PM in the News: State lawmakers holding fewer recorded votes

Christian Wade, “State lawmakers holding fewer recorded votes,” The Eagle-Tribune. March 12, 2024.

The number of roll call votes by the state House of Representatives has plummeted in recent years, prompting concerns from open government groups about a lack of transparency in Beacon Hill’s often secretive legislative process.

In the current legislative session, which got underway in January 2023, the House has held 81 roll calls that recorded how each lawmaker voted on specific bills, according to voting records from the House clerk’s office.

But the number of recorded votes has been declining for years, with 105 roll calls held during the preceding two-year session in 2021 and 2022, according to the data. In the 2017-18 session, the House held 313 roll call votes.

There has also been a decline of recorded votes in the state Senate, where 135 recorded votes were held during the 2021-22 session, according to the Senate clerk’s office. That’s compared to 186 roll call votes in the 2020-21 session.

….

Jonathan Cohn, policy director of the group Progressive Massachusetts, said the lack of recorded votes deprives people of “opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges” facing the state.

“So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand,” he said in a statement.

Letter: Legislature must act on state’s housing crisis

Al Blake, “Letter: Legislature must act on state’s housing crisis,” Berkshire Eagle, March 2, 2024.

To the editor: Massachusetts and the Berkshires have a housing crisis.

To rent the average two-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Homeownership has become increasingly out of reach as the state’s median home price nears $600,000.

The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities the local workforce can no longer afford to live there. The Legislature needs to take action before the crisis gets worse.

I’m glad that Gov. Maura Healey has responded to this crisis by introducing the Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing. One of the most exciting proposals is the real estate transfer fee local option. This would enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on large real estate transactions in order to create a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation.

I am grateful that the housing crisis will be at the center of the Legislature’s attention this year, and I hope that our Berkshire legislators will advocate for the strongest legislation possible as the only way to make or keep that a reality is through good policy.

Al Blake, Becket

This International Women’s Day and Always: better health, not more prisons

Happy International Women’s Day!

Today should serve as a reminder of the fundamentally intersectional nature of the push for women’s rights. Women need pay equity, universal health care (including and especially reproductive health care), affordable child care, affordable housing, and so much more.

This International Women’s Day, take action on two important issues: saying no to another women’s prison and saying yes to creating a better maternal health care system. 
 


No New Women’s Prison

Massachusetts is planning to spend $50 million to build a new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham. As of January 1, 2022, the population in MCI-Framingham stood at 179, with more than 20% held in pre-trial detention. Why would we expand a system that costs $235,000 per person and only causes further harm?

That is the question that women from MCI-Framingham asked in a historic hearing last summer when they were able to testify to state legislators about the myriad better uses of that $50 million, especially in terms of investing in communities and support services at MCI-Framingham, expanding programming, and improving access to health care.

Studies have repeatedly shown that society cannot incarcerate its way to safety, and the family separation of incarceration and the well-documented inhumane conditions in Massachusetts’s prisons and jails fuel the community instability that is detrimental to public safety. Instead, investments in housing, health care, economic opportunity, and other social supports have been shown to be the true foundation of public safety for all.

Can you write to your state legislators in support of a moratorium on new prison and jail construction?

The Prison Moratorium bill (S.1979) would create a 5-year pause on major jail and prison construction and expansion, without preventing essential repairs, to allow for a focus on reducing the number of people in prison, implementing alternatives, and investing in communities.

The Legislature, in fact, has already gone on record in support of this bill by passing it at the end of the session, but Republican Governor Charlie Baker vetoed it. Let’s finish the work this year.

Find out if your legislators are already co-sponsors here.

  Demand a Better Maternal Health Care System

Massachusetts is facing a maternal health care crisis, which is devastating all of our communities, and hitting Black, Indigenous and people of color especially hard. This crisis has been compounded by a cascade of maternity care closures across the state. Policies are urgently needed to reverse this alarming trend.

A study published by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health last year revealed that rates of severe maternal health complications nearly doubled between 2011 and 2020. The situation is especially dire for black women, who are twice as likely than white women to die from maternal health complications in Massachusetts.

We need to demand that all women and birthing parents have access to the care that they need.

Can you write your state legislators along with the Chairs of the Committees on Public Health and Health Care Financing in support of access to midwives and birthing options?

An Act promoting access to midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth options (H.2209/S.145) would improve maternal health outcomes and promote racial and economic justice by expanding access to midwifery care and birthing choices, eliminating maternal care deserts and increasing access for low-income families.

Letter: Sealing of erroneously denied youthful offender sealing petitions

March 5, 2024
Pamerson O. Ifill
Commissioner of Probation
One Ashburton Place # 405
Boston, MA 02108
Re: Sealing of erroneously denied youthful offender sealing petitions

Dear Commissioner:

We are writing on behalf of youth, community, legal services, and other organizations to request that you direct the Sealing Unit in your office to comply with the law and seal the youthful offender records of petitioners who were previously denied sealing due to the Sealing Unit incorrectly applying the adult sealing statute (G.L c. 276, § 100A) rather than the juvenile
sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) to youthful offender offenses. On February 14, 2024, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that the delinquency sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) “is the proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Matter of Impounded Case, No. SJC-13465, 2024 WL 590605, at 1 (2024). However, our understanding from General Counsel Nina Pomponio is that, except for the petitioner in this particular SJC case, the Sealing Unit will take no action to seal the records of individuals who were previously denied sealing of their youthful offender records based on the erroneous application of the adult sealing statute unless they file a new petition. We respectfully submit that this position is flatly inconsistent with the Court’s decision, a dereliction of the Sealing Unit’s basic responsibility as a government agency, profoundly unjust, and unnecessary based on the Sealing Unit’s practice of treating youthful offender records as sealable under the juvenile statute less than a decade ago.


This position is particularly disappointing when compared to the laudable steps your office is taking to seal adult offenses ending in a not guilty finding to implement the SJC’s recent decision in Commonwealth v. J.F.1 The number of sealing requests related to youthful offender offenses is almost certainly much smaller than the number of adult offenses that ended in a not
guilty finding which your office is now sealing.

The failure to seal these records is legally unsupportable. The SJC’s unanimous decision last week is unambiguous: “We conclude that § 100B, the juvenile delinquency statute, is proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Slip op. at 2 (emphasis supplied). Nothing in the opinion remotely suggests that its holding was limited to the individual youthful offender who brought the petition. To the contrary, its language is not restricted to the case before it. “After review of the text of §§ 100A and 100B and an analysis of legislative intent as to youthful offender adjudications as revealed in §§ 53 and 60A and more broadly, we conclude that the Legislature intended that, in the context of record sealing, youthful offender adjudications be treated more like delinquency adjudications than adult criminal adjudications.” Slip op. at 13 (emphasis supplied). Any reading other than that youthful offender records are to be treated for sealing purposes as juvenile records is baseless.

The failure to seal these records disregards the agency’s basic responsibility to do its job. The refusal to seal these records effectively deprives persons eligible for sealing of its benefits because the sealing unit misled them. Before this decision, the Sealing Unit sent letters to individuals who requested sealing of all juvenile offenses that erroneously instructed them in some instances that they could never seal their youthful offender offenses and in other instances that the longer seven-year waiting periods applied to any felony offense. Sealing is a non-discretionary duty under section 100B if a person has filed a petition to seal and the offenses are eligible for sealing. See G.L c. 276, § 100B (the commissioner “shall” seal eligible
offenses after filing of a petition). The Sealing Unit has a responsibility to correct its errors.

This inaction by the Sealing Unit is profoundly unjust. It deprives Black, Latinx and LGBT+ individuals the opportunity to mitigate the racism and collateral consequences related to the disproportionate involvement of these young adults in the juvenile court system. It also places an undue burden on the public to follow SJC slip opinions. Those with youthful offender records also are a vulnerable population because so many children in the juvenile court are from poor and low-income communities and have families that are, or were, involved with the Department of Children and Families.

This inaction is also utterly unnecessary and simply cruel. Less than a decade ago the Sealing Unit routinely (and correctly) treated youthful offender records as akin to delinquency records for sealing purposes. Attorneys from Greater Boston Legal Services and Northeast Legal Aid recall having past clients who sealed their youthful offender records under G.L c. 276, § 100B after a three-year juvenile waiting period in 2018 or 2019. Moreover, a 2013 chapter in an MCLE publication authored by your office’s then-deputy legal counsel stated that delinquency and youthful offender offenses can be sealed after the same three-year waiting period without any exclusions. 2

Thus treating youthful offender records like juvenile records for sealing purposes is well within the Sealing Unit’s ability, and the relatively short period of its erroneous application of the law suggests there are a small number of persons affected.
Individuals with juvenile court records are as deserving of second chances as adults, and as the SJC has held, less culpable for their past offenses given what is known about brain development. See Diatchenko v. Dist. Att’y for Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655, 660 (2013).

In sum, we urge you to instruct your office’s Sealing Unit to approve all the prior requests for sealing which were denied because of the misapplication of the adult sealing law to youthful offender records without requiring individuals to file new petitions. This is the only way to prevent continuing stigma and harm in the form of collateral consequences related to wrongful denial of these petitions. Thank you for your attention to this matter.


Sincerely,

Pauline Quirion, Director, CORI & Re-entry Project, Greater Boston Legal Services
Mia Alvarado, Executive Director, Roxbury Youthworks, Inc.
Virginia Benzan, Director of Racial Justice Advocacy, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
Hon. Jay Blitzman (Ret.)
Mary Bonauto, Senior Director of Civil Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders
Stacey Borden, Director, New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc.
Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director, Progressive Massachusetts
Jessica Collins, Executive Director, Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts
Professor Margaret Drew, UMass School of Law Human Rights at Home Clinic
Ryan Dominguez, Executive Director, Mass CultivatED
Daniel French, Board President, Citizens for Public Schools
Ed Gaskin, Executive Director, Greater Grove Hall Main Streets
Lauren Gibbs, End Mass Incarceration Together (EMIT)
Alyssa Golden, Senior Supervising Attorney, CORI/ Re-entry, Community Legal Aid
Rahsaan Hall, Executive Director, Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts
Sophia Hall, Deputy Litigation Director, Lawyers for Civil Rights
Phillip Kassel, Executive Director, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee

Paul Kominers and Kristen Gagalis, Anderson & Kreiger
Susan Malouin, Senior Attorney, Criminal Record Sealing Unit, Northeast Legal Aid
Julie McCormack, Director, Safety Net Project, Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School
Dave McMahon, Co-Executive Director, Dismas House
Rev. Jo Murphy, Executive Director, Unitarian Universalist Mass Action (UU Mass Action)
Kayla Hamlett Murray, Executive Director, Bethel Institute for Community Development
Ariel Nelson, Criminal Justice Debt & Reintegration Project, National Consumer Law Center
Matthew Parker, Director, Union of Minority Neighborhoods
Marlene Pollock, Coalition for Social Justice Action
Nichelle Sadler, Executive Director, UTEC Training Center for Excellence
Professor David Siegel, New England Law | Boston CORI Initiative
Leon Smith, Executive Director, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
Rev. Chris Sumner, Boston Reentry Collaborative
Jessica Tang, President, Boston Teachers Union
Lisa H. Thurau, Executive Director, Strategies for Youth, Inc.
Vincent Ware, Greater Boston Reentry Taskforce

cc: Nina Pomponio, General Counsel, Office of Commissioner of Probation

1 J.F. overruled a 1995 decision prohibiting immediate sealing of any offenses ending in not guilty dispositions. See Commonwealth v. Doe, 420 Mass. 142 (1995), overruled by Commonwealth v. J.F., 491 Mass. 824, 831, (2023).

2 See Nicola J. Pangonis, Criminal Records: Sealing and Expungement, § 18.4.4, CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE-THE
COLLATERAL EFFECTS OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT (MCLE 2013 ed.).

Testimony in Support of Ending the Use of MCAS as a Graduation Requirement

Monday, March 4, 2024

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Committee:  

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

I am writing today in support of ending the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement and in favor of NO. 23-36, An Act requiring that districts certify that students have mastered the skills, competencies and knowledge of the state standards as a replacement for the MCAS graduation requirement (House, No. 4252).

Ample education policy research has shown that high-stakes standardized testing, such as the MCAS, does not measure a student’s ability to learn, capacity for effort, creativity, or perseverance, and it is not an accurate predictor of future academic or life success. Instead, test scores are highly correlated with a family’s economic status.

Massachusetts is among only eight states that mandate passage of standardized testing as a requirement to graduate high school. This requirement inaccurately and incompletely assesses students, incentivizes the narrowing of school curricula to focus on test content, and adds undue stress to students’ lives, with impacts especially felt by students with Individualized Education Plans, English Language Learners, and BIPOC students.

Massachusetts’s strong performance in education statistics is not due to a testing graduation requirement, but due to the investments put into our public schools (as well as the comparative affluence of the commonwealth vis-à-vis other states). Indeed, our education out-performance often fades away when data gets disaggregated.

Testing can and should serve a valuable diagnostic purpose—assessing progress, identifying trends, and more. But it should not be a high-stakes phenomenon. We have capable educators and policymakers who can craft a statewide competency-based graduation requirement that would enable students to be properly assessed according to the totality of their work.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Just In: What’s a Living Wage in Massachusetts?

MIT’s Living Wage Calculator analyzes the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support themselves and/or their family, working full-time, meeting basic needs like food, health care, housing, and transportation. 

They just updated it a few weeks ago, and the living wage for a single adult in Massachusetts now stands at $27.89. In households with children, the number is even higher. It’s clear that we have a cost-of-living crisis.

We can solve that in two ways: by bringing down costs or bringing up wages. And we need to do both. In 2018, Massachusetts set an example for other states and the country by passing a $15 minimum wage.

It’s time to raise the minimum wage again. Legislation filed this session (H.1925/S.1200) would raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, bringing it much closer to a living wage.

Can you ask your state rep and state senator to co-sponsor and champion legislation to raise the minimum wage to $20?
Find out if your legislators are already co-sponsors here.

Massachusetts workers deserve better. Let’s make sure all workers receive a living wage.