PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan was quoted in an article by Ella Fassler of The Appeal about MA’s most Trumpian sheriff, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, and an upcoming trial that an ICE protester faces:
“As long as the Massachusetts legislature continues to punt, they are being complicit in Trump’s racist deportation agenda,” Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts, an organization that supports the bill, told The Appeal: Political Report last year. “Inaction is the result of a legislature and leadership that is unrepresentative of the diversity of the state.”
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.
As Daniel Nichanian of The Appealwrote, Illinois has banned 287(g) agreements (which deputize state and local law enforcement to ICE), but other states have yet to catch up:
And in Massachusetts, where Democrats enjoy a veto-proof legislative majority, lawmakers have repeatedly ignored or killed the Safe Communities Act, which includes a measure that would ban 287(g) within the state. “As long as the Massachusetts legislature continues to punt, they are being complicit in Trump’s racist deportation agenda,” said Jonathan Cohn, the chairperson of the issues committee at Progressive Massachusetts, a group that advocates for this bill. “Inaction is the result of a legislature and leadership that is unrepresentative of the diversity of the state.”
Chairman Boncore, Chairman Straus, and members of the Joint Committee on Transportation, my name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am pleased to offer testimony. Progressive Massachusetts would like to go on record in support of S.2061 / H.3012: An Act relative to work and family mobility.
The Work and Family Mobility Act would enable all qualified state residents to apply for a standard Massachusetts driver’s license, regardless of immigration status, to increase road and public safety and allow for greater mobility across our Commonwealth.
Immigrants are a core part of the fabric of our community, but regressive laws still on the books hinder their ability to fully participate. Notably, our state still prevents undocumented residents from obtaining driver’s licenses, hindering their ability to work and to engage in the community.
This is bad for our economy and bad for public safety. In 2016, undocumented immigrants contributed $8.8 billion to the Massachusetts economy, and not being able to obtain a driver’s license prevents their full participation in the economy, especially as our underfunded public transit system too often provides irregular hours and insufficient reach.
Moreover, this situation is bad for public safety. All drivers on the road should have the appropriate training that comes with a license: that makes everyone — fellow drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians — safer.
But a true definition of public safety is much broader. In the first two years of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of people with no criminal convictions more than tripled, fueled by a fivefold increase in arrests of immigrants who’ve been charged with an offense but not yet convicted. The most common charges are traffic offenses. Massachusetts can and should reduce our complicity with a federal immigration agenda out of step with our values and priorities as a Commonwealth.
Other states have realized that changing the law so that immigration status is no longer a barrier to obtaining a license is common-sense policy. Fourteen states have already passed such laws, including our neighbors in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. It’s past time that we do too. We urge a prompt favorable report for S.2061 / H.3012: An Act relative to work and family mobility.
Every day, we hear new horror stories about families being ripped apart at the border and the terrible conditions that children seeking asylum are held in.
We can — and must — continue to lobby our elected officials in Washington to do all they can to close the dystopian detention camps and craft a humane immigration system.
But there’s work to be done in Massachusetts, too. Police officers in Massachusetts are being deputized by ICE to act as immigration officials, ripping families apart and forcing our immigrant friends and neighbors to live in fear.
Massachusetts, we can do better.
The Safe Communities Act (SCA) will enable us to do so.
The SCA has five key parts:
Barring law enforcement and court personnel from inquiring about immigration status
Protecting due process rights
Setting standards for law enforcement and court officials to notify ICE only when a person is released after serving a sentence, not before.
Ending contracts with ICE that allow state and county personnel to act as federal immigration agents, at state taxpayers’ expense.
Providing crucial training and accountability
This — not ripping families apart — is what true public safety looks like.
Jonathan Cohn, issues committee chair at Progressive Massachusetts, said new legislators are ready to push the Safe Communities Act forward.
“They understand that the standard operating procedure of the State House isn’t sufficient and that they need to be taking bolder steps,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll bring some incumbents along.”
“A resolution for Legislature: Finish last year’s work” — Jonathan Cohn, CommonWealth
DATE: 12/29/2018
IN A FEW short days, the next legislative session in the Massachusetts State House will begin. New legislators will be sworn in. The governor will give his State of the State address. The mad dash to file bills and secure co-sponsorships will start—and end—in the blink of an eye.
But we’re not there yet. Now is the time for reflections on the past and aspirations for the new. And in that spirit, I’d like to propose a New Year’s resolution for the Massachusetts Legislature: finish last year’s business.
The Legislature will have a lot on its table soon, and indeed, new issues arise all the time. But if they want to avoid the chaotic spectacle that the final days of a legislative session too often are, then it’s good to start early.
In January of 2017, Progressive Massachusetts unveiled our legislative agenda for the 190th legislative session — 17 items for 2017 (and 2018). As we near the end of the year — and the start of the next legislative session, it’s the perfect time to take stock of how the various bills fared.
Clear Victories
Reproductive Rights
The ACCESS bill, which updates MA’s contraceptive coverage equity law to require insurance carriers to provide all contraceptive methods without a copay, passed overwhelmingly in the Legislature and was signed by the Governor.
Democracy
Massachusetts became the 13th state to adopt Automatic Voter Registration. In this reform pioneered by Oregon in 2015, eligible voters who interface with select government agencies (here, the RMV or MassHealth) are automatically registered to vote unless they decline. With more than 700,000 eligible citizens in MA unregistered, AVR will increase the accuracy, security, and comprehensiveness of voter rolls.
The bill also enrolls Massachusetts in Electronic Registration Information Center, a coalition of states founded by the Pew Research Center that enable states to synchronize their voter rolls. ERIC has increased the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the voter rolls in participating states.
[Note: The original bill included smaller social services government agencies as well. The final bill allows for their later inclusion but focuses on the two largest sources of possible new registrants.]
Steps Forward
Criminal Justice Reform
The comprehensive criminal justice reform bill passed by the Legislature in April incorporated some elements from our priority bills (Read our write-up here):
Eliminating most mandatory minimums for retail drug selling and drug paraphernalia and limiting mandatory minimums in school zones to cases involving guns or minors. [Note: PM and advocates had sought the elimination of all mandatory minimums. The bill, however, left in place mandatory minimums for Class A drugs (like heroin), expanded this definition to include opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil, and created a new mandatory minimum for assaulting a police officer, an overused charge wielded as a threat against protesters.]
Raising the felony-larceny threshold from $250 to $1,200 [Note: PM and other advocates had sought $1,500.]
Reducing fines and fees [Note: PM and other advocates wanted probation and parole fees fully eliminated.]
Establishing a process for expunging records, especially for juveniles convicted of minor offenses
There is still work to be done–from raising the age of criminal majority to severely curtailing (or outright abolishing) solitary confinement. That said, the bill, despite its shortcomings, was a step in the right direction.
Fight for $15
At the start of the session, we supported legislation to raise the minimum wage from $11 to to $15 by 2021, raise the tipped minimum wage from $3.75 to $15.75 by 2025, and require the minimum wage to increase with inflation starting in 2022.
The Raise Up Massachusetts coalition’s ballot initiative was slightly more modest in its ambition, extending the full phase-in date one year (due to a later start) and raising the minimum wage for tipped employees to only $9 (60% of the minimum wage) by 2022.
What passed in the ultimate “Grand Bargain,” an effort of the Legislature and the Governor to avoid three ballot initiatives ($15 minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, sales tax reduction) was more modest still. It raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2023, raised the tipped minimum wage to only $6.75, and dropped indexing. Unfortunately, the Legislature included a further concession to the business lobby, agreeing to phase-out time-and-a-half on Sundays and holidays. Although the bill is a net win for workers in Massachusetts, it’s possible that, due to the phase-out of time-and-a-half, some workers will be left worse off.
Paid Family and Medical Leave
The version of paid family and medical leave passed in the aforementioned “Grand Bargain” was less robust than the original legislation and the ballot initiative text, but still more robust than the programs that exist in other states.
Senate Victory, House Opposition
Several of our priority bills succeeded, or made partial progress, in the Senate, only to flounder in the House amidst fierce opposition from the conservative House leadership.
Fully Funding Our Schools
Massachusetts’s 25-year-old education funding formula is short-changing our schools $1-2 billion per year due to outdated assumptions about the costs of health care, special education, ELL (English Language Learners) education, and closing racial and economic achievement gaps.
The 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission recommended a path forward for fixing it. The Senate unanimously adopted a bill to implement them. The House, however, insisted on leaving English Language Learners, Black and Brown students, and poor students (not mutually exclusive categories) behind.
Protecting Our Immigrant Friends and Neighbors
Despite Massachusetts’s liberal reputation, our Legislature has been historically hostile to strengthening protections for our immigrant community.
The Senate included four provisions from the Safe Communities Act, a bill that our members fought strongly for, in its FY 2019 budget: (1) a prohibition on police inquiries about immigration status, a prohibition on certain collaboration agreements between local law enforcement and ICE, (3) a guarantee of basic due process protections, and (4) a prohibition on participation in a Muslim registry. The amendment was a win-win for both rights and safety, but House Leadership opposed its inclusion in the final budget.
Bold Action on Climate Change
Many elements from our priority environmental legislation were incorporated in the Senate’s impressive omnibus bill:
Building on the Global Warming Solutions Act by setting intermediate emissions targets for 2030 and 2040
Establishing a 3% annual increase in the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to accelerate our commitment to renewable energy
Prohibiting a “pipeline tax” on energy consumers
Instructing the governor’s office to develop carbon pricing for the transportation sector by the end of 2020, for commercial buildings and industrial processes by 2021, and for residential buildings by the end of 2022 (not as strong as a revenue-positive carbon pricing scheme, but still in the right direction)
However, the House proved a roadblock yet again. The ultimate compromise energy legislation included only a 2% increase from 2020 to 2030, after which it would fall back to the current 1%. This would take us to only 56% renewable energy by 2050 instead of 100%.
Loss…But a Battle Not Over
Revenue & Reinvestment
Progressive Mass members played a major role in the signature collection for the Fair Share amendment (or “millionaires tax”), which would have created a 4% surtax on income above $1 million (inflation-adjusted) to fund education and transportation investment.
As a citizen-originated ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment, the Fair Share amendment had to receive the support of at least 25% of the Legislature in two constitutional conventions. It secured well more than double this amount, but the Supreme Judicial Court struck it from the ballot this June.
Inaction
Medicare for All
Although the Senate took modest steps in the direction of single payer, passing legislation to create a public option (a MassHealth buy-in) and require a study of whether a single payer system would save money relative to the current system, the House took no such action.
Housing Production
Although the Senate passed a comprehensive zoning reform bill to increase housing production in the suburbs last session, no such action was taken in either house this session.
Debt/tuition-free Higher Education
The cost of higher education has grown a lot in Massachusetts, and the Legislature continues to punt.
In Conclusion: We won some, we lost some, and we’ll keep on fighting.
For the sake of the children separated from families and for the safety of undocumented citizens who are our neighbors,in order to #KeepFamiliesTogether let’s demand from our representatives that they make this the first order of business when they re-convene in January 2019.
