With two days of notice, and 24 hours to read over 200 pages of legislation, the House voted on the rules yesterday afternoon. There’s no sugar coating it: our amendments for public committee votes died. Worse, they died without a recorded vote.
Trust me–the irony is not lost on us.
The amendments died on a “voice vote,” which is when the Speaker calls the outcome of a vote based on the perceived “yay” and “nay” votes he hears from the floor. In reality, nobody says a word and the Speaker just gets to call the vote how he wants. See for yourself exactly how it went down:
Yeah. It’s tough to watch.
Key Takeaways
Our amendments for public committee votes died on voice votes. This means we did not get to see each rep’s vote on this issue, which is deeply frustrating. Erin, we had a whole graphic ready to show how each rep voted on public committee votes. We were especially excited to show you how the reps whose voters explicitly instructed them to support public committee votes through our non-binding ballot question voted. But we simply don’t have that information to give you--a massive blow to all of us who worked on the ballot question campaign. Essentially, leadership felt there was “consensus” that these amendments should not pass and acted accordingly, and not a single rep stood for a roll call.
This infuriating outcome is a perfect illustration of why we so desperately need this reform in the first place: when a modest good governance reform supported by 87% of the electorate and used in most legislatures across the country (and even in the MA Senate!) gets swatted down without so much as a second thought, that’s not a democracy.
The compromise language from last session is still in the House Rules, but conspicuously missing from the Joint Rules. In direct response to our campaign last session, House leadership made a concession in both the House Rules, and the House’s proposal for the Joint Rules: “no” votes in committees would be publicly listed by name, and all other actions listed as aggregate tallies. This concession is still in place for the House Rules, which is huge for us. Strangely, this language, and any language about publishing or not publishing committee votes was removed from the Joint Rules proposal.
But there’s still hope. Because the House and Senate must come to an agreement on the Joint Rules, there is still time to fight for publishing committee votes as well as other priorities. Since the Senate has historically included public committee votes in both the Senate-only Rules and their proposal for the Joint Rules, the Senate will almost certainly negotiate for the publishing of full committee votes in the Joint Rules. Perhaps the House is hoping to ultimately meet in the “middle” and codify their concession from last time.
Good governance amendments were struck down left and right. Several amendments to give legislators more time to read amendments before voting on them were filed and promptly rejected. (See roll call results for amendment #7: time to review technical amendments here, and for #12: time to review consolidated amendments here.) Arguments against having more time to read before voting included gems such as “this would be the equivalent of a rain delay for the legislature,” (thanks Rep. Dan Hunt for that one), and “amendments are available electronically now, so you shouldn’t need more time to read them,” (from seasoned rhetorical acrobat Rep. Sarah Peake).
In addition to time to review, an amendment to require that committee hearings be scheduled one week in advance (up from just 72 hours) was soundly rejected. (See that roll call here.) This policy, designed to make it easier for working people to attend and testify at committee hearings, has also been included in the Senate’s Rules. But somehow, giving constituents and advocates an extra few days to take work off and organize people to testify would be untenable, according to Rep. Ruth Balser, because “a lot of preparation goes into a hearing, and committee chairs need flexibility.” Convinced? Yeah, neither are we.
One small note: those three amendments were filed by Republicans. That’s right: Massachusetts Democrats are solidly to the right of Republicans on these democracy issues. And if you know anything about where Republicans stand nationally on democracy issues, that is not a good look.
Finally, some good news: committee hearings will now be permanently hybrid. This is the one solid piece of good news to emerge from the rules debate. The practice of hybrid committee hearings, in place via emergency rules due to covid, has been made permanent. This is a massive victory for accessibility for everyday people to testify at committee hearings.
Well, there you have it. Of course, our own amendments dying with so little fanfare is devastating, but it was also generally disappointing to see so little debate on the floor on something that matters so much to our democracy. Only eight amendments were filed (and not withdrawn) to both sets of rules debated yesterday–combined. That's what the Speaker's power looks like: a manufactured facade of consensus to do whatever he and his leadership team wants.
But we knew all of this. In fact, that was exactly why Act on Mass was founded–because the people of Massachusetts deserve better. We deserve a state house that strives to be more accessible and accountable to everyday people, not one that bends over backwards to keep us out.
The fight continues. First things first, we’ll keep you updated as the Senate votes on their rules, and when there are opportunities to organize around the Joint Rules conference committee.
As for the House Rules: we’re in it for the long haul. The Speaker might have institutional power, but we have the people–87% of them, in fact. The rules are important, but there are many avenues for this fight, and we’re planning to use everything at our disposal to build our grassroots power, and demand the transparency and accountability we deserve.
That’s why, for the first time in Act on Mass history, we will be taking the fight for reform beyond just the rules: we’ve got a whole suite of legislative priorities up our sleeves that we can’t wait to announce. Stay tuned!