Good evening,
Remember the last time you started a new job? The nervousness of choosing an outfit for the first day, not knowing where the coffee maker is, gradually getting a grasp of the office social dynamics... Really makes you grateful for those extra two months they give you at the beginning before actually starting work, just to get acclimated.
… Wait, what?
Look, if that’s not how your workplace functions, you might consider seeking employment at the Massachusetts General Court. Legislators are now a month and a half into the 194th session and have yet to receive committee assignments. Freshmen representatives have yet to be assigned offices and are camping out with their aides in common rooms. Hearings have not been scheduled, and bills have not started being considered. Why? Leadership likes to hold privileges like committee assignments and nice offices over the heads of the membership for as longas possible, even if it means delaying the legislative process.
Oh, and leadership just announced that once committee assignments are made, their beloved stipends will be paid retroactively. That adds a 2-month boost to the pay of any legislator who kisses the ring, even though those two months haven’t included committee work. Say, it’s almost as if the stipends are unrelated to actual committee work and instead just a tool for leadership to reward loyalty and punish dissent using taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, in every other New England state, committee assignments were made by early January, hearings started weeks ago, and bills are already being considered. How’s that for Massachusetts exceptionalism?
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State House Scoop
Rules, rules, rules
New Senate rules - will their transparency promises hold water?
As you’ll recall, we started out the 194th legislative session with some bold proclamations from House and Senate leadership about making rules changes to acknowledge the public’s demands for transparency.
In January, Act on Mass joined with 30 other progressive organizations to draft a joint letter and “transparency benchmark,” outlining a number of transparency changes that could be made immediately and letting the Senate and House know how we’d be grading their efforts. We emphasized that rules changes could only go so far to address the myriad of issues that stymie representative democracy in our legislature, including (especially) the concentration of power in leadership. Many of you contacted your own legislators reflecting your demands for what should make it in the rules package. And this week, we saw the fruits of those efforts: the Senate releasedand voted on their rules proposals: one for Senate Rules, and one for the Joint Rules.
As a reminder for how the rules process works, the House and Senate approve the rules governing their respective chambers by themselves, which the Senate has just done. However, most of the legislative work of the session is done in Joint committees, which are governed by the Joint Rules. The Joint Rules must (you guessed it!) be decided jointly.
The House committee on Rules now has the opportunity to release their own proposals, which we anticipate the week after next. Their rules proposals will then be brought to the House floor for amendments, debate, and a vote. Just like any bill, if the House and Senate proposals for Joint Rules differ, the differences must be ironed out in a Conference Committee… if they can be. House and Senate have failed to agree on Joint Rules for the last two sessions, so they are still using the Joint Rules approved in 2019.
But back to the present: how’d the Senate do with their rules package?
This Wednesday 2/19 at 7 P.M., we are co-hosting a Transparency Action Hour with our friends at Progressive Mass, Progressive Dems of MA, MA Sierra Club, and the Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Accountability. We’ll break down the Senate rules package in full. If you want to hear a full account of how these rules will affect public participation in the legislative process and join with fellow transparency advocates to put some pressure on key House members ahead of their own rules package, join us on Zoom!
JOIN US FOR THE TRANSPARENCY ACTION HOUR>>
In the meantime, I’ll hit you with some of the highlights.
One proposed joint rule change we were surprised to see? A requirement for bill sponsors to write and publicize a bill summary for every bill they file. This was a change we asked for in our letter that hadn’t been previously mentioned by Senate leaders– so it looks like they read our letters!
Having plain language bill summaries that explain what a bill would actually accomplish and breaking down the legal jargon for everyday people is an important step to making the legislative process more accessible. Although the Senate’s proposal stops short of our full demand, which would include detailed summaries of bills once they’ve passed through the committee process (including changes made to bill language), we were excited to see this in the Joint Rules proposal.
A key point of rules contention between House and Senate in recent years has centered around public committee votes: the Senate generally supports public committee votes, but the House does not, which means that Joint committee votes remain private. Interestingly, the Senate seems to have come up with a handy workaround in these rules, which will use the Senate-only rules to mandate that the votes of Senate members be released from Joint Committees, even if the House votes are not. It would certainly be a step forward to get the Senate votes from joint committees, and we can also hope that this might provide more clarity for advocacy: for example, if a bill is sent to study, and all senators are recorded as having voted for it, we can target our advocacy to House members.
Of course, there is also the hope that this provision will make it so embarrassing for House members of joint committees to keep their votes private that they will also make their votes public. And to that I say: join the Transparency Action Hour next week to push House rules committee members for just that!
The Senate Joint rules proposal also proposes to do something unprecedented with Joint committee structure, aimed at reducing friction between the two chambers. Currently, Senate and House members of Joint committees vote together to advance, reject, or send bills to study. Senators complain that this disadvantages the Senate, which has fewer members.
Thus, the Senate’s new rules would allow Senate members of joint committees to vote on Senate bills and House members to vote on House bills, with the aim of moving things out of committee more quickly. Although this might also allow for better targeting for advocates, this change could also just kick the can of negotiation down the road; differences between Senate and House bills would still need to be ironed out later in conference committee, which include fewer members and are even more tightly controlled by leadership. And of course, the House would have to agree to such a huge change in committee structure.
Overall, the Senate’s rules proposals do include some meaningful reforms that would improve transparency. However, many also seem designed for a system in which more and more work is left to conference committees, which are tiny, closed-door, and hand-selected by leadership. Indeed, another proposed change (which we cautioned against in our letter) would permanently extend the deadline for conference committee reports beyond July 31st, allowing more work to be saved for the very end of session and done by closed-door conference committees. That is not good for democracy in our Commonwealth.
But that’s just the headlines! Join us on Wednesday at 7 pm for a full break-down and to take action to push the House ahead of their rules debate.
Massachusetts Leaders “If only there were someone who could do something about this” Quote of the Week
A new section in which we document the creative ways that our state leaders absolve themselves of responsibility for Massachusetts’ response to our federal crisis.
If you missed last week’s Scoop, I had a bit of a rant about how state leaders have had at least three months to prepare our state for the worst of what the Trump administration had planned, chose not to act pre-emptively, and now claim that things are moving too fast to react.
This week’s most egregious offender? Lucky winner House Speaker Ron Mariano, who was asked this week about the dangers of a federal funding freeze to Massachusetts. Here’s the quote, from Channel 5 news reporting:
“‘The loss of federal funds will be significant to all segments of the budget,’ Mariano said.
When asked how he would prepare for it, Mariano said, ‘There’s not much you can do.’”
Gee, if only there were someone around here with control over our state's $62 billion budget!
Wouldn’t it be nice to have state leaders who go out of the way to protect their citizens’ best interests and provide, you know, leadership in times of crisis? Well, in Massachusetts, we’re still looking.
Also worth reading!
The Boston Globe's editorial board published a great piece on the Senate rules, highlighting two bills that we're working on with the Coalition to Reform our Legislature.
- Massachusetts Senate makes a stab at transparency by Globe Editorial Board
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Syd's Sprinkles
Syd’s Sprinkles: Trump’s climate and environmental attacks
Anyone else feel like they’re stuck in a cycle of bad news after bad news these days?
Luckily, there is a bit more balance between good and bad in my coverage this week, but if you’re feeling like me and are a bit overwhelmed with wondering how to advocate for what is right, then you can join me at the virtual Letter-to-the-Editor workshop on Sunday, February 23, at 2pm. We will also be co-hosting a virtual Transparency Action Hour on Wednesday, February 19, at 7pm.
You can sign up for these events here:
JOIN OUR LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR WORKSHOP>>
JOIN US FOR THE TRANSPARENCY ACTION HOUR>>
The Trump administration has enacted federal funding freezes on various projects meant to fight climate change and address environmental issues. As part of Trump’s larger efforts to stop various climate projects and initiatives in favor of the proliferation of the use of fossil fuels, these funding freezes also impact our communities in ways that go beyond the implementation of renewable energy.
Projects that would help to clean contaminated land, remove lead from homes and buildings, and promote environmental justice in access to energy in Massachusetts came to a halt as Trump turns his favor toward increased production and use of plastics, fossil fuels, and other resources that are not only harmful to the environment, but to the health of humans, animals, and plants [paywalled].
Luckily, over 20 states have already filed lawsuits against Trump and his administration and federal courts have “issued temporary orders directing the Trump administration to halt its funding freeze.”
In spite of this, it doesn’t seem like Trump and his administration have done much to follow the directions of the courts. As of this week, there are still funding freezes in place that go against the rulings and even the groups and nonprofits that have had their funding restored are not sure how they should continue in their everyday processes and others don’t know what their grants actually entail or can be used for in the future. With the threats of future funding freezes, climate and environmental nonprofits don’t have a sound foundation to continue building their movements upon.
Some of these grants that are still being withheld include funds for Solar for All, the Clean Diesel Grant, the Diesel Emission Reduction Act Program, the State Clean Diesel Grant, and air monitoring programs.
Leaders of environmental and climate movements, in addition to other movements and initiatives Trump has begun to attack, have voiced their concern and fear over Trump’s policies since his campaign began. One of the most frustrating aspects is that these fears have been brought to the attention of our legislators, but they have gone seemingly unheard.
On top of this, Trump has also begun the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement (for the second time). While this isn’t too shocking considering it was one of his campaign promises, this does mean that the United States doesn’t – and therefore the states don’t – have a concrete and binding agreement to work toward a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news is that Massachusetts does have some legislation in place that works toward this goal. In the 2024 climate bill, which was signed by Governor Healey back in November, some of the legislation includes environmental justice and reduced gas emissions initiatives.
While some important issues were left out of the legislation – e.g. legislation concerning air pollution, etc. – the 2024 climate bill is key to holding Massachusetts and the companies and residents within it accountable to tackling climate change when the federal government does not.
Additionally, people are still using their voices to get our demands for climate action heard. Just this past week, the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition (MYCC) held a lobby day where they urged our legislators to uphold transparency and climate goals.
If you would like to have your voice heard like MYCC did this week, then you should join us at our two virtual events next week!
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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>>
Join the Transparency Action Hour!
TAKE ACTION FOR TRANSPARENCY>>
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Look: even if state leaders seem ready to throw in the towel, we are not. We can and will stand together for better democracy in our state and nation. Hope to see you at an action this week!
In solidarity,
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass