Happy Saturday,

So much for my grand plan to split this Scoop in half! Even more happened this week! 

It’s weeks like this when I remember I’m still new in this job. Informal sessions had already started by the time I wrote my first Scoop in September. Although I’ve had a few years learning the ins and outs of the legislature, I haven’t had to write an Act on Mass Scoop from formal sessions yet. It’ll keep me on my toes– and that’s exciting. 

Also keeping me on my toes: Speaker Ron Mariano. He takes being the most powerful person in Massachusetts quite seriously. Things he (our state’s highest lawmaker) takes less seriously: …laws? 

In case you missed it, the deadline for the House and Senate to comply with Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s legislative audit was this week. When asked Wednesday if the House intended to comply, Speaker Mariano replied: “I think compliance is in the eye of the beholder.” 

…

Friend, I have to laugh, or I’d cry. When such a powerful man can show such arrogance, such confidence in his infallibility, and such disrespect of the voters whose daily lives he governs, there is little left for us watchdogs to say. 

If you want to know how your representative or senator feels about the speaker’s comments, I urge you to send them an email! And– on a completely unrelated note– I’ll remind you that the first year of session is also a great time to think about running for office, or encouraging someone you know to do so. Building a better legislature will require people with genuine respect for their neighbors and communities to step up and challenge those who don’t. And I don’t have to say it: the bar is pretty low! 

---

State House Scoop

Off to the races: the beginning of the 194th session 

Following right up on an eventful end of session in December 2024, January 2025 saw the 194th session come in with a bang! 

Right on January 1st, we got news that Governor Healey ordered an 11% pay raise for legislators. This will boost legislator salaries by a minimum of $8,391 a year with even more going to those legislators who already receive a leadership stipend– which, in our state, is just about everybody. 

Although this raise is in line with increases in Massachusetts’ median income since 2023, it is significantly larger than legislator pay raises offered in recent years– the largest of which was a 6.5% boost in 2021. Advocates also pointed out that minimum wage did not get a raise this past session– staying at levels set in early 2023, based on legislation passed in 2018. 

The beginning of session also saw elections for the Senate President, House Speaker, and minority leaders of both chambers. You didn’t miss much: as we discussed in December, the only person facing a challenger was House Minority Leader Brad Jones, who won easily.

However, we did have an unexpected development during the election for Senate President: normally-quiet Senator John Keenan of Quincy voted “present” rather than supporting Sen. President Karen Spilka’s re-election. Keenan critiqued the Senate’s process of lawmaking in recent years– including a lack of transparency and accountability.

In an interview covered by Commonwealth Beacon, Keenan provided powerful testimony to explain his vote. Here's an excerpt of the Commonwealth coverage for you to read it directly: 

 “Keenan said it’s not unusual to hear from constituents with an interest in a pending bill and have to tell them it recently emerged onto the Senate floor with little advance notice and has already been passed. When they then ask how he voted, ‘I have to say I didn’t vote on it,’ Keenan said, explaining to constituents that a bill was passed by a voice vote with no roll call taken. 

“Keenan said the Senate took close to 700 roll calls during its 2015-16 session, but recorded just 252 in the session that just concluded and roughly the same number in the two-year session before it. He said the striking decrease has been the result of more bills passed by voice vote and more bundling of often unrelated issues in big omnibus bills. In either case, he said, the result is ‘we are less accountable to our constituents.’” 

Senator Keenan is right: both the House and Senate have seen a substantial decline in recorded votes in the last decade. Most bills these days are passed on voice vote, with little to no notice given prior to a vote. We know as citizens and advocates that this contributes to our increasing alienation from the process of lawmaking. Having a senator echo these concerns and say that this has negatively impacted their constituents, while delivering a bold rebuke to leadership, is pretty significant. 

Look: the real story is that we had no meaningful election challenge for leadership, and only one member of the Democratic caucus stood up for their constituents and reserved their support for the pre-determined candidates. House and Senate leaders have a ruthless incentive structure of sticks and carrots to insure that this sort of dissent never happens. But we have some carrots too: if you live in Senator Keenan’s district, reach out to thank him for standing up for transparency and accountability! 

Opening remarks: some nods to transparency!

As I teased in last week’s Scoop, the big transparency news of the new session was that both Senate President Spilka and Speaker Ron Mariano made explicit reference to transparency and pledged reforms in their opening remarks. 

Their remarks shared similar themes: they both touted the accomplishments of the 193rd session, lamented press coverage that they felt did not fairly cover said accomplishments, and promised reforms to improve the public’s awareness of their legislative victories. Thanks to press coverage, said Mariano, “the perception of our work is often at odds with what we know to be the truth about what we've accomplished.” However, “doing good work isn't enough if our constituents don't feel as though they can easily follow the process."

Here’s what this means: the people’s demands for transparency and accountability are reaching the top brass. I understand why they’re ticked off: Question 1 won every town in the state, their approval ratings are at a record low, and a plurality (45%!) of Bay Staters agree the legislature is not transparent. 

Chalking their slide in public confidence up to press coverage is a bit of a stretch. This past session exemplified many of the major problems with our legislative procedures: the first year saw record-low productivity, the budget was submitted late for the 14th year in a row, and lawmaking on nine major issues was left to be completed in lame-duck months by 6-person conference committees and passed without a recorded vote in sparsely-attended informal sessions. But addressing one’s own anti-democratic actions is uncomfortable– easier to blame the press. 

Certainly, if the legislature is so opaque, so inscrutable, and so unresponsive to citizen concern that the only way for the public to access information about it is through press and watchdog groups, it leaves leadership with little means for controlling the narrative. If that realization is what it takes for us to get meaningful reform, so be it. We should have a legislature that can be understood and followed by everyday citizens who don’t have to do it for a full-time job. 

Still, meaningful reform would require serious overhaul of the legislature’s current operating procedure, including a potentially-uncomfortable examination of its hierarchical power structures. So, what did Speaker Mariano and Senate President Spilka have in mind? 

Speaker Mariano was characteristically vague, saying only that the House would “consider a number of rules reforms” during the rules debate, “from potential changes to the legislative calendar, to reforms aimed at bolstering public confidence in the legislative process.” 

Senate President Spilka, however, listed a number of specific reforms that the Senate would consider, also addressing the legislative timeline and transparency. They included: 

  • On the legislative timeline: 

    • Extending the deadline for work on bills past July 31st– which would formalize the late-session lawmaking that happened this session
    • Moving the deadline for bills to be reported out of committee from the beginning of the second year to the end of the first year, in hopes of speeding up the lawmaking process

  • On transparency and public access to lawmaking: 

    • Making the votes of Senate members in Joint Committees public and calling on the House to do the same (votes in Senate committees are already public)
    • Making testimony submitted to Joint committees public (also already the case for Senate committees) 
    • Posting summaries of bills made by Senate Ways and Means
    • Opening the first meeting of conference committees to the public

On the calendar changes, I’m split. Requiring more lawmaking to be done during the first year of session would be a helpful reform. As a full-time legislature, they should be making full use of both years to pass legislation that improves the lives of Bay Staters. However, with leadership’s vice grip control over floor votes, most bills that receive a favorable report in their first committee still go on to see no further action. Truly speeding up the legislative timeline would require granting genuine lawmaking power to rank-and-file members of committees, rather than keeping things in a tidy leadership bottleneck. 

For that reason, I also don’t see the value in extending the deadline for conference committee work past July. Allowing yet more lawmaking to be done in sparsely-attended informal sessions by tiny, leadership-selected conference committees would be a democratic backslide, not progress. 

As for transparency, many of these reforms are basic measures that would take a meaningful step to bringing us in line with peer legislatures on public access to information. Act on Mass has long advocated for votes in joint committees, where the majority of lawmaking is done, to be made public. It is unclear if the Senate would be able to release their votes without the consent of House members, but doing so would provide at least some information to advocates and members of the public about the goings-on in closed-door joint committees. 

Therein lies the key challenge with these potential reforms: the House and Senate haven’t agreed to joint rules since 2019. Without knowing exactly what reforms the House might be open to, it is possible that this year’s rules debate ends with yet more stalled negotiations, and we see no progress on the previous session.

Regardless, as someone who remembers the days where “transparency” was a dirty word on Beacon Hill, I’m allowing myself a small moment of triumph that House and Senate leaders have been forced to recognize our movement and the power of the public’s demands. And, a rules debate centered on reform may present some great opportunities for organizing! Keep an eye on your email.  

Also worth reading/watching

Additional resources for your perusing pleasure. 

--

Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.

--

---

Take Action

Act on Mass is hiring! 

We are accepting candidates for our Social Media and Digital Organizing Spring 2025 Internship! If you know any savvy folks that might be interested, send them our way. You can access the job posting here: 

INTERNSHIP POSTING>>

Progressive Mass - Beacon Hill 101 - Jan 15, 7 pm

Looking to brush up on the inner workings of the Golden Dome and how to best enact change there in preparation for the 194th session? Our friends at Progressive Mass are hosting a back-to-basics Beacon Hill 101 webinar on Jan 15th at 7 p.m. Sign up today!

ATTEND BEACON HILL 101>>

---

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend, and a wonderful next week. 

In solidarity,

Scotia

Scotia Hille (she/her)

Executive Director, Act on Mass