FY 2027 Budget Testimony

March 31, 2026

Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and Members of the Joint Committee on Ways & Means: 

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.

As we contemplate the daunting, anxiety-inducing, catastrophic possibility of steep cuts to the federal budget as Republicans in DC attempt to take an axe to health care, education, infrastructure, and so much more, we need to be prepared in MA to protect our essential services. We need to continue to do what we are doing—and we also need to be doing more. 

To make that possible, we urge you to embrace progressive sources of revenue as well as tap into the rainy day fund in order to avoid any cuts. 

In the FY 2027 budget, we urge you to focus on increasing critical investments that underlie the quality of life in the Commonwealth and make this high quality of life accessible to all: 

  • Delivering on Our Promises to Our K-12 Students: The Student Opportunity Act from 2019 was a major win for students across the Commonwealth. However, the combination of high rates of inflation in FY23 and FY24 and a tight inflation cap under the SOA has led to a $465 million gap in district budgets.  As a result, districts across the state are being forced to cut their budgets, lay off educators and staff, and cancel long-needed investments. We must keep our promises to students.

The impact of inflation is being compounded by the impacts of ICE terrorism. Many of our cities have experienced declining attendance in their public schools due to fear of ICE activity. The districts should not be punished for that. 

We further urge you to fix charter school tuition reimbursements so that our public schools are not losing critical funding. Tuition dollars follow students, but if a class size falls from 25 to 23, a school cannot hire 23/25 of a teacher. So many of the costs of education are fixed costs, and siphoning off resources harms the 90% of students who attend local district public schools. 

Our students deserve not only well-funded schools, but also green and healthy schools that focus on the whole student. We urge you to increase funding for capital improvements for school buildings so that students can have the safe and healthy environment conducive to learning, and to provide funding for community schools so that districts can embrace this proven model that empowers students, parents, and educators to collaborate and provide vital wraparound services. 

  • Building on Recent Child Care & Early Ed Investments: Last session, you made historic investments in early education and child care, moving us closer toward a vision of quality and stability for providers, good pay for educators, and affordability and access for families. We join the Common Start Coalition in calling for continued investments:
    • Increasing the number of families receiving child care financial assistance (this was included in the supplemental budget!),
    • Increasing funding for the C3 operational grant program to support child care providers,
    • Moving Massachusetts further toward child care reimbursement rates that cover the true cost of delivering high-quality care, and
    • Delivering much-needed funding for Head Start providers
  • Increasing Funding for Access to Counsel: We join fellow organizations in the Right to Counsel Coalition in urging for an increase to the Access to Counsel pilot (Line Item 0321-1800) from $2.5 million to $4 million. In the first 12-months of funding, legal services opened 1,192 cases. In 87% of the cases closed, tenants have stayed housed or received the time to find new housing
  • Protecting Our Immigrant Communities: Last year’s creation of the Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative (MACI), which provides legal aid for individuals in Massachusetts facing Immigration Court proceedings, was a big win, and it has been doing excellent, necessary work already. To meet need, we urge you to fund the program at $15 minimum.

We also urge you to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to immigrant workers who file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

Thank you for your work on the budget and on this marathon of a hearing. 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts 

MA Needs Same Day Registration

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Ballot Initiative Petitions:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth. We have been advocating for Same Day Registration since the early years of our organization, and we hope that you take the opportunity to pass this important reform this session (NO. 25-08 An Act relative to election day registration/H.5001).

Tenants moving to a new apartment after getting priced out or evicted by an unscrupulous landlord. Senior citizens looking to downsize and move into a retirement community. Under MA’s current law, if these moves happen too close to an election date, these people—and countless others like them—could lose their right to vote.

That’s because we have an arbitrary and unjust 10-day voter registration cutoff. And shockingly, we’re an outlier in New England for having a cutoff at all. In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut, eligible voters can register to vote or update their registration at the polls. It’s a simple reform (indeed, NH and ME have done it for decades), and it can boost engagement and improve the efficiency of election administration.

People are more likely to become lifelong voters when they have positive experiences voting. Being turned away because of a clerical error or having to cast a provisional ballot that you are unsure will be counted leaves a voter—who took the time out of their day to go to their polling location and educate themselves about what is on the ballot—feeling demoralized. Same Day Registration ensures that such voters can seamlessly update their registration and have a voting experience they can be confident in.

When democracy is under attack, MA should be taking every step we can to strengthen our democracy. Let’s show our commitment to democracy and improve the voting experience for everyone.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Let’s Protect Our Commonwealth

March 30, 2026

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions;

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.

We are submitting testimony in opposition to Petition No. 25-17 / H.5006: An Act relative to limiting state tax collection growth and returning surpluses to taxpayers, as well as IN OPPOSITION to Petition No. 25-18 / H.5007: An Act relative to reducing the state personal income tax rate from 5% to 4%. 

In 2022, because of your help, Massachusetts did something transformative: we—you, the legislators who placed it in on the ballot; us, the organizations and activists who campaigned for it; and the voters across the Commonwealth—passed the Fair Share Amendment, securing a more progressive tax code and new investments in public education and transportation. 

That new revenue has helped our Commonwealth do great things. It has provided stable funding for universal school meals, ensuring that no children are going hungry during the school day. It has provided funding for free community college, creating new pathways for economic mobility. It has provided more money for child care, to boost stability for child care providers, better pay for educators, and greater affordability for families. It has expanded scholarship programs, increased investments in school facilities, provided new investment in the MBTA and our roads and bridges, and guaranteed better hours and free fares on regional transit authorities. It has made our state more affordable, more accessible, and more welcoming. 

These ballot initiatives want to wipe that—and more—away in order to give more money to the richest residents of the Commonwealth. Only for those richest residents of the Commonwealth will the tax cuts from this question outweigh the likely financial burden of lost public services. 

The idea of a commonwealth is based on the idea that when we pool our resources and all chip in (and those who have more chip in more), we can do much more than we could do just by ourselves. The gain from a small tax cut quickly disappears for regular people if public school quality goes down, public transit becomes unreliable, health care becomes more expensive, and child care options disappear. 

It is clear why this question exists: the corporate titans of the state are unhappy that, for once, the people won, and they want to wrest power back. Having already received massive tax cuts from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress last year, they want even more. 

The loss of more than $5 billion to the state budget would be damaging in any year. It is catastrophic when we are facing severe funding cuts from the federal government, as well as a federal government that wants to sabotage the foundations of economic prosperity. 

We make our state more affordable through the investments we make and the services we provide to ensure a stable foundation on which all can thrive. We need to do even more than we already are. These questions would undo recent progress and make those goals even further out of reach. 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts 

MA House Passes PROTECT Act 134 to 21

Yesterday, the House passed its redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to protect Massachusetts communities from increasingly lawless behavior from ICE.

The bill restricts cooperation and communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE and adds additional protections:

  • Prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status, with narrow exceptions 
  • Bars the use of state and local resources for civil immigration enforcement
  • Limits the sharing of nonpublic information and advance release notifications by banning the *initiation* of contact with ICE
  • Bans new 287(g) agreements (with very narrow exceptions), i.e., which deputize state and local law enforcement as ICE agents
  • Limits civil arrests in courthouses by requiring a judicial warrant or order, and a review by a judicial official
  • Requires that employers provide written notice to employees within 48 hours of receiving a federal immigration inspection notice, such as an I-9 audit
  • Strengthens protections for individuals in ICE detention (i.e., requiring notice of legal rights in a person’s primary language at intake, guaranteeing confidential attorney-client communication, mandating the timely tracking of custody status and transfers with notice to counsel and designated contacts; providing interpretation services for key interactions and ensure access to court proceedings)
  • Makes it easier for victims of crime and human trafficking ​to secure U and T visas, which provide a legal status that can lead to a green card 
  • Authorizes the Governor to restrict civil immigration enforcement in nonpublic areas of state facilities, and requires multilingual guidance for agencies, private entities, law enforcement, and public school districts 

The bill passed 134 to 21, with all Democrats in attendance joined by Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading), Third Assistant Minority Leader David Vieira (R-Falmouth), Marcus Vaughn (R-Wrentham), and Donald Wong (R-Saugus).

During the floor debate, the House adopted four amendments.

The House voted 130 to 25 (party line) to adopt Christine Barber (D-Somerville)’s amendment to clarify that the bill applies to sheriffs. The sheriff offices in Bristol, Plymouth, and Barnstable Counties have all previously had 287(g) agreements with ICE, and the majority of such contracts across the country are with sheriffs.

The House voted 136 to 18 for Sean Reid (D-Lynn)’s amendment to require the Governor to publish multilingual guidelines for all school districts on how to handle interactions with law enforcement officers regarding civil immigration enforcement. Joining Democrats and the four Republicans who voted for the final bill were First Assistant Minority Leader Kimberly Ferguson (R-Holden), Second Assistant Minority Leader Paul Frost (R-Auburn), and Hannah Kane (R-Shrewsbury).

The House voted 151 to 3 for Adrianne Ramos (D-North Andover)’s amendment to expedite the U and T visa certification process for applicants with a dependent who will soon age out of dependent status. Three Republicans voted no: David DeCoste (R-Norwell), John Gaskey (R-Carver), and Marcus Vaughn (R-Wrentham). Michael Soter (R-Bellingham) voted present.

The House also voted unanimously for an amendment from Brad Jones (R-North Reading) that could potentially create a new loophole in the bill, but advocates are still analyzing the implications of the text.

The bill, unfortunately, does not end the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state: the one between the Department of Correction and ICE. However, as Governor Healey remains staunchly supportive of that agreement, the legislative hurdles have become much stronger.

Take Action: Investing in People, Not Incarceration

Friday was the first day of spring, and the new season is always a perfect time to think about second chances and new life. As winter passes, we get more light, we get more greenery, we see more flowers.

It’s a time to think about how our systems can be designed to encourage second chances and new life instead of cycles of violence and harm.

Prisoners’ Legal Services, Families for Justice as Healing, the Keeping Families Connected Coalition, Jane Doe, Inc., Medical Justice Alliance-MA Chapter, Progressive Massachusetts, and Citizens for Juvenile Justice recently teamed up to write a letter to the Senate and House Committees on Ways and Means, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate President urging them to prioritize a package of six critical bills this session. Over 100 organizations have signed on in support and now we need the help of individuals to ask their legislators to make this a priority.  

This platform includes:

  • An Act relative to elder and medical parole (H.2693)
  • An Act to build restorative family and community connection (H.2591)
  • An Act relative to human rights and improved outcomes for incarcerated people (H.2608)
  • An act relative to justice for survivors (S.1256)
  • An act establishing a jail and prison moratorium (H.3422, S.2944)
  • An Act to Promote Public Safety and Better Outcomes for Youths (S.1061)

These six critical legal system reform bills have advanced to the committee on Ways and Means and are well positioned to be acted upon by the legislature this session. Each of these bills represents an opportunity to reduce incarceration, redirect spending to where it is most needed, and improve conditions for particularly vulnerable carceral populations, specifically young people, families, survivors of abuse and sexual violence, and elders. More details on the bills are in the letter.  

Please contact your legislators with a copy of the letter via email, phone, or the form below and ask them to express their support to the Committee on Ways and Means as well as House or Senate leadership.  

Email Your Legislators

2026 PM Congressional Primary Interviews

Progressive Mass’s Elections Committee recently hosted public candidate interviews with the US Congressional candidates who filled out our comprehensive policy questionnaire. Check out the interviews here.

CD-01: Jeromie Whalen

CD-04: Chris Boyd, Ihssane Leckey, Jason Poulos

CD-05: Jonathan Paz

CD-06: Beth Andres-Beck, Jamie Belsito, Mariah Lancaster, Tram Nguyen

CD-08: Patrick Roath

CD-09 Craig Swallow

The House Redrafted the PROTECT Act. How is the new bill different?

On Friday, the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee reported out a redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to strengthen protections for immigrant communities in Mass.

Original: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5158 

Redraft: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5293 

The bill is a mashup of the PROTECT Act and Healey’s bill. For example, it takes language around protecting courthouses from Healey’s bill, not the PROTECT Act  (see comparison chart here).

PROTECT 2.0 eliminates the following provisions of PROTECT 1.0: 

  • The section requiring disclosure of ICE or CBP employment in the POST certification process 
  • Several of the protections for individuals in ICE detention
    • The guarantee of 1 free telephone call within the first 2 hours of ICE detention 
    • The requirement that detention facilities maintain a “secure electronic locator system” for detained individuals, replacing it with a less specific requirement for record-keeping. 
    • The guarantee that detained individuals will be provided access to legal services organizations 
    • The requirement that a public hotline enabling people to identify individuals in custody have hours “sufficient to provide timely location confirmation” 
  • Some of the language banning communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE:
    • The ban on communication with ICE, as opposed to simply “initiation” of contact.
    • The ban on “ facilitat[ing] a transfer timed to enable a federal civil immigration enforcement action”  
    • (BUT the language does remove the conditional descriptor of “primary” in its ban on the “use state or local resources for the purpose of facilitating a federal civil immigration enforcement action”) 
  • The expansion of agencies able to certify individuals for U and T visas to include the executive office of the trial court and the juvenile court department; the department of children and families; the executive office of labor and workforce development and any agency within the secretariat with authority over wage and hour, workplace safety, unemployment insurance or labor standards; the Massachusetts commission against discrimination; and any other state or local agency designated by regulation of the secretary of public safety and security in consultation with the attorney general.

PROTECT 2.0 adds the following provisions: 

  • A requirement that employers provide notice to employees within 48 hours of notice of an upcoming ICE workplace raid (“I9 inspection”) 
  • Inclusion of “the likelihood of imminent deportation” to the factors considered at a bail hearing, which could lead to immigration status being treated as an indicator flight risk in and of itself and could exacerbate racial disparities in bail hearing outcomes 
  • Directive to Governor Maura Healey’s administration to create rules around locations where ICE agents would be prohibited and multilingual guidelines for state agencies about how to comply (A watered down version of Healey’s “sensitive locations” language) 

Neither PROTECT 1.0 nor PROTECT 2.0 did the following: 

  • Ban future 287(g) agreements between sheriffs and ICE. More than sixty percent of 287(g) agreements around the country are signed by sheriffs. 
  • Provide a clean ban on 287(g) agreements, as opposed to one with a series of conditions. The conditions in the bill are designed to never be met, but other states have done clean bans.
  • Terminate the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state, i.e., the DOC contract, of which Governor Maura Healey has been a staunch defender.
  • End ICE detention in Massachusetts (e.g., “shutting down Plymouth detention center”) 

Find some more detailed textual analysis here.

Testimony in Support of Rent Control Ballot Question

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge a favorable report for H.5008: An Act to protect tenants by limiting rent increases. 

Massachusetts has a lot to offer, but that does little if people can’t afford to live here. The US News & World Report’s annual state rankings put Massachusetts at #47 in affordability. A worker earning minimum wage in Massachusetts would have to work 101 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at market rate. [2] 

Clearly, Massachusetts has an affordable housing crisis. This is unsustainable. It has led to expanding economic inequality, increased homelessness, and damage to our economy, as talented workers often leave the state for less expensive regions. Too many of us know stories of friends, family members, or neighbors being priced out of neighborhood then city then state. 

The crisis in outmigration we face is not billionaires moving to Florida. It is of working people not able to afford the cost of living here. 

Solving this affordable housing crisis will require us to use every tool in the toolbox. That requires zoning reform that encourages the creation of walkable, sustainable, and inclusive communities. It requires public investment. And it requires strengthening tenant protections that ensure that communities can remain affordable, inclusive, and stable.

AWe cannot build our way out of the crisis alone because the people at the highest risk for displacement will already be pushed out before they can benefit from any medium to long-term reduction in rents. Rent control offers the essential stability needed while other strategies can work to bring down rents overall, through building and financing schemes. 

At its core, rent control is about offering price stability to renters. We know what price stability looks like. It’s what homeowners with mortgages are given. Why should renters not have the same predictability? 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts

Letter: “Reader angered by the disappearance of immigrant children”

Jennifer Debin, “Letter: Reader angered by the disappearance of immigrant children,” Hometown Weekly (Dover/Sherborn), March 19, 2026.

To the Editor:

I recently learned that approximately 700 kids are missing from our neighboring Framingham public schools in large part due to ICE and anti-immigrant activity creating an environment of distrust and perceived lack of safety.

As a public school parent myself, this is extremely troubling. If this is happening in just one district, the effects across Massachusetts of students not being in school could be disastrous for our children and the future of our state. Massachusetts has stood up to ICE but we could be doing much more.

Our country was once the Land of Opportunity and the home of the American Dream with our public education system being an integral part of that. Keeping kids away from school due to the very real fears that they or their family members may be detained by ICE for the simple act of trying to go to school is something we must fix immediately. Individuals and activists groups can be powerful and have shown that we in Massachusetts do not want ICE tearing apart our communities but we need Governor Healey and the legislature to step up to make policy change to reinforce our actions, getting kids back in school and families back to living their everyday lives without fear. Massachusetts is the only state with a Democratic Governor and Democratic Legislature to still have a statewide 287(g) agreement with ICE. I am calling on Governor Healey to end this collaboration with a stroke of the pen.

Additionally, Beacon Hill should make it clear: state and local law enforcement should not be assisting ICE and should not be acting as ICE agents.

Doing so makes us all less safe as people become afraid to report crimes, retreat further from public life, and more children are denied an education. Our legislators must support and pass the Safe Communities Act, the Dignity Not Deportations Bill, and the PROTECT Act. Children of any immigration status need to be in school and Massachusetts must do more on their behalf.

Jennifer Debin
Sherborn, MA

Sign-on Letter: Let’s Strengthen Our Vaccine Laws

March 16, 2026
The Honorable John J. Lawn, Jr.
Chair, Joint Committee on Health Care Financing
State House, Room 236
24 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02133


Dear Chairman Lawn and Committee Members,


The Massachusetts Legislature has worked quickly in recent months to ensure that the state’s vaccine recommendations are based on sound scientific evidence and that its residents are able to access immunizations. The undersigned organizations request that the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing report out favorably H.2554, An Act Relative to Routine Childhood
Immunizations, which would remove the non-medical exemption from required school vaccines and enhance data collection and sharing to better track immunization rates.


H.2554 is supported