Behind Closed Doors: What’s Wrong with the MA State House

By Eileen Ryan, Progressive Watertown

On Sunday, October 27th, Progressive Watertown hosted a forum, “Behind Closed Doors: What’s Wrong with the MA State House.” The impetus for the forum was the failure of key legislation supported by Progressive Massachusetts to pass in the legislative session that ended on July 31st, 2024, despite wide-spread support and 1,000s of hours of activism by constituents across the commonwealth. Close to 50 people attended, including several Watertown past and present City Councilors. I, as a Progressive Watertown Steering Committee member, had the honor of moderating.

Jonathan Hecht, who served as state representative for Watertown and Cambridge for twelve years and Watertown town councilor for four, was our first speaker. He is a member of the leadership team of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts and on the steering committee of the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature. Jon gave a brief history of voting rights in Massachusetts, which included some surprising facts: until the 1960s, MA had a rigorous and unfair literacy test required of voters, as well as a “pauper exclusion,” i.e., no one who received public assistance could vote. Jon noted that great progress has been made over the past 60 years to make it easier to vote and more citizens are voting and yet, less is being accomplished at the State House. Public hearings are held by committees, but follow-up committee meetings to discuss the fate of the proposed legislation never happen. There are currently about 750 bills sitting in the Ways and Means Committee that have been heard, vetted, and recommended but have not moved forward, with many of these bills multiple sessions or even decades old. Jon also discussed the stipend system of favoritism at the State House and how it disproportionately affects members of the House of Representatives. People who run for office with the best of intentions become frustrated that they are not able to do the job they were elected to do.

Danielle Allen, professor of political philosophy, public policy, and ethics at Harvard University and the Founder and President of Partners in Democracy, spoke next. Danielle addressed the need for constant democracy renovation at the state level and how it interacts with the looming signs of fascism on a national level. She was applauded when she shared that she had just resigned as a Washington Post columnist due to that paper’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate. Danielle also highlighted that we are in a moment of intense change technologically and economically and that we are all feeling the effects of great migrations and globalization. She deplored the decline of local news and how it affects voters’ awareness and pointed out that MA is 50th in the number of choices we have in each Massachusetts election cycle due to a high bar to get your name on the ballot.

Both speakers support a Yes on Question 1, the ballot question to enable the State Auditor to audit our state legislature, and are working out other possible ways to change the legislature, including a future ballot question to address the State House’s stipend system.

The audience asked great questions and was motivated to take action. The forum was recorded and will be ready for viewing soon.

PM in the News: Ballot Questions

Tavishi Chattopadhyay, “Question 2 proposes removal of MCAS, sparks debate over equity for students,” The Daily Free Press, October 20, 2024.

Jonathan Cohn, policy director at Progressive Massachusetts, a grassroots organization, said he supports Question 2 because he believes the MCAS narrows the curriculum in schools.

“We want our students to have a well-rounded and comprehensive kind of high school experience,” Cohn said. “Reducing that experience to a single test score does students [a] disservice.”

….

However, Cohn said the MCAS already disenfranchises some demographics, including students learning English as a second language, students with disabilities, low-income students and students of color.

Jack R. Trapanick, “With Ballot Question 1, A Test of Trust in the Massachusetts State Legislature,” Harvard Crimson, October 22, 2024.

Jonathan Cohn, policy director at Progressive Mass, pointed out that it was difficult to get any internal information about the legislature’s workings. Neither its committee votes nor hearing testimony are available to the public.

“We hold the status of being the only state where the governor’s office, the legislature, and the judiciary, all claim full exemption from the public records law,” he said.

The legislature, Cohn added, “doesn’t view information, in general, as the public good” — though he conceded that the measure was likely to face a lawsuit if it passes.

Letter: Mass. leaders needed to do more

Marianne Rutter, “Letter: Mass. leaders needed to do more,” Newburyport News, September 22, 2024.

To the Editor:
I, like many Massachusetts voters, was excited for our state to finally have a Democratic governing trifecta (Governor, Senate, and House) again. However, when seeing the productive legislative sessions in other new Democratic trifectas like Michigan or Minnesota, I can’t help feeling disappointed.

As has become the unfortunate norm on Beacon Hill, the House and Senate ran out the clock after midnight on July 31 with a long list of unfinished business, leaving unaddressed many important priorities like economic development, climate change, and bills to address the Steward crisis, as well as many common-sense bills that never advanced far enough to come up for a vote. Massachusetts citizens shouldn’t need to wait until 2025 until these important issues are addressed.

Our Legislature’s over-centralization of power, inertia, and complacency will require deep cultural change (or the shocks of election losses). Even worse is a trend not commonly on view for the average voter: there has been a striking decline in basic deliberation and accountability in the Legislature, with both chambers taking fewer than half the recorded votes they did just a few sessions ago.

In the near term, the Legislature should do something simple: come back into session and finish their work. The economic development bill has important policy components, such as keeping high school seniors out of adult prisons and strengthening our public health infrastructure (both in the Senate bill), and we shouldn’t have to wait until next year to start all over again. The same for climate legislation: Mother Nature doesn’t wait, and neither should the Legislature. We need robust legislation that centers environmental justice and includes a clear plan to transition away from gas.

Going back into session will mean the Legislature will do what it is supposed to: deliberate, legislate, and vote.

Sincerely,
Marianne Rutter

LETTER: What is wrong with our Legislature?

Lynn Nadeau, “LETTER: What is wrong with our Legislature?,” Marblehead Current, September 8, 2024.

To the editor:

What is wrong with our Massachusetts Legislature? The basic function of a legislature — passing laws — seems too difficult for them. The most recent two-year session has left important bills unpassed. This impacts every issue area that people care about: housing, criminal justice, economic development and climate.

The Legislature has egregiously failed to agree on a climate bill that would combine the omnibus bills passed in each chamber.

Over the last two years, we citizens have learned about proposed bills, attended briefings and hearings, weighed in with our state representatives and senators, and yet still, after two years, we are left right back where we started. The Legislature has failed to come to an agreement on siting and permitting of clean energy projects, on addressing plastic pollution, on plans to accelerate our transition away from gas, and on gas company profiteering by rebuilding remain stuck in limbo or outright dead.

It’s been frustrating for citizens and environmental groups to keep informed and to communicate with Representative Armini and Senator Crighton and then have the bosses in the Legislature fail to bring bills up for a vote. What is wrong with the Massachusetts Legislature? It’s well-paid, well-staffed and full-time. But its productivity and functionality are among the worst in the nation. The Senate president and House speaker control their respective chambers and dole out chairships and other sinecures. In exchange, they insist on vote secrecy, fealty and unanimous votes. The industrial lobbyists must be chortling all the way to the bank. We get to vote on a question on the November ballot to require the auditing of the Legislature by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office. Let’s vote for the Auditor’s Office to find the bloat and dysfunction!

Lynn Nadeau

PM in the News: Does the legislative clock and calendar matter on Beacon Hill?

Chris Van Buskirk, “Does the legislative clock and calendar matter on Beacon Hill?,” Boston Herald, September 22, 2024.

“With five high-profile bills still locked up in secretive talks heading this session, Progressive Massachusetts Policy Director Jonathan Cohn said the fall dealmaking proves “all of their self-imposed deadlines are fake.”

The proposals cover a wide range of issues including prescription drugs, hospital oversight, clean energy, and economic development. But Cohn argued breakthroughs on major bills could have happened earlier.

“If you push off everything to the end of the session, and then you have all the conference committees at the same time and you have people who are in multiple of them, they simply won’t get things done,” he said. “The way in which they slowly finished things after (July 31) speaks to how it would have been a perfectly functional way to operate if they just started everything early.””

Op-Ed: “In narrow Decker win, a pointed message to her and Legislature”

Jonathan Cohn, “In narrow Decker win, a pointed message to her and Legislature,” CommonWealth Beacon, September 22, 2024.

When it comes to elections, history is told by the winners. Months of intense campaigning, voter engagement, policy and strategy debate, and more fall out of the picture, and we just look at the ending check mark of victory, no matter how close or how commanding a margin. 

But that view can often conceal as much as it reveals, and the recent Democratic primary for state representative in the 25th Middlesex District in Cambridge, pitting longtime incumbent Marjorie Decker against challenger Evan MacKay, is a perfect example. 

One can look at the final, certified result and say that — yet again — incumbency rules in Massachusetts. One can even spin it as a resounding affirmation of the incumbent candidate’s theory of change – work your way into leadership, close ranks, enforce State House building norms and power structures, and then use that to cultivate the good will to pass some bills while closing the opportunities for others. 

But with Decker emerging from a recount as the victor by just 41 votes, one can also look at the race another way, since if a mere 21 voters changed their minds, we would be telling an entirely different story.  

Viewed in such a way, another narrative takes hold. Rep. Decker had the support of US Sen Ed Markey, Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll, US House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and a majority of the Cambridge City Council. She can lay claim to 12 years in the Legislature and 14 on the Cambridge City Council, with notable accomplishments. She spent almost four times as much money as her challenger, and had many more organizational endorsements. In spite of all that, her victory margin out of the roughly 7,000 votes cast amounted to just over 0.5 percent.  

MacKay, a former Harvard Graduate Student Union president and current teaching fellow, had a clear message: Too much of the State House’s business is being done behind closed doors, controlled by too few people, and we are suffering because of it. That toll includes the policies not passed to address the housing crisis, the climate crisis, widening inequality, and much more. Corporate interests will always be able to find their way into a closed door in a way that regular people never can.  

Voters expect more from their elected officials. They expect them to express the same views in public that they do in private. They expect them to be transparent, accessible, and responsive, rather than shielding information that would be publicly available in other states. And they expect that, here in Massachusetts, we should be using our second-largest-in-the-country Democratic supermajority of any legislature to deliver on the wide array of policies that could improve the everyday lives of the people of the Commonwealth.  

This legislative session saw fewer bills and fewer votes than any in recent history. I have sometimes described the avoidance of votes by the Massachusetts House and Senate on issues with even the slightest bit of contention as an incumbent protection racket, but that paints only a partial picture. The incumbent protection racket that exists in both chambers is only designed to help the most conservative members, those who do not want to show their constituents just how out of step they are. It does not help anyone else.  

Progressives like Rep. Decker will be good team players for House leadership by voting against — and speaking on the floor against — measures like making committee votes publicly available, even though they know that their districts would disagree. They will be good team players and vote for regressive tax packages that their districts would be unhappy with. And they will sell watered-down bills as monumental progress, knowing, again, that their districts would want more but that their conservative colleagues want even less.  

As an incumbent protection racket for conservative legislators, this functions smoothly.  

But how about for progressives? This same system actually does them a grave disservice.

I know from putting together a legislative scorecard each year and actively following the behind-the-scenes moves of the Legislature that the vast number of representatives who will vote lockstep with the Speaker actually have quite a bit of ideological diversity as individuals. But because the House doesn’t allow, or at least actively discourages, taking recorded votes, there is no way for progressives to show that they are actually fighting for what their constituents care about. This flattening benefits conservatives; it does not benefit progressives.  

Progressives are also the ones who shoulder the burden of legislative inertia. Rather than pass the type of ambitious housing and climate policies that would have helped bolster Decker in a hard-fought race, House leadership protected conservative members and special interests and hung her out to dry, just like they did to former representative Jeffrey Sanchez, a Jamaica Plain lawmaker who chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, but was sent packing six years ago by voters in his district. 

Many legislators have been grumbling about the chaotic and unproductive end to the formal legislative session back in July, when so many bills were left on the table. The status quo of the Massachusetts State House has not been working for the people of the Commonwealth, but it isn’t working for rank-and-file legislators either.

If legislators want to see a different outcome — and perhaps enjoy a more relaxing summer two years from now when they face reelection — it’s time to start thinking and acting differently. 

Jonathan Cohn is policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. The group endorsed MacKay in this month’s Democratic primary.

Letter: “Legislature is dominated by one party. Sherborn woman wonders why it can’t pass bills”

Jennifer Debin, “Letter: Legislature is dominated by one party. Sherborn woman wonders why it can’t pass bills,” MetroWest Daily News, September 14, 2024.

To the Editor:

The lack of action by our elected representatives in the Massachusetts Legislature is frustrating and unacceptable.

We have a Democrat for governor, as well as Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, yet so very little happened this session and that seems to be the pattern. When compared to a state like Minnesota that also has a Democratic trifecta, our record of passing bills is abysmal.

It is ridiculous that most will be re-elected again and again in spite of very few accomplishments. At the very least, they need to be continually called out for their inaction on behalf of Massachusetts residents and hopefully then be faced with primary challengers.

When I was a School Committee member, I ran in a contested race. We had a well attended debate. This is healthy and good for democracy. My School Committee position was uncompensated; in fact, I often had to pay a baby sitter in order to attend meetings.

I took my position extremely seriously, and gave it my all to serve on behalf of our townspeople. I feel that too many legislators are forgetting why they are there. They are our voices and they have failed to pass highly popular and pressing bills that affect us all, such as the dire climate bill, not to mention the numerous potential policies that are quietly “sent to study.”

We need and deserve true leaders who will take action and not merely play act their roles. 

Jennifer Debin

Sherborn

2024 Ballot Initiative Forum: Recording

You can find a copy of the video here.

We’d love to know how you want to get involved this fall, so please also take a moment to fill out this survey.

Question 1: https://www.dianaforma.com/ballot

Question 2: https://www.yesonquestion2ma.com/

Question 3: https://www.voteyeson3mass.com/

Question 4: https://maformentalhealth.org

Question 5: https://www.fairwageplustipsma.com/

Question 6 (a non-binding advisory question in select state rep districts): https://masscare.org/

Letter: How our state Legislature has failed us

Norman Daoust, “How our state Legislature has failed us,” Cambridge Day, September 3, 2024.

How has our state Legislature failed us? Let us count the ways.

Failed to include the local option transfer fee, the tenant opportunity-to-buy policy and a rent control local option in the Affordable Homes Act.

Failed to pass an economic development package, clean-energy siting bill and halt on gas infrastructure expansion; a bill to allow supervised drug-consumption sites; and a ban on the sale of cellphone location data.

Failed to include voter access reform to delink a municipal census from voter registration in the state budget (even though it passed in the Senate).

Never made it out of committee: same-day voter registration; Make Polluters Pay legislation; and Medicare for All in Massachusetts.

Failed to pass bills out of conference committee so they could be voted on by the entire body: hospital oversight (given the Steward hospital fiasco, how could they fail to bring this to a vote?); a climate bill; drug pricing bill; a Raise-the-Age juvenile for possession of a firearm; and a Plastics Reduction Act.

Stuck in Ways and Means are a moratorium on construction of prisons and jails and expanding the public-records law called the Sunlight Act to cover the governor and state Legislature.

It’s guaranteed that other bills you care about also were never passed.

By effectively taking the final five months of the legislative session off, the likelihood of additional bills passing is minimized.

If you believe our state Legislature has failed you, contact the speaker of the house and president of the Senate as well as your state representative and senator and let them know the bills you want passed.

Norman Daoust, Raymond Street, Cambridge

Letter: Missed Opportunities: Why the Legislature Should Reconvene

Jason Brown, “Missed Opportunities: Why the Legislature Should Reconvene,” West Roxbury Bulletin, August 22, 2024.

To the Editor:

Like many Commonwealth voters, I was hopeful the new Democratic trifecta would lead to significant legislative progress this year. However, when comparing the General Court’s legislative session to the productive ones in Michigan and Minnesota, it’s hard not to feel disappointed.

The Legislature struggled to pass bills that had broad support in the last session. The SAPHE 2.0 bill, which would strengthen public health infrastructure, passed both chambers unanimously in 2022 before being vetoed by our former Republican governor. Similarly, a moratorium on new prison and jail construction had wide support, but met a similar veto. It would have made sense for the Legislature to prioritize these bills at the start of this session. Instead, the prison moratorium has yet to see a vote, and SAPHE 2.0 remains stuck in conference committee, with clear support only from the Senate.

The Legislature’s complacency and over-centralization of power require deep cultural change. But in the near term, the General Court should do something simple: reconvene and finish their work. The economic development bill and robust climate legislation, especially with environmental justice at their core, can’t wait. The environment won’t wait, and neither should the Legislature.