Happy August!
And just like that, formal sessions for the 194th Session of the Massachusetts Legislature closed with… uh… a whimper.
After finalizing a few pieces of legislation in the final days before the July 31st deadline, the General Court is now on August recess. This is the time each year where most legislators take a full month off to return to their districts, spend time with their families, and relax. (Not to be confused with winter recess, which is also a long break from Thanksgiving – New Years. A takeaway: if tired of your full-time job, start prepping a write-in campaign for state rep!)
Last Thursday, we gathered with fellow progressive organizations on the state house steps to “grade” the state house on a host of issues. Spoiler alert: on the eve of the final day for major legislation to be passed, each group gave the state house an “incomplete” for their inaction on major progressive priorities.
Here we are giving “Governor Maura Healey,” “Senate Pres. Karen Spilka,” and “House Speaker Ron Mariano” their dismal report card on progressive issues:
At least one of these grades got an update after our action, with the long-awaited passage of the PROTECT Act to restrict ICE’s activities in the Commonwealth. That bill built on immigration reform legislation originally filed in 2013, which spent years languishing without a vote. Although its new protections are a very significant victory, they come more than 1.5 years into Trump 2.0’s reign of terror and still leave Massachusetts as the only blue state in the country with a state-level cooperation agreement with ICE. So, we’ll defer to our allies in the immigrant organizing space for whether the state house merits an “A,” but it’s certainly an improvement over an “I.”
Indeed, when legislators return from recess and their conference committees get to work on the huge pile of outstanding priorities, we hope to host future actions updating these grades. In anticipation of that, I wanted to make one more announcement: in case you haven’t seen, Act on Mass has a brand-new website! Same link—actonmass.org—with an updated look.
Two new features of our new website that I want to highlight:
- A calendar page, where you can find details on upcoming actions like our planned report card actions, as well as canvasses and events for our endorsed candidates
- My (personal) most anticipated feature: a Scoop archive which is now keyword-searchable! If you run across a term like “ethics disclosure” or “supplemental budget” in the wild and want to see if Act on Mass has covered this in the Scoop, you can now search this on our website!
Major thanks to the volunteer team that has helped us maintain our website over the years and helped us with this transition! Happy exploring.
State House Scoop
With this Scoop, we’ll follow up on the sneaky “legislative records” bill (S.3200) passed by the Senate last week. You heard from Isabel with an update and action guide earlier this week, so you know the bad news: the bill passed, with only one Democrat joining Republicans to vote against it (thank you Senator Montigny!)
For a recap, Act on Mass is supporting Ballot Question 1: Expanding Public Records Law, which would simply apply the state’s existing public records law to the legislature and governor’s office. S.3200 instead proposes a “legislative records” framework that would apply only to the legislature, be limited to a list of 19 “legislative records,” (almost all of which are already public), and have only a limited, in-house appeal process. Worse, it specifies that public records requests of the legislature would be “solely” governed through this framework, setting it up to potentially nullify the impact of the Ballot Question 1.
The House passed a similar version of the bill in June, H.5469, which Act on Mass rallied against too. Senators snuck in S.3200 under the wire, sending it to conference committee negotiations on the last day of formal sessions. Under new deadline rules, the 6-person conference committee now has until the final end of session on January 5th, 2027 to release a compromise bill. This means that legislators can wait to finalize it until after voters decide on the question at the ballot—and after their own re-elections are secured.
The Boston Globe Editorial Board (paywall) warned about this very issue this week, writing that the legislature’s new deadline rules “seem to have also created a license to procrastinate or, worse, a way to thwart voters.” They note that this potential “post-election mischief” is “the very reason lawmakers abandoned lame-duck sessions in the first place some three decades ago.”
The vote on this bill included some interesting moments which highlighted the back-room dealing that goes into lawmaking in our state house.
Top Senate leader makes joke out of predetermined amendment outcome
Legislative leaders make little attempt to hide how business really gets done on Beacon Hill. Just skip through one session on the legislature’s website and you can see it. Even though legislators have fancy digital voting machines that allow each member’s vote to be recorded with the push of a button, most votes of House and Senate are taken via unrecorded “voice votes.” As old as democracy itself, these votes are supposedly a verbal measure of the opinion of the chamber, where members shout “yea” or “nay” to express their vote and the presiding officer judges which side had more shouts.
In our state house, voice votes are little more than democratic theater, used to not-so-subtly obscure the fact that vote outcomes are almost always predetermined behind closed doors. When a voice vote is called, the presiding legislator introduces the vote and, in the same breath, announces the outcome, without pausing for any other “voice.” You can see a video of this here, or… pretty much any recording on the Legislature’s website.
Most often, voice votes take place without back-and-forth debate, leaving constituents and advocates in the dark about why a vote turned out how it did. At first, the debate on S.3200 was no exception. To kick off, Senator Keenan gave six speeches in a row in support of amendments he had filed, including #7 and #9 which Act on Mass supported. Nobody spoke against the amendments, and yet, all six were promptly voted down on voice votes. The only “voice” was that of the presiding Senate leader, Senate Pro Tempore William Brownsberger.
Who knows, maybe announcing the fate of predetermined amendments is sort of… boring? Minority Leader Bruce Tarr spoke next in favor of Amendment #10 to remove the time limit on records access (S.3200 would apply only to records created after January 6th, 2027.) This time, when Brownsberger asked for a call of the “yeas” and “nays,” he paused, as if actually waiting for rank-and-file senators to shout their opinions. Of course, this was so out of the ordinary that nobody spoke, and Brownsberger shook his head in mock disapproval before announcing that the amendment had indeed failed. You can watch the scene on our Youtube here:
Most often, voice votes take place without back-and-forth debate, leaving constituents and advocates in the dark about why a vote turned out how it did. At first, the debate on S.3200 was no exception. To kick off, Senator Keenan gave six speeches in a row in support of amendments he had filed, including #7 and #9 which Act on Mass supported. Nobody spoke against the amendments, and yet, all six were promptly voted down on voice votes. The only “voice” was that of the presiding Senate leader, Senate Pro Tempore William Brownsberger.
As you can see, the mere idea that senators might publicly express their own votes on an (extremely reasonable) amendment was so funny that the chamber erupted in laughter. Brownsberger himself was so overcome with laughter that he couldn’t get through the announcement of the next amendment; he called the Senate into a brief recess instead.
Sadly, this is how the elite leaders of our legislature treat the mere idea of democratic debate on an issue of importance to the voters: as a joke.
Apropos of nothing, Act on Mass is proud to endorse Daniel Lander, who is challenging Senator Brownsberger for the Suffolk and Middlesex Senate seat. With the help of our endorsement committee, we’re excited to support a slew of candidates for State House and Senate who will take the interests of their constituents and the principles of representative democracy seriously. For more on our endorsed candidates, read on for Isabel’s section!
Isabel’s Candidate Corner
Hi, Scoop Readers!
Exciting news, you can now see all of our endorsed candidates on our brand new website! You can read all about all eight on our endorsements page, including updates on the dates and times for Act on Mass canvasses.
This week, I am super excited to shout out two of our endorsed candidates, Michael Lachenmeyerand Ravi Simon!
Michael is running to represent 12th Hampden, which includes Springfield, Wilbraham, East Longmeadow, and Monson. He is an ardent advocate for affordability, single-payer healthcare, environmental protections and, of course, legislative transparency. Through his campaign, he has already shown his commitment to collaboration and integrity. We would be proud to have him as an ally in the State House.
Michael is running against the incumbent, Representative Puppolo, who has held this office since 2007. Puppolo serves as the chair of the House Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, and recieves an annual leadership stipend of 20,000$ to do so. However, as Lachenmeyer has pointed out, no bills have been before the committee this session and they have only met every couple months. Side note, you can also read all about our stipend reform campaign on our shiny new website!
If you’re interested in supporting Michael’s campaign, you can donate here and/or join us for a canvass at 1:00pm on August 19th! Register here for the location.
The second candidate I’d like to spotlight is Ravi Simon. Ravi is running to represent 13th Middlesex, which includes Concord, Lincoln, Marlborough, Sudbury, and Wayland. Ravi has served as a sole staffer for the incumbent, Representative Carmine Gentile. In this role, he saw first hand how our hard-earned rules reforms can be more effectively implemented, and what still needs to change. He was a key organizer for the Massachusetts State House Employee Union drive, and also recently served on the Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee. We are so excited about his campaign, and can’t wait to see how he spends his time in office. You can donate to Ravi’s campaign here, and we will be coming to 13th Middlesex on August 28th. Hope we’ll see you there!
What else we’re reading this week
Great reporting and media from around the Bay State this week!
- Wondering why public records law is so important? Read this great deep dive into the crumbling digital infrastructure behind our state’s district attorneys offices, which the Legislature has failed to fund for a decade. This investigation was made possible by public records requests— Massachusetts prosecutors run their offices on software from the dial-up era by Nasser Eledroos
- Shameless plug: listen to Scotia’s interview on Quincy local politics podcast Liz Speaks, covering Ballot Question 1 and transparency issues in our legislature—on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts
Take Action
Defend transgender care in the Commonwealth! – August 13th, 2 pm
Act on Mass is a member of the Protect Trans Care coalition! A number of healthcare providers in Massachusetts have stopped providing care to transgender people under 19, complying in advance with a cruel Trump admin directive that has since been overturned out in court. Our allies are calling on the AG and the state government to enforce Massachusetts civil rights law, which prevents discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and restore care. Join their advocacy day at the legislature this Thursday!
Support AOM’s endorsed candidates!
Take action by signing up to knock doors, phonebook, or get a yard sign for one of our endorsed candidates this weekend!
- Michael Lachenmeyer, 12th Hampden: sign up here
- Ravi Simon, 13th Middlesex: sign up here
- Evan MacKay, 25th Middlesex, sign up here
- Alison Leary, 10th Middlesex: sign up here
- Lorena Betts, 16th Middlesex: sign up here
- Daniel Lander, Suffolk & Middlesex: sign up here
- Persis Yu, Norfolk & Suffolk: sign up here
- Mike Zullas, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Bristol: sign up here
Every District Accountable: Has your Rep signed the pledge?
We had a great launch event for our “Every District Accountable: Good Government for Mass” pledge this week! Here are some resources about it:
- Click here to see if legislative candidates in your district have signed the pledge yet
- Activist toolkit: check this document for details on the five commitments in the pledge and a script to contact your legislator about it
- Part of an org that’s interested in co-sponsoring the pledge? Sign up here!
Thanks for reading and for supporting Act on Mass! Have a great rest of your weekend.
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass