Happy Saturday, friend!
We’re currently nestled in the eye of the budget storm; the House debate is over, and the Senate’s will take place this week. In the meantime, Senators have filed over a thousand budget amendments, most of which are earmarks for local projects. As the House did, these amendments will almost certainly be grouped into a handful of mega “consolidated amendments,” rewritten by leadership, which will be approved unanimously. The House budget debate only had a single roll call vote on an amendment other than the near unanimous approval of the 7 consolidated amendments. Not much of a “debate” if you ask me.
The shift of lawmaking from the public eye with speeches, floor debates, and recorded votes on individual issues to a private process held behind closed doors should deeply trouble us.
Time will tell if the Senate budget debate will continue this trend or buck it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll hold twice as many votes on individual amendments as the House did: two!
State House Scoop
$9 billion needed for public housing repairs: a budget reality check
The House’s budget proposal came in at $56.2 billion. The Senate’s proposal, to be voted on next week, is starting around $55 billion. Claiming that the Bay State has more than enough tax revenue, the House and Governor have proposed about $1 billion in permanent tax cuts alongside the budget. They argue, further, that in order to keep Massachusetts “competitive” (a loaded piece of conservative rhetoric I broke down in the intro to last week’s Scoop), those tax cuts should disproportionately benefit the ultra-rich and corporations.
These are some big, abstract numbers that can be hard to grapple with. To give you a sense of scale: according to experts and advocates, in order to repair the Commonwealth’s 43,000 public housing units to an acceptable condition, we would need $9 billion in the 2024 budget. You read that right: we are nine billion dollars short of what is needed to make our existing public housing acceptable.
Conditions in our public housing are inhumane: children have elevated levels of lead in their blood, there is dangerous dilapidation that has led to serious injuries, and even “a rodent problem so bad a family’s young children sleep in a top bunk because rats scurry across the floor at night.”
Thus far this year, the legislature has allocated a mere $55 million towards capital investments in public housing — just 0.6% of what is needed. Another note for scale: that $55 million is just one eighth of the amount of money they’re giving away in tax cuts explicitly for the rich.
So when we talk about tax cuts, or even level-funding in the budget (i.e. defunding considering inflation), we’re talking about the choice to prioritize making the rich richer over safe living conditions for our most vulnerable populations. Instead of $1 billion in permanent tax cuts, why not invest that in public housing? I’ll do ya one better: what if we taxed the top 1% richest Bay Staters more, not less?
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Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.
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Joint Rules feud exposes inter-chamber power struggle
It’s been four years since Beacon Hill has bothered to pass rules for their Joint Committees — something that they’re required to do at the start of each session. And this year, it’s even worse: not a single joint committee has passed their own operating rules for the session, which were due two months ago. The issue really came to light this week when two separate hearings were convened for the same bills by dueling factions of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy (TUE).
The reason for the double hearing? House co-chair Jeffrey Roy scheduled the Thursday hearing without Senate co-chair Michael Barrett’s approval — a move Barrett says violates the operating rules of the committee. This not only forced constituents to schlep to the State House to testify twice on the same legislation (for some advocates, turning what would normally be a day trip into an overnight stay in Boston), but it also lifted the curtain on growing tensions between House and Senate members of joint committees.
The core tension is this: every joint committee (the issue-based committees that advance or kill bills) has members of both the House and the Senate. And since the Senate has 40 members to the House’s 158, House Reps outnumber Senators on every joint committee. That’s why these committees have been operating not by majority, but by consensus — otherwise, Senators (who each represent more constituents than each Representative) could get shut out of committee process decision-making. Then again, Roy argues that the current system, where Barrett can single handedly block or delay a committee vote on a bill, has slowed the legislative process.
In other words: dramaaaaaaaaaaa
I love messy infighting as much as the next gal, but this public spat between two lawmakers (who apparently occasionally collaborate on their folk music side projects??) has sinister implications. If these chairs can fight over the power to decide which bills come to a vote and when, it shows how much power they have in the first place. And in our humble opinion at Act on Mass, it's rarely a good thing for just a few people have so much power, especially when determining the fate of climate-related legislation.
A 2021 Brown University study found that despite the fact that testimony in legislative committees is nine to one in support of climate action, the vast majority of climate bills die in committee. In contrast, bills that were backed by the utilities lobby were far more likely to advance out of TUE, and eventually pass into law. Brown’s recommendation to actually expedite the committee process and make it truly reflective of the wants of Bay Staters? “Sharply improve transparency.”
More sinister implications: Barrett wasn’t the only Senate co-chair who received pushback from their House counterpart. Four other Senate co-chairs told reporters that they had received seemingly uniform proposals to give House members more power to schedule hearings than Senators, suggesting this didn’t come from Roy and isn't a one-off. Yup—this push to edge out Senate voices in committees is likely coming from the top. It’s almost as if we have a democracy crisis on Beacon Hill. Someone should really do something about that…
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Announcing our Sunlight Agenda!
Our fight for democratic integrity on Beacon Hill has become more dire since our founding in 2019. In 2023 alone, we’ve seen the Senate strip away term limits for their president, the House reject a measure to make their committee votes public without a recorded vote, and Governor Healey reject a slew of public records requests, breaking her campaign promise to abide by public records law.
That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’re taking our fight beyond just the session rules, and launching our first ever legislative agenda!
- S. 1963 (Sen. Jamie Eldridge): An Act to provide sunlight to state government
- S. 2064 (Sen. Becca Rausch): An Act extending the public records law to the Governor and the Legislature
- H. 3121 (Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven): An Act relative to the open meeting law
- S. 2014 (Sen. John Keenan): An Act relative to collective bargaining rights for legislative employees
The first step of our campaign is the co-sponsorship drive. Email your legislators today to ask them to cosponsor the Sunlight Agenda:
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Take Action
TODAY: Fight MAGA Default Crisis Rally, 3PM @ Boston Common
Organized by our friends at Indivisible Mass Coalition, join keynote speaker Representative and Minority Whip Katherine Clark at a rally on Boston Common to say NO loud & clear to extremist MAGA GOP demands for cuts to social programs in return for raising the debt ceiling.
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That's all for this week! Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Until next time,
Erin Leahy
Executive Director, Act on Mass
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