Happy Saturday,
As you all know, I (Scotia) am new here at Act on Mass! Lately, when people ask me what I do for work, I get the pleasure of telling them that I work for a nonprofit organization that advocates for good governance and transparency at the Massachusetts state legislature. To most people, that sounds like one thing: politics! Usually, they respond with a quip: “Wow, you must be busy these days, with the election!”
…
:(
:’(
This is when a new acquaintance gets to hear the first of my array of sad facts about state politics in Massachusetts: that we tend to have the least competitive legislative elections in the country. That is to say: no, other than ballot questions and volunteering on our own time, a November election tends to be distinctly un-busy for those of us who work on the state legislature in Massachusetts.
Last week, my sad fact was underscored: Massachusetts was once again ranked last in legislative competitiveness out of all U.S. states that held legislative elections in 2024. With unfortunately merited snark, Ballotopedia points out in their report that Massachusetts has been dead last in six out of the last eight elections. In fact, Massachusetts also saw one of the biggest declines in competitiveness since the last election in 2022 (33% decline)– despite the fact that it was also dead last that year!
Studies link high election competitiveness to a number of important outcomes, including voter engagement and legislator effectiveness– it’s considered an important marker of a healthy democracy. It doesn’t take a political scientist to link our national ranking on electoral competitiveness (#50) to our 2023 national ranking on legislative effectiveness (also #50!). When our reps know they’ll keep their jobs regardless, why risk alienating leadership to push for new progressive policies? Why keep promises to voters, when they’ll get re-elected either way?
At Act on Mass, we’re building a movement to hold our elected leaders accountable around the clock– starting right here by delivering information about their activities straight to voters, with our Saturday Scoop!
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State House Scoop
Deep dive on gun control reform
Conservatives are launching new opposition efforts to one of the legislature’s landmark pieces of legislation this session: a sweeping new gun control bill. The repeal effort has us harkening back to times of yore, like… oh, the last election, when conservatives tried the same tactic to repeal another popular piece of legislation at the ballot box and failed.
Let’s recap. You might have heard about the gun bill from friends in the gun violence prevention community, who championed these measures through the last two sessions. Finally passed in one of the final weeks of this session and signed by Governor Healey on July 25th, An Act Modernizing Firearm Laws (H.4885) is the state’s most significant new gun safety law in a decade. It provides a slew of updates to the firearm code – here’s just a few of them:
- Raising the age to own a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun to 21
- Prohibits the creation of “ghost guns” or 3D-printed guns, which can be made without a background check and are untraceable
- Bans the carrying of firearms in schools, polling places, and government buildings
- Expands the definition of “assault-style” weapon to apply the state’s assault weapons ban to more firearm types
- Requires live training for new gun licenses
Unsurprisingly, gun control opponents statewide are up in arms (yikes… no pun intended) about the new bill. The result has been some interesting governance shenanigans.
On August 1st, Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) filed a federal lawsuitchallenging the live training requirement, characterizing it as “burdensome.” They sought a federal injunction to block the implementation of the bill until the lawsuit was resolved. On Sept. 12th, MA lawmakers quietly announced the release of a new mid-year spending package– which contained a tiny provision that would delay the live training requirement part of the gun bill until 18 months after the rest of the law comes into effect. Lawmakers explained that they were correcting a “drafting error” in the original text. This change undercut the ability of the plaintiffs to seek an injunction on the whole law on the grounds of the training requirement
Then, on August 12th, GOAL took the first step toward filing a referendum petition to repeal the law with a question on the 2026 ballot. This gave them until this week (Oct 9th) to collect 37,000 signatures to get the question on the ballot. Under this procedure, citizens can also pause the enactment of the law in question until the decision is made on the ballot by collecting 50,000 signatures within the deadline.
So, last week on Oct. 2nd, Governor Healey took executive action to enact the law early. Normally, a law takes effect 90 days after it is signed, which would have had it coming into effect on Oct. 23rd. With this executive action, Healey ensured that the law will be in effect for the next two years, avoiding the possibility of a pause via referendum petition.
Last week also saw a new lawsuit by a Bellingham gun shop owner challenging the law on the basis of the assault weapon expansion. Legal experts expect the law to hold up in state court but if the challenge makes it to the Supreme Court of the U.S., things could get complicated.
Let’s zero in for a second on the democratic (or undemocratic) processes involved in the creation of this law, and the arguments they engender against it. The House passed its version of the bill in October 2023, the Senate in February 2024. The bill then sat in conference committee until July 17th– one of the last weeks of the session. It was released that day at 6:30 P.M. and passed by both houses the following afternoon, allowing proponents or opponents little time to mobilize on it.
Indeed, a representative of the conservative repeal campaign was quoted as saying:
“This thing wasn’t vetted. The public wasn’t allowed to give input on the final bill. The Legislature didn’t even get a chance to read the final bill before they passed this… This was all done in a rush on purpose because they knew the bill could not stand the light of day. That’s why they rushed to pass it.”
Well, we at Act on Mass know that this rushed passing of legislation is not only reserved for legislation that conservatives don’t like: it’s the rule. You can read about this problem in the Transparency section of our website– it's something we've targeted before, with our reform campaign for 72 hours to review legislation. However, this particular line of criticism from conservatives raises an unfortunately important point about the status quo of legislating in Massachusetts.
A September 2023 poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters supported expanding MA’s gun laws, including 84% support of banning “ghost guns” and increasing training requirements, key components of the new law. These measures also got majority support among Republicans, a demographic that the repeal effort hopes to target.
Our lawmakers deserve praise for delivering on this extremely popular priority with sweeping legislation. However, when they keep their lawmaking process behind closed doors, with little public time to read legislation and little public input, they raise suspicion and invite challenge to even widely popular legislation. With a Democratic supermajority that gets re-elected (for better or worse– very easily) every 2 years, secrecy need not be the standard operating procedure of our legislature.
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Birthing center funding
Maternal mortality rates in the United States still have not been adequately addressed, despite having become a larger topic of conversation in the health-world in recent years.
While maternal mortality rates have fallen since 2020-2022, the reality is that they have only gone back to pre-pandemic rates – which were still high. These mortality rates are especially high for people of color, with black women facing the highest risk overall with being 1.9 times more likely to die within a year postpartum or during pregnancy than their white counterparts in Massachusetts.
These maternal mortality rates are especially high in low-income areas and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities, like ones in Massachusetts that have recently faced a major blow to their access to healthcare with the Steward hospital closings.
In order to address the disparages in health care that exist based on race, income, and other identities, the state has awarded grants to various health equity-centered organizations. The latest $1 million state grant will help to increase options for prenatal and postpartum care by opening two new birthing centers in Boston and Worcester – which both are home to large BIPOC communities.
These state grants are a step in the right direction toward addressing inequities in health care, but they are certainly not a replacement for the services lost in the Steward Healthcare closings. Communities in and surrounding Ayer and Dorchester are still facing a reality where access to healthcare services have been lost. This loss can cause an increase in mortality rates within both communities – whether that be due to longer travel or dispatch times for first responders, not having access to transportation to get to other hospitals, or otherwise.
“Culturally competent birth centers”, like the ones who will be built using this $1 million state grant, will help to mitigate the disparities between races in terms of maternal mortality rates.
So, while the state still has a ways to go to address general healthcare disparities with the Steward hospital closings and otherwise, the grants being used to address this specific issue in prenatal and postmortem care is a step in the right direction.
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Bonus: also in the news this week!
Transparency and government reform keeps popping up in the news!
On the subject of electoral competitiveness... this week saw a great opinion piece in the Boston Globe covering the primary election in Cambridge between incumbent Rep. Decker and Act on Mass endorsed candidate (and transparency champion!) Evan McKay:
- A rare challenge to the machine in our one-party state (paywall)by Jeff Howe - "A primary in Cambridge surprised everyone by becoming an actual contest. What if it represents the stirrings of a movement?" We think so!
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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 — Abortion Access Bill
On the subject of reproductive health, this week we are saying goodbye to the Abortion Access Bill, also known as An Act advancing access to abortion care (H.1599, S.1114).
The Abortion Access Bill would have:
- Required patients to sign informed consent form, with translations available, for any reproductive-care-related procedure
- Removed the mandatory waiting period
- Barred providers from forcing patients to review ultrasound results and appear at provider facilities any longer or more frequently than is the standard of care
- Targeted Crisis Pregnancy Centers with provisions ending any counseling or information in any form that is “medically inaccurate, medically unnecessary, or misleading”
- Added additional provisions to expand inclusion and accessibility in reproductive healthcare
- Removed age requirement to sign informed consent forms to receive reproductive healthcare
- Allocated support and financial assistance to veterans seeking abortion-related care
With Rove v. Wade overturned by our country’s Supreme Court and abortion access on the ballot in states across the nation, it is now more important than ever for states – who now hold the power to determine whether they will uphold this decision or continue to protect the rights of their residents – to ensure that their inhabitants have the right to privacy and to choose when seeking reproductive health care.
If you remember the Mom’s for Liberty lawsuit that was mentioned in a past Saturday Scoop, then you remember what good state policy can do to protect groups at risk like pregnant women who are no longer guaranteed the right to choose on a federal level.
There is more than enough research that supports that a ban on safe and legal abortions does not stop abortions from happening. Instead, this just increases the amount of illegal and unsafe abortions that put pregnant people at risk of serious injury or even death.
So what’s the hold up? Is now not the time to enact legislation that protects the health and privacy of Bay Staters and out-of-staters have to travel to access safe healthcare?
You can contact your legislator and ask them about it yourself!
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Take Action
Legislative elections in Massachusetts: not competitive. Ballot questions: very much so. In the next few weeks we're ramping up our focus on the five questions that Massachusetts voters will encounter on the ballot. Here's how you can get involved and learn more!
Canvass or Phonebook for Yes on 2 - multiple locations, multiple dates!
Our friends with the Yes on 2 campaign are running frequent canvasses and phonebanks at key locations around the state to talk to voters about the ballot question, including some later today! Get plugged in to an event near you by signing up on their Mobilize.
Yes on 5 Get-Out-the-Vote Kickoff and Phonebank - 10/15 at 5 pm
The Yes on 5 campaign is hosting a virtual GOTV kickoff + phonebank event this week– join them to talk to Massachusetts voters about why they should vote Yes for One Fair Wage in November!
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That's all today folks, enjoy a lovely fall weekend! Hope to see you on a phonebank sometime soon.
In solidarity,
-Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass