get the full minimum wage with tips, this has never been common practice, and wage theft is rampant in the industry. The tiered wage system allows this to happen.
Moreover, sexual harassment remains widespread in the restaurant industry. As our country continues to grapple with the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault across industries, we must face up to the fact that unequal wage systems create the breeding ground for such inappropriate and predatory behaviors.
The tiered wage system has its roots in the legacy of slavery and persists because of the way society views certain occupations – particularly those disproportionately held by women, people of color, and immigrants – as less deserving of good pay and benefits than others. Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington all already pay the full minimum wage. Massachusetts should join them.
Thank you for your work on this committee, and we urge you to do right by workers and advance this.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
Letter: Sealing of erroneously denied youthful offender sealing petitions
March 5, 2024
Pamerson O. Ifill
Commissioner of Probation
One Ashburton Place # 405
Boston, MA 02108
Re: Sealing of erroneously denied youthful offender sealing petitions
Dear Commissioner:
We are writing on behalf of youth, community, legal services, and other organizations to request that you direct the Sealing Unit in your office to comply with the law and seal the youthful offender records of petitioners who were previously denied sealing due to the Sealing Unit incorrectly applying the adult sealing statute (G.L c. 276, § 100A) rather than the juvenile
sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) to youthful offender offenses. On February 14, 2024, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that the delinquency sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) “is the proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Matter of Impounded Case, No. SJC-13465, 2024 WL 590605, at 1 (2024). However, our understanding from General Counsel Nina Pomponio is that, except for the petitioner in this particular SJC case, the Sealing Unit will take no action to seal the records of individuals who were previously denied sealing of their youthful offender records based on the erroneous application of the adult sealing statute unless they file a new petition. We respectfully submit that this position is flatly inconsistent with the Court’s decision, a dereliction of the Sealing Unit’s basic responsibility as a government agency, profoundly unjust, and unnecessary based on the Sealing Unit’s practice of treating youthful offender records as sealable under the juvenile statute less than a decade ago.
This position is particularly disappointing when compared to the laudable steps your office is taking to seal adult offenses ending in a not guilty finding to implement the SJC’s recent decision in Commonwealth v. J.F.1 The number of sealing requests related to youthful offender offenses is almost certainly much smaller than the number of adult offenses that ended in a not
guilty finding which your office is now sealing.
The failure to seal these records is legally unsupportable. The SJC’s unanimous decision last week is unambiguous: “We conclude that § 100B, the juvenile delinquency statute, is proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Slip op. at 2 (emphasis supplied). Nothing in the opinion remotely suggests that its holding was limited to the individual youthful offender who brought the petition. To the contrary, its language is not restricted to the case before it. “After review of the text of §§ 100A and 100B and an analysis of legislative intent as to youthful offender adjudications as revealed in §§ 53 and 60A and more broadly, we conclude that the Legislature intended that, in the context of record sealing, youthful offender adjudications be treated more like delinquency adjudications than adult criminal adjudications.” Slip op. at 13 (emphasis supplied). Any reading other than that youthful offender records are to be treated for sealing purposes as juvenile records is baseless.
The failure to seal these records disregards the agency’s basic responsibility to do its job. The refusal to seal these records effectively deprives persons eligible for sealing of its benefits because the sealing unit misled them. Before this decision, the Sealing Unit sent letters to individuals who requested sealing of all juvenile offenses that erroneously instructed them in some instances that they could never seal their youthful offender offenses and in other instances that the longer seven-year waiting periods applied to any felony offense. Sealing is a non-discretionary duty under section 100B if a person has filed a petition to seal and the offenses are eligible for sealing. See G.L c. 276, § 100B (the commissioner “shall” seal eligible
offenses after filing of a petition). The Sealing Unit has a responsibility to correct its errors.
This inaction by the Sealing Unit is profoundly unjust. It deprives Black, Latinx and LGBT+ individuals the opportunity to mitigate the racism and collateral consequences related to the disproportionate involvement of these young adults in the juvenile court system. It also places an undue burden on the public to follow SJC slip opinions. Those with youthful offender records also are a vulnerable population because so many children in the juvenile court are from poor and low-income communities and have families that are, or were, involved with the Department of Children and Families.
