A write-up of the hectic final day of the 2019-2020 legislative session
Continue readingA Chaotic Final Day of the Session, with Some Notable Victories
Tell Beacon Hill to Finish the Job
The current legislative session in Massachusetts ends in just three short weeks, with a few holidays in between.
And there’s a lot left to do.
The Legislature has to reject harmful amendments proposed by Republican Governor Charlie Baker to weaken police accountability legislation and strike vital language on equitable abortion access and prison oversight from the budget.
Important climate and housing legislation has been languishing in secretive conference committees while crises fester.
Key protections for workers like emergency paid sick time and for our immigrant communities like the Safe Communities Act and the Work and Family Mobility Act (driver’s license bill) were voted out of committee months ago but remain stuck in limbo.
It’s time to stop delaying and take action.
Can you email your state legislators today to demand swift action on these priorities?
We can’t let the clock run out with so much still on the table — and so much at stake.
Here’s What You Can Do This Week for Civil Rights & Housing Stability
It’s been quite the 24 hours. And if you’re like us, you’re thinking, “How can I take action, including right here in Massachusetts?”
Here are some ways.
Past Time to Pass the ROE Act
While we mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we must redouble our efforts to strengthen reproductive rights here in Massachusetts.
Contrary to our liberal reputation, we still have retrograde language and laws on the books.
Tell your state legislators to stop delaying and pass the ROE Act.
Housing Is a Human Right
At the end of the July, the MA House and Senate passed economic development bills (H4887). Each bill contains some important steps to address our affordable housing crisis.
Can you call your state legislators in support of the following three housing reforms? You can find their number here if you don’t have it.
- Tenant Opportunity to Purchase, which guarantees the right of refusal for tenants when a large building is up for sale or foreclosed (from the HOUSE bill)
- Inclusionary Zoning Reforms, which would lower the threshold for passing such ordinances to a simple majority (from the SENATE bill)
- Eviction sealing protections to gives tenants with no-fault evictions the legal right to petition the court to seal their record any time after the conclusion of the case and provide tenants with non-payment evictions the ability to petition the court to seal within 14 days of paying off their judgment (from the SENATE bill)
Police Accountability Week of Action w/ the ACLU
In July, the MA Senate and House both passed police reform legislation (not far-reaching enough, but with a number of important steps forward). However, since then, police unions have been bombarding them with ads and misinformation to make sure that a final bill gets watered down or not passed at all.
If we want to have any accountability at all, we can’t let such tactics work. Join the ACLU this week for a series of events to draw attention to police brutality here in Massachusetts and underscore the need for action.
Monday, September 21, 6:00 PM: Virtual rally kick off (RSVP here)
Tuesday, September 22, 5:30 PM: Police accountability phone bank (RSVP here)
Friday, September 25, 11:00 AM: Police accountability phone bank (RSVP here)
Haven’t spoken to your state legislators about this bill recently? Take a moment today to do so.
Phone Banking for the Safe Communities Act
The Safe Communities Act would end the entanglement of police, courts, and county sheriffs in immigration enforcement, and protect basic rights. This entanglement makes immigrants fear sharing personal information with anyone, including medical providers and public health workers.
We need to take a stand and make clear that immigrants are welcome here, and that means passing the Safe Communities Act.
Fortunately, the bill was reported out of committee in July. But we need to make sure that there is enough support for it to be brought to the floor by the end of the year.
Join the Safe Communities Coalition for one of these upcoming phone banks:
Monday, 9/21, 5:00-8:00PM – Register here
Thursday, 9/24, 5:00-8:00PM – Register here
Tuesday, 9/29, 5:00-8:00PM – Register here
Thursday, 10/1, 5:00-8:00PM – Register here
Let Our Families Drive! March & Rally
Thousands of Black and Brown immigrant families continue to live in fear of ICE detention for being stopped for a traffic violation and many are being deported – even during a pandemic. All families deserve the right to move freely in our state and live in dignity.
Saturday, September 26th, the Driving Families Forward Coalition will be holding a rally in support of the Work and Family Mobility Act, which would support expanding access to driver’s licenses across the Commonwealth
The March & Rally will be broadcast via Facebook Live. The coalition will meet up outside the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) located at 136 Blackstone St, Boston (by the Haymarket T Station) and march to the JFK Federal Building to uplift the need to abolish ICE and the deportation machine. The march will end at the State House for a short speaking program and rally.
Phone Bank for the Census
The 2020 census will determine representation and resource allocation for the next decade. If people are uncounted, their voices will be unheard, and their communities won’t get the resources they need to thrive.
That’s why we’re joining our allies at the Massachusetts Voter Table to call residents and voters in communities of color, working-class neighborhoods, and more to participate in the 2020 Census and to make a plan to vote safely this fall.
