Good morning,
Did you know that, thanks to the stipend system, the average Republican in our state house is paid more than the average Democrat?
It sounds counterintuitive, and yet: in Democratic super-majority Massachusetts, one of the most sound personal financial decisions a legislator can make is switching to the Republican party.
Here’s how it works: over the years, Massachusetts’ Democratic leadership has occasionally wanted to add more stipends for members. (Why not? It works so well for keeping people in line!)
Of course, an active minority party could be in a position to make a stink about such things. So the Democratic leadership has sweetened the pot. Over the years, random minority positions have been given their own carveouts in the stipend law. My personal favorite: in 2005, there was an “S” added to the statute to allow for multiple “third assistant minority leaders”—the House has two. Or take the Massachusetts Senate, which has 5 Republicans. One is the minority leader, who gets a stipend of $89,000 on top of his annual salary. The other four (!) are all assistant minority leaders, pulling $52,000 extra for their “leadership” duties. Huh.
On average, all these carveouts mean that Republicans have access to more stipended leadership positions than Democrats. The average Republican in the House receives roughly $21,000 in extra leadership stipends, while their average Democratic colleague gets $18,700 (data from BeaconHillStipends.org). In the Senate the difference is even more stark: the average Republican receives $73,300 on top of base pay to Democrats’ $59,500. Dissenters in the Republican ranks have accused Republican leaders of taking stipends from the Democrats in exchange for being less oppositional.
So why are we talking about this?
We need your help to get the word out about stipend reform!
The paid opposition for Republicans is just one reason we are in desperate need of reform to the system of legislator stipends in Massachusetts. And on Election Day, eight districts will get the chance to vote on this themselves! We need you to help get the word out to your neighbors and friends in these districts.
Because this is a local, nonbinding question, it has received limited media attention. We’re looking for volunteers to help boost awareness before Election Day. We’ve put together anAction Guide with phone bank links and a Letter to the Editor guide.
Volunteers are welcome to call voters on their own time, and/or join us next Sunday (November 1st) in Somerville for a Stipend Reform Ballot Question Phonebank from 11am -12pm at Studio Constellation (259 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA 02143)! We will kick off the phonebank with a 10-minute training before we hit the phones. This event will be hybrid, so you can hop on Zoom using this link.
We’re also planning to table across the districts where the question will appear on Election Day. If you’re interested in supporting any of these efforts, please fill out our volunteer form and/or reach out to info@actonmass.org
State House Scoop
Tax cuts still aren’t affordability, or: why we’re voting No on 5
For this week’s Scoop, I’m going to ask you briefly to step into a time machine.
The year is 2023. Biden is still president. Maura Healey is just a few months into her term as Massachusetts governor, the first time in eight years that a Democrat has held the corner office. We’re still celebrating the 2022 passage of the Fair Share Amendment, which is projected to bring in $1 billion in additional annual revenue for education and transportation projects, funded by a small surtax on millionaire earnings.
Suddenly, this reverie is interrupted in March 2023 by Governor Healey’s filing of her first annual budget. She proposes $1 billion in permanent tax cuts—almost the exact number projected to be gained from the Fair Share amendment—with most benefits accruing to the wealthy. Act on Mass sends a Saturday Scoop which describes this budget as “more conservative than the budget proposed by former Republican Governor Charlie Baker last year… This move flies in the face of the demonstrated will of the people at the ballot box, and shows the administration’s real priority: pleasing wealthy donors and business owners.”
But there’s still hope! Maybe the new Healey administration is overly responsive to the wealthy donors who had recently put her in office. But the tax cut needs to go through the Legislature to be finalized. Surely our Democratic supermajority Legislature won’t take up such a blatant cash grab for the wealthy, mere months after their electorate had voted for Fair Share?
Alas. A few weeks later, the House releases and passes their own version in under 48 hours, proposing $1.1 billion in tax cuts. In June 2023, the Senate releases theirs, proposing $590 million in permanent tax cuts. There is no public hearing held on either of these bills, which move to a closed-door conference committee. In September, the final version is released: $1 billion in tax cuts, including major cuts to capital gains tax, the estate tax, and corporate taxes for multi-state businesses. Just two progressive legislators vote against the final bill.
It’s not all bad: the cuts do include some provisions that would benefit low-income households, including an expansion of the earned income tax credit (EITC) and renter deductions. However, Mass Budget reports that these benefits are much smaller per-household than those directed at wealthy earners. Still, Governor Healey positions the cuts as a response to the “rising cost of living,” stating “this tax package delivers savings for those who need it most, while making long overdue changes that will better allow Massachusetts to compete with other states.” Her office celebrates the passage of the state’s “first tax cuts in more than 20 years.”
Okay, now zoom back to the present: it’s October 2026.
Trump is president and more unpopular than ever, with Republicans flailing nationwide in the lead-up to the midterms. Governor Healey is running for re-election. In a recent poll, 56% of voters said they plan to support Governor Healey, with 31% supporting Republican candidate Mike Minogue, 5% behind independent Andrea James, and 7% undecided. Across the board, the top issue motivating voters? “The state’s cost of living.”
There’s one part of the poll that I found particularly interesting: voters were asked about Governor Healey’s record on cutting taxes. Despite the 2023 tax cut, just 10% of voters felt that Governor Healey had “definitely” followed through on cutting taxes. A majority, 56% felt that she had broken her campaign pledge to cut taxes.
This political amnesia could be due to the nature of the 2023 tax cut: because the benefits to the average citizen were relatively small (compared to the wealthy), the majority of people who respond to opinion polls may not have noticed much of an impact. And of course, a little extra cash in pockets come April cannot itself drive down a state’s cost of living. Massachusetts still has the second-highest cost of living in the United States, behind Hawaii.
The poll result also indicates something else: tax cut enthusiasts are difficult to satisfy. Despite “champion”-ing a conservative approach to fiscal governance, Healey saw apparently little political benefit from it with conservatives and tax hawks. The cost of living did not go down, and the tax cut enthusiasts still want more tax cuts.
This brings me to another issue on my mind and heart these days: ballot Question 5. This question proposes a change to Massachusetts’ annual revenue collection cap, to limit revenue collections based on the previous year’s revenue collections instead of the current model. Its stated goal is to trigger more regular annual rebates to Massachusetts taxpayers and to limit budget growth for the state. The Tufts Center for Public Policy Analysis estimates that this would cost the state roughly $1.1-1.3 billion per year if enacted. It would have the equivalent effect of reducing the income tax rate from 5% to 4.8%.
This question is being primarily led by the dark-money “Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance,” whose backers include the Mass. High Tech Council, the Pioneer Institute and the Mass. Competitive Partnership: basically the “who’s who” of CEOs and big-money interests in the state. (The Board of Directors of the Mass Competitive Partnership alone is made up of billionaire Patriots owner Robert Kraft, the CEOs of Fidelity, Bank of America, Liberty Mutual, and anti-union Mass General Brigham, along with 12 other CEOs). In other words, the question is being led by the anti-worker millionaires and billionaires who are still smarting over the Fair Share Amendment.
These wealthy backers frame their pitch for Question 5 around cost of living, citing the “affordability crisis” faced by Massachusetts families. They describe the measure as “a practical step to help keep Massachusetts affordable, competitive, and fiscally responsible.” But wait… haven’t I heard this before? I thought the 2023 tax cut was supposed to make Massachusetts affordable and competitive??
I keep coming back to something I heard an SEIU union organizer say last week at a ballot forum on this question: “a rebate can’t build a school.” Although I’ve never said no to a ~$200 check from the government, it’s not going to make my rent cheaper next month. It’s not going to help Massachusetts’ municipalities out of their budget crisis. And it’s not going to make our education systems better or more equitable. For that, we need a functional state government.
Millionaires and billionaires can risk cuts to social services for 0.2% back on their taxes, because their wealth protects them without a social safety net. For everyday working people, we keep each other safe by pooling our common wealth and directing it towards our shared values.
We have the resources in our state to make it affordable for everyone. What we need is a Legislature and executive branch that will spend their political capital to do that work—expansions of social services, healthcare and housing as a human right, progressive taxation—instead of catering to wealthy donors who will never be satisfied. We also need a democratic Legislature, where members can stand up against things like tax cuts without risking their own livelihoods in the building.
That’s the reform work that’s left to do. In the meantime, vote for the future you want. We’re voting No on 5.
New blog post: Un-rig the Legislature: The Legislature Should Make It Easier to Record Votes
By Act on Mass intern and endorsement committee member, Oscar Gillette!
Constituents knowing how their legislator votes is a fundamental building block of the Democratic process. But with leadership deciding the outcomes of votes in our Legislature, simply getting a recorded vote takes a great deal of effort.
If we had a functioning and democratic legislature, we would have a system where, if the legislative leadership wanted to kill a bill or amendment, they would have to call each legislator, and convince them to vote no. We, the voters, could then debate that issue and replace legislators whose votes we didn’t like. Because of this, legislators would be more scared to go against their district than to go against leadership.
That is not how things work in Massachusetts. Most decisions are made by what is called a “voice vote.” Theoretically, in a voice vote, the presiding officer asks legislators to say “Aye” or “Nay,” and then judges which was louder. In reality, the presiding officer almost never actually pauses after calling for ayes and nays, and just announces the result that leadership decided. This protects members from having to take firm positions on anything (which could give ammunition to potential challengers) and it ensures that leadership will get the result they want. The presiding officer calling for “Ayes” and “Nays” is just a formality: in fact, Senate Pro Tempore William Brownsberger recently made a joke of pretending to wait for members to voice their votes. We discussed this joke in the August 11th Scoop.
The prevalence of “voice votes” is a tool of incumbent protection and power consolidation: two things that are present throughout the Massachusetts’ legislature’s rules and norms. If you are a concerned constituent who wants a particular amendment to pass, how can you go about making your voice heard in any way that matters? Sure you can call your legislator and ask them to support it, but unless your legislator is in leadership their opinion on the amendment will never be publicly asked and will certainly not affect the outcome. Your legislator can tell you that they support the amendment to make you happy, and ten minutes later tell the next caller that they oppose the amendment. When decisions are made by voice vote, constituents have no power, and legislators face no accountability.
…Visit our website for the full blog, including how Massachusetts compares to other states on this issue!
| Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog. |
What else we’re reading this week
Interesting writing and reporting from around the Bay State this week!
- *Act on Mass featured!* How do public records laws work in New England? We tested it. in WGBH
- OPINION: No on Q3 – Jungle Primaries are Bad for Working People’s Interests by Jonathan Cohn in Working Mass
- Mass. upgraded from least competitive elections in the country to second-worst in Commonwealth Beacon
- Vietnamese workers at Mass. nail salons struggle with unstable pay, hazardous conditions in Boston Globe (paywall)
- One step forward for West-East Rail in Commonwealth Beacon
Take Action
⭐ Phonebank for local, non-binding, pro-democracy ballot questions!
Check out our Stipend Reform Action Guide for sample scripts and talking points. You can also join us to phonebank in Somerville on November 1st from 11am -12pm at Studio Constellation (259 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA 02143) or on Zoom.
⭐ Write a Letter to the Editor
Better on the page than over the phone? Since these questions are local and time-sensitive, Letters to the Editor will be crucial for turning out voters. Here is a recording of our Letter to the Editor workshop, and some tips and tricks tailored to the stipend reform ballot question. Feel free to send drafts/questions to info@actonmass.org
⭐ Table with us on Election Day
Table with Act on Mass in your district on Election Day! We are looking for volunteers to serve as a community resource and help voters navigate this year’s ballot. Fill out this form or email us to connect with Act on Mass staff.
⭐ Put up flyers near your polling location
Voting early this week? Us too! Here’s a flyer we drew up to boost voter confidence that you can put up while you’re there, should you feel so inclined 🙂
Thanks for reading and for supporting Act on Mass! Have a great weekend.
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass