Good morning,
Thanks to all those who attended our fundraiser this past Sunday! It was wonderful to meet many of you in person and to share in joy, pain, and laughter about our shared mission for transparency and accountability from our state government.
A highlight for me: now that I’m almost two years into my role as executive director of Act on Mass (can you believe it?) the crowd also had a lot of familiar faces! I want to say a big thank you to the supporters who have become trusted friends and allies over the years, including our amazing hosts from Indivisible Acton Area and Concord Indivisible. It’s always a treat to get together in person and talk about how to move our state forward.
I’m also thrilled to announce that we came within a hair of reaching our fundraising goal: out of our goal of $10,000, we raised $9,966.31—within just $34 of our goal!
We owe a huge thank you to everyone that contributed. As we’ve said all along, our movement is opposed by the big money interests in our state. They benefit from a closed-door legislative system that allows access to the privileged few at the exclusion of the many. Act on Mass can’t count on big dollars to get our work done. Your contributions make our work possible: empowering constituents, holding our legislators accountable, and pushing for progressive change in Massachusetts.
I’m also a perfectionist, so I’ll do one final pitch: if you haven’t made a contribution yet and can help us close that $34 gap, please consider it! If 34 people gave us $1, we would reach our goal today. :)
HELP US RAISE $34 AND REACH OUR GOAL>>
---
State house Scoop
State house acts with uncharacteristic urgency to expand World Cup drinking, “fun”
You may have seen the headlines: Massachusetts’ state house finalized a bill this week to temporarily relax our state’s strict public drinking laws, in a last-ditch effort to appear more fun to tourists visiting for the World Cup and other events this summer.
Seriously. I wrote that originally as a joke, but here’s what Senator Julian Cyr had to say in the legislature’s official press release about the bill: “I’ve said for years that Massachusetts has a ‘fun’ problem, so I am delighted to see the Legislature pass this bill to bring some much-needed conviviality to our summer… Let’s show the world that we truly do know how to have a good time in Massachusetts. Cheers!”
You know what? Mission accepted, Senator Cyr.
This bill had a relatively short timeline compared to other initiatives that pass through our legislature. It was first filed on May 11th, the press spotlighted it on May 27th, and it passed the House and Senate on June 4th and 8th respectively. The pesky public hearing process was skipped completely. The two chambers met to hammer out the differences between their versions on June 8th and the governor signed it just hours later. Within less than a month, it went from idea to Massachusetts law.
My first reaction? Relief. Usually, when our legislature is acting with uncharacteristic speed, it’s to do something nefarious that they don’t want the public to know about—like last week’s House bill gutting the legislative audit.
My second reaction was, honestly, frustration. As I said to a reporter at MassLive, “it’s remarkable to see what priorities they choose to act quickly on while residents have been begging them for months to take action on housing relief, immigrant protection and municipal funding.”
With public drinking, legislature finalizes eighth statewide policy law in two years
Legislators protest when we remind them that our legislature is the “least efficient legislature in the United States.” Unfortunately for them, the numbers aren't great. By our count, this new drinking law is only the eighth new statewide policy law passed since this two-year legislative session began in January 2025. Here’s a breakdown of laws passed this session:
As you can see, the vast majority of the legislature’s lawmaking work for the last 1.5 years has been on local bills, a.k.a. “home rule petitions,” which only pertain to a single city or town. Here’s a few examples from just the last week:
- An Act authorizing the Town of Berkley to recall elected officials (S.3018)
- An Act exempting Nick Santos from the maximum age requirement for the position of police officer in the City of Haverhill (H.4390)
- An Act providing for the exchange of certain park land in the Town of Lexington (H.4843)
These local bills are important, for sure. In fact, towns and cities often spend years waiting for them to pass on Beacon Hill, often in vain. Still, in a state with no shortage of representation at the local level (296 town meetings, 1,200 select board members, and 600 city councilors, just to start!) it hardly seems like the best use of precious state-level time.
And what of those eight statewide policy changes? Surely they’re more significant than 1.5 months of “fun” drinking laws? Action on housing affordability, healthcare costs, and other issues on the minds of Bay Staters? Maybe even…. a policy response to the alarming threats of the Trump administration?
Alas... not quite. Here's the list of those eight laws:
As we wrote last year, the state’s updated Reproductive SHIELD Act (Act 16 of 2025 above) was a huge step forward in protecting Bay Staters from federal overreach into transgender and reproductive care. Yet, almost a year later, that’s still the only new policy law passed by our state house that responds to the specific threats of the Trump administration. Other policies, including uncontroversial ones, seem caught in the "inexcusable inertia on Beacon Hill," to quote one senator.
We found out recently that 59% of state house races this year will feature only one candidate. When legislators know that they're going to have their job next year, there is little urgency to get work done in a single session. It also means that legislators are unused to competition, and can avoid taking strong stances that might isolate part of their electorate. Each time you take a legislative action, you risk pissing off somebody. The least controversial thing for legislative leaders to do is to take no action and say you're "study"-ing an issue. So, year after year, that's what happens—until big business is breathing down their necks.
There’s now six weeks left in the formal sessions, by which legislators (if they plan to follow their own rules) need to get major policies passed by both chambers. They do seem to have picked up the pace of lawmaking at least a little. Just last week, the House unanimously passed their version of the sweeping data privacy act passed by Senators in September, which will now go to a conference committee to negotiate a final version. The Senate plans to vote next week on a bill to direct funding to primary care in healthcare. Months later, there is still hope that the PROTECT Acton immigration reform will emerge from conference committee.
All that to say, the drinking law bill passed this week underscores a frustrating reality: legislators can act with urgency when they want to. (Especially when they’ve procrastinated planning for World Cup events that were scheduled in, uh, 2022. Municipalities are now scrambling to take advantage of the new relaxed laws with just a few days to plan)
With a few weeks left in the legislative session, let’s hope that protection for immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, healthcare reform, housing relief, labor rights, climate progress, and other issues of importance to Bay Staters will get as high of a priority as “fun.”
Your legislator is your voice for new policies on Beacon Hill. Do you know what they're working on with the few weeks that are left? Reach out and ask them!
---
Isabel's Vol Call
Happy Saturday!
It was so good to see some of you on Tuesday at our H.5469 phonebank! It was so much fun, in fact, that we’re going to do it every week this summer! If you’re free from 10-10:30am on Tuesdays, we are going to make our voice heard on this “transparency” bill. If you’re interested in calling but not free at that time, the link to some scripts is here and Act on Mass’s handy-dandy “legislplaining” common response guide is here.
JOIN AOM TO PHONEBANK REPS ON TUESDAY!>>
For this week’s Vol Call, if you’re wondering how you can take action as another unproductive legislative session winds to a close, look no further than the Every District Accountable: Good Government for Mass Pledge. As Scotia outlined, we are planning on using this Pledge as an organizing tool into next session (and beyond!) to push for specific, actionable, common-sense lawmaking practices.
We are trying to get as many current and/or prospective state legislators to sign on as possible, and we need your help! Here is a toolkit for reaching out to the elected officials/candidates in your district, as well as a more in-depth summary on each point of the Pledge.
We are also currently looking for organizations to cosponsor the Pledge, so if you'd be interested you can find more information here or email me at isabel@actonmass.org.
Happy Pride!
Isabel
TELL YOUR SENATOR: NO TO H.5469>>
---
Also worth reading this week!
Great reporting and writing from around the Bay State this week!
- To get on the Mass. ballot, incumbent Democrats got a hand from their public employees (paywall) by Chris van Buskirk for Boston Globe
- Massachusetts’s slow adoption of EV chargers through federal program is ‘mystifying’ to transit advocates by Jordan Wolman for Commonwealth Beacon
- Opioid deaths fall below 1,000 for first year since 2013 by Alison Kuznitz for State House News Service
- EDITORIAL: House plays political games over audit, public records by Boston Globe Editorial Board
---
Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.
---
Take action
PHONEBANK: Call your legislators about H.5469! - Tuesday, 10 - 10:30 am
Join Act on Mass for a quick virtual phonebook to call our legislators about H.5469! We'll meet on Zoom to go over some background on the bill and then call our reps.
JOIN AOM TO PHONEBANK REPS ON TUESDAY!>>
CAMBRIDGE, MEDFORD, SOMERVILLE, AND WINCHESTER - State senate forum on transparency! - June 16th, 7 PM
June 16th at 7:30 pm - Join Act on Mass and allies in Cambridge for a candidate forum featuring two candidates for state senate of the Suffolk & Middlesex District, Senator Will Brownsberger and Daniel Lander, focused on questions of transparency and accountability in the state legislature.
If you're interested in hosting a transparency and accountability forum in your district, send us an email at info@actonmass.org!
---
Thanks for reading and for taking action! We'll be back next week!
In solidarity,
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass