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
