Happy Saturday,

Did you miss us? 

I (Scotia) just got back from two weeks mostly off-the-grid, doing my best not to check the news, or think about the democracy problems plaguing our country and state legislature… not as easy as I thought.

I was hoping that, having missed two whole weeks of state house news, I might be struggling to decide what to cover in this Scoop– so much to catch up on!

Instead, I am disappointed to report that we are mostly where we were before. Still no joint rules passed. In fact, the conference committee on rules still has yet to reconvene since their first meeting in March. Despite the continued crisis on the federal level, the number of bills passed this session still stands at a whopping… 2. One of these was a supplemental budget that reduced shelter rights for migrants and the other merely extended COVID-era laws allowing hybrid meeting access, right up against an expiring deadline. Not exactly a coordinated and efficient policy approach. 

You might be having déjà vu. The previous legislative session, which started in 2023, also got off to a slow start. The Boston Globe found that it was “least productive start to a legislative session in at least 40 years.” And we all know how that session ended: our legislators met massive criticism for running past their own July deadline, and ultimately crammed in a full fifth of their total lawmaking output of the two year session within the final 24 hours of the session. 

So let’s put these two sessions in context. In sleepy 2023, at this point in the year, the MA legislature had passed a record-low number of bills: 9 total. And at this point in this session… with Massachusetts’ values under attack from the federal level, that number is, again, 2! Somehow, despite starting the session with promises of efficiency, they’re doing less than ever before. 

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State House Scoop

We've got a House budget!

On April 16th, after 3 months of deliberating behind closed doors, the House Ways & Means committee released its version of the FY 2026 budget for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This follows up on the budget proposal introduced by Governor Healey in January of this year. For a review of the budget process, check out our Scoop from February! 

First, as a longtime transparency advocate, I have to nerd out for a second. Although Joint Rules still have yet to be finalized, you might remember that the House rules passed in March did require that committee votes be made public from House-only committees. This, unfortunately, doesn’t make a huge difference, as most substantial lawmaking work is done in joint committees. However, there is one extremely important House-only committee: House Ways & Means. So, for potentially the first time in Massachusetts state house history, this House budget release came with a public committee vote, showing how members of the committee voted on the budget. 

This committee vote doesn’t tell us much. Most of the negotiating between Chair Aaron Michlewitz, Speaker Mariano, and rank-and-file members about the specific content of this budget took place behind closed doors. Most of the Democrats on the committee voted to approve; most of the Republicans reserved their vote. Nobody voted against. However, it does reveal that 9 Democrats and 3 Republicans took “No Action,”  indicating that they may not have been present for the vote. We know our legislators aren’t busy doing much else these days. So, if your rep is on Ways & Means and took No Action on this vote, feel free to reach out and ask them why. Transparency and accountability go hand in hand! 

Like Gov. Healey’s budget proposal, the House version calls for a 6% increase in state spendingover last year, although their top price tag comes in at roughly $500 million under Healey’s proposal. This $61.4 billion budget proposal still relies on $16 billion in federal dollars and makes no contingency plans for a potential loss of federal funds. Our allies at Mass Budget point outthat the House budget proposal removes all potential “revenue raisers” that were part of Healey’s plan, including a progressive change to charitable deductions which could have generated $164 million a year from primarily high-income earners. They write: “with unprecedented federal budget cuts looming, it is important to consider additional avenues to raise revenue.” 

In fact, I recommend checking out Mass Budget’s analysis for a full exploration of other key ways that the House’s budget proposal differs from Governor Healey’s. I want to zero in on one of these. 

You’ll remember that budget bills these days are never just budget bills. Due to the difficulty that individual bills face making it through the convoluted and opaque legislative process, budget bills tend to be accompanied by language that changes actual policy. It's a shortcut to lawmaking. This year, Governor Healey’s budget proposal included language that would require broker fees to be paid by the party that hired the broker– usually the landlord– targeting a practice that raises costs for renters. 

Language addressing broker fees did make it into the House proposal. However, the language proposed by the House is not as strong as that proposed by Healey and would allow renters to bear the burden of brokerage fees in cases where they initiated contact with the broker, including by simply responding to a listing. This would leave a number of renters still inadvertently on the hook for high fees. 

This makes me think back to the Boston Globe’s 2023 study which found that members of the MA legislature are more likely to be landlords than renters. What’s more, 86% of MA legislators own their own property, compared to just 61% of Bay Staters. In comments to the Globe in 2023, several lawmakers invoked their own experience as landlords in explaining their opposition to policies aimed to reduce rental burdens such as local rent control options. In light of this, the House’s proposed watering down of the broker fee policy is disappointing but unfortunately not surprising. 

Finally, we should give credit where credit’s due. The House budget proposal also included a big win for immigrant justice groups: a $5 million grant to establish an immigrant legal assistance fund, in order to support the legal defense of immigrants accused of non-violent acts. Amidst a disturbing trend of federal agents targeting legal immigrants, this show of backing from our state is timely. 

Amendment bonanza 

Of course, the budget does not stop at the budget proposal released by House Ways & Means. In the days that followed, rank-and-file members of the House got the chance to file their own amendments. In total, 1655 amendments were filed to this budget, constituting the highest number of amendments filed to a budget in at least 14 years (paywall). In their coverage, State House News Service linked this record-high to increased need for funding across Massachusetts amidst federal funding cuts. 

Most of these amendments were earmarks for representatives’ own districts. They were tackled with a process called “consolidated amendments,” in which a large number of amendments are combined by members of leadership into enormous mega-amendments, which then receive an up-or-down vote (read: always up) from the body. For this budget, the amendments were passed with 7 consolidated amendments, labeled A-G, which tacked a total of $81 million in additional spending to the budget. 

Let’s think about this process for a second. Imagine you’re a rank-and-file lawmaker from, say, North Provincester. Every session, you file bills related to your key issue of choice [insert here], but they never seem to make it through committee. You need some accomplishment to deliver to your constituents in order to get re-elected in 2026. So, while Ways & Means was working on the House’s budget version this year, you dropped by Chair Aaron Michlewitz’ office a few times to ensure that your local high school would get some funds. This proved unsuccessful. So, you seize one of the few powers still granted to you as a rank-and-file lawmaker and file an amendment to the budget to include the funds for North Provincester High. 

In a functional state house, you, as the representative from North Provincester, would be able to build support amongst your colleagues for this amendment. Even if leadership was opposed, you could pound the pavement on Beacon Hill, gain a majority vote of support in the body, and secure the funds for your district. You might even make an impassioned speech on the House floor to convince your fellow legislators and prove your commitment to your constituents. 

However, in our current system, leadership has ensured that this power is taken from rank-and-file reps and that any negotiating happens behind closed doors. Instead, you must go back to Rep. Michlewitz and Speaker Mariano again and beg for your amendment to be included in a consolidated amendment. As you can see, this creates an enormous lever of power that leadership can use to keep representatives in line, even outside of budget season. 

It also makes amendments very tricky to track. Almost no amendments (from Democrats) are marked as receiving an adverse vote or being left out of the budget. On the legislature’s website, pages and pages of amendments are marked as having been consolidated in one of the 7 consolidated amendments and passed. However, examining the language of the consolidated amendments reveals otherwise: often, these multi-page mega amendments do not contain the explicit language of all the amendments they are said to consolidate. This is known as a filed amendment being “consolidated away” and is leadership’s way of soft-killing amendments, making it difficult for the public to follow. Here’s a graphic that illustrates this:

Although most of the 1655 amendments were passed via consolidated amendment or “consolidated away” without any public debate, a couple of policy amendments did get individual votes. Via amendments, Republicans in the House sought to gut funding for No Cost Calls, expand police cooperation with ICE, further limit emergency shelter rights for migrants, and weaken implementation of the MBTA communities act. Our Democratic-dominated legislature easily voted each of these down on a roll call vote, ensuring that these critical policies would continue to move forward. 

Nevertheless, their choice to take a recorded vote to defend these Democratic policies stood in sharp contrast to their approach to another Republican-filed amendment: another anti-trans amendment from Representative John Gaskey. Despite their experience with this Trump-inspired Republican strategy and the criticism they faced last time for refusing to take a stand against it, they chose the same response: amended the amendment to nullify it, and passed it on an unrecorded voice vote. In doing so, our Democratic House leaders showed a shameful cowardice: willing to go on the record to defend Democratic policies, except for the rights of transgender youth.

The House voted to pass this budget, with all its amendments, on Wednesday. Shortly, the Senate Ways & Means will release their version, and the process will repeat again in the Senate. You can let your senators know that you expect them to stand for trans and other LGBTQ rights, both in the budget and outside of it.

TELL YOUR SENATOR: PROTECT TRANS KIDS>> 

Additional reading

Some interesting reporting that caught our eye this 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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New blog: what can Beacon Hill do about federal funding cuts? 

From our digital organizing intern, Lily!

Less than four months into the administration, federal funding cuts are starting to hit Massachusetts. Already, the Trump administration has announced a series of funding cuts significantly impacting folks across the state. A $12 million program helping Massachusetts schools partner with local farms for cafeteria food has been slashed. The UMass Chan Medical School has instated a hiring freeze and rescinded PhD offers amid NIH funding cuts. 

And it’s not letting up anytime soon. Earlier this month, Trump has cut $106 million from Massachusetts K-12 Education Stabilization funding that supports post-pandemic recovery with funds for mental health resources and professional development, among other things. Masshealth could be next on the chopping block. The anticipated blows to Medicaid funding would slash more than half of the budget for MassHealth, which more than 2 million Massachusetts residents rely on. 

Instead of the robust policy plan one might expect from a Democratic Governor, the Democratic supermajority in the Massachusetts State legislature, Bay Staters are seeing a lackluster response. Both Governor Maura Healey and Beacon Hill leadership have failed to come up with any comprehensive response to Trump’s and Musk’s chainsaw to the federal government. At every level, the Massachusetts government seems paralyzed. Up until April 1st, when Senate President Karen Spilka announced the underwhelming “Response 2025” that lacks specific policy plans to make up for federal funding lapses. Governor Healey, when she’s not bragging about her capitulation to Trump on immigration, is also failing to offer a coordinated response, instead imploring residents to "stop bad things from happening." When asked what the House could do to prepare for Trump’s spending cuts, Speaker Mariano said simply: “you don’t.” 

Are we really this unprepared for cuts to federal funding? Not really...

READ THE FULL BLOG TO FIND OUT!>>

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Take Action

Take Action for Rent Control with City Life/Vida Urbana

With the housing crisis squeezing wallets across the Commonwealth, we need the legislature to approve rent control home rule petitions. Our allies at City Life/Vida Urbana are hosting art builds this month to boost this movement - join them to take action! 

TAKE ACTION FOR RENT CONTROL>>

Reminder: we're coming to your district this summer and we need your help!

As we announced a few weeks ago, we have set a goal of tabling in every Senate district in the state this summer. We are looking for events in your district to come speak to your neighbors about why state democracy matters more than ever. Do you have an event to recommend us? Please help us by filling out the survey here:

HELP US VISIT YOUR DISTRICT THIS SUMMER>>

"MA Fights Back Organizing Fair": April 17th, 6:30 PM - Dorchester 

With the crisis at the federal level and the inaction of our state leaders, folks may be frustrated and looking for opportunities to get involved. Some of Act on Mass' allies are hosting an organizing fair this week to help you answer that very question! Come to hear from groups on the ground and find out how to get plugged in. 

SIGN UP FOR "MA FIGHTS BACK" FAIR>>

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And that's all for this week! Have a blessed weekend and enjoy this almost-summer sunshine.

In solidarity,

Scotia

Scotia Hille (she/her)

Executive Director, Act on Mass