Fight for Housing Justice & Immigration Justice
On Monday, the House voted on key housing amendments to its economic development bill.
State reps overwhelmingly ignored housing justice activists, voting AGAINST allowing municipalities to impose real estate transfer fees to combat speculation and raise money for affordable housing, AGAINST allowing municipalities to pass rent-stabilizing regulations, and AGAINST making it easier for municipalities to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances.
Some of these state reps — embarrassingly — voted against the text of bills they co-sponsored earlier in the session.
The Senate will be taking up its version of an economic development bill tomorrow, so that means there is another opportunity to fight for housing justice and immigration justice.
Can you call your senators in support of the following amendments?
#2 (Crighton): Work and Family Mobility, which eliminates immigration status as a barrier to obtaining a driver’s license
#6 (Crighton): Tenant’s Right of First Refusal, which guarantees the right of refusal for tenants when a large building is up for sale or foreclosed
#47 (Boncore): Promoting Housing Opportunity and Mobility through Eviction Sealing (HOMES), which seals evictions when they are pending, until and unless an allegation is proven; seals all no-fault evictions, and seals all evictions after 3 years
#57 (Cyr): Compromise local option transfer fee on high cost home sales to support low and middle income housing, which enables municipalities to impose a real estate transfer fee on sales above $1 million, with money going to affordable housing
#96 (Collins): City of Boston Inclusionary Development Policy and Linkage Fees, which incorporates Boston’s Inclusionary Development Policy (requires affordable units within new residential projects) and Linkage Fees (requires payments from large commercial developments to fund affordable housing and job training) into Boston’s zoning code and allows for future rate adjustments
#175 (DiDomenico): Tenant Right to Counsel Pilot, which establishes a right to counsel pilot program to provide full legal representation to eligible individuals vulnerable to evictions
#249 (Jehlen): Supporting Affordable Housing With A Local Option For A fee To Be Applied To Certain Real Estate Transactions, which enables cities and towns to impose transfer fees on real estate sales with appropriate exemptions (e.g., for low- and middle-income homeowners)
Housing Stability Is an Essential Part of the Cure for COVID
The following testimony was submitted to the Joint Committee on Housing.
Thank you chairs and members of the committee for reading our testimony.
As municipal leaders scramble desperately to find solutions to the onslaught of evictions they know are headed their way, the people must turn to the state legislature to quell the oncoming tsunami of homelessness that will destroy families and traumatize children if the state legislature does not act.
We urge you to pass S2831/H.4878 in order to end the threat of evictions posed by the sudden end of the current eviction moratorium in October. If families are required to pay back rent for almost half a year, there is no way those living paycheck to paycheck will be able to stay in their homes. If we don’t provide a solution to this problem, we will have a catastrophe unlike any we have confronted before, as families are turned out of their homes en masse.
Please vote yes to allow a year long moratorium on evictions to give families the time they need to get back on their feet and forgive them their back rent since living paycheck to paycheck will not allow them the ability to accumulate the savings they will need to pay their back rent. There is no perfect solution to the housing emergency that confronts us, but this bill is the best solution to a difficult problem. It ensures housing stability for renters while also providing funds for smaller landlords who are also victims of the pandemic economy.
If you pass this into law, it would say a lot about who we are as a state and as human beings. Please show the compassion and responsibility to our citizens that we want to see in other states. You have an opportunity to show leadership to the entire country. Please pass S2831/H.4878.
Thank you,
Caroline Bays
Board President, Progressive Massachusetts
Massachusetts House Votes Down Proposals to Help Renters, Promote Affordable Housing
When Governor Charlie Baker sent an economic development bill to the MA Legislature, he included his “Housing Choices” legislation, which had been stalled as a standalone bill. The “Housing Choices” bill addresses one aspect of Massachusetts’s affordable housing crisis: the fact that new construction is relatively rare in the suburbs due to the prevalence of single-family zoning. If you can only build one housing unit per lot, it makes it more difficult to respond to a growing population or growing demand. Currently, zoning changes (such as those that would approve multifamily housing construction) require a 2/3 approval from local government. Baker’s bill, which the MA House retained in their economic development package, would lower that to a simple majority.
The need for more supply, though, is just one part of the problem. There is no guarantee that the new supply would be affordable, nor that the new supply would not push up rents for current tenants, thus running the risk of displacement. There isn’t even a guarantee that any new housing will be built at all (it’s a removal of a barrier rather than promise of new construction).
That being said, as an MIT researcher recently noted in CommonWealth Mag, all this means is that we need to think comprehensively when we approach the affordable housing crisis: we do need zoning reform, but we also need stronger protections for existing tenants. Tenant protections will not address the need for supply: only new construction can. Zoning reform will not address displacement: you need tenant protections for that. This was also an essential takeaway of the book Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty on the housing crisis in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, the MA House voted down efforts at striking such a balance.
Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) filed and roll-called three amendments to strike a better balance.
First was his amendment 34, which would have enabled municipalities to impose transfer fees on real estate transactions to fund affordable housing. Cities like Boston, Somerville, and Nantucket have filed home rule petitions in order to be able to do so because state law prohibits them from doing so on their own. To be clear, this amendment would simply allow municipalities to pass their own laws to address the affordable housing crisis–and to craft whatever exemptions to the transfer fee’s application as they see appropriate.
The House voted 130 to 29 against it. 9 state reps endorsed *the very same bill* but voted NO here: Barrett, Driscoll, Garballey, Gonzalez, Keefe, Khan, Livingstone, Miranda, and Santiago.
The only argument put forth against it on the floor was from Rep. Ken Gordon (D-Bedford), who said that there is already enough money for affordable housing (false) and that a transfer fee would hurt low and middle-income homeowners (also false, given the allowance of exemptions).
He also filed and roll-called an amendment that reflected the text of his Tenant Protection Act, which would remove the prohibition on rent control and enable municipalities to pass other tenant protections, such as just cause eviction ordinances or limitations on condo conversions. Again, simply allowing municipalities to pass their own laws in response to the affordable housing crisis.
The House voted 136 to 23 against it. Five legislators who co-sponsored the very same bill voted against the amendment: Devers, Hawkins, LeBoeuf, Miranda, and Santiago.
Finally, Connolly filed and roll-called an amendment to lower the threshold for approval of inclusionary zoning ordinances to a simple majority. Inclusionary zoning, i.e., the requirement that a certain percentage of new construction meet an affordability threshold, was not included in the list of zoning changes that would no longer need a supermajority.
Given that many suburbs don’t want to build housing at all, there is likely not a rush to adopt inclusionary zoning, but if a suburb were so forward-thinking, it should be able to.
The House voted 139 to 19 against allowing that. Again, five representatives who co-sponsored *the same bill* voted against it: Gentile, Hawkins, Hendricks, LeBoeuf, and Livingstone.
Go Big or Don’t Go Home
In a mere eleven days — on Friday, July 31st, at 11:59 pm — the legislative session in the Massachusetts State House comes to an end.
The bills that didn’t make it past the finish line this year will disappear into the ether or return like a phoenix from the ashes in January next year, only to face the same grueling process.
But there are many policies that can’t wait until January. Indeed, passing them now is already far later than should have been done. And, frankly, the Legislature shouldn’t get to leave session until they finish.
What priorities are we talking about?
- Passing the Safe Communities Act so that state and local law enforcement aren’t being deputized as ICE agents
- Passing the Work and Family Mobility Act because mobility is a basic right, regardless of one’s citizenship status
- Passing the ROE Act because MA needs to strengthen reproductive rights here at home as they remain under attack on the federal level
- Passing the 100% Renewable Energy Act because we can’t keep stumbling forward into climate chaos
- Passing Emergency Paid Sick Time so that no worker has to choose between their health and their job security
- Passing guaranteed housing stability for at least one more year because if we want people to stay at home, they need a home to go back to
- Passing a budget that raises Progressive Revenue by making sure that corporations and the rich are paying their fair share
The Legislature can’t keep punting session after session and patting themselves on the back.
Take Action: Extend Sick Time. Extend the Eviction Moratorium. Extend the Session.
Today marks Phase 3 of Republican Governor Charlie Baker’s reopening plan. That means that movie theaters (??), casinos (??), and gyms (??!?) are allowed to reopen today — even as states around the country are seeing resurgences of the COVID-19 outbreak.
And to make matters worse, this reopening is happening without any new, enforceable protections for workers.
If we want to have a successful, equitable recovery, then workers who are sick or are taking care of loved ones need to be able to stay home without fear of losing their job. Massachusetts’s 2014 earned sick time law does not provide enough hours to meet the scale of the crisis, and the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act has big coverage gaps that leave millions of front-line workers without paid sick time.
Massachusetts needs to pass Emergency Paid Sick Time legislation to ensure that all workers can take paid sick time during this crisis.
And for people to be able to stay home, they need a home to go back to. The eviction and foreclosure moratorium signed in April is set to expire next month, August 18. That means that, if the Legislature does not take action, working-class families across the state could face a wave of evictions during a possible COVID resurgence.
Evictions and foreclosures are bad for public health in the best of times. They are even more dangerous now, and the instability and insecurity is likely to hit Black and Brown families the hardest.
But, again the Legislature can take action here by extending the eviction/foreclosure moratorium, expanding mortgage deferment protections, and stabilizing both renters and small property owners.
And time is short. The Legislative session is set to end at the end of the month. If the Legislature does not finish the vital business of protecting workers and addressing the backlog of important pre-COVID legislative priorities, then legislators should stay in session until they finish.
Here’s where you come in.
(1) Call your legislators in support of these two bills & call on them to support extending the legislative session:
- S.2701 / H.4700: An Act relative to emergency paid sick time
- SD.2992 / HD.5166: An Act to guarantee housing stability during the COVID-19 emergency and recovery
(2) Email your legislators in support of these bills and extending the session.
(3) Share this email with five friends.
Four Weeks Left….
Unless anything changes, four weeks from today — Friday, July 31st — the formal part of the 191st Legislative Session of the Massachusetts General Court will come to an end.
That means that there are four weeks for the MA Legislature to up its game on pretty much every single front.
Four weeks for them to take action in support of immigrants’ rights, such as passing the Safe Communities Act and the Work & Family Mobility Act.
Four weeks for them to take action in support of reproductive justice by passing the ROE Act.
Four weeks for them to tackle the systemic racism in policing and the criminal legal system.
Four weeks for them to tackle our affordable housing crisis (and just over a month for them to take action before the eviction moratorium passed earlier this year expires).
Four weeks for them to take action to address climate change because Mother Nature doesn’t care about self-imposed deadlines.
Four weeks for them to pass Emergency Paid Sick Time so that workers don’t have to choose between their health and their job security in a global pandemic.
Four weeks for them to pass a budget that lives up to our values by raising progressive revenue to avoid deep, harmful cuts in public services.
None of this will happen unless your legislators hear from you — loud and clear — that they can’t keep procrastinating. That they can’t keep punting issues to later and later in the session until each session runs out. And then the cycle of excuse-making and delay continues.
Can you call your legislators to demand action in these final four weeks?
Find their contact information here, and then save it for next time.
🚨Actions You Can Take from Home During the COVID-19 Crisis
With the outbreak of COVID-19, Massachusetts is facing a crisis.
We have a public health crisis, as the number of those infected grows every day. We have an economic crisis, as the threat of a recession looms larger every day and workers risk weeks (or months) without a paycheck. And we have a democratic crisis, as the virus outbreak challenges our ability to hold traditional in-person elections.
And this is on top of the crises we already face, such as the inequality that affects all aspects of our society.
And our Legislature needs to respond with the requisite urgency and comprehensiveness.
Can you email your state legislators to demand quick and comprehensive action?
Here’s what a comprehensive response must include:
✅Passing HD.4935 (Connolly-Honan): An Act Providing for a Moratorium on Evictions and Foreclosures During the COVID19 Emergency because, in a state of emergency in which people are being asked to stay at home, people need to have homes. Evictions and foreclosures exacerbate our public health crisis and strain our already weak safety net.
✅Passing legislation to provide immediate financial assistance to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic, such as HD.4945 (Gouveia): An Act providing for emergency cash assistance in response to COVID-19, HD.4951 (Decker): An Act to provide short-term relief for families in deep poverty, and HD.4950 (Miranda): An Act providing emergency access to equity and justice for all in response to COVID-19
✅Passing HD.4958 (Mark/Sabadosa): An Act relative to COVID-19 emergency unemployment expansion, which would ensure that independent contractors, sole proprietors, partners in a partnership, freelance, and tipped employees are eligible for unemployment benefits and that COVID-19 emergency assistance does not make any worker ineligible for receiving any existing state benefits
✅Passing Emergency Paid Sick Time legislation that guarantees all workers at least fifteen additional work-days (120 hours) of job-protected paid sick time for immediate use during the COVID-19 outbreak or any future public health emergency because no worker should be forced to choose between their health and their economic security
✅ Passing HD.4963 (Sabadosa): An Act regarding Decarceration and COVID-19, which would require the release of individuals who are currently in pre-trial detainment or under incarceration if they are a member of a population deemed especially vulnerable by the CDC, are eligible for medical parole, are almost finished with their sentence, or are only being detained due to inability to pay bail or due to minor violations of parole
✅Passing legislation to expand options to Vote by Mail (such as HD.4957 — Mark/Sabadosa), so that no voter is forced to choose between their health and their right to participate in our democracy
✅Providing the necessary funding to ensure that our response does not leave vulnerable communities behind, such as our immigrant population or our homeless population.
Our legislators need to start responding with the urgency required–and fast.
Can you email your state legislators today?
Did you already email? Then you can follow up with a call. Find your legislators here.