This inaction is also utterly unnecessary and simply cruel. Less than a decade ago the Sealing Unit routinely (and correctly) treated youthful offender records as akin to delinquency records for sealing purposes. Attorneys from Greater Boston Legal Services and Northeast Legal Aid recall having past clients who sealed their youthful offender records under G.L c. 276, § 100B after a three-year juvenile waiting period in 2018 or 2019. Moreover, a 2013 chapter in an MCLE publication authored by your office’s then-deputy legal counsel stated that delinquency and youthful offender offenses can be sealed after the same three-year waiting period without any exclusions. 2
Thus treating youthful offender records like juvenile records for sealing purposes is well within the Sealing Unit’s ability, and the relatively short period of its erroneous application of the law suggests there are a small number of persons affected.
Individuals with juvenile court records are as deserving of second chances as adults, and as the SJC has held, less culpable for their past offenses given what is known about brain development. See Diatchenko v. Dist. Att’y for Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655, 660 (2013).
In sum, we urge you to instruct your office’s Sealing Unit to approve all the prior requests for sealing which were denied because of the misapplication of the adult sealing law to youthful offender records without requiring individuals to file new petitions. This is the only way to prevent continuing stigma and harm in the form of collateral consequences related to wrongful denial of these petitions. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Pauline Quirion, Director, CORI & Re-entry Project, Greater Boston Legal Services
Mia Alvarado, Executive Director, Roxbury Youthworks, Inc.
Virginia Benzan, Director of Racial Justice Advocacy, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
Hon. Jay Blitzman (Ret.)
Mary Bonauto, Senior Director of Civil Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders
Stacey Borden, Director, New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc.
Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director, Progressive Massachusetts
Jessica Collins, Executive Director, Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts
Professor Margaret Drew, UMass School of Law Human Rights at Home Clinic
Ryan Dominguez, Executive Director, Mass CultivatED
Daniel French, Board President, Citizens for Public Schools
Ed Gaskin, Executive Director, Greater Grove Hall Main Streets
Lauren Gibbs, End Mass Incarceration Together (EMIT)
Alyssa Golden, Senior Supervising Attorney, CORI/ Re-entry, Community Legal Aid
Rahsaan Hall, Executive Director, Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts
Sophia Hall, Deputy Litigation Director, Lawyers for Civil Rights
Phillip Kassel, Executive Director, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee
Paul Kominers and Kristen Gagalis, Anderson & Kreiger
Susan Malouin, Senior Attorney, Criminal Record Sealing Unit, Northeast Legal Aid
Julie McCormack, Director, Safety Net Project, Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School
Dave McMahon, Co-Executive Director, Dismas House
Rev. Jo Murphy, Executive Director, Unitarian Universalist Mass Action (UU Mass Action)
Kayla Hamlett Murray, Executive Director, Bethel Institute for Community Development
Ariel Nelson, Criminal Justice Debt & Reintegration Project, National Consumer Law Center
Matthew Parker, Director, Union of Minority Neighborhoods
Marlene Pollock, Coalition for Social Justice Action
Nichelle Sadler, Executive Director, UTEC Training Center for Excellence
Professor David Siegel, New England Law | Boston CORI Initiative
Leon Smith, Executive Director, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
Rev. Chris Sumner, Boston Reentry Collaborative
Jessica Tang, President, Boston Teachers Union
Lisa H. Thurau, Executive Director, Strategies for Youth, Inc.
Vincent Ware, Greater Boston Reentry Taskforce
cc: Nina Pomponio, General Counsel, Office of Commissioner of Probation
1 J.F. overruled a 1995 decision prohibiting immediate sealing of any offenses ending in not guilty dispositions. See Commonwealth v. Doe, 420 Mass. 142 (1995), overruled by Commonwealth v. J.F., 491 Mass. 824, 831, (2023).
2 See Nicola J. Pangonis, Criminal Records: Sealing and Expungement, § 18.4.4, CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE-THE
COLLATERAL EFFECTS OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT (MCLE 2013 ed.).
Testimony in Support of Ending the Use of MCAS as a Graduation Requirement
Monday, March 4, 2024
Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Committee:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
I am writing today in support of ending the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement and in favor of NO. 23-36, An Act requiring that districts certify that students have mastered the skills, competencies and knowledge of the state standards as a replacement for the MCAS graduation requirement (House, No. 4252).
