Happy Saturday,
In last week’s Scoop, we talked a lot about the House and Senate’s differences– conflict, pettiness, failures to agree, etc.
This week, we also got some glimpses of how what the two chambers have in common. Consolidated amendments, voice votes galore, etc. See also: a shared willingness to use secret amendments to shovel millions of $$$ to the districts of members of leadership. More on that later.
The Senate wrapped up their FY 2026 budget debate this week, working through 1000+ amendments to pass a final version Thursday. Their version differs significantly from the House’s version, which was finalized in April, teeing the two chambers up for some riotous negotiation.
Now, 3 members of each chamber will be appointed to a conference committee, including a Republican from each, to hammer out the differences that will dictate our state’s priorities for the next year. Despite our attempts to change this in the rules this year, conference committees are almost exclusively behind closed doors. So, we can expect to hear about it when it’s done.
And… we haven’t met our budget deadline since 2010. So it could be a while.
On a different note, be sure to visit the Sprinkles section for a new blog post from Sydney: a deep dive into the legal issues at hand regarding the involvement of police in ICE raids in Massachusetts. And now for the Scoop!
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State House Scoop
House and Senate point of agreement: when raiding Fair Share Funds for giant leadership earmarks, move in secret
As a reminder, we’re still talking about two separate budget bills right now: 1) a $1.3 billion supplemental budget allocating Fair Share funds for this year, 2025 and 2) the $61 billion FY 2026 budget.
This week, the Boston Globe broke a new story on 1) : State Senate leaders slip $10m of taxpayers’ money from millionaire’s surtax into pet projects (paywall). The Senate’s move mirrored the process by which House leadership snuck in a massive $25 million earmark for a single parking garage in the Speaker’s district to the same pile of Fair Share funds. Like Mariano’s earmark, this move was also reported weeks after the vote took place.
The debrief: after debate on the 317 amendments filed by rank-and-file senators, Senate leaders tacked on a “corrective amendment,” which are intended to correct spelling mistakes and ensure that numbers are accurate. This corrective amendment, however, contained an extra $10 million in spending for the districts of Senate President Karen Spilka, Ways & Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues, and other Senate leaders, including earmarks much larger than those received by the districts of rank-and-file members.
This spending was not filed through the typical amendment process and, thus, not listed publicly. It was added mere minutes before the $1.3 billion package was voted on by the Senate. No discussion was made of the amendment’s contents and it passed on a voice vote– no roll call. Once again, every attempt was made to avoid public accountability as Fair Share funds were shoveled off to the districts of leadership.
Facing criticism, Senate leaders came up with an excuse that I can barely copy-paste without an eyeroll: “Senate leaders defended their action, saying they’ve long done it this way.” Translation: sorry about being corrupt, we’re just following tradition! In Massachusetts, a historically slippery slope…
Takeaways from the Senate budget debate: FY 2026
This week, the Senate hosted their “budget debate,” processing the 1,058 amendments that Senate members filed to the FY 2026 budget. Most of these were local earmarks, but some proposed significant policy changes.
The Senate approach to amendments on the budget is slightly different than that of the House (check out our recent Scoop for review). Similar to the House’s “consolidated amendments,” Senate leaders combine large batches of amendments into “bundles,” which are then approved with a single vote. Differing from the House, these “bundles” are constructed on the Senate floorrather than in the office of the Ways & Means Chairman. Senators claim that this makes the process more transparent, though it still allows tight leadership control over what amendments make it off the chopping block– even if the kissing-up is more publicly visible.
In another difference, the Senate actually rejected some amendments– even those that came from their own party members. This type of intra-party dissent is rarely seen in the House, where amendments that don’t get leadership approval are most often “consolidated away,” making the final fate of amendments extremely difficult to track. You will recall that House leaders even recently showed an unwillingness to openly vote down a Trump-inspired Republican amendment, preferring instead to dilute it with procedural tricks and pass it without a recorded vote.
Friend, you can’t help but laugh at how low the bar is for transparency and representation in the Massachusetts legislature. “Look at the Senate’s budget process!” says the transparency advocate. “Sometimes, they actually dare to vote ‘no’ on stuff that won’t pass!” :|
Although most of the amendments concerned earmark spending for senators’ districts, this is Massachusetts: when you have the least productive legislature in the country, you gotta pack in some policy riders!
Senators approved major policy changes on liquor licenses and prescription drug pricing via amendment, among others, while leaving out some policy shifts that are in the House version of the budget. The liquor license change appears to be a potential dig at the House over last week’s rules scuffle– fodder for negotiations that are certain to drag on.
The prescription drug pricing amendment is an interesting case. For one, it weighs in at a whopping 23 pages long. That’s because an effective legislature wouldn’t have to address this via budget amendment: it’s a bill! In fact, this change is based on a longer bill filed by Senator Cindy Friedman that is currently pending before the Health Care Financing Committee.
On the one hand, the policy change is desperately needed: it would allow the Health Policy Commission to cap prices for certain medications, cutting costs and easing healthcare burdens for Bay Staters. In arguing for the amendment, Senator Friedman took a page from Act on Mass’ book and cited legislative inaction as the motivator for passing it with the budget, pointing out that the policy has been introduced each session since 2019 without action.
On the other hand, there is some credence to the argument made by Senator John Keenan, who was the only Democrat to vote against the amendment. Said Keenan, “on a 23-page amendment that is a bill that's in committee that hasn't had a hearing, a bill that's different from last session, I'm just not so certain that this is the time or the place to take it up.” Keenan also expressed concern that including this big of a policy shift would gum up negotiations with the House on a final budget.
Indeed, Senator Keenan’s argument highlights a negative feedback loop of legislative inaction: when the legislature fails to act on critical policies through the traditional legislative process, it leads to more and more work being done through informal processes that restrict public input.
Well, amidst plenty of process to criticize, here’s what’s certain: the conference committee that will be appointed to reach a compromise on this FY 2026 budget has their work cut out for them!
As we prepare Transparency on Tour, some reflections on our “common wealth”
As budget season enters its next phase, I’ve been thinking about all these line items and what they say about our priorities as a Commonwealth. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about last year’s cuts to the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP).
To jog your memory, HIP is a little-known but hugely impactful program that grants SNAP recipients in Massachusetts additional monthly funds from the state that can only be spent at local farms. When we covered HIP in November, I described it as “an example of state policy at its best: using a tiny fraction of our state budget… to benefit two vulnerable populations – low-income families burdened with food costs, and local farmers who struggle to compete against cheaper food imports.” More than 175,000 households statewide have benefited from HIP, sending $63 million in spending to local farms.
Last year, Governor Healey asked for $25 million to fully fund the program, but the legislature allocated only $15 million with little warning, forcing HIP to reduce benefits for all recipients.
As we plan Transparency on Tour, I’ve been in touch with many farmers markets across the state. Many rely on HIP recipients for their most dependable customers. More than one have told me that these cuts have hit their communities hard.
$25 million– that’s the same price tag as the secret earmark added for Speaker Mariano’s pet parking garage. The $10 million cut to the program could also be made up by Senate leadership’s secret amendments.
What to do with our taxpayer dollars– literally, our “common wealth”– is among the most important actions that the legislature embarks upon every year. It can sometimes seem like events on Beacon Hill are far away, but their impacts are keenly felt. For many this year, it will mean the difference between being able to purchase healthy food for their children or not.
Good state policy benefits from public input and accrues to the public good, casting the widest net possible to distribute the benefits of our common resources. Bad state policy is made in secret, often directing disproportionate benefits to those in power and their friends. The line between these two is something that impacts every resident of this state, for better or worse. When we visit every Senate district in the state this summer, I can expect that is a lesson that we'll learn again and again.
Other stories this week
It was a busy week! Here's a couple other things to keep an eye on that we didn't have room for in the full Scoop.
- Although she admitted some things have “gone too far,” Governor Healey complimented Trump’s work on securing the Southern Border, claiming that she “told President Biden that he needed to act on the border and shut it down two years ago.” With Dem governors like this, who needs Republicans?
- Wait months for a primary care appointment recently? After neglecting to move on related legislation for two sessions now, pressure is mounting for legislators to take action on the extreme shortage of primary care doctors in Massachusetts
- Streetsblog Mass reports on plunging Tesla’s sales in the Commonwealth since January, with meaningful implications for our state climate strategy
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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: A review of MA law on immigration enforcement
With the marked increase in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Massachusetts since the start of Trump’s second term, and the involvement of police in the ICE raid that occurred in Worcester about two weeks ago, questions surrounding local and state law enforcement's cooperation with ICE have been at the center of many conversations. These questions concern not only the legality of local law enforcement’s involvement in ICE operations, but also with the safety of communities across the state and country.
In 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a ruling on the Lunn v. Commonwealthcase that answered one of these questions. The case centered around Sreynuon Lunn, who had been brought to the United States as a seven-month-old refugee from Cambodia, and who was later arrested and detained by local law enforcement for a criminal charge that was dismissed. Despite the dismissal, Lunn was held in custody beyond when he would otherwise be released so that ICE officials operating based upon civil immigration law could bring him into federal custody.
The main argument made by Lunn’s defense team was that “the state’s cooperation with ICE detainers not only violates constitutional protections against warrantless arrests but also creates a substantial risk of discriminatory – and unlawful – enforcement.”
Ultimately, the Supreme court decided that Massachusetts law enforcement did not have the authority to act solely based on ICE detainers – a detainer being “ICE’s ‘request’ that, if an immigrant of interest to ICE is in the custody of local authorities for any reason, the authorities voluntarily delay that individual’s release by up to 48 hours to allow ICE to transfer him or her into immigration custody.”
The issue is that the court decision is not enough to completely prevent local and state law enforcement from complying with ICE operations and detainer requests. There were many open-ended questions that remained unanswered by the court’s ruling. Governor Maura Healey, who was still Attorney General at the time, and the Supreme Judicial court both argued that the issues presented in the case would be best addressed via legislative action. But, in true Massachusetts Legislature fashion, no decisive action has been taken in the years following the 2017 court case.
We've got some ideas about how the legislature could address this. Visit our website to read the rest of the blog!
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Take Action
We protect us: make sure your rep takes a stand on ICE raids!
Recent violent ICE arrests in communities around Massachusetts have left residents fearful. Governor Healey has come out with more sympathy for ICE than her detained residents and their families. We need legislators to step up and address this. Do you know where your rep stands and what they're doing to protect our communities? Use our form to send them an email!
Transparency on Tour Collaborative Launch: May 26th, 7 pm
Reminder that we'll be officially launching our Transparency Tour this Monday May 26th! Join us to learn more and have your role in shaping this project!
RSVP TO HELP US HIT 40 DISTRICTS THIS SUMMER>>
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And that's all for this week! Enjoy your weekend.
In solidarity,
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass