Happy belated Joint Rule 10 Day, friend!

Or, more accurately, our condolences; this is the day when hundreds of bills in the MA Legislature are "sent to study," i.e. killed for the remainder of the session. And since votes in joint committees aren't public, we won't be able to see a breakdown of which committee members voted to send these bills to study, never mind know why.

Ah, democracy!

Here’s the status of some key bills:

Noticing a pattern? Many high-profile bills received extensions, which move the committee’s deadline to report out a bill to a date typically in April or May. Extensions might sound like good news, and they are; they allow campaigns to keep fighting for their bills. But they can also have a sinister motive; committees will grant extensions to bills with strong movements behind them in order to quietly send them to study later to generate less negative attention from advocates and press.

But we won’t let that happen, will we?

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State House Scoop

“Governor Healey releases FY2025 budget proposal amidst revenue downturn*--*

Right on schedule (take notes, Legislature), Governor Healey unveiled her proposal for next year’s budget, kicking off the four month long period known on Beacon Hill as “budget season.” The process goes a little something like this:

  1. The governor files her proposal
  2. House leaders change it to their liking, and file their own version 
  3. The House then votes on their budget proposal, wading through the 1,000+ amendments that lawmakers filed to it (or, more likely than not, unanimously vote YES on a number of “consolidated amendments” drafted by leadership... but I’m getting ahead of myself)
  4. With both the Governor’s and the House’s versions to consider, Senate leadership crafts their own proposal
  5. Just like the House, the Senate then amends and votes on their budget
  6. A conference committee with members from the House and the Senate is formed to negotiate a compromise version in secret, which is then unable to be amended further

Yes, Healey’s budget is a starting point, but it also sets the tone for the debate. And I’ll let Senate Ways & Means Chair Michael Rodrigues summarize that tone in three words: “strong fiscal discipline." In other words, friend, more spending cuts in 2025. This is in addition to the devastating 9C budget cuts Healey just made to dozens of social programs in the current (FY2024) budget that we wrote about in the last full Scoop. 

Why all these spending cuts? These are due to lower than anticipated tax revenues for seven months in a row PLUS the tax cuts just passed this fall (yup, they knew about the tax revenue dip and chose to cut taxes anyways 🤪). Without the revenue from the Fair Share Amendment, this budget is .5% smaller than last year’s budget adjusted for inflation. And House and Senate leaders are hinting that their budget proposals might cut even more. 

If you leave this Scoop with one takeaway, let it be this: thank Cod for the Fair Share Amendment. Because of this new revenue (generated by a 4% surtax on income over $1 million per year), the budget proposal includes free school meals for all public school students and funding to make community college free for some, among other desperately needed investments in education. Fair Share revenue also supports public transportation, but even Fair Share can’t fund the T alone; spokespeople for the MBTA estimate that Healey’s budget still underfunds the T by $93 million.

After all of this, the downturn in revenue, the 9C budget cuts, the shrinking of the budget, you would think maybe, JUST maybe, the Governor would consider raising new revenue to cover these costs? Perhaps increasing taxes on our state’s billionaires or multi-state corporations instead of cutting them??

“No.” 

Asked and answered.

Senate passes gun control bill after months of inter-chamber infighting

After much inter-chamber fighting last spring about which committee should house gun legislation, the Senate finally passed their version of the long-awaited gun bill last week. Both versions of the bill would expand existing red flag laws and crack down on ghost guns, which is great. But the devil, and disagreement, is in the details; the Senate version is 94 pages shorter than the House's and includes far fewer specifics.

But the House and Senate differ on more than the content of the bill. In response to the House bill, passed in October, the Senate took an unusual route to “filing” and passing their own version to circumvent the committee dispute. Instead of submitting a bill, assigning it to a joint committee for a hearing, and advancing it through the normal pathways, the Senate opted instead to take up the House bill under an amendment by Senator Creem, which struck the entirety of the House’s language and instead replaced it with their own. After passing 37-3, the bill now goes to a conference committee with three members from each chamber to hash out the differences behind closed doors. They have until July 31st, the end of formal sessions, to produce and pass a compromise. 


Teachers strike underscores need for Right to Strike legislation

The Newton School Committee has finally agreed to heed the demands of the Newton Teachers Association following a two-week strike for better pay, cost of living adjustments, and support for students’ mental health, among others. Teachers in Newton have been working without a contract since August. Strikes lasting this long are highly unusual; the past five teachers unions in MA that have gone on strike since 2020 were all awarded a contract within five days or less. 

From unlivable wages, to understaffing and overworking, teachers across the state are going to extremes to get the bare minimum. Because it is illegal for public teachers to strike in Massachusetts, the NTA accumulated over $600,000 in fines over the course of the strike in order to reach a fair deal for themselves and their students. This policy is wildly unpopular; recent polling has shown that 2/3rds of Bay Staters support allowing teachers to strike for higher wages and better working conditions. But alas, Joint Rule 10 Day has come and gone, and without so much as a passing glance, the legislature killed the bill to reinstate public educators’ right to strike by “sending it to study.” If teachers cannot credibly threaten to withhold their labor by striking, what chips do they have to bargain for themselves and their communities with?

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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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Our Movement in the News!

Since the Sunlight Act was reported favorably out of committee last month, the bill and our movement for transparency and accountability on Beacon Hill has gotten loads of great press. Check out a few of these below, and don’t be shy about sharing them with your friends! Or legislators 👀

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Take Action

Email your senators in support of the Sunlight Act!

Lead sponsored by transparency champion Senator Jamie Eldridge, this comprehensive legislation includes several transparency reforms, including requiring all recorded committee votes to be posted on the Legislature's website, requiring that committee hearings be scheduled at least a week in advance, making written testimony submitted to committees publicly available, and subjecting the Governor's Office to the state's public records law. The bill has received a favorable report from the Rules Committee, and now sits in Senate Ways & Means - the last hurdle before it can be brought to a vote and passed. 

Email your senator today to express your support for the Sunlight Act and urge them to bring it to a vote this session!

EMAIL YOUR SENATOR >>

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That's all for today! (I know, have such nerve saying "that's all" at the end of an extremely long email.) Here's what I'll leave you with for the weekend: after Joint Rule 10 Day (and as decisions on extended bills start to trickle in) our focus at Act on Mass becomes twofold: 1) hold the Legislature accountable for killing popular bills, and 2) fight like hell to get the Sunlight Act to a vote and passed in the Senate. Yes, we really believe it's possible. You heard it from President Spilka herself; the Senate is already on record in support of three of the four elements of the bill (excepting public records law for the Governor's Office). And what's a little Public Records Law between friends?

EMAIL YOUR SENATOR ABOUT THE SUNLIGHT ACT >>

Have a great, unseasonably warm weekend!

In solidarity,

Erin Leahy

Executive Director, Act on Mass