Ample education policy research has shown that high-stakes standardized testing, such as the MCAS, does not measure a student’s ability to learn, capacity for effort, creativity, or perseverance, and it is not an accurate predictor of future academic or life success. Instead, test scores are highly correlated with a family’s economic status.
Massachusetts is among only eight states that mandate passage of standardized testing as a requirement to graduate high school. This requirement inaccurately and incompletely assesses students, incentivizes the narrowing of school curricula to focus on test content, and adds undue stress to students’ lives, with impacts especially felt by students with Individualized Education Plans, English Language Learners, and BIPOC students.
Massachusetts’s strong performance in education statistics is not due to a testing graduation requirement, but due to the investments put into our public schools (as well as the comparative affluence of the commonwealth vis-à-vis other states). Indeed, our education out-performance often fades away when data gets disaggregated.
Testing can and should serve a valuable diagnostic purpose—assessing progress, identifying trends, and more. But it should not be a high-stakes phenomenon. We have capable educators and policymakers who can craft a statewide competency-based graduation requirement that would enable students to be properly assessed according to the totality of their work.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
Joint Testimony in Support of An Act to Strengthen Visitation Rights of incarcerated people (S.1541) and An Act to Strengthen Family and Community Connection with Incarcerated People (H.2314)
January 23, 2024
Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
Rep. Carlos González, House Chair
Sen. Walter Timilty, Senate Chair
Joint Testimony in Support of An Act to Strengthen Visitation Rights of incarcerated people (S.1541) and An Act to Strengthen Family and Community Connection with Incarcerated People (H.2314)
Dear Chair González, Chair Timilty, and Honorable Members of the Committee:
We, the undersigned organizations, were active in the advocacy for No Cost Calls, and we applaud the Legislature’s recent work in passing that legislation. There is more work to be done on the vital issue of keeping families connected. In that spirit, we write to you today to urge you to give a favorable report to S.1541 and H.2314.
This legislation is needed because too often, people hoping to visit a friend or relative encounter barriers, disrespectful treatment, or even being turned away because of arbitrary dress codes or routine operations such as drills. Under current rules, people fortunate to have a big circle of support must choose a small number of people who can be approved to visit. This legislation will lift that cap and guarantee certain minimum standards, such as adequate visiting hours and the ability to hold one’s child during a visit. It will also allow for visits when an incarcerated person is hospitalized in critical condition, a time when everyone needs the comfort of loving attention from people they know.
Decades of research document the many benefits when people who are incarcerated are able to maintain robust relationships with their friends and family, from better mental health to easier transitions home, ultimately improving public safety and community life across Massachusetts. [1] This legislation can help to ameliorate the disproportionate impact of restrictions on Black and Latinx families, whose children are more likely than White children to have a parent who is incarcerated because of the structural racism in the criminal legal system that the Commonwealth is working to address. [2]
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we thank you for your attention to these important issues and ask that you give S.1541 and H.2314 a timely and favorable report.
Actual Justice Task Team of the Southern New England United Church of Christ
Ameelio
BIJAN (Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network)
Bristol County for Correctional Justice
Coalition for Effective Public Safety (CEPS) Steering Committee
Community Action Agency of Somerville, Inc.
Disability Policy Consortium
Drop LWOP New England
Justice 4 Housing
Massachusetts Action for Justice
Mystic Valley Action for Reproductive Justice
National Lawyers Guild-Massachusetts Chapter
New Vision Organization, Inc.
Parole Review For All
Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts
Progressive Massachusetts
Save Our Sons
SURJ Worcester
The Harriet Tubman Project
The Real Cost of Prisons Project
Unitarian Universalist Mass Action
Women & Incarceration Project, Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights, Suffolk University
[1] Leah Wang, “Research Roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families,” Prison Policy Initiative, Dec. 2021, available online at the Prison Policy Initiative website.
[2] Final Report of the Special Legislative Commission on Structural Racism in Correctional Facilities of the Commonwealth, recommendations on visitation, Dec. 2022, available online.
Testimony on the Affordable Homes Act
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $37.97 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price has passed $600,000. The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities, the local workforce can no longer afford to live there.
We are glad to see that Governor Healey recognizes the need to use a variety of tools to address our housing crisis and strongly support the comprehensive approach in the Affordable Homes Act, H.4138.
We were delighted to see the inclusion of key provisions like the following:
- Creating a five-year housing plan (which should focus not only on supply but also on affordability to different income levels)
- Enabling cities and towns to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances by simple majority—a vital tool for increasing affordable housing supply and diversifying communities
- Making it easier to use public land for housing development
- Establishing an Office of Fair Housing
- Launching a Social Housing pilot program
- Authorizing $150M for public housing decarbonization and $115 million for sustainable and climate-resilient affordable housing
- Permitting Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities and prohibiting the parking mandates and owner-occupancy requirements many municipalities use to make ADUs harder to build
- Enabling cities and towns to pass real estate transfer fees as a tool to raise money for affordable housing production and preservation
- Creating a process to enable individuals to seal eviction records
All of these are essential to a three-pronged approach to the housing crisis: protecting tenants, increasing housing production, and investing more in affordable housing. We can do all three, and this bill does.
However, we would like to outline how to make some of these provisions more accessible and effective as well as some additional measures to consider including.
Real Estate Transfer Fee Local Option
Cities and towns across Massachusetts want to take action to address the housing crisis, but they are often unable to do so without state approval. Seventeen communities have now requested the ability to use this tool, beginning with Provincetown in 2010. In the years since this initial request, circumstances have only become more dire, and more cities and towns have passed such home rule petitions or are actively considering doing so.
Our housing crisis is simply too great to leave funding and financing tools on the table. All communities must be able to use this tool that will allow us to generate additional resources for desperately needed local affordable housing.
To ensure that the transfer fee language in the bill can best meet the needs of diverse cities and towns, we urge the following:
- Setting the Right Threshold: Home sale prices vary greatly across Massachusetts, with rural communities and Gateway cities often having property values well below $1 million. They should still be able to benefit from this tool. Similarly, communities should be able to set higher thresholds if that is best for local needs and market conditions.
- Maintaining Flexibility: Communities should be able to determine whether buyers or sellers of a property bear fees and should be able to create local exemptions that best apply to their community.
- Applying Fees to the Full Transaction: Allowing municipalities to apply fees to the full amount of transactions, rather than only the amount in excess of a threshold, will allow communities with higher needs and sales prices to generate more desperately needed revenue.
Sealing Eviction Records
Having an eviction record is creating a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing. Records are created as soon as a case is filed and are publicly available forever–– regardless of the outcome. These records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color.
Regardless of whether one does anything wrong or is actually evicted, being party to an eviction or housing case is being unfairly held against tenants when they try to rent a new place. Even winning in court hurts tenants.
We are delighted to see eviction sealing language in this bill, but we would recommend several steps to ensure that tenants can best be protected:
- Ensuring that dismissals, cases that tenants win, and no-fault evictions be automatically sealed by the court as opposed to a petition process which involves extra steps for the court and all parties.
- Ensuring that in non-payment cases, tenants can seal after 14 days of paying a judgment and after 4 years if they were unable to pay because of an economic hardship or other good cause reasons.
- Ensuring that in a fault eviction, where one must wait 7 years to seal, that an intervening eviction which prevents one from sealing can only be a fault eviction and not just any type of eviction case, such as a no-fault eviction.
- Clarifying that the court has the direction to consider disability and domestic violence issues in fault cases and to adjust the sealing process accordingly.
Additional Measures to Include
We join with over 240 organizations to call for the inclusion of Access to Counsel in the Affordable Homes Act. 9 out of 10 tenants are unrepresented in eviction court, leading to higher rates of displacement and community instability. Evictions negatively affect people’s physical and mental health, and result in job loss and decreased school attainment for children. Guaranteeing legal representation to all tenants facing evictions would have a major positive impact.
We also urge you to use this opportunity to repeal the ban on rent control and enable municipalities to enact local rent control ordinances to stabilize housing costs and prevent no-cause evictions. We have been seeing a growing interest in rent control across the Commonwealth, with multiple municipalities filing home rule petitions to be able to take action. Rent control is an essential tool to combat displacement, and cities and towns should be able to pass such policies as fit their local housing situation.
Cities and towns that want to take action should be able to do so, and we urge you to include a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase local option (along the lines of S.880/H.1350), which would enable cities and towns to pass laws allowing tenants to join together to match a third-party offer when their homes are being sold.
We also urge you to use this bill to establish a statewide Foreclosure Prevention Program to require servicers to participate in pre-foreclosure mediation with homeowners to explore alternatives to foreclosures, an idea put forth in S.653 and H.942.
We also urge you to take additional steps to increase our supply of affordable housing, such as by funding and writing into statute the Small Properties State Acquisition Fund, which would provide subsidies for nonprofit acquisition of homes from the market, and by including funding for the production of affordable homeownership units that can be kept affordable in perpetuity. We also urge you to add an affordability requirement to the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) so that public subsidies to development address the need for affordable housing stock.
Lastly, A Technical Correction
We stand with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO in asking you to address a major concern about Section 35 of the bill. As written, this section would remove the application of prevailing wage laws to certain private development projects on public land. We hope that this was a drafting error and such language can be removed. The state should be using public land to both advance housing goals and create good-paying jobs, and these are not in conflict.
Thank you for all your work on this important bill and vital topic.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
Book Ban Attempts Are Happening in Massachusetts Too
Chair Lewis, Chair Garlick, and Members of the Joint Committee on Education:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
We urge you to give a favorable report to S.2528/H.4229: An Act Regarding Free Expression, filed by Senator Julian Cyr and Representative John Moran.
Over the past few years, we have seen attacks on schools and libraries across the country aimed at removing books by and about LGBTQ people, communities of color, and other marginalized groups.
Many people would like to think that Massachusetts is different, but we are not. According to the American Library Association, in 2022 there were at least 45 attempts to restrict access to books in Massachusetts school and public libraries, with 57 titles challenged. This puts us among the top 5 states with the highest book ban attempts.
Students learn best when they see themselves and the issues that impact them reflected in their education. Education should be about opening up students to the world and to themselves, and that requires a focus on inclusivity and equity. And it means not seeking to exclude parts of history or identity.
Beyond being simply a moral issue, this is a constitutional issue. The First Amendment protects the right to share ideas, including educators’ and students’ right to receive and exchange information and knowledge. These bills would ensure that selection of age-appropriate library materials is based on the professional expertise of librarians and educators, and would establish a process and standards for handling book challenges so that books are not taken off the shelves based on political or personal views.
Thank you for all your work on the hearing, and, again, we urge you to swiftly advance these important bills.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
A Clean Slate and a Second Chance Shouldn’t Be a Bureaucratic Nightmare.
Testimony for H. 1598/ S.979. & H.1493/S.998
Right now in our state, numerous people have made mistakes in their lives, served their time, and returned to society only to find they are unable to fully reintegrate into our community because, even though they are eligible to clear their records, they have been unable to do so. We tell people they have the right to a clean record after 7 (felony) or 3 (misdemeanor) years but then we make them jump through complicated hoops in order to actually receive a clean CORI. Requiring people to go through a complicated procedure in order to clear their name is unnecessary and hurts not just them but the people of our state. It is time to implement an automatic sealing process.
When our forefathers founded the United States, they embedded the concept of due process in our Constitution which states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Due process requires that our government develops fair and just procedures. Yet in Massachusetts we seem to have forgotten this fundamental right. How can our state consider instituting a system that constantly punishes someone long after they have served their sentence (and sometimes when they have never been convicted of any crime) to be a fair and just process? Yet, we use CORIs to deprive people of being able to live their lives fully all the time.
While this is unduly harsh to the people and families who suffer from the never ending punishment they receive long after having served time for a crime, the negative impact ripples through our entire society. By preventing someone from accessing work, housing, training and other vital services, it is not just tragic for that person and their family, but our society is deprived of their work and contribution to our community as well. And, worse, if they end up homeless and without income, the state often ends up paying for their care. The consequences of creating a class of unemployable people isn’t just unjust to them, it’s unfair to the rest of society as well.
Our founders understood that we need to allow everyone to have access to a fair process. They also understood that once people have served their time, we need to allow them to reintegrate into society instead of creating permanent pariahs, which is what these CORIs do. We need to return to our foundational principles – not only because it is due process for someone who has violated the law, but because it is also better for our society as a whole. Sealing these CORIs automatically will result in helping to create Justice for All.
Caroline Bays
Progressive Massachusetts