Happy Saturday friends,
Ahh, mid-September in Massachusetts. The leaves are falling, the Pats are losing, and our lovely state legislators are still crawling through informal sessions.
The past few weeks have brought some interesting updates to the many legislative priorities that our legislators left on the table at the end of formal sessions in July. We’ve covered some of these in recent Scoops with Sydney’s Sprinkles section– the Graveyard of the 193rd Session. Most of our "graveyard" bills have died outright, languishing in Ways and Means or being sent to study, to never be considered again until they are reintroduced next session and the cycle repeats.
But let’s do a quick recap a few things that our State House is still negotiating on, albeit in low-attendance informal sessions mostly kept from the public eye:
- Clean energy siting reforms: a major priority for climate legislation this term, this bill seeks to speed up the bureaucratic process of choosing sites for and constructing substations and transformers, critical to Massachusetts’ climate goals. Both House and Senate kept this central issue and then filled their versions with their own slate of climate measures; disagreements over the additional details is keeping this bill in conference committee.
- Hospital oversight bill: in light of the Steward Health crisis, advocates pushed for this change to boost state oversight of hospitals and increase accountability from private actors. House and Senate versions passed their respective chambers by wide margins but failed to come to an agreement on this critical legislation by the July deadline
- Opioid crisis bill: in the midst of an opioid crisis that claimed the lives of a staggering 2,125 MA residents last year, this bill includes a broad series of measures to tackle the crisis, including licensing addiction counselors and requiring insurance to cover overdose-reversal drugs like Narcan. The Senate version includes a measure allowing municipalities to open harm reduction centers, while the House’s does not, keeping this bill in conference committee. Despite the urgency of this matter, the committee recently met this week for the first time since July.
Advocates wait eagerly to see if action will be made on these bills and others in informal sessions. So what's going on in the meantime? Let's get into it.
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State House Scoop
What Supp? - Healey comes out swinging with a supplemental budget
Last week, Governor Maura Healey introduced a supplemental budget measure. Supplemental budgets are a fairly routine move, used to allocate funds outside of the typical budget process for agencies or projects that are in dire need of funds. However, this supplemental budget file by Healey is notable for two reasons.
One, it was filed after the end of formal session, which is atypical. Although budget measures get a bit of a fast track, they still must go through processes similar to any bill: it is read by House and Senate committees, who release their own versions, to which members can add amendments, and on and on, etc. etc. All the bills that we discussed above went through these processes months ago and are now in conference committee, where three (3!) members of each chamber produce a compromise between House and Senate versions. Starting a bill from scratch once the legislative session is over is a bold move, even for the governor.
(Little reminder on conference committees – by custom, the House and Senate leaders each appoint two members from their own party and one from the minority party.
…Wait… so you mean to tell me… a grand total of six people, hand-picked by leadership, decide the final language for a bill before it becomes law, which cannot be amended afterwards, and two of them are Republicans? Giving the Republican caucus, who number a measly 29/200 across the House and Senate, wildly disproportionate control over the final versions of our laws?!
Yes. Good ol' #MApoli, where having an 80+% Democratic supermajority feels remarkably like not having one.)
But back to the supplemental budget. Notable thing two: Healey chose to link the supplemental budget to the very climate measures we just discussed – namely, clean energy siting reforms. This is an interesting move on the part of the governor, which uses the vehicle of a supplementary budget measure to effectively speed up negotiations between the House and Senate on this issue.
Whether we like it or not, the use of budget bills to pass non-budget-related policies– called “outside sections”– is a fairly common move for our government. For one, the state budget has a stricter deadline than other bills: a budget mustbe passed each fiscal year, meaning that tacking things onto the budget is one way for reps to get things checked off the list before the messy end of the session. (I say “stricter” because the state budget has famously been late for the last 13 years in a row.) Also, as I mentioned, the budgets get fast-tracked a bit, heading straight to Ways and Means without passing through preliminary committees. Crucially, budgets and all their attached components also get to skip the pesky stage of public input– public hearings are not held on budget measures. Therefore, outside sections can also be used as a tool for our representatives to sneak through legislation without public input. Gee, good thing we can trust them not to take advantage of a thing like that!
In this case, the Governor is using the outside sections of a supplemental budget measure herself to speed things along on a legislative priority that legislators have been stalling on. Reactions are mixed– some advocates are glad that the central policy of clean energy siting reform has a chance of passing, while others argue that not combining this policy with relief for energy consumers and environmental justice communities will exacerbate inequality.
Members of the Senate negotiating team are particularly miffed, as it seems that the Governor’s proposal includes the additional measures from the House but not those of the Senate. A key Senate negotiator accused the governor of “taking sides” and interrupting negotiations.
The supplemental budget will now go to the House for debate, allowing the Senate to stew on whether to ultimately vote it through. Legislators on either side could also use the Governor’s move as a tool in ongoing negotiations to get the original bill through conference negotiations. Either way, Healey’s move doesn’t seem to reflect much faith in the ability of our legislators to move on this key priority, despite her rosy assessment of the state of our democratic processes.
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Credit where credit's due
Mom’s for Liberty Lawsuit: Why a functioning state legislature is vital to our safety
While we at Act on Mass often address our grievances with the legislature, there are moments that illuminate the importance of what good state policy we already have in place.
Recently, a lawsuit by the conservative group Mom’s for Liberty has threatened transgender students across the country. It intends to halt new federal protections for transgender students under Title IX on the argument that “any protections for transgender students will essentially unravel protections for women” by altering the language on discrimination on the basis of sex. This lawsuit applies to any school at which a Mom’s for Liberty member is a parent, including 32 schools in Massachusetts.
Luckily, Massachusetts had already enacted other legislation – such as An Act Relative to Gender Identity passed in 2011 – that gives transgender people protections that Mom’s for Liberty is desperately trying to prevent from becoming federal law. In our state, we are protected against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation regardless of the outcome of this specific lawsuit. Therefore, these 32 schools are spared the risk of legal battles about their gender-inclusive policies.
That is 32 schools where transgender and gender non-conforming children can focus on homework and friends, not their rights being caught up in court cases.** This** is what good state policy can do, when carried out by a legislature that operates in a timely manner to carry out the wishes of constituents. But with our legislator’s infamous inaction sessions after session, we run the risk of not having enough protections in place to stave off harmful lawsuits and court decisions.
It is times like these – when our federal protections are being threatened by radical groups – that we truly appreciate the importance of holding our legislators accountable to pass progressive policy that reflects the needs of the Massachusetts population.
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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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Syd’s Sprinkles: Graveyard of the 193rd Session — Healthy Youth Act
On the subject of protecting kids from weird conservative rhetoric… In this week’s installment of the Graveyard, we lay to rest the Healthy Youth Act.
In yet another session, the Healthy Youth Act (S.268, H.544) has died via House Ways and Means after being passed in the Senate.
Despite being co-sponsored by 78 House representatives (we’ll do the math: that’s the majority of the 160-member House!), the Massachusetts House of Representatives has failed to pass the Healthy Youth Act.
The Healthy Youth Act would have:
- Ensured that a comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education curriculum is taught in public schools
- Mandated education about consent, healthy relationships, and gender affirmation in sexual education curricula
We have proof that our legislature can enact policies that protect Bay Staters when the federal government does not, but our legislators fail to do so much of the time. Since the State House is notoriously underproductive and unmotivated to set protections for vulnerable groups session after session, young people face a lack of sufficient education to make informed decisions and engage in safe conversations with their peers under the guidance of their teachers.
Without this vital education, transmission rates of STDs, teen pregnancies, and non-consensual relations will continue to occur at levels that could have been lowered if young people in the state were better informed about acts that they choose or choose not to engage in. Inclusive sex education is not only for members of the LGBTQ+ community, but for all identities.
Outraged? Check if your representative co-sponsored this vital legislation this session– and encourage them to champion it in the next.
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Take Action
Save the date!
Ballot Q1 Info Session - October 3, 2024 5-6:30 PM
Act on Mass' very own Brenna Ramsden will join State Auditor Diana DiZoglio and Cambridge City Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler to discuss Ballot Question 1 on October 3rd in Cambridge. Join us to hear the discussion and ask any questions about the ballot measure!
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That's all we've got today. Enjoy the (more or less) lovely fall weather and dream sweet dreams of what a Democratic supermajority in Massachusetts could actually accomplish after common-sense transparency reforms!
Dreaming with you,
- Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass