PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn penned an editorial in CommonWealth about the new Senate Ways & Means chair:
OVER THE PAST few legislative sessions, progressives have looked to the Massachusetts Senate as a beacon of progressive policymaking. Across a range of issues, the Senate has been willing to pass bold and expansive bills that end up watered down—or dead on arrival—in the more conservative, top-down House.
However, Senate President Karen Spilka’s choice of Sen. Michael Rodrigues to chair the powerful Senate Ways & Means Committee should give progressives everywhere pause. Although the Westport Democrat describes himself as part of the “boring middle,” much of Rodrigues’s record locates him squarely on the right.
PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn and Act on Mass co-founder Matt Miller penned an editorial for CommonWealth calling on progressive state reps to stand for more roll call votes:
THERE WAS SOMETHING different about the start of this legislative session in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It wasn’t the composition: Yes, Democrats did manage to flip two seats, but a slightly more overwhelming super-majority isn’t much of a sea change.
It was that Democrats were actually willing to stand up and demand a recorded vote on something.
On January 30, a handful of Democrats committed to demand recorded votes on a series of transparency amendments from Rep. Jon Hecht of Watertown. The content of the amendments would have been noncontroversial to the average voter—giving representatives more time to read bills and amendments, publishing the testimony that interest groups submit on bills, and posting the roll call votes taken behind closed doors in committees online. Simple, right?
Representatives spoke both in favor and against each amendment, and they took a roll call vote. Although the amendments unfortunately went down, the public process is how most people imagine that democracy works: Legislators debate vigorously and then go on record for what they believe in.
The #MeToo movement brought national attention to how pervasive sexual assault and sexual harassment are across institutions and industries, but anyone who ever worked or advocated in the Massachusetts State House already knew.
As State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (D-Northampton) said in a recent article, “Sexual harassment occurs in the State House every single day.”
And that needs to change.
Massachusetts residents deserve a truly representational government, with legislative members and staff representing the full diversity of the Commonwealth. For that to happen, everyone must feel safe and respected at work.
Just as the government should be a model employer, the State House should be a model workplace, setting an example in terms of both rules and norms.
A first step? Passing An Act promoting equality and respect in the legislature (S.1898 / H.3572), a bill from Rep. Sabadosa and Sen. Becca Rausch which would create an independent commission to investigate and report on complaints of workplace and sexual harassment in the Massachusetts Legislature.
Find your legislator’s email here, and let them know that it’s time to start taking workplace harassment seriously.
Sabadosa and Rausch also filed a resolution in support of their bill at the Massachusetts Democratic Party convention. If you’re headed to Springfield, make sure to vote yes.
A toxic culture won’t change on its own, but you can help change it.
If we actually had mandatory sex ed in MA, everyone would know that withdrawal is not effective. As it stands, it remains one of the most popular strategies in the Massachusetts Legislature. Legislators file amendments only to withdraw them without discussion or debate.
If you were paying attention to the Senate budget debate last week or the House budget debate last month (You probably weren’t! There’s a lot going on!), then you may have noticed such a lack of robust debate or contentious votes.
Of the 36 recorded votes taken by the State Senate, 25 were unanimous. Most others just had one or two dissenting votes. Hardly controversial stuff.
Of the 15 recorded votes taken by the House, 10 were unanimous, and another 3 just had one dissenting vote.
Here at Progressive Massachusetts, we’re big fans of recorded votes. Ironically, such unanimity is a reason why a recorded vote could actually not be necessary in a given circumstance. If everyone agrees on a few extra thousand dollars for a good program, a recorded vote is just fodder for a press release, rather than a basis for real accountability.
Several senators spoke on the Senate floor about the need for new revenue (due credit to Senators Jamie Eldridge, Sonia Chang-Diaz, Jo Comerford, and Becca Rausch), but there were no votes about raising additional revenue. And in the House, there was even less discussion–and again no votes.
If a budget is a statement of values, why is there so little debate?
One of the reasons is that most of the amendments that would truly raise moral issues about the budget (the lack of revenue, insufficient funding in key programs, etc.) get withdrawn, or, in the House side, they get “consolidated” and hollowed out of all content (more on the “consolidation” process another day).
This issue isn’t unique to the budget, either. When the Legislature takes up major bills, many of the amendments get withdrawn without discussion or debate (let alone vote).
Just check out the four examples from last session below.
So why would a legislator withdraw an amendment?
There are three common reasons:
Pressure from colleagues
Pressure from Leadership
Fear of a bad message if an amendment were to fail
(1) and (2) both stem from the same root: the fact that most legislators don’t want to be put on record. Having recorded votes means that they have to take a side on sometimes controversial issues, and that means that at least some of their constituents will be unhappy. Maybe they are more progressive than their district and afraid of getting calls from rabid right-wingers. Much more likely they are much more conservative than their district and don’t want constituents contented with an image of Massachusetts’s liberalism to know. And they will press upon an amendment’s filers to make sure that no vote happens.
Regarding (2), Leadership can often promise a real debate later or a bit of extra funding for a favored program now (or threaten loss of key perks) to get a legislator to withdraw an amendment. For decades, legislators have been withdrawing righteous amendments while promises from leadership have gone unfulfilled. And yet, progressive legislators keep falling for the same trick.
(2) and (3) also stem from a misunderstanding of how power works. Too many legislators see power only from the lens of the Golden Dome. But any legislator’s power ultimately comes from their constituents. And their constituents want to see them be champions. Their constituents want well-funded schools, well-funded public transit, clean water and air, sound investments in all kinds of infrastructure, etc., etc. Their constituents probably think Massachusetts is a liberal bastion, and so we should make it just that. If legislators take hard votes, then their constituents will have their backs. And if a vote for popular progressive policy were to fail, their constituents aren’t going to turn their backs on the policy; they will know which legislators to target and to pressure and know how to organize for the next fight. Because, to be short, that’s how politics works.
PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan Cohn penned an editorial for CommonWealth on the need for the MA Legislature to be bolder in its policy ambitions, especially around taxes and housing. Read the full piece here and an excerpt below:
LAST SESSION, one of the only significant bills that Massachusetts legislators passed before budget season was sweeping legislation to raise their own pay. By contrast, this year, the Legislature has already passed important bills to lift a retrograde welfare cap and ban the homophobic and abusive practice of conversion therapy.
This could be a sign that the Legislature is interested in being more proactive this session, and that would be a welcome change indeed.
There are plenty of issues that the Legislature can—and should—tackle this session, all of which require bold and comprehensive policy solutions and all of which face the same risk: that the Legislature lets the business lobby set the limits of its ambitions.
“Especially since out of the White House we’re not going to see a lot of great policy for the next few years, it’s up to the states to show a lot of policy leadership,” said Jonathan Cohn, the chair of the organization’s issues committee, before attendees broke out to attend meetings with individual legislators.
“We want the the State House in general to understand that there is a progressive population out there that is really strongly in favor of all these progressive issues,” Watertown Selectwoman Caroline Bays said Wednesday while at the State House for the annual lobby day organized by liberal advocates Progressive Massachusetts. Over a hundred dedicated lefties met with lawmakers to try to push moderate Democrats to dive in on social and economic issues Beacon Hill is reluctant to take up.
But those issues, be it more funding for district schools, enhanced health care for the poor, or expanded service and repairs for the MBTA, need to be paid for in order to balance the state’s budget.
For progressives like Bays, that answer is easy. Tax more, preferably the well-off.
“Today when I was lobbying my state my state rep, I said you’re taxing me too little,” Bays said.
“Even though the state might not be as liberal as many people think it is, we should make it as liberal as people . . . like to think it is,” Jonathan Cohn, chairman of the group’s issues committee, told members from many of its 16 chapters across the state…..
“It takes people like us to push things to the top of the pile,” Rachel Poliner, of West Roxbury, told them. “Times are different than they were a few years ago. . . . You could say that all of us — as voters and as legislators — have been a little too complacent. Why is the MBTA in the shape it’s in? Right, so we’re upping the ante.”
These amendments were simple good government proposals, requiring that…
Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read the final language of any bill they’re voting on
Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read any amendment submitted on the floor that they’ll be voting on
Hearing testimony (for/against) a bill and all votes taken in committee to be publicly available.
Yet they all failed, as most rank-and-file Democrats voted with House Leadership against them.
If you’ve reached out to your representatives since, they’ve probably given you a number of excuses. Spoiler: They’re not very good ones.
(1) “Requiring more time for Legislators to read bills would just create unnecessary delays. my constituents routinely tell me that we need to be doing more.”
The slow pace of legislative progress in the House is a confounding and deliberate choice–of legislators’ (and especially House Leadership’s) own making. Leadership sets the agenda and the pace: Hearings that take months to be scheduled, repeatedly missed deadlines for reporting bills out of committee, and a final month of a 2-year session packed with a flurry of major bills. This is all by choice, and not out of necessity (recall the lightning speed with which the legislature drafted, debated, passed the “Upskirting” bill). There is no reason they can’t start the real work three days earlier. Better yet, they could start a year and a half earlier and not find themselves in such a time crunch at the end.
(2) “By a time a bill comes to the floor, there has been a tremendous amount of public input already. So giving more time for experts, advocates, and the public to read it is just superfluous!”
This is a loose interpretation of the word “public.” The drafting of a bill happens behind closed doors, which only high-ranking legislators and well-financed lobbyists can get behind. Even rank and file legislators do not have access to this process, and there is no record of whose input is actually being incorporated. It is important for experts, advocates, and constituents to be able to offer input as well.
(3) “This would create an opportunity for obstruction. A Republican state rep like Jim Lyons could file amendment after amendment, clogging up the process and taking days of our time.”
First of all, Jim Lyons was defeated last November. That point aside, the uninformed chaos of floor amendments could be avoided if amendments were filed well in advance of debate and voting. Moreover, if a legislator were seeking to be obstructive, there is already a backstop: the House routinely suspends its own rules anyway, and it would just need an (easily attainable) 2/3 majority to do so. Amendment #2 would have required that this suspension be done by a roll call vote, providing a public record of who judged the amendments to be gratuitous and unworthy of a serious reading, but it would still be perfectly possible.
(4) “This is a solution in search of a problem. We already have enough time to read what we’re voting on.”
Last year, the House voted to authorize the creation of community benefit districts the very same day the bill was reported out of House Ways & Means Committee. The bill would have let wealthy property owners in residential and commercial areas impose taxes on their neighbors and privatize public spaces. Many members had no idea what they were voting on, having been given favorable talking points but few details. Only after the House passed the bill were organizations like the ACLU, Common Cause, the NAACP, and the Mass Law Reform Institute able to rally the public to action.
The “Grand Bargain” deal passed by the Legislature last summer (in order to avoid a $15 minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and a sales tax reduction being on the November ballot ) was voted on the very same day it was reported out of the House Ways & Means Committee – indeed, just one hour after activists from the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, which was behind the $15 minimum wage and paid leave ballot questions, were given the language and well before the 100+ group coalition had finished reading and debating it.
In both cases, the rule granting representatives 24 hours to read a bill was suspended, and this was not because legislators had all finished reading. Indeed, even by extending the window to 72 hours, the House could still suspend the requirement; however, Amendment #1 would again require them to do so by roll call, meaning representatives would have to justify to their constituents why they felt such a suspension was appropriate.
(5) “Committees should be able to set their own rules, and wouldn’t these rules cause an undue burden for already overworked and underpaid staff?”
The House Rules *already* set standards by which committees must operate. Requiring two additional steps of transparency – the publication of testimony and the publication of committee votes – is fully in line with that. Establishing basic parameters for a committee is not undue interference with its operation.
Moreover, in January 2017, the Massachusetts Legislature voted for a pay hike that increased the pay, stipends, and office expense budgets of committee chairmen. It is fully within their ability to increase the pay of their staff; indeed, they should.
(6) “All hearing testimony is already public.”
Sure. But very difficult to participate in and to access.
Yes, anyone who is able to come to downtown Boston to attend a hearing in the middle of the workday is able to listen to the testimony. That is no substitute for publishing submitted testimony online, like Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin do.
Furthermore, a great deal of testimony is submitted in writing – in fact, the committees encourage it. Even representatives who are not members of the committee have been denied access to this testimony by some committees. If even rank and file legislators can’t get it, experts, advocates, and the public certainly can’t.
(7) “All of my votes are already public.”
Ha! First of all, publicly recorded floor votes are VERY, VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND especially on the House side. (For more on this issue, check out our Scorecard website FAQs).
But we’re not talking about floor votes; we’re talking about committee votes. And those are not actually available online.
(8) “I’m new here, and who am I to say how the chamber should operate? Isn’t that presumptuous?”
So House Leadership has convinced you of their power and the absence of yours. Interesting, don’t you think?
The Legislature does not belong to the Speaker, the Majority Leader, or any other member of House Leadership. It belongs to the people. It is only to their constituents that legislators are accountable because their constituents are the ones who elected – and will decide whether to re-elect – them.
(9) “I’m playing a long game. If I vote for this, then I’ll end up on the Speaker’s bad side, and I won’t be able to push any of the priorities that we both care about.”
Many representatives have been saying this for years. But given how important bills keep hitting the same roadblocks session after session, the strategy of going along to get along is certainly not a proven winner. The only reason the Speaker has that kind of control in the first place is the lack of transparency and accountability inherent in the House’s standard practices. The only way to fix structural problems is with changes in structure, and your constituents will certainly have your back.
(10) “But this will mean I’ll just get more calls from constituents.”
Jonathan Cohn, chairman of the Issues Committee of Progressive Massachusetts:“Too often, House Democrats will vote in lockstep with the speaker, whether he’s right or wrong, without doing their own due diligence about what they are, in fact, voting on. Legislators should come to their own conclusions about bills and amendments based on their own promises and principles and the input from advocates, policy experts, and their own constituents—not just on how the speaker chooses to vote … The House had a long debate about its rules, but for the rest of the session, there needs to be a serious debate about the norms by which the chamber operates and how badly they are in need of a change.”
Former Sierra Club lobbyist Phil Sego was once quoted as saying, “Don’t mistake what happens in [the Massachusetts State House] for democracy.” Our legislative process is deeply flawed and designed to avoid public accountability.
Yesterday, your representative had a chance to take the first step toward changing that. Amendments were introduced that would have required:
Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read the final language of any bill they’re voting on
Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read any amendment submitted on the floor that they’ll be voting on
Hearing testimony (for/against) a bill and all votes taken in committee to be publicly available.
The first amendment would have ensured reps have at least 72 hours to read a bill before they have to vote on it. It failed 55-103. (Quick guide: To find out how your rep voted, look at the Y = yes, N = no, or X = absent to the left of their name).
The second amendment would have ensured that reps have 30 minutes to read any amendment filed on the floor before having to vote on it. It was voted down 47 to 111.
NB: The text of both amendments would have allowed the House to waive the requirement for a 2/3 vote. So if something was non-controversial, it wouldn’t be creating unnecessary delay (the unnecessary delays being all too often of House Leadership’s own making).
Finally, the third amendment would have required the publication of hearing testimony (for/against a bill) and any roll call vote taken in committee. It was voted down 49-109.
We should all be able to agree on these commonsense measures. In fact, Mass Fiscal Alliance supported this amendment along with Progressive Mass – probably the only time we’ve agreed on anything.
We have to wonder what the representatives who don’t support such obvious transparency and accountability requirements are hiding.
Let Your Rep Know You’re Watching
Please send an email to your rep now. If they voted yes, a message of thanks will serve as reassurance that this was the right decision. If your rep is a no vote, they deserve to hear your opinion on that. Receiving this positive or negative feedback will be a factor in their decision making when the next vote comes up.
“Thank you for voting in favor of amendments #1 through #3 to the House Rules yesterday. Transparency is the bedrock of democracy, and your support for a more transparent State House matters a lot to me and other constituents.”
“I was very disappointed to see that you voted against amendments #1 to #3 to the House Rules yesterday. These common sense measures would have brought much-needed transparency to the State House and made sure constituents–and legislators–feel empowered to be a part of the democratic process.”
