A guide to the Mid-session Scorecard

The 190th legislative did not have a very auspicious start.

Both House and Senate fast-tracked a bill to give pay increases to the Senate President, Speaker of the House, judges, the governor, and other constitutional officers; raise stipends to appointed committee chairs and select other legislative leaders; and increase the number of legislators eligible for stipends (1h).

Here at Progressive Mass, we understand that it is important that elected officials be paid well for the work that they do (especially so that they don’t seek more lucrative work that leads to a host of conflicts of interest), but the bill reflected the endemic problems of Beacon Hill.

• It lacked any semblance of deliberative, democratic process, and its ultimate effect was to centralize power further in Leadership, creating a more hierarchical and less democratic Legislature.
• It also left out woefully underpaid staffers from the pay increase—and the countless workers across the Commonwealth facing stagnant and sub-livable wages. In short, we deserve better from our Legislature.

It’s unfortunate that, in the House, Republicans tend to be the only ones calling for transparency and a more democratic process (Would they if they were in control? Probably not). Republicans pushed an amendment at the start of the session requiring committee roll call votes be published online. This would help citizens better hold their elected officials accountable. Accordingly, it was voted down by the Democratic majority (2h).

Apart from the restoration of line-item-vetoed budget programs and earmarks (most of which were worthwhile), the pay raise remains the only time the Democrats of the Legislature used their overwhelming supermajority to override Governor Baker’s veto.

That budget also left much to be desired, as it largely continued the austerity that hamstrings our ability to invest in our future:

Budget season in the House tends to follow a particular script. Amendments from progressive representati ves proposing new revenue or creative new ideas will be withdrawn, often without floor debate. Amendments from Republicans will be debated on the floor and then “sent to further study,” i.e., tabled indefinitely. And the leadership will decide behind closed doors which line item increases will get into the final budget, bundling them into large, omnibus amendments. Votes, including that on the final budget, will mostly be either party-line or (nearly) unanimous (with occasional splits in the Republican caucus or defections from the likes of Colleen Garry of Dracut or James Dwyer of Weymouth on the Democratic side).

The amendments sent to study (studies that will never happen — and shouldn’t) sought to stymy the state’s ability to collect revenue (3h, 4h) or prevent people from accessing the benefits that they need and deserve (5h, 6h).

Later in the spring of 2017, the Fair Share amendment (or “millionaire’s tax”) secured its place on the November 2018 ballot, as both houses overwhelmingly voted to support it in its second Constitutional Convention (7h). The Fair Share amendment, which would impose a 4% surtax on income above $1 million and allocate the revenue to a designated education and transportation fund, is an important start to counteracting the chronic underinvestment described above.

Speaking of ballot initiatives, the Legislature decided to rewrite Question 4, the marijuana legalization ballot initiative that passed in 2016. The House bill, which violated the spirit of what citizens had voted for, would have more than doubled the tax on marijuana, creating the conditions for black market to flourish; eliminated the ability of voters to have a direct say over local marijuana policy; and created new law enforcement agencies with broad and poorly defined powers. Important racial equity provisions were added via the amendment process (9h), but did not counter the fundamentally flawed nature of the bill. In addition to overwhelmingly passing this bill (10h), the House voted down an amendment to make sure that the funds from the bill don’t end up flowing to the cities and towns that ban marijuana (8h).

On the health care front, both the House and Senate beat back a terrible proposal from Governor Baker to drop more than 100,000 individuals from MassHealth and impose other restrictions on coverage (13h), as well as his proposals to freeze employer contributions to the unemployment insurance trust fund (12h). Despite Baker’s claims to moderation, his proposals would make his Republican colleagues in Washington proud. Thankfully, they failed last year, but we must be vigilant because Baker has not given up hope of passing it.

The House had strong bipartisan support for committing Massachusetts to the greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement (14h) and guaranteeing access to birth control without copay (15h) — although it’s important to note that Massachusetts is already committed to the Paris goals by way of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

Criminal justice reform dominated the rest of 2017. As is often the case with the budget, many Democratic amendments were withdrawn or bundled and rewritten. Republican amendments were often sent to further study (which, given how bad they are, is better than passage). Democrats thankfully dispensed with Republican amendments to undermine the recent Lunn court ruling on immigrants’ rights (16h), double down on a punitive approach to the opioid epidemic (17h, 23h), and violate individual privacy rights by expanding state surveillance (18h).

Some good amendments did pass. The House voted to increase the threshold at which larceny gets prosecuted as larceny from the current $250 to $1,000 (lower than the Senate bill, but better than the status quo) (20h, 22h). Massachusetts, despite our liberal reputation, has the third lowest such threshold in the country. The House also voted to strengthen to strengthen juvenile justice reforms (18h).

Not every roll call vote involved in improving the bill or fending off efforts to weaken it. The House also voted overwhelmingly to expand the witness intimidation statute to cover more people and transactions and have higher penalties, opening up possibilities for police and prosecutorial abuse given the lack of requirement for an empirical foundation for such charges (21s).

Note: If legislators were not present for a vote but submitted a letter to the Clerk about how they would have voted, we recorded the intended vote in the scorecard. Relevant references here are available upon request. If a legislator was absent but did not make his/her intent clear, that absence was scored equal to a vote against the progressive position.

A guide to the Mid-session Scorecard

The 190th legislative did not have a very auspicious start. Both House and Senate fast-tracked a bill to give pay increases to the Senate President, Speaker of the House, judges, the governor, and other constitutional officers; raise stipends to appointed committee chairs and select other legislative leaders; and increase the number of legislators eligible for stipends (1s). Here at Progressive Mass, we understand that it is important that elected officials be paid well for the work that they do (especially so that they don’t seek more lucrative work that leads to a host of conflicts of interest), but the bill reflected the endemic problems of Beacon Hill. It lacked any semblance of deliberative, democratic process, and its ultimate effect was to centralize power further in Leadership, creating a more hierarchical and less democratic Legislature. It also left out woefully underpaid staffers from the pay increase—and the countless workers across the Commonwealth facing stagnant and sub-livable wages. In short, we deserve better from our Legislature.

The pay raise remains the only time the Democrats of the Legislature used their overwhelming supermajority to override Governor Baker’s veto, aside from the restoration of line-item-vetoed budget programs and earmarks (most of which were, granted, worthwhile programs and earmarks).

The base of that budget also left much to be desired, as it largely continued the austerity that has been harming our ability to invest in our future. That said, several of the amendments for which we had advocated did pass unanimously (2s, 3s, 4s).

One of those amendments (4s) would have established a schedule for implementing the 2015 recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission, which found that the Commonwealth is underestimating the cost of K-12 education by $1-2 billion each year due to outdated assumptions regarding the costs of special education and health care as well as of closing the achievement gaps for low-income students and English Language Learners. This mirrors one of our priority bills — Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz’s S.223. Unfortunately, it did not make the Conference budget, although the fact that S.223 was reported out favorably by the Joint Education Committee offers hope.

Almost every single budget vote in the Senate last year was unanimous — adding extra funding to an array of important programs and blunting the overall austerity. The one contested vote was on eliminating the use of student standardized test performance in teacher evaluations (5s). Although testing can provide valuable information to teachers and administrators, the use of student impact ratings in teacher evaluation ignores the many other factors, both individual and social, that affect a student’s performance, and creates problems in subjects where standardized tests are not given, such as in art, music, and gym.

Later in the spring, the Fair Share amendment (or “millionaire’s tax”) secured its place on the November 2018 ballot, as both houses overwhelmingly voted to support it in its second Constitutional Convention (6s). The Fair Share amendment, which would impose a 4% surtax on income above $1 million and allocate the revenue to a designated education and transportation fund, is an important start to counteracting the chronic underinvestment described above.

Speaking of ballot initiatives, the Legislature decided to rewrite Question 4, the marijuana legalization ballot initiative that passed in 2016. The Senate’s bill (unlike the House’s) and, thankfully, the final Conference Committee legislation remained faithful to the will of the voters and contained some valuable social justice and public health improvements (7s, 9s).

Criminal justice reform and health care reform dominated the rest of the session. These votes counted for half of the votes scored in the first half of the 190th session (13s-30s).

Unfortunately, the awareness of the importance of reducing fines and fees did not hold when the Legislature passed its “no texting while driving” bill, as senators voted down an amendment to reduce the fine scale in the bill (8s).

On the health care front, both the House and Senate beat back a terrible proposal from Governor Baker to drop more than 100,000 individuals from MassHealth and impose other restrictions on coverage (12s). Despite Baker’s claims to moderation, his proposal would make his Republican colleagues in Washington proud. Thankfully, it failed last year, but we must be vigilant because Baker has not given up hope of passing it.

During the summer, the Senate also passed the Healthy Youth Act, which requires schools that teach sex ed to uses medically accurate, age-appropriate, and comprehensive curriculum–and beat back efforts to weaken it (10s, 11s).

In the fall, the Senate passed its own version of health care reform, and although it did not go as far we would have liked (single payer, anyone?), it contained many valuable improvements — from a public option to greater cost controls for prescription drugs and hospital bills to the authorization of dental therapists to increase access to dental care, among many other provisions that will improve the health and well-being of the Commonwealth (36s). The Senate beat back several efforts to weaken the bill (31s, 33s, 34s), but also one to improve it (32s). The bill also included a modified version of the so-called “benchmark” bill, which requires the establishment of a “single payer benchmark” and annual reports that compare the actual health care expenditures in the commonwealth for 2016, 2017, and 2018 with those under a single payer system. If the “single payer benchmark” outperforms actual costs, then the Health Policy Commission has to propose a single payer plan.

Note: If legislators were not present for a vote but submitted a letter to the Clerk about how they would have voted, we recorded the intended vote in the scorecard. Relevant references here are available upon request. If a legislator was absent but did not make his/her intent clear, that absence was scored equal to a vote against the progressive position.