Tell Gov. Healey: OpenAI Contract Needs to Be Open

Last Friday, Governor Healey committed Massachusetts to a three-year, multimillion-dollar contract with OpenAI, a company that has been in the news recently for collaborating with ICE, to deploy its AI tool for the Executive Branch’s 40,000 employees.

Healey did this upon the recommendation of the Commonwealth’s industry insider-dominated “AI Strategic Task Force,” but without consulting state workers.

As Beacon Hill works on passing new data privacy protections, Massachusetts residents should also be concerned about how Healey’s new partnership would handle sensitive data. We can’t know because the contract has not been released.

Workers, civil rights advocates, and consumer advocates need to be at the table to decide how new technologies will be embraced, not just those who will profit from them.

Here’s what you can do:

  • Contact the Governor’s office. Call (617) 725-4005 or use this email tool. Ask for the release of the full procurement documents and the data processing agreement, and ask why workers, consumer advocates, and civil rights advocates were excluded from this decision.
  • Contact your State Representative and Senator. Email your state legislators to ask whether the Joint Committee on Advanced IT plans to hold hearings on this contract. Find their emails here.

Letter: “Stop ICE in Massachusetts “

Al Blake, “Letter: Stop ICE in Massachusetts,” Berkshire Eagle, February 18, 2026.

To the editor: Every day, we see horrific violence by federal immigration agents across the country, including here in Massachusetts.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions are making all of our communities less safe. Berkshire residents have turned out in big numbers to protests and standouts demanding that our elected leaders do more leading and stand up to the cruelty and lawlessness of the Trump administration.

There was a recent surge of ICE activity in Maine, and Massachusetts could be targeted next, so we must stop being complicit. Gov. Maura Healey and Beacon Hill legislators are finally getting the memo that the public wants to see action. But it matters that we pass legislation that truly meets the moment. Beacon Hill should make it clear: State and local law enforcement should not be assisting ICE and should not be acting as ICE agents. Massachusetts law enforcement must never assist ICE in making civil immigration arrests or ask members of the public about their immigration status. We are the only state with a Democratic governor and Democratic-majority Legislature to still have a statewide 287(g) agreement with ICE. Gov. Healey can end this collaboration with a stroke of the pen.

Al Blake, Becket

How Two Ballot Referenda Propose to Reduce State Income Tax Revenues

Fred Berman, Mystic Mashup Indivisible

How Two Ballot Referenda Propose to Reduce State Income Tax Revenues and the Implications

While much attention has been understandably focused on the threats posed by the Trump Administration to our democracy, to the civil and constitutional rights of our neighbors, to our safety net programs, to our school systems and universities, and to our ability to sustain and strengthen the physical infrastructure that our economy needs to grow while protecting the environment – housing, public transportation, clean energy …  another less well-known threat has been brewing.

To learn more about two tax-cutting ballot referenda sponsored by the Mass. High Tech Council, the Pioneer Institute, and their anti-tax allies, I attended a workshop at the 2026 Progressive Mass annual meeting, led by Harris Gruman, Executive Director of the SEIU Mass. State Council and a co-founder of Raise Up Mass., the coalition that led the successful fight to pass the Fair Share millionaire tax constitutional amendment.

The two tax-cutting ballot referenda championed by the High Tech Council, et al. would, if passed, undermine our state’s ability to adequately support health care access, human services, public and post-secondary education systems, and the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of essential infrastructure – transportation, energy, natural resource protection – that make Massachusetts such an outstanding state to live in.  Of course, all of these sectors have already been targeted by the Trump Administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which will cut $3.7 billion in federal funding over the three-year period that began in 2025. Like the metaphoric frog in boiling water, we might not feel the impacts of these referenda in the first year, but by years two and three, when we have lost $7-10 billion of the state’s $60 billion budget, the hemorrhaging will have become all too apparent.

One ballot question calls for reducing the state income tax rate from 5% to 4% over a three-year period.  The Mass. Budget and Policy Center (“Mass Budget”) calculated that when fully implemented, that 20% income tax cut will cost the state about $5 billion/year or about 11.5% of the state’s total $43.7 billion tax revenue. 

A second ballot question calls for changing the so-called Chapter 62F formula that prescribes the annual limit or cap on tax revenue collection.  The mechanism proposed by this ballot initiative to reduce tax revenues is more arcane, but here’s my best shot at an explainer, based on what I learned at the workshop and online: 

How the Current Tax Revenue Limit Works

Established in 1986, Question 3 added Mass General Law Chapter 62F creating a state tax revenue limit and set it equal to the sum of the prior year’s state tax revenue limit plus the average growth of Mass. wages and salaries over the prior three years.(*1)  

That is,

This year’s total tax revenue limit

=

Last year’s total tax revenue limit

X

1 + percent of 3-year average wage/salary
growth (or 1, if the wage/salary growth avg. was negative)

Under the existing provisions of Chapter 62F, if this year’s revenue cap was $46.38 billion and statewide wage/salary growth over the past 3 years averaged 2.5% per year, the revenue cap for next year would be $46.38 billion X 1.025.  Note that the 4% millionaire’s tax is not taken into account (*2).  Importantly, the existing formula almost always results in an annual increase in the total tax revenue cap, and never lowers that cap, with the amount varying based on the magnitude of wage and salary growth. Only twice in the past 38 years, in 1987 and 2022, has tax revenue exceeded the cap and required a refund to taxpayers.

How the Ballot Referendum Revising the Chapter 62F Tax Cap-Setting Algorithm Would Change Things

The Chapter 62F Referendum would revise the formula for the state tax revenue limit in two ways: (1) It would add the millionaire’s tax into the equation, and (2) instead of basing this year’s tax revenue limit on last year’s tax revenue limit, it would base this year’s tax revenue limit on last year’s net tax revenues:

This year’s total tax revenue limit

=

Last year’s total net tax revenues 

X

1 + percent of 3-year average wage/salary
growth (or 1, if the wage/salary growth avg. was negative)

This is a subtle change with profound implications. 

  • Instead of steadily increasing the tax revenue cap, the Mass High Tech Council’s proposed algorithm would base this year’s tax revenue cap on the magnitude of last year’ net tax revenue; that is, the tax cap would decrease if the product of last year’s net tax revenue <times> last year’s wage/salary growth factor was lower than the prior year’s net tax revenue, and the tax cap would increase by only a small amount, if last year’s net tax revenue was only marginally higher than the prior year’s net tax revenue and/or if last year’s calculated 3-year average growth in wages/salaries was low.  Three subtle factors to note:
  • The inclusion of the 4% millionaire tax in the calculation of net tax revenue adds volatility to the calculation of the tax cap, because most of a millionaire’s income typically comes from investments, (e.g., the stock market) whose payouts may significantly vary from year to year. So even if other tax revenues increase from year to year, a bad stock market year could result in a lowered tax cap. 
  • Basing this year’s tax cap on last year’s net tax revenue – rather than basing it on last year’s gross tax revenue – means that if gross tax revenues were high enough last year to require a refund to taxpayers, this year’s tax cap will be based on the level of tax revenue remaining after that refund.
  • That is, (a) a low tax revenue year results in a lower increase or even a decrease in the tax cap; (b) a higher tax revenue year coming after one or more years of low tax revenues will be subject to a lower tax revenue cap, necessitating issuance a tax refund; and (c) the refund requirement in a strong tax revenue year will result in a lower tax cap the following year, because the tax cap is based on net (not gross) tax revenues.  In summary, the proposed revision to the Chapter 62F algorithm for calculating the tax revenue cap does exactly what the ballot referendum’s sponsors intended: it reduces the State’s tax collections.

To see how big an impact on net tax revenue (i.e., after required tax refunds) the Chapter 62F formula change might have, I simulated 15 years of tax collections under the following assumptions about the average annual increase in non-4% (millionaire tax) tax revenues: simulation #1 assumed a 5.25% average annual increase, simulation #2 assumed a 4.25% average annual increase, simulation #3 assumed a 3.25% average annual increase, and simulation #4 assumed a 2.25% average annual increase. In each simulation: (a) I allowed gross tax revenues (including the 4% millionaire tax) to decline in two of the 15 years. Each simulation used the same projections about annual growth in salary/wages (ranging from 1.5% to 3% and averaging at 2.48%/year) and the same projections about the annual level of revenues from the 4% millionaire tax (ranging from $1.3 to $3 billion/year and averaging $2.7 billion/year.  Here’s what I found:

 

Average Annual Revenue Increase (excludes 4% tax)

Total Revenue Collected (15 yrs.)

(includes 4% tax)

Taxes Refunded Using Current Algorithm (15 yrs.) 

(% of Total Revenue)

Taxes Refunded Using Revised 62F Algorithm (15 yrs.)

(% of Total Revenue)

# Years Chapter 62F Algorithm Required Refund

Existing Algorithm

# Years Chapter 62F Algorithm Required Refund

Proposed Algorithm

Simulation 1

5.25%

$1,055.59 billion

$97.11 billion (9.2%)

$231.86 billion (21.96%)

11 of 15

15 of 15

Simulation 2

4.25%

$973.12 billion

$30.71 billion (3.16%

$104.91 billion (10.78%)

 

6 of 15

15 of 15

Simulation 3

3.25%

$898.10 billion

 

0

$46.40 billion (5.17%)

 

0 of 15

15 of 15

Simulation 4

2.25%

$829.83 billion

 

0

$23.85 billion (2.87%)

 

0 of 15

11 of 15

  • If annual growth in gross tax revenue (incl. the 4% millionaire tax) consistently exceeds annual growth in salary/wages, gross tax revenue will start to consistently exceed both the current tax cap and the tax cap proposed by the ballot referendum. As noted above, for simulation purposes, annual growth in salary/wages averaged 2.48%, varying year to year and ranging from 1.5% to 3%.
  • The more consistently gross tax revenue (incl. the 4% millionaire tax) exceeds the annual cap, the higher the percentage of gross tax revenues that will be refunded to taxpayers – with the largest sums, of course, going to the wealthiest taxpayers.

Why would the Mass. High Tech Council (MHTC), Pioneer Institute, and their conservative anti-tax partners call for income tax cuts that, combined with cuts in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” will cause at least an $8 billion/year budget shortfall – more than three times the losses caused by the 2008-09 Great Recession, when annual state revenues fell by $2.5 billion?

And why would the remaining financial and tech firms and educational institutions represented on the Board of the High Tech Council – a number of organizations formerly on the MHTC Board have left the Board due to the MHTC’s sponsorship of these tax-cutting initiatives – support state revenue losses which will undermine the state’s ability to adequately support economic development, infrastructure maintenance and improvements, public safety, and educational excellence from pre-school to post-secondary … in the state where their families and employees live and work, and where the educational institutions that serve them and train their future staff are located?

Harris Gruman’s and the Raise Up Mass Coalition’s answers are two-fold:

  1. Greed: This isn’t about helping ordinary working people; these initiatives are part of a strategy to claw back some of the income that the Fair Share Millionaire’s Tax has cost members of the MHTC Board and their colleagues. The average annual tax cut that the richest 1% of taxpayers would receive is estimated at $31,600 ($608/week). The average annual tax cut that the bottom 80% of taxpayers would receive is estimated at $534 ($10/week).
  2. Greed: “It is clear that the MHTC intends to use the threat of these ballot initiatives – and the incredible damage they would do to Massachusetts – to blackmail legislators into cutting taxes for the ultra-rich and large corporations. Faced with their inability to defeat the Fair Share Amendment, they have instead chosen extortion: well-financed business interests are seeking to elevate themselves over our state government as final decision makers on Massachusetts fiscal policy.”

Harris cautions that, “This isn’t a serious effort to tackle Massachusetts’ real competitiveness problems, like the sky-high cost of housing and childcare that are driving low- and middle-income working famlies out of the state. It’s just another attempt to make the rich richer.”
He warns that “State leaders should not be tempted to negotiate in response to this blackmail attempt. If they do, the MHTC and its backers will come back with similar threats and new demands every cycle, raiding public coffers for their own benefit, while shifting the costs of diminished public services onto everyone else.”
“Furthermore, while their goal may be to extort targeted tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and corporations from our Legislature and Governor, we can’t rule out some of them taking this all the way to the ballot as a show of force.”
For now and the next few months, the goal is getting the sponsors to end their effort to get these referenda on the ballot, and to get them to stop using the threat of these ballot initiatives to leverage a rollback of the historic Fair Share victory for fair and adequate taxes.

[1] According to an August  2025 Mass. Dept. of Revenue press release, the 5% Mass. income tax generated $23.7 billion and the 4% millionaire tax added another $3 billion in FY 25.  Sales and use taxes added $9.6 billion, corporate and business taxes added $4.7 billion, and “all other” tax collections added $2.7 billion.  Tax collections totaled $43.7 billion.

[2] A September 2025 report from the State Auditor’s office explains how Chapter 62F has worked since its inception in 1987, and in particular,  why taxpayers got refunds from the Mass. Department of Revenue (DOR) for the fiscal years 1987 and 2022.  The third footnote on page 10 explains that per the provisions of the Fair Share Amendment, revenue from the millionaire’s tax is not currently included in calculating net revenue for the purposes of determining whether net revenue exceeded the tax cap. 

2026 Annual Meeting Videos & Links

Thanks to everyone who joined us on the 31st!

You can watch Senate candidate interviews here.

If you’re interested in learning more about what’s involved in starting a chapter in your community, email chapters@progressivemass.com.

Hope to see you soon!

In Solidarity,

Progressive Mass Team

Yes for a Safe MA

Campaign website: yesforasafema.com

Campaign email: info@yesforasafema.com

Key takeaway: The more Massachusetts voters understand the law, and what’s at risk, the more likely they are to vote in our favor. We encourage folks to sign up to get involved and take action by donating, endorsing (as individuals or organizations), hosting an event, or volunteering.

Rent Control

Campaign website: https://www.keepmasshome.com/

Legislative campaign: https://www.homesforallmass.org/policy/

Legislative Reform

Slide Deck: LINK

Campaign website (Stipend Reform): https://www.stipendreform.com/

Campaign website (Public Records): https://www.dianaforma.com/ballot

Saving Our State from the Greedy Tech Bros

Campaign website: https://www.protectmassachusettsfuture.com/

Join an upcoming action: https://forms.gle/opNdicweBFdiUyzK8

Voter Contact 101

Slides: LINK

State Budget

Slide Deck: LINK

MassBudget’s website: https://massbudget.org/

MassBudget’s preliminary analysis of the Governor’s budget proposal: https://massbudget.org/2026/01/28/massbudgets-preliminary-analysis-of-governor-healeys-fy-2027-budget-and-fy-2026-supplemental-budget-proposals/

Sign up for the March 3rd MassBudget webinar on funding affordable housing through a real estate transfer fee on high-priced home sales: https://secure.massbudget.org/np/clients/mbpc/event.jsp?forwardedFromSecureDomain=1&event=54

Sign up for MassBudget’s mailing list:https://secure.massbudget.org/np/clients/mbpc/subscribe.jsp?subscription=34

Care Not Cages

Slides: LINK

If people are looking to donate, these are fundraisers for families impacted by immigration enforcement across MA: Operationmilkweed.org

Join LUCE: lucemass.org

Join BIJAN (accompaniment and bond): https://www.beyondbondboston.org/join

Overview of immigration detention: https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-timeline

Tell Congress to stop ICE detention: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/464bfff89caa6e21cda6427cbcea52b9

PLYMOUTH

– To understand more about the relationship between detention capacity and ICE Arrests: https://www.ilrc.org/resources/if-you-build-it-ice-will-fill-it-link-between-detention-capacity-and-ice-arrests

– To read about detention in Plymouth County Correctional Facility over 25 years: https://www.bu.edu/law/files/2024/09/ICE-detentions-plymouth.pdf

Holding DAs and Sheriffs Accountable

Slide Deck: LINK

Additional DA resources:https://www.aclum.org/campaigns-initiatives/what-difference-da-makes-0/

Additional Sheriff resources: https://www.aclum.org/know-your-sheriff/

PM in the News: Boston Globe on Fare Gates

Ian Philbrick, “The new fare gates at South Station are annoying. They’re also part of the answer to a bigger problem.,” Boston Globe, February 13, 2026.

Gates can also become bottlenecks that slow commutes. “It is a tax on people if you’re stuck waiting in line,” said Jonathan Cohn, the policy director for Progressive Mass, which supports fare-free public transit. And that’s assuming they work; last month’s snow appears to have temporarily knocked the gates out of service.

….

For Cohn, the fare gate debate is a chance to change how public transit works. “Whenever I see lots of money being put into combatting fare evasion, it always just ends up reinforcing to me why fare-free public transit is a good goal.”

Testimony: MA Needs to Opt Out of Trump’s Regressive Tax Cuts

Thursday, February 12, 2026 

Chair Madaro, Chair Eldridge, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth.

Since taking office just over a year ago, the Trump administration, along with the Republican Congress, have been hard at work to redistribute wealth in this country upwards and to take an axe to government services. They have been clear that their agenda is to make government work worse for everyday people: less responsive, less knowledgeable, less efficient. 

The regressive corporate tax cuts in the “Big Ugly Bill” were central to that agenda: they exist to increase the economic and political power of the rich and to force cuts to essential services that we all rely on. 

Last summer, our Congressional delegation was united in voting NO on that bill. We should send a clear NO to allowing the tax changes from it to be automatically written into our tax code. 

The Governor’s proposal to protect Massachusetts from the massive budget impact of the Trump corporate tax cuts this fiscal year is important, but it’s not enough: we shouldn’t adopt these Trump’s regressive corporate tax breaks at all.

Permanently preventing state-level adoption of the Trump corporate tax cuts would preserve  $463 million in state revenue in this year’s budget alone and an additional $990 million over the next five years. That is money that can be invested in health care, in education, in food assistance, in transportation, and in so much more, at a time when the federal government is no longer a partner but often an active saboteur. 

We don’t need to bribe corporations by throwing money at them for research investments they made years ago in other states. Our investments in our Commonwealth are what make it a good place to do business. The idea that we would spend vital resources on such corporate handouts when our state remains one of the most unequal is galling. 

When we fight to do big things in the Commonwealth, we so often hear that “we don’t have the money.” That same line is rarely invoked when it comes to corporate handouts. But let me be clear: we don’t have the money to do this right now given looming federal cuts. 

Other states across the country have already taken action. Let’s not wait too long to join them. 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts 

Hell World: “Maura Healey declines to end state’s partnership with ICE”

Andrew Quemere, “Maura Healey declines to end state’s partnership with ICE,” Welcome to Hell World, February 10, 2026.

Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Mass, said the group was “glad to see that Governor Healey is finally being more vocal about ICE’s abuses.”

“However, it is disappointing to see that she still refuses to terminate the only existing 287(g) collaboration agreement in the state,” he added. “This agreement uses our state employees to do ICE’s work. It is unconscionable to think that Massachusetts is doing anything to make ICE’s work easier when they are acting like a rogue agency of death squads.”

Just Say NO to Trump’s Regressive Corporate Tax Giveaways

Trump’s corporate tax cuts are going to cost Massachusetts nearly half a billion dollars this year alone — on top of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal programs we rely on.

Here’s why: States use the federal tax code as a starting point to calculate how much people and corporations owe in taxes. Trump’s changes to the federal tax code cut taxes for the rich and large corporations. So, unless we act now, these cuts will be baked into our state’s tax code, meaning big tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.

We don’t have to let this happen. Tell your lawmakers now: reject Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires and protect Massachusetts.

Gov. Healey recently introduced a bill that starts to address the problem. But there’s a catch: although her bill would defer these regressive corporate tax handouts for this budget cycle, it leaves them in place for future ones. Regressive corporate tax cuts are bad this year, and they will still be bad next year.

As we already face a budget crisis due to Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, we can’t afford even more cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and other essential public services.

States like California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the District of Columbia, have already taken action to address this problem. Massachusetts should join them.

Can you write to your state legislators today?

EMAIL YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS

Already emailed your state legislators about this? Then call their offices to follow up.

Care Not Cages: Mass Immigrant Justice in 2026

Becca Kornet, Progressive Mass Western Norfolk County

Shannon Flynn and Leela Ramachandran from LUCE led a breakout group at Progressive Mass’s 2026 Annual Meeting about the critical work done by LUCE. LUCE is an acronym: Liberation, Union, Community, Esperanza/Esperança/Espoir/Espwa (hope). LUCE’s work covers two broad areas:

  • Hotline operators available 6am-8pm (call this when you think you see ICE, ask about resources, report detentions)
  • Local hubs of volunteers (ICE verifiers, connecting with local resources, canvassing with “know your rights” info)

The communities hit hardest by ICE in 2025 include Framingham, Milford, Marlborough, East Boston, Chelsea, Revere, New Bedford, Waltham, and more. Even suburban communities like Acton, Newton, Milton, and Hudson have seen ICE activity. From March-December of last year, verifiers responded to over 1,100 incidents in 120 cities and towns in Massachusetts (and this is likely under-counted). People have been detained in a wide range of locations, including district court, businesses, traffic stops, homes, immigration court, on the street, at gas stations, and more. There has been frequent collaboration between local police and court staff and ICE.


We were reminded that we have had bad immigration policy since the 1700s, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. While what’s happening now is particularly horrible, much of it is not new. President Obama truly earned the moniker, “deporter in chief,” as his administration detained more immigrants than all presidents since 1890 combined. The Biden administration didn’t do nearly enough. And Governor Healey, while finally taking a stronger stance on this issue, has also not gone far enough. When you hear about people being transferred, this can mean a dehumanizing experience of being in full body shackles for hours in a van; transfers are often done very quickly and to multiple places, so often by the time detainees’ families know they are gone, they have been moved from Burlington to Plymouth to Louisiana; this quick movement also means they have had no chance to secure legal representation.


As for the detention locations in Massachusetts:

  • The facility in Burlington is an office building, and not set up to keep people long-term; immigrants are often sleeping on floors
  • The conditions in Plymouth are terrible, with detainees reporting freezing temperatures (meaning they have to shell out money to buy sweatshirts if they can afford it) and inedible food
  • There is also the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) in Framingham and Burlington, where individuals are given ankle monitors to wear and rules to follow – and they are still at risk of
    deportation


Currently, Massachusetts allows local/state entities to rent detention space and sign contracts with ICE. Learn more about the Dignity not Deportations Act (H1588/S1122), which would prohibit these contracts and also prohibit MA entities from donating time to or volunteering with ICE. The Detention Watch Network is a great resource. Another great way to help is by volunteering for the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN); there are opportunities to accompany individuals to court and make financial donations to their bond fees, which can be extremely expensive. 

To learn more, sign up to volunteer, or make a financial contribution, visit https://www.lucemass.org.