Greetings, 

It feels like we’re hard pressed for good news these days, but this week delivered! 

First of all, we co-hosted our Transparency Action Hour this Wednesday and had a phenomenaltime. More than 140 people joined us and our co-hosts to take action for rules reforms that would make our legislature a more transparent and accountable institution. It was so energizing to see such a display of people power. 

If you attended, feel free to reply with feedback! We would like to host events like this more often. If you missed it, you can find the recording here. 

Whether you were able to make it for the Action Hour or not, there are still ways to take action. Our action guide is here with a sample script for an email or phone call to share your support for transparency reforms with your representatives ahead of the House rules vote this week. This action guide can– and should!– be shared with family, friends and neighbors as well. We are strongest when we take action collectively. 

Speaking of which, here’s another piece of good news: if you’re looking to take your action to the next level, I’ll remind you that our marvelous policy fellow Sydney is hosting a Letter-to-the-Editor and Op-Ed workshop tomorrow at 2 pm. Join to gain skills for harnessing the power of local press to make your voice heard! 

SIGN UP FOR LTE & OP-ED WORKSHOP>> 

The last piece of good news this week is a tentative one, but extremely exciting: the House released a summary of their Rules package on Thursday, and it appears that they intend to finally cave to years of public pressure and make committee votes public. But I’m getting ahead of myself– let’s get to the Scoop! 

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State House Scoop

Rules, rules, rules  

Before we get to the exciting parts, let’s do a quick reality check on what the ongoing rules debate means: we are two months into the legislative session and the “legislating” hasn’t kicked off yet. 

Thanks to their massive leadership stipends, Speaker Mariano and Senate President Spilka have each collected a cool $36k off the taxpayers for the last two months of… writing a few in-line changes to the legislature’s operating proceduring, gutting the right to shelter without public input, and… drawing up each chamber’s seating charts? Neither bills nor representatives have been assigned to committees and public hearings have not been scheduled. For a session that started off with promises to improve “efficiency,” they’re not moving very fast. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s rampage through the federal government continues at lightning speed. This Thursday, at a bipartisan meeting of governors at which Gov. Healey was also present, President Trump called out our New England neighbors in Maine and threatened to pull all federal funding from the state over compliance with an executive order banning transgender women from women’s sports. 

Our state leaders should be reacting with urgency to prepare for these threats to our values and our ability to provide services for Bay Staters– including contingency plans for Healey’s budget proposal which expects $16 billion in federal funds. Unfortunately, urgency still doesn’t seem to be in the Beacon Hill playbook. 

House rules: will we finally get public committee votes? 

For a recap of where we’re at in the Rules process, the Senate released their rules package and voted on it last week, as you read in last week’s Scoop. This week, we collaborated with some of our fellow co-signers of the “Transparency Benchmark” letter to release a scorecard, grading the Senate’s proposals. Some proposals got an A from us– including a requirement to include plain-language bill summaries with every bill– and some got an F, such as the proposal to extend the deadline for conference committee reports past July 31st. Peruse at your leisure!

Now, The House is expected to debate their rules this coming week. This was part of the motivation behind our Transparency Action Hour, in which we took action together to call our representatives and phonebank key districts to encourage House members to adopt our recommended rules reforms. The very next day, we got a surprising sneak peek at the House’s rules package with the release of a summary of their proposed changes. 

Friend, at the risk of being dramatic, I’ll prompt you to imagine me opening that email from State House News Service, seeing the following bullet point on the list of proposed House rules reforms: 

  • "How each individual member votes on polls conducted by the committees will be posted on the website, along with the relevant hearing attendance of the member voting on the poll."

… and nearly falling off my chair. 

I had flashbacks to contentious representative meetings I attended as an organizer during the People’s House campaign in 2021, where reps tried to convince their constituents that posting their own (alleged) votes on their personal website was basically the same thing as full public committee votes. I remembered myself, full of hope, following the Rules debate in July of that year, only to see “progressive” representatives argue that making committee votes public might cause their poor, feckless constituents to misunderstand them. I thought of the signatures collected and votes counted in 37 House districts across 2020 and 2022 which showed that Massachusetts voters supported public committee votes by an average of 87% in favor– yet whose representatives continued to vote against them. 

Now. One key piece of Act on Mass’ mission is being “vigilantly skeptical of people and institutions that hold significant power.” And House leaders have fooled us with performative "reforms" before. So we’re holding off on any celebrations until the official language of these rules changes is released, anticipated Monday, and the package has been voted on. We will also maintain the same standards for the House reform as the Senate scorecard and point out progress that could be made in other areas– no distracting me with big ticket items! 

Nevertheless, that the impenetrable curtain of State House obscurity would even start to waver on the key reform of public committee votes is 100% due to the hard work of advocates across the state that have pushed for this since 2019. And if you’re reading this Scoop, you’ve been part of that fight. 

While we wait for the final say on these rules, now is the time for your House representatives to hear from you! You can use our action guide from the Transparency Action Hour for a script. Let them know that you’ve heard that public committee votes will be in the House package and you firmly support that change– as well as a whole suite of additional reforms that can and should accompany it. 

We’ve shown that public pressure gets results. And if committee votes become public, keeping a close eye on our legislators may just become a bit easier– and lot more important.

Also worth reading!

An interesting (and alarming) piece on how federal funding might impact infrastructure projects in MA: 

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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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Take Action

LTE and Op-ed Workshop - Sunday Feb. 23rd, 2 pm

Join us tomorrow to practice putting our words in action in local press! Hosted by our policy fellow, Sydney. 

LEND YOUR VOICE: LTE WORKSHOP>>

Care Not Cuts Rally - February 25th, 10 AM 

Our friends in the movement for healthcare justice are hosting a rally and lobby day on Tuesday to protest some of the harmful closures and cuts proposed in Gov. Healey's budget. Legislators should hear from us: care, not cuts! 

RSVP FOR CARE NOT CUTS>>

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That's it for this week! We'll be watching closely for the House rules debate this week– and will fill you in next week. In the meantime, call your reps! 

In solidarity,

Scotia

Scotia Hille (she/her)

Executive Director, Act on Mass