State House 101

Massachusetts legislators often defend Beacon Hill’s transparency by pointing out that legislative information is publicly available online. Technically, that is true. In practice, finding and understanding that information can feel like navigating a maze.

The Legislature’s website remains difficult to search, difficult to navigate, and difficult to interpret unless you already understand the procedural language of the State House.

A resident trying to follow a bill often encounters a confusing trail of extensions, redrafts, consolidated amendments, committee referrals, and procedural deadlines. Key information is scattered across multiple pages and PDF documents. Sometimes a bill’s page appears inactive even while major negotiations are taking place behind closed doors.

For example, a constituent attempting to track a housing bill might discover that the bill was reported out favorably, then replaced with a redraft, then folded into a broader package, then referred to another committee, then quietly delayed for months without any clear explanation. At each stage, there may be little indication of who made those decisions or why.

For example, here is the information that the legislature’s website provides for House bill 2078, which would allow certain public employees the right to strike, for this most recent session.

This set of actions is really difficult to decode if you aren’t a Beacon Hill insider. Months of inaction followed by a study order allowed the bill to be quietly killed, and if you want to know if your rep. is to blame, too bad. No committee vote was held.

In many cases it seems that the website is designed in a way to make it intentionally hard to track. In fact, legislators get access to a different website that they use to track bills, even they can’t track their own website.

Even experienced advocates and journalists regularly struggle to follow legislation through the process. For ordinary residents with jobs, families, and limited free time, meaningful participation becomes even harder.

The result is a system where information exists in fragments. Transparency depends less on whether records technically exist and more on whether ordinary people can realistically access and understand them.

Session after session, we see popular progressive bills die in our state legislature, without any action. This is even the fate of policies codified in the party platform of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, like same day voter registration, or public committee votes. Upon investigation, these bills are almost always “sent to study,” a convoluted and opaque process that shields our legislators from progress and accountability and allows them to quietly kill bills. 

When news reports on the bill reference “a study,”a voter might think that the legislature is actually doing some investigation, hearing expert testimony, and even doing analysis of the implications of a proposal. The polite language hides what’s really going on though, since practically every time a bill is “sent to study,” there is never an actual study or report on the bill. So what’s really going on here?

Before a bill can come before the House or Senate for a full vote, it gets sent to a committee for preliminary consideration. There are three different types of committees in the legislature – House, Senate, and Joint committees. The House and Senate committees only have members from their corresponding chamber, but the Joint committees have members from both chambers of the legislature. Joint committees are where the bulk of legislating happens. 

During a committee vote, the committees have three choices:

1. Report it favorably: rule that the bill “ought to pass” and pass it along to the next step in lawmaking (rare)
2. Report it adversely: rule that the bill “ought NOT to pass” and kill it (even more rare)
3. Send it to Study: rule that a bill be studied further and reported on by a later date, and pretend it might still pass. However, the vast majority of the time, no study is ever done, no report is ever produced, and sending a bill to study is a euphemism for killing the bill (fairly common)

For a sense of how often each of these options are exercised: of the 275 items that the Committee on Public Safety & Homeland Security reported during 2017-2018, they only reported a single bill adversely. (0.36%). The Joint Committee on Housing reported none of the 165 bills it considered adversely. (0.00%).

Voters would be better served by Committees actually exercising their power to vote bills up or down and going on the record supporting or opposing certain bills. There are bills introduced by conservative Republicans who you would expect the legislature to kill, yet they aren’t. Why are legislators shirking their duty?

Perhaps it is because it only takes less than 50 words to kill a bill!

The catch here is that co-sponsors of bills – or legislators that support a bill and present it for consideration – do not always vote favorably for those bills during committee votes. 

The bill to Prevent Wage Theft (H.1868 & S.1158), which has plenty of co-sponsors and should pass easily in both the House and Senate given the Democrats’ supermajority, has faced pushback despite its popularity. Representatives have made it a habit to cosponsor bills that they had no intention of ever advocating for or voting in favor of when push comes to shove. That’s why the Act to Prevent Wage Theft has had over a supermajority of co-sponsors and has never come to a floor vote. 

A reason for the lack of  action to pass the bill in both chambers stems from the lack of transparency and accountability that occurs in committees and during committee votes. 

When a committee makes a decision on a bill, they do so on the basis of many hours of expert and public testimony, documents that committee staff compile, and discussions on the committee.

Yet when a bill is reported, the committee doesn’t include any of that. In other states like California, the committee report includes a list of who testified about legislation and whether they supported or opposed it. They think their residents deserve to know if, for example, a healthcare insurance executive testified against singlepayer healthcare, or if a Senior Executive at Exxon testified against a bill to tackle climate change.

In Massachusetts, all this information is diligently compiled by the committee staff, and then put in a secret file somewhere instead of being published.

The public deserves to know what information led a committee to decide one way or another.

Additionally, when the committee advances or kills legislation, they don’t have to give a reason. When the Safe Communities Act was killed (by “sending to study”), there was a 7 line study order that made no reference to the reason for the bill’s failure.

We don’t know why the 19 member committee voted to kill the bill. We don’t have any public report on who testified against the bill​.

During committee hearings, constituents are able to speak in favor of or against bills that are being considered by committees. These committees then take what they hear their constituents argue during the hearings and decide whether certain bills “ought to pass”, “ought not to pass”, or are “sent to study.”

Or do they?

According to a study conducted by The Climate and Development Lab at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, this is not always that case. In fact, many important bills that are considered by committees actually result in decisions that go directly against popular testimony from the public.

In this study, figure 2 shows the amount of support that climate-friendly bills get during public testimony. Individual testimony coming from constituents is 9-to-1 in favor of environmentalist legislation and makes up the majority of testimony that is delivered. The opposition for these bills is comparatively miniscule, so it would only make sense for clean energy and climate legislation to be passed by legislators. However, this is not the case.

That same study found that the utilities lobby (think Eversource and National Grid) actually have distinctly better success rates of passing their legislation. Why is that? 

“Of the 245 climate and energy bills introduced over a six year period, only 43 made it out of committee to a floor vote. Nearly every committee that determined those outcomes voted in secret, leaving little opportunity for the public to hold legislators accountable for voting against climate action. Bills all went through the powerful and obscure Ways and Means Committees and then conference committees, where they were drastically rewritten.​

Furthermore, all of the votes on climate and clean energy happened via voice vote, so at no step of the process was any individual senator’s or representative’s position on a bill recorded.  

The committee votes that determine the bulk of legislative outcomes in the state, beyond occurring in secret, also happen under tight control by legislative leadership. The House Speaker determines who is on each committee, along with the budgeting process, party campaign funds, and the flow of information. As one interviewee put it, “It does seem that the House is a dictatorship and not a democracy.”​

In contrast to the long waits that bills can suffer in hearings, when the Speaker wants to take action on a bill, they can move it incredibly quickly.

In 2018, the so-called “Grand Bargain” bill to raise the minimum wage had been held in committee for months as activists advocated for passage. Then, suddenly on June 20th, the Ways & Means committee reported out a new version of the bill, and the Speaker ensured that the bill was taken up and passed the same day. Less than 24 hours is not sufficient time for Reps to read a new draft of a 38-page law dealing with a number of complicated issues.

It’s not sufficient time for legislators to consider which amendments they want to file to strengthen the legislation and seek support from their colleagues on those votes.

Remember, to get a recorded vote on any amendment, you need to have 10% of the body, 16 members, stand in a 5 second window to demand roll call. When a bill is rammed through the chamber in less than 24 hours you have no hope of making meaningful amendments.

There were only 5 amendments filed on this bill on June 20th, and only 1 of them was adopted: An amendment written by the chair of the Ways & Means committee, who had just reported out the bill earlier that day. His amendment? Technical fixes to the language of the bill he had reported out in a rush earlier to ensure the language the Reps were voting on passed legal muster.

Forget about meaningfully impacting legislation passed in such a rush. Most reps didn’t have time to read to bill and understand what they were voting on!

In Jan 2019, Jonathan Hecht attempted to pass a new rule in the House that Reps be given 72 hours to read legislation before voting on it. Leadership spoke against this rule and defeated it, ensuring that Reps continue to be in the dark on what they’ve voting on in many cases.

Not only do Reps not know what they are voting on – constituents don’t have the time to look into and speak on behalf of legislation with such short notice. That’s why Act on Mass helped to create the People’s House Campaign to reform our legislature. In 2021, we presented two amendments to the House Rules that would have required at least 48 hours, or at least 72 hours to review legislation before coming to a vote. The former was unsuccessful, receiving a mere 39 votes in favor. The amendment for 72 hours never came to a vote and was killed by leadership.

Because bills are often killed in committee, it’s a necessity for our legislators to try to advance bills via amendment to other bills, oftentimes through the budget, one of the only laws the legislature is legally required to pass each session. The Senate attempted to pass part of the Safe Communities Act through a budget amendment, for example.

After a bill is put in the Order of the Day, meaning it will come up for a vote the next day, there is a certain time period, sometimes very brief, during which legislators can submit amendments, and then they can “co-sponsor” the amendments of their colleagues.​

Unfortunately, it’s common practice for leadership to take electeds one-by-one into closed offices and demand that they withdraw their amendments.

Now, it would sometimes make sense for an amendment to be withdrawn, if for example someone else submitted the same amendment and it passed. But in most cases, this is a method of leadership ensuring that issues they don’t support don’t come up for a vote by the full House.

During the 2017 Criminal Justice Reform debate, 82.8% of all amendments were withdrawn. Very few of them were passed by other means.

Another way amendments can “vanish” is through the consolidation process. This is where leadership takes all the amendments filed to a bill (this could be in the thousands for the budget, for example) and categorizes them into consolidated amendments. 

Let’s consider this example: the summary of consolidated amendment A says it contains amendments 1-6. But when you look into the actual text of consolidated amendment A, it only contains 2, 4, and 5. Who chose that? Leadership. And of course, it was behind closed doors. When this happens, we say amendments 1, 3, and 6 were “consolidated away” meaning it looks like they were considered, but in reality, they just vanished behind closed doors. 

Consolidated amendments only get one vote, meaning that it can be an “all or nothing” result. They  are typically seen as pre-approved by leadership, and therefore are expected to be voted on favorably, despite often lacking key issues. In practice, consolidated amendments usually pass unanimously or near-unanimously.

Above, we outlined that bills mostly die in committee. The committee chair enforces what leadership wants and won’t let meaningful bills come up for a vote. But what happens if a committee chair decides to advance a bill that leadership doesn’t support?

They are brought into the same closed-door office meetings that happen all too often, and the implication is that if the right outcome doesn’t happen, the chair might lose their committee chairmanship.

Losing a chairmanship means you lose the  stipend leadership gives you for being in that position. You could also lose your fancy office and be shunned to the basement. Leadership can even force you to have less staff, a worse parking spot, or be socially and professionally alienated within the walls of the State House.

For a state representative, stipends attached to committee chairmanships can make a big difference on your salary, 149 out of 200 state legislators are stipended. This chart shows the current pay distribution in red and the pay distribution that would occur if the stipend reform ballot initiative that we are backing passes and is implemented in blue.

Many of the committees that lead to stipends for their chairs and vice-chairs don’t meet, don’t consider bills, and don’t hold hearings. They are ghost committees whose sole purpose is to create an excuse to get more members stipended.

Think this sounds far-fetched? It’s not.

In 2017, Rep Russell Holmes was stripped of his committee vice chairmanship after making public comments mildly critical of the Speaker (which is definitely not a coincidence).

Former Rep Diane Provost, who was in the House both before and after a majority of members received leadership stipends, said that “with more members in leadership positions, the House became more hierarchical and less collegial. Dissent lessened, dissidents became more conspicuous and marginalized.” 

By standing up to leadership in ways that align with the wishes of their constituents, legislators run the risk of not only losing the little influence they have over legislation, but risk losing large portions of their salaries that are already pretty low.

There aren’t many votes recorded in the Massachusetts House, but if you look at the data as it exists, you’ll find something striking.

The vast majority of Democratic representatives vote the same as the Speaker of the House does 90%-100% of the time.

In the context of the Massachusetts State house, it makes sense that the House Speaker or Senate President could wield so much power without others in the State House putting them in check. If a bill is already on the floor, there is an assumption that leadership wanted it there. And if the Speaker wants the bill on the floor, then chances are they want it to be passed. 

It’s common knowledge on Beacon Hill that the best way to advance your career as a Democrat is to follow the leader. This not only feeds into the lack of transparency, but it also promotes a toxic work environment for those in the State House. 

In December 2018, Rep. Cory Atkins gave a farewell address to the House.After enumerating the many honorable statesmen and politicians who had worked in the House chamber since 1638, she contrasted the honorable history of the chamber by pointing out that now most people simply check the big boards on the wall to see how the Speaker of the House is voting and change their votes to match then-Speaker DeLeo’s. 

When asked for comment later by Bob Katzen of the Beacon Hill Roll Call, Rep. Russell Holmes had a damning answer for what had just transpired: “Welcome to the House of Representatives. This is exactly how the House runs itself and the members should be ashamed. The speaker is like a shepherd leading a flock of sheep.”

The Speaker of the House and Senate President have near-unilateral power and control over their respective chambers due to a series of rewards and punishments they use to keep the rank-and-file in line. The Speaker and Senate President  appoint and can fire committee chairs at will, and therefore control the flow of legislation.

Every two years, at the beginning of the legislative session, members of each chamber elect their leader by a majority vote. In theory, this means there can be a change in power with each legislative session, after each election. But in practice, we rarely see change at the very top, unless a leader retires or is carried out in handcuffs (yes, the latter is more common than you think). 

Before holding a public vote on the floor, Democrats meet in a private caucus to select one Democrat to support. This protects this party from splitting their votes and potentially giving the position to a Republican. They then return to the floor to make a rare public vote, putting every rank-and-file legislator on the spot to choose the party’s pick or face retribution. 

Given the ways in which the Speaker and Senate President can enforce discipline, taking a stand in caucus is just as bad as personally attacking them.

Until these rules and the general culture of secrecy in the State House are changed, we won’t see important bills passed.