The committee vote was not public. Only four of its17 members answered my multiple requests for comment about how they voted.
All those who replied told me that they voted to advance the reform. They are state Representatives Russell Holmes and Lindsay Sabadosa, and state Senators Sonia Chang-Díaz and James Eldridge. All four are Democrats, but so are 14 of the committee’s 17 members. “It’s very easy for prisoners to lose hope and their connection to society, and restoring the right to vote would provide an enhanced capacity to stay connected,” Elridge told me. State organizers have taken issue with the secrecy of this process. “When legislators vote behind closed doors to continue to a racist history of disenfranchisement, with no public record of how they voted for their constituents, that’s a fundamental failure of democracy,” Jonathan Cohn, an organizer with Progressive Mass, an advocacy group thatsupportedthe proposal, told me in a written message. He added that the lack of public votes is “a systemic problem for activists in Massachusetts because bills can be killed with everyone having ‘clean hands.’
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.”
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.”
The process, however, stands in stark contrast to how the House’s counterparts in the Senate have approached their own debate. The upper chamber released its initial rules package on Thursday, a week ahead of its scheduled debate, and set its amendment deadline for Monday, giving senators three days to consider them.
That difference is “really striking,” said Jonathan Cohn, chair of the issues committee for Progressive Massachusetts, an advocacy group that criticized the Legislature for a lack of transparency.
“I would love to see the House embrace reform. But I would be lying if I said I had any confidence that they would,” Cohn said.
The Massachusetts General Court is the second oldest deliberative body of the world. It’s time for it to start living up to such a stature.
Opaque processes and procedures are the standard operating procedure in the Legislature, leaving the public—and even many legislators—in the dark while monied interests exert sway behind closed doors. And an over-centralization of power encourages a culture of quiescence and retaliation, discouraging open debate on major issues—a problem especially acute in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Real reform will be impossible without changes to both rules and norms.
And with the MA House set to vote on its rules for the 191st legislative session tomorrow, we have a few good ideas about measures the House could adopt.
(1) Read What You’re Voting On
PROBLEM: When legislators don’t have the time to do their due diligence, bad legislation can easily slip through. Take, for example, the House’s vote last year on a bill authorizing what’s called “community benefit districts.” That bill would have enabled wealthy property owners to essentially “own” public spaces and impose fees on other property owners in the district with or without their approval, all with zero safeguards for civil liberties and equal access. Representatives only learned that a vote was going to take place on the bill the day of the vote itself, providing no time for legislators to read the fine print or consult with experts. The result? It sailed through almost unanimously, with representatives only realizing what they actually voted on afterwards.
SOLUTION: Bills should be made available to House members and the public, in the form in which they were most recently reported from committee, at least 72 hours (three days) before being considered on the floor. Legislators, experts, advocates, and engaged community members then have the opportunity to more thoroughly evaluate a bill, and legislators will better understand what they are actually voting on.
The same standard – read what you’re voting on – should also apply to amendments. When a bill is being considered, representatives should get at least 30 minutes to review the text of any new amendment before having to vote on it.
(2) Know What You’re Voting On – and Who’s Behind the Bill
PROBLEM: Legislators don’t have the staff (or time) to attend every single hearing on every single bill, and can thus be left with only a cursory understanding of what a bill does and who the main forces behind it are.
Hearings, at least, are public, unlike much of the legislative process. When negotiations happen behind closed doors, other legislators and the public are left in the dark about how a bill is changed and who is lobbying for those changes. Take, for example, the case in 2017 when the House Ways & Means Committee watered down a bill to protect pregnant women in the workplace – with no legislator or lobby group taking ownership of the change.
SOLUTION: Committee staff are already doing a lot of work compiling information on a bill, so that information should be made available to all legislators and the public. As is the norm in a number of other state legislatures, bills reported out of an “issue area” committee should be accompanied by substantive reports with a) a summary of the arguments advanced pro/con at the bill hearing and in written testimony submitted; b) a list of organizations and individuals that testified pro/con on the bill; c) a list of organizations and individuals that met or otherwise communicated with the Committee Leadership. And when a bill gets reported out of a committee like Ways & Means or Third Reading, those reports should also include an explanation of any changes made to the bill.
(3) Show Your Vote
PROBLEM: Of the thousands of bills that get filed at the start of a session, comparatively few get passed in either chamber, let alone being signed into law. Most bills end up dying in the committee stage – whether voted down, sent to further study (i.e., indefinitely tabled – the study never happens), or discharged to another committee (where they then flounder). When a bill dies in committee, all legislators are left with clean hands, since no recorded vote is made available for the decision. Indeed, the House evades its own stated rules around making these recorded votes available by polling votes electronically instead of in person. This leaves legislators outside of the committee—and the public—in the dark about what is happening on important pieces of legislation.
SOLUTION: The state legislatures in a majority of US states publish roll call votes from committees online, and so should ours. A recorded vote should be taken (and published) whenever a committee makes a decision, whether to give a bill a favorable/negative report, “send it to further study,” or discharge it.
“Robinson’s transparency pledge a necessity for Legislature” — Jonathan Cohn, MetroWest Daily News (1/14/2019)
The Massachusetts Legislature often touts its status as the second oldest deliberative body in the world. If only it lived up to that description. Unfortunately, public deliberation in our supposedly-deliberative body, especially the House of Representatives, has become exceedingly rare.
Consider, for example, the frequency with which state representatives withdraw their amendments. When a bill is brought to the floor, representatives have the opportunity to offer amendments. With most negotiations taking place behind closed doors among a small number of high-ranking members, this is the first and only chance for most representatives to affect the language being proposed. When an amendment is filed, however, its sponsor faces intense pressure from leadership to withdraw it. Hundreds of amendments are filed, only to be withdrawn without a second of debate.
