Testimony

Let’s Support Open Government with Transparency and Hybrid Meeting Access.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Collins, Chair Cabral, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.3040 / S.2024: An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings (Rep. Garlick & Sen. Lewis) and S.2064: An Act extending the public records law to the Governor and the Legislature (Sen. Rausch).

Modern Open Meeting Access for All

Since early 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legislature has suspended provisions of the Open Meeting Law to enable public bodies to carry out their responsibilities remotely, with virtual access and participation by the public. As in-person gatherings were able to safely restart, many public bodies have shifted toward hybrid meetings, enabling both in-person and remote attendance by both officials and the public.

Such hybrid meetings have been a boon to public participation. Remote access has removed obstacles facing working people, parents of young children, other caregivers, people with disabilities, people with limited transportation, among many other populations who may not be able to travel to a city or town hall or spend hours waiting for their time to speak. Yet retaining a robust in-person component recognizes the value of in-person discussion and deliberation to democracy and ensures that unreliable Internet access, common in rural and low-income urban areas, is not a barrier to participating in our democracy.

Although the Legislature recently extended the option for hybrid meetings until 2025, we should not be relying on piecemeal extensions but instead reform Open Meeting Law for twenty-first-century democracy and technology. H.3040/S.2024 provides a path for doing so, recognizing both the importance of open government and the needs cities and towns face in making that a reality.

Expanding Public Records Law

In the 2016 public record reform law, the Legislature created a commission to explore whether to expand the public records law to the Legislature and the Governor’s office, but that commission ended up yielding no formal report. Massachusetts remains the only state in the US where both the executive and legislative branch of state government claim full exemption from public records law. The same governing bodies that require cities and towns to adhere to strict Open Meeting Law rules exempt themselves from even a basic level of transparency.

As other state governments understand, making executive records like calendars, emails and texts, visitor logs, and call logs accessible is key to accountability: when such documents are fully kept secret, the public is left in the dark about whom the Governor is meeting and why, and what they are prioritizing.

The difficulty in obtaining information from the Massachusetts Legislature not only makes our state an outlier but also stifles the democratic process. The majority of states make committee votes electronically available, including states like California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon. And states like Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Oregon make committee testimony fully available to the public.

The most moneyed interests are those who benefit from closed, hierarchical systems because they will always be able to work their way behind closed doors—whereas the public and researchers are rarely so lucky. Openness helps foster social trust: open government should be viewed as part and parcel of the work of civics education that has bipartisan support in the State House.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

democracy transparency

Let’s Learn from the Pandemic and Pass the Community Immunity Act.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Dear Chair Cyr, Chair Decker, and Members of the Joint Committee on Public Health:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.2151/S.1458: An Act promoting community immunity.

If we want to be ready for the next pandemic, or even just ready for the next outbreak of a disease we thought we were decades past, we need to be strengthening and standardizing our infrastructure for immunization. We need to leave the past three years with lessons borne out in policy.

A look at our current immunization infrastructure leaves much to be desired. We currently lack full and accurate reporting on vaccination rates among young people, relying instead on voluntary surveys of schools, summer camps, colleges, and daycares. The limited data available show alarming rates of under- and unimmunized children in communities across the Commonwealth. To put that into perspective, in the current school year, more than 200 high schools, more than 200 middle schools, more than 200 elementary schools, and more than 1,600 child care centers and preschools failed to report any immunization data to state public health officials. Of the kindergarten programs that submitted data, 152 lacked herd immunity to protect against the spread of measles, and 15 lacked herd immunity to protect against the spread of polio.

We cannot fix a problem without a full and accurate read of it, and the Community Immunity Act’s data reporting requirements are a key first step. But the bill, as necessary, goes further, with targeted education and outreach about vaccine safety and efficacy and standardization and centralization of vaccination protocols. Standardized state-level policies determined by public health officials are crucial when determining exemptions if we are to make sure that medical and religious exemptions are not abused and that local superintendents are not overburdened.

We ask that you swiftly advance the Community Immunity Act out of the Public Health Committee with a favorable report. Please help to keep all of us safe and healthy, particularly people who are immunocompromised and rely on community immunity.

Thank you for your consideration and your service to the people of the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

public health vaccination

We Need More Housing, and We Need More Affordable Housing.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.1379/S.858: An Act relative to yes in my backyard and S.870: An Act to improve the housing development incentive program.

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour. [1] Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as median housing sale price in Metro Boston nears $1 million. [2] We need action, and we need to be using every tool in the toolbox to make our state more affordable for all.

If we want to see more homes, and more affordable homes, being built, then we need to reform our zoning laws. According to a recent analysis by the Eviction Lab, Massachusetts metro areas accounted for 3 of the top 10 metro areas with the most restrictive zoning laws. Such restrictive zoning laws push up costs and reinforce residential segregation: indeed, according to census data, more than 60 percent of Massachusetts’s Black population lives in just ten cities.

The MBTA Communities law, recently passed and currently being implemented by cities and towns, can make a dent, but we need more ambitious and comprehensive policy. H.1379/S.858 would require multifamily zoning and remove costly parking mandates around public transportation, encouraging dense, transit-oriented development that is good for climate and good for communities. It would also expedite the process of converting unused state-owned land into affordable housing or vacant commercial properties into multifamily housing, among many other steps.

We also need to make sure that we are building more affordable housing, and S.870 would reform the Housing Development Incentive Program to ensure that it actually does so. Currently, the HDIP program subsidizes units with shockingly high rents in hot markets in little need of the “carrot” of tax incentives. [3] The program needs to be refocused to where it can have clear benefits for surrounding communities and to design mixed-income housing that addresses the full range of housing needs in our gateway cities.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

[1] National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Massachusetts.” Accessed July 25, 2023. https://nlihc.org/oor/state/ma.

[2] Kohli, Diti. “The Typical House in Greater Boston Now Costs $900,000. Here’s What That’ll Buy You in the Rest of America.” Boston Globe. July 20, 2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/20/business/typical-house-greater-boston-now-costs-900000-heres-what-thatll-buy-you-rest-america/.

[3] https://www.masslegalservices.org/content/MLRI_HDIP_Report_12_15_22.

housing

Let’s finish the wins for No Cost Calls and the Prison Moratorium.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Chair Eldridge, Chair Day, and Members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary:

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.1795: An Act establishing a jail and prison construction moratorium and H.1796: An Act relative to telephone service for inmates in all correctional and other penal institutions in the Commonwealth.

We were very grateful last session when the Legislature passed the Prison Moratorium and No Cost Calls. Unfortunately, due to vetoes from Governor Baker, they did not become law. It is just as urgent to finish the job this session, and we urge you to advance these bills as swiftly as possible and to strengthen the No Cost Calls language in the FY 2024 budget currently under negotiation.

H1795: The Prison Moratorium

If you have not yet watched the testimony from women at MCI-Framingham during the State Administration & Regulatory Oversight hearing on the Prison Moratorium, please do. The Committee had the opportunity to hear from the most directly impacted individuals, and their testimony was powerful.

We find it deeply misguided that Massachusetts is considering spending $50 million on a new women’s prison. As of January 1, 2022, the population in MCI-Framingham stood at 179, with more than 20% held in pre-trial detention. In part as a result of sentencing reforms, Massachusetts’s incarceration rate has been falling, and the population at MCI-Framingham could be reduced further through tools such as medical parole.

Studies have repeatedly shown that society cannot incarcerate its way to safety, and the family separation of incarceration and the well-documented inhumane conditions in Massachusetts’s prisons and jails fuel the community instability that is detrimental to public safety. Think of how much we could do for expanding economic stability and opportunity with that $50 million, rather than creating a new prison. The five-year moratorium in this bill recognizes that such alternative visions of public safety exist on the ground, and they merit investment and experimentation and scaling.

H1796: No Cost Calls

Choosing between paying rent or buying groceries and being able to connect with loved ones is a decision no one should be forced to make, but Massachusetts is currently forcing this dilemma on thousands of families across the Commonwealth. Families are being charged exorbitant fees to maintain vital connections with incarcerated loved ones — a regressive tax on the most vulnerable populations of the Commonwealth.

While only 21 percent of the state’s population is Black or Latinx, more than 54 percent of the people imprisoned by the Department of Corrections are. Black and Latinx children are, respectively, nine and three times more likely than White children to have a parent in prison. As communities already struggle with the high cost of housing, health care, and transportation, no one should be forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries and maintaining contact with loved ones.

Moreover, punitive policies targeted at the families of incarcerated individuals leave us all worse off: numerous studies have shown that contact with loved ones promotes lower recidivism rates and successful reentry.

Additional Bills

We would further like to go on the record in support of the following bills:

H.1401/S.997: An Act relative to Massachusetts state sovereignty
H.1688/S.959: An Act to Prevent the Imposition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences Based on Juvenile Adjudications
H.1821/S.1045: An Act to reduce mass incarceration
H.3956: An Act creating an independent correctional oversight office to facilitate the recommendations of the Special Legislative Commission on Structural Racism in Correctional Facilities of the Commonwealth
H.1461: An Act relative to juvenile fees, fines, and restitution

Thank you for all your work in organizing this hearing.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

decarceration no cost calls

We’ve Seen the Success of Universal School Meals. Let’s Make Them Permanent.

Monday, July 17, 2023

Chair Lewis, Chair Garlick, and Members of the Joint Committee on Education:

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.603 and S.261: An Act relative to universal school meals.

Over 1 in 5 households with children in Massachusetts are struggling to put food on the table. School meals take the pressure off family budgets and allow families to put food on the table day-to-day.

Ensuring that students receive proper nutrition would reduce health care costs, improve student attendance, improve socio-emotional health, and improve student performance. It’s simple: if basic needs are not met, higher-level functions are more difficult. You can’t do well on a test if your number one though is the growl in your stomach.

We have seen the success of universal school meals already, and we are grateful for past extensions of universal school meals by the Legislature in recognition of the success. It’s time to make universal school meals permanent.

California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Vermont have heeded the data and done so already. Let’s join them.

Please give a favorable report to these bills and urge the Budget Conference Committee to include permanent universal school meals in the FY 2024 budget currently being negotiated.

Thank you for your work on this.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

education hunger

How A Zero Carbon Renovation Fund Can Accelerate Our Transition to a Green Economy

Monday, July 17, 2023

Chair Barrett and Members of the Senate Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy:

We urge you to give a favorable report to An Act establishing a zero carbon renovation fund (H.3232), filed by Rep. Andy Vargas.

This summer has been an ongoing series of warning signs of the need to take bold and comprehensive action on climate change. Earlier this month, from July 3 to July 6, we experienced the four hottest days on record globally. We have seen extreme flooding hit neighboring states, and the same for the dystopian impacts of raging wildfires in Canada.

Fortunately, we know what we need to do to mitigate climate change. According to the recent Massachusetts Clean Heat Commission Final Report, achieving our state’s climate goals will require retrofitting an additional 500,000 residential homes and roughly 300 million square feet of commercial buildings to utilize energy-efficient electric heating by 2030, with a pace of 20,000-25,000 home installations a year ahead of 2025, ramping up to 80,000 a year in the latter half of the decade, and over 100,000 residential homes per year thereafter. If we want to meet our goals, we need to start accelerating and scaling our actions.

This bill would allocate $300 million for a Zero Carbon Renovation Fund (ZCRF), administered by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, to jumpstart the market for zero carbon renovations. Such renovations would include (1) maximizing energy efficiency through building envelope upgrades, (2) electrification of building systems, (3) maximizing usage of on-site renewable energy, wherever possible, and (4) use of building retrofit materials that are low embodied carbon.

Importantly, this bill understands that our sustainability transition must be an equitable one, and that some of the oldest housing stock is that where low-income communities and communities of color live. Accordingly, the ZCRF would prioritize affordable housing, public housing, low- and moderate-income homes, schools, BIPOC- and women-owned businesses, and buildings located in Environmental Justice communities.

We’ve seen positive steps from Gov. Healey about investing in green retrofits, but we must scale up that work.

The Legislature has made an ongoing commitment to passing climate legislation. Last session, you took important steps to expand the wind energy industry and to decarbonize transportation, among other steps. Decarbonizing buildings must be at the center of new climate legislation, as buildings make up a large share of our carbon emissions.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

climate

“We cannot correct the inequities that we cannot see.”

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Dear Chairman Collins, Chairman Cabral, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group working to advance progressive policy here in the Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.3003: An Act ensuring equitable representation in the Commonwealth, filed by Rep. Tackey Chan and Sen. Jamie Eldridge.

The diversity in our Commonwealth is a source of our strength, and we are continuing to get more diverse. Our state programs, policies, and investments need to understand that diversity in its entirety, and that cannot happen without accurate data. The demographic groups in the Commonwealth are not monoliths, and without disaggregating the data, we risk erasing persistent social, economic, or educational inequalities.

All ethnic subgroups have different histories, background, needs, and challenges. Without accurate data broken down by detailed sub-ethnic groups, critical needs of some communities in areas such as language, economic status, education, and health could be left unmet. Indeed, they already are. We cannot correct the inequities that we cannot see, and we cannot see them without comprehensive data.

Government agencies that currently collect voluntary demographic data based on race or ethnicity of residents should include voluntary subgroup options for Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino, Black and African American, and White. This would highlight and uplift data representing communities including but not limited to Vietnamese, Cambodian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Haitian, Cape Verdean, Ethiopian, Somalian, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Dominicans, and Colombians. We must also recognize the diversity within the Native American, Middle Eastern, and North African communities in Massachusetts, which currently have limited recognition by the Census Bureau.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

equity

“Prisons as they are currently structured do not make us safer–they make us less safe.”

By Caroline Bays, a member of the PM Board, PM Issues Committee, and Progressive Watertown

Thank you, Mr Chairman and all of you, for hearing my testimony today on S.1979 / H.1795, an act that would establish a five-year moratorium on building new prisons.

I am usually before you as a Watertown city councilor or as a board member on behalf of Progressive Massachusetts. But today I am here on behalf of my dear friend who has spent the last 16 of his 35 years in prison.

Six years ago, I had a life-changing event when I was asked to visit this young man who was experiencing a mental health crisis. As a result, I have seen up close how dysfunctional, counter-productive, and destructive prisons are to the human beings who live within those walls.

Prisons no longer even pay lip service to rehabilitation; they are designed purely for punishment. They no longer try to help people get back on their feet and become productive members of our society. The stories I have heard–the danger, harm, cruelty, and viciousness he has experienced are destructive not just to him but to our society and who we are as a state.

Prisons as they are currently structured do not make us safer–they make us less safe. And we are harming the most vulnerable members of our society–people who need help. We are putting people who are mentally ill in prison; we are putting people who are addicted to drugs in prison; we are putting people who are experiencing dire poverty in prison.

Since when did we decide that it was morally right to treat those who need our help as criminals and deny them the support and treatment they need? Whom does it help? This is cruel to those impacted and actually decreases our safety.

I urge you to help us look for solutions that will benefit everyone–the incarcerated people and the general public.

decarceration

Massachusetts Doesn’t Need Another Women’s Prison. Not Now, Not Ever.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Chair Collins, Chair Cabral, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

We urge you to give a favorable report to An Act Establishing a Jail and Prison Construction Moratorium (H. 1795 / S.1979).

Let me be clear: there is no such thing as a humane prison. As a famous adage goes, every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does. Our prison system is not designed for rehabilitation, and it is not designed for justice. It is designed for dehumanization and punishment, and no amount of branding or around-the-edges reforms can change that fact. Our prisons and jails are good at creating cycles of trauma; they are not good at creating public safety or community well-being and stability.

With this in mind, we find it deeply misguided that Massachusetts is considering spending $50 million on a new women’s prison. As of January 1, 2022, the population in MCI-Framingham stood at 179, with more than 20% held in pre-trial detention. In part as a result of sentencing reforms, Massachusetts’s incarceration rate has been falling, which raises the question: Why expand a system that costs $235,000 per person and only causes further harm?

Studies have repeatedly shown that society cannot incarcerate its way to safety, and the family separation of incarceration and the well-documented inhumane conditions in Massachusetts’s prisons and jails fuel the community instability that is detrimental to public safety. Instead, investments in housing, health care, economic opportunity, and other social supports have been shown to be the true foundation of public safety for all. Think of how much $235,000 per person can do in creating opportunity and building up communities.

The five-year moratorium in this bill recognizes that such alternative visions of public safety exist on the ground, and they merit investment and experimentation and scaling. It provides time for the Commonwealth to do the work of listening to the most impacted communities and to center, rather than sideline, their voices in policymaking.

We were very grateful last year when this committee and this Legislature passed the Prison Moratorium in last year’s session. Unfortunately, due to former Governor Charlie Baker’s veto, it did not become law. It is just as urgent to finish the job this session, and we urge you to advance these bills as swiftly as possible.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

decarceration

The Location Shield Act Is Necessary to Protect Basic Privacy Rights

June 26, 2023

Chair Cronin, Chair Chan, and Members of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure:

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.357/S.148:An Act Protecting Reproductive Health Access, LGBTQ Lives, Religious Liberty, and Freedom of Movement by Banning the Sale of Cell Phone Location Information (“the Location Shield Act”), sponsored by Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian and Senator Cynthia S. Creem.

The dissemination, marketization, and use of technology routinely occurs faster than our ability to appropriately govern it. We can see that clearly with the case of cell phone location data. Location data, a subset of the personal data collected via cell phones, reveals information about individuals’ interests, associations, and activities—a treasure trove for corporations looking to surveil and micro-target customer behavior. We have no laws to regulate or prohibit companies from abusing or profiting from such deeply sensitive information.

A just, equitable, and democratic society depends on the preservation of a sphere of personal autonomy. We cannot have freedom of religion if people’s attendance—or lack thereof—at houses of worship is being tracked. We cannot have reproductive freedom if information about people’s trips to abortion clinics is being tracked and sold via their phone. We cannot have true freedom for the LGBTQ community if information about people’s intimate relationships is being tracked and sold. If survivors of domestic violence are not able to visit a shelter without such information being tracked and sold, or individuals in recovery are not able to seek out a substance use clinic without that information being tracked or sold, then the foundations for well-being are being eroded.

The Location Shield Act provides commonsense protections to give ordinary people robust location data privacy. These rules strike the right balance by allowing the use of data for providing useful technologies like mapping services and weather forecasts while outlawing the abusive sale of our personal device location information. By implementing these commonsense regulations, we can ensure Massachusetts residents and visitors can make use of the latest technologies without compromising their fundamental rights.

As no regulatory framework yet exists, Massachusetts has a real opportunity to be a leader, protecting the cherished privacy rights of residents of the Commonwealth while continuing our state’s track record of advancing forward-thinking policy that expands to other states and to the country as a whole.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

civil rights