Testimony

“Our commonwealth…took away the right to vote from a category of people who were formerly enfranchised.”

April 6, 2023

Chair Keenan, Chair Ryan, and Members of the Joint Committee on Election Laws:

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.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.26 and S.8: Proposal for a legislative amendment to the Constitution relative to voting rights.

I would like to begin with a bit of history. Felony disenfranchisement in Massachusetts is a recent phenomenon. Indeed, although we often think of the history of voting rights in the US as one of ever-forward motion, Massachusetts stands as an outlier. In the late 1990s, after incarcerated individuals in MCI-Norfolk started organizing for better conditions, Republican Governor Bill Cellucci and the MA Legislature responded with retaliation: a multi-step process of disenfranchisement. In 2000, Massachusetts voters approved a constitutional amendment to prohibit people incarcerated for felonies in state prison from voting in state elections; the subsequent year, Cellucci signed a law to extend this prohibition to federal and municipal elections. Our commonwealth did something rare in recent history: it took away the right to vote from a category of people who were formerly enfranchised.

In 2022, the Massachusetts Legislature took an important step forward when passing the VOTES Act by including language creating protections for jail-based voting for those who still maintain the right to vote, but we must build on that momentum by ending remaining disenfranchisement, as these bills would.

Felony disenfranchisement compounds the systemic racism of the criminal legal system. Approximately 8,000 residents of the Commonwealth are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, more than 50% of them are Black or Latinx.

Felony disenfranchisement laws disenfranchise more voters than those directly affected. Whenever someone loses the right to vote even temporarily, they are likely to mistakenly think that they have lost it permanently. We must eliminate archaic laws that create voter suppression and voter confusion.

Felony disenfranchisement exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in our prisons and jails. Even Trump’s DOJ pointed out that Massachusetts correctional facilities are engaging in torture, and a lack of political voice puts individuals at risk for abuse.

Moreover, studies have often shown that fostering ties to the outside world is central to reducing recidivism. Civic engagement provides just that, and we should welcome it.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

decarceration elections

“We voted to have those who have a little more to pay their fair share.”

Testimony from Keith Bernard before the Joint Committee on Revenue on Tuesday, March 28

Honorable chairs and members of the committee,

My name is Keith Bernard from Malden and for transparency, while I am an elected member of the Malden School Committee, I am not representing them and I am testifying on behalf of Mystic Valley Progressives, a chapter of Progressive Mass. I am also testifying because I am father and as of a month ago a grandfather. Our group supports favorable reporting of S.1784 and H.2960, a fairer and less costly proposal to reform the estate tax threshold without giving an enormous tax break to multi-million-dollar estates.

In November, I voted for the Fair Share Amendment because I believe that our public school systems as well as our transportation network had been underfunded for a long time. I saw my neighbors, and the children in my neighborhood not getting the services they needed to thrive. Educational professionals could not afford to work at a job that many of them loved. I saw my city having to make difficult choices to make our budgets work and I know that Malden is not the only municipality that faces these hard decisions.

You may know Malden, because of our recent teacher strike. I was happy to vote to approve raises for our teachers and especially our educational professionals. I have neighbors that work for the Malden Public School but were not being paid a living wage, and we fixed that. I do not want to look them in the face when we lose other programs that the working families of Malden because we now have a revenue gap.

We voted to have those who have a little more to pay their fair share. We asked for revenue to be generated in a fair manner so we could invest in our children and our workers. We need well-funded schools, and we need trains and buses that run on time and and regularly. However, I and our members do not support giving multimillion dollar estates a six-figure tax cut. As you consider reforms to the estate tax, please respect the will of the many who voted Yes on 1, and do not give the largest estates a tax break. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing S.1784 and H.2960 be reported out favorably.

Fair Share revenue

Fair Share was a Transformative Win. Let’s Protect It.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Chair Moran, Chair Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue,

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide, multi-issue grassroots advocacy organization with chapters across the commonwealth committed to fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic Massachusetts.

Because of our commitment to a vision of shared prosperity, we have been involved with the Fair Share Amendment campaign from the start, and last year, we knocked over 100,000 doors for Question 1 — not to mention the work of phone banking, text-banking, tabling at community events, and talking with friends and neighbors. Everyday people around the commonwealth got involved with the campaign because they realized the need for a fairer code and the transformative potential of the investments we could make with new revenue.

They understood that more revenue could mean greater reinvestment in schools to ensure that buildings are safe, green, and healthy; to address the social and emotional needs of students coming out of a pandemic; to ensure that underpaid professionals get the compensation they deserve; and to deliver on the promise of the Student Opportunity Act. They understood that more revenue could mean changing course from our decades-long disinvestment from public higher education and instead guaranteeing better pay for faculty and staff and ensuring that students can graduate without debt. They understood that more revenue could mean finally fixing the MBTA so that the buses and trains run frequently, reliably, and safely — as well as to more places and at lower cost. They understood that more revenue could mean fixing our roads so that they are no longer ridden with potholes and upgrading structurally deficient bridges that plague so many communities.

The voters understood too, delivering a win for Question 1 in November. Massachusetts voters were clear: make sure the rich pay their fair share so that we can invest in our education and infrastructure.

Elected officials said that the barrier to doing important things was money, so we went out and made sure to organize and mobilize to get that revenue. And the Governor’s proposal would give it right back.

Regressive tax cuts account for almost $400 million of Gov. Healey’s tax proposal. The proposed cut to the short-term capital gains tax would be bad for the economy, by encouraging more speculative activities such as rapid stock trading and “flipping” real estate, and it would be deeply regressive, as the highest-income 1 percent of households would receive almost eighty percent of the tax cut at an average of over $7,000 apiece.

The proposed cut to the estate tax is also deeply regressive. We can acknowledge that “cliffs,” as exists in the estate tax, are not good policy designs, but that should not lead to excluding estates up to $3 million and providing a $182,000 tax cut to estates even larger than that. There is no world in which a $10 million estate needs an extra $182,000. If the Legislature would like to update the estate tax, it should heed proposals like H.2960/S.1784: An Act relative to estate tax reform, which would only lift the exemption threshold to $2 million and would provide no tax breaks to larger estates. Such a proposal, in contrast to the Governor’s, would preserve most of the revenue-generation, inequality-reduction, and fairness benefits of the estate tax, while eliminating the current cliff effect.

Other parts of the Governor’s tax proposal are, fortunately, not so regressive, but they still do little to address the cost of living in Massachusetts. A child tax credit providing $600 per child under 13 would not even cover two weeks of child care. An expanded renters deduction would lead to merely $50 more for renters, if they even qualify. Tax credits are an inefficient way to meet the very real needs of caregivers and renters, and the Legislature must act swiftly to pass legislation to address the high cost of child care and the impact of escalating rents. If the Legislature would like to advance the Governor’s tax credits, they should be paid for with progressive, revenue-raising changes to the tax code, so that they do not drain down payments on transformative policy that actually addresses the high cost of living.

Massachusetts needs robust state revenue if we want to take action to address the child care affordability crisis, the housing affordability crisis, growing student and medical debt, the climate crisis, and an often-malfunctioning transit system. Moreover, as the federal government seems headed for debt-ceiling brinkmanship, Republican-led austerity, and the sunset of COVID-era aid, Massachusetts will likely see greater need for state revenue to fill in the gaps. Now is not the time for permanent, regressive tax-cutting.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Fair Share revenue

Strengthening Reproductive Rights Here at Home

July 21, 2022

Chair Michlewitz and Vice Chair Friedman,

Thank you for taking swift action in support of reproductive justice after the Supreme Court’s recent shameful and misguided ruling in Dobbs. When rights are under attack on the national level, it is important for Massachusetts to send a clear message that we will not only protect but also strengthen rights here at home—as well as serve as a model to other states.

Progressive Massachusetts would like to emphasize the importance of several provisions in S.3003 and H.4954.

Provider Protections: S.3003 and H.4954 will both establish critical protections for those in Massachusetts who provide or help someone access reproductive health care and gender-affirming care. These provisions state unequivocally that access to reproductive health care and gender-affirming care are rights secured by the constitution and laws of the Commonwealth. This language takes steps to protect defendants from abusive litigation based on such care, ensures that officials in the Commonwealth will not voluntarily facilitate investigations or lawsuits into such care, and offers protections to providers who may face impacts on their professional license or medical malpractice insurance premiums as repercussions of abusive litigation.

Medication Abortion: Thousands of college students in Massachusetts currently live in “access deserts” where the nearest abortion provider is hours away via public transit, if accessible at all. Language adopted by an amendment from Sen. Lewis to S.3003 will ensure that public college students can access medication abortion in the early stage of pregnancy at the locations where they already receive other reproductive health care services—at their campus health center. We wouldn’t accept having to travel over four hours for a dentist appointment. Abortion care shouldn’t be any different.

Delivering on the Promise of the ROE Act: We must do everything we can to ensure pregnant patients can access compassionate care in our Commonwealth. In a post-Roe reality, it is simply not safe for a patient at any stage of pregnancy to have to travel out of state to access an abortion provider. To this end, we urge you to realize the full intent of the ROE Act by clarifying the statutory framework for abortion care after 24 weeks to ensure no one is forced to travel out of state for care.

Thank you for your work on this important issue.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

reproductive rights

Letter to the Budget Conference Committee on No Cost Calls

Monday, July 27, 2022

Dear Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and members of the Committee:

I am writing on behalf of Progressive Massachusetts to thank you for your support of legislation that would keep families connected by eliminating the cost of phone calls for those who are incarcerated and for their loved ones. As you and the other members of the Conference Committee consider the FY23 budget reports, we urge you to consider that, to truly keep families connected, calls should be free, fully funded, and guaranteed.

We are proud to be among the 70 organizations, including legal service providers, public defenders, social workers, bar associations, and directly-affected people, that have advocated for No Cost Calls. We recognize that criminal legal reform is a racial justice issue and that mass incarceration disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities and people living in poverty. We understand that families often have to choose between staying connected to an incarcerated loved one and paying for necessities like rent or food—or risk going into debt.

We urge you to include the following essential pieces in the ultimate budget language:

Guaranteed Telephone Access

Currently, Massachusetts jails and prisons do not restrict how many minutes incarcerated people can talk to their loved ones each day. Calls are only limited by the cost. The Legislature must ensure that this current level of contact does not decrease once calls are free. Both the House and the Senate have approved language that aims to avoid new restrictions on access to phone calls. We urge you to bar any new caps on calls in order to maintain continuity and to guarantee at least 120 minutes per person per day.

Funding of Communication Services

We strongly support the House language creating a $20M Trust Fund dedicated to communication services. Upon proof of expenditures, the Fund would reimburse prisons and jails for their spending on communication services. That Trust Fund should be in the final FY23 budget, to take effect this year.

Prohibition on Commissions

Both the House and Senate budgets address site commissions, i.e., payments made by phone companies to jails and prisons, taken from revenue paid by consumers. While some Sheriffs have said they need this money to provide programs, the House and Senate have agreed that low-income telephone consumers should not pay for programs in the jails and prisons. Instead, the Sheriffs should seek such funding through their budget requests, with full transparency and accountability, and the Legislature should ban site commissions.

Start Date

Families have shouldered the financial hardship of paying the high costs of maintaining contact with their incarcerated loved ones for too long. We respectfully request that you include fully funded, guaranteed No Cost Calls in the final FY23 budget, to take effect this year.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director Progressive Massachusetts

decarceration

Gig Companies’ Lies…As Easy as A, B, C

Dear Chair Feeney, Chair Murphy, and Members of the Joint Committee on Financial Services,

Thank you for holding today’s hearing. My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a Massachusetts that is more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.

Progressive Massachusetts is opposed to Big Tech’s anti-worker, anti-consumer Ballot Initiative (H.4375/H.4376), An Act defining and regulating the contract-based relationship between network companies and app-based drivers.

Massachusetts has very clear standards for determining independent contractor standards (the “ABC test”), and gig economy companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart 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, Lyft, DoorDash, or Instacart 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.

These ballot questions would deny app-based gig workers a living wage, benefits, legal rights, and anti-discrimination protections. They also effectively take away consumers’ and the public’s right to take legal action against the companies in the event of an accident, and will disincentivize the companies from doing everything they can to ensure that riders are safe when they avail these services.

These companies spent over $200 million to pass a similar ballot question in California called Proposition 22 with devastating impacts for workers and communities.

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

workers rights

PILOT Reform: Our Wealthy Institutions Need to be Better Neighbors

Friday, January 28, 2022

Chairman Hinds, Chairman Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue:

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 a favorable report for H.3080 and S.1874: An Act relative to payments in lieu of taxation by organizations exempt from the property tax (Rep. Uyterhoeven & Sen. Gomez).

Massachusetts is lucky to be home to many world-class hospitals and universities. But these large institutions, despite often operating indistinguishably from for-profit institutions, do not have to pay taxes. Given their large footprint, that is a fiscal drain for many communities across the Commonwealth, especially as communities are looking to find much-needed funds for investments in schools, housing, and infrastructure.

This bill would address this discrepancy by requiring large hospitals and universities to pay 25% of commercial property taxes to municipalities, based on the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement in Boston. Under this bill, municipalities could opt in to requiring a mandatory PILOT rather than having to engage in drawn-out negotiations or chasing down institutions one by one.

Why 25%? This number reflects the costs posed by such large institutions to municipal services like police, fire departments, and departments of public works. It is still a good deal for the institutions, who are still paying far less in property taxes than an individual would have to pay. And, by applying only to institutions with property worth over $15 million, the bill would avoid risking any adverse impact on smaller institutions.

We need to be empowering municipalities to take action to address the many crises before us, but they need the funds to do so. And when they have wealthy institutional neighbors, they shouldn’t be forced to be stuck in struggling fiscal straits.

Moreover, municipalities across the Commonwealth, as well as the state government itself, would benefit from a clearer understanding of how much money gets lost through such tax exemptions each year. We thus also urge a favorable report for H.3802 An Act establishing a study to examine lost municipal real estate tax revenue (Rep. Robinson), which would provide a clearer assessment of just what that lost revenue is.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

revenue

How MA Can Be a “HERO” for Climate and Affordable Housing

Friday, January 21, 2022

Chairman Hinds, Chairman Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue:

We urge a favorable report for H.2890 and S.1853: An Act providing for climate change adaptation infrastructure and affordable housing investments in the Commonwealth, jointly known as the HERO bill.

The motto for Progressive Mass is “We all do better when we all do better.” If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are all connected and that we must trust and rely on each other to create the robust, healthy state we all want to live in.

As income inequality skyrockets and housing prices rapidly escalate, exacerbating the housing stability faced by countless families, Massachusetts must take action to ensure that we can still be a place where people can afford to live and thrive at any stage of life. Likewise, as the consequences of climate change become increasingly apparent, we must similarly take bold action to enable us to meet and exceed existing climate goals. But both of these crises cannot be addressed without raising the funds to address these issues.

Raising the deeds excise tax to be more in line with the rest of New England is an easy way to raise some of this much-needed revenue. We cannot afford to pass up this opportunity to add $150,000,000 to our Global Warming Solution Trust Fund to allocate towards climate mitigation and climate adaptation measures and another $150,000,000 towards Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and the Housing Preservation and Stabilization Fund (HPSF).

The HERO Coalition has been an impressive effort uniting housing advocates and climate advocates around shared goals. Indeed, the goals of affordable housing and climate justice are deeply linked, as greening our housing stock is essential to climate mitigation and combating climate change is essential to community stability amidst extreme weather. This bill provides a great opportunity to take action, with long-term positive benefits that ripple across the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

climate housing

Request that A&F Revise Upwards Goals on Minority and Women’s Hiring on Construction

Progressive Mass signed on to this letter organized by the Coalition for Equal Access to Jobs / Massachusetts Communities Action Network.

January 13, 2021
Michael Heffernan
Secretary of Administration and Finance
State House
Boston, MA 02133
Dear Secretary Heffernan,

The last time the Executive Office of Administration and Finance set goals on hiring of people of color and women on construction jobs was on March 18, 2009. At that time it was set for 15.3% for minorities and 6.9% for women. This was in Administrative Bulletin #14 issued by A&F at www.mass.gov/administrative-bulletin/equal-opportunity-and-non-discrimination-on-state-and-state-assisted-construction-contracts-af-14

Today more than 11 years later, 2020 census data for our state shows it’s 67.6% White, 12.6% Hispanic, 7.2 % Asian, just under 7% Black and 4.7% identifying with two or more groups. SO WE NOW HAVE DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE OF COLOR THAN WHEN A&F LAST SET THESE FIGURES IN 2009.

Additionally, women comprise over 50% of the workforce but less than 4% of building trades workers in Massachusetts. Two recent disparity studies in Springfield and Worcester suggest that at least 9% of women workers have skills transferable to the construction trades. And, we have now seen a rise of women apprentices in union building trades programs to over 10%. We are calling on you to issue a new Administrative Bulletin increasing hiring goals for people of color and women and we would like to meet with you on this issue.

Massachusetts will soon be getting an estimated over $9.3 billion in funds under the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure bill. So let’s get a new Administrative Bulletin so with the increase in jobs from this new funding that will benefit all, so people of color and women could get a fair share of the jobs, if you make and enforce new goals.

We as community groups, unions, civil rights, and social service agencies, local governments call on you to issue a new updated Administrative Bulletin on Equal Opportunity and Non-discrimination on State and State-Assisted Construction Contracts and meet with us on this.

You can reach us at (617) 470-2912, LewFinfer@gmail.com

Sincerely,
NAACP, New England Conference
Greater Boston Building Trades Unions
Building Pathways
La Collaborativa (Chelsea)
Massachusetts Association of CDC’s
Project Right (Boston)
Essex County Community Organization
Pioneer Valley Project (Springfield)
Progressive Resistance Boston
Worcester Interfaith
I Have A Future (Boston)
MA Communities Action Network
YouthBuild Boston
Madison Park Development Corporation
The Neighborhood Developers
350 Mass
Progressive Massachusetts
Action for Equity

cc Jamey Tesler, Secretary of Transportation
James Cowdell, Deputy Chief of Staff at A&F
Gary Blank, Chief Adminstrative Officer, DOT

equity