If you have read news about the State House or seen advocacy alerts or legislative newsletters recently, you may have heard the term “Joint Rule 10 Day.” This poses a key question: What is Joint Rule 10 anyway?

In the Joint Rules governing the MA House and MA Senate, Rule #10 creates deadlines for committees to take action. By the first Wednesday of December, i.e., tomorrow, every joint committee needs to take action on every bill in its purview. (It wouldn’t be Beacon Hill without exceptions: The Health Care Financing Committee has a later deadline, and committees aren’t held to the deadline for bills filed after January, when there’s an early session filing deadline).

Also new this year: rather than voting as one joint committee, the House and Senate members of the committee will each vote on their own bills.

What happens next?

• The committee can give a bill a favorable report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought to pass. It then advances to the next stage of its journey from bill to law, typically moving to the Ways & Means Committee.
• The committee can give the bill an adverse report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought not to pass, and it is done for the session.
• The committee can send the bill to study: that means the committee does not plan to take further action on the bill. It is, in other words, a polite way to vote the bill down. No “study” results.
• The committee can give the bill an extension: that means the committee has not yet decided the fate of the bill and wants more time to decide or redraft/combine bills.

There are several ways your legislators can vote in a committee (and with the new rules, you’ll be able to see):

• Favorable: the bill ought to pass
• Adverse: the bill ought not to pass
• Reserve Rights: the bill ought not to pass barring major revisions
• No Action: the legislator was not present for the vote

Here are a few bills we’re supporting that have already advanced favorably from their first committee in either House or Senate:

• Same Day Registration: Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on Election Laws
• Delinking the Municipal Census from the Voter Rolls: Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on Election Laws
• Clean Slate (i.e., automatic record sealing: Advanced 6 to 0 from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
• Raise the Age (i.e., keeping young people out of the adult prison system): Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
• Prison Moratorium (i.e, putting a five-year pause on new prison and jail construction): Advanced 8 to 0, with 1 reserving rights and 2 taking no action, from the House Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight
• Location Shield Act (i.e., banning the sale of cell phone location data): Included in the Senate’s data privacy omnibus bill in September; Included in the House Committee on Advanced IT’s data privacy omnibus bill (favorable report of 9 to 0, with 2 reserving rights)
• Right to Free Expression (i.e., reining in politically motivated book bans): Passed by the Senate last month; Advanced 11 to 0 from the House Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development

That’s the good news. Unfortunately, at least one of the bills on our priority agenda got sent to study. The Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources voted 4 to 0 on sending a bundle of bills to study, including Make Polluters Pay (i.e., requiring major oil and gas companies to pay fee on historic emissions). The vote was 4 to 0, with 1 senator reserving rights and 1 registering a dissent in the Senate Journal.

After bills leave their first committee, then legislators can no longer co-sponsor the bills. But there are plenty of other asks to make of your legislators!

Stay tuned for more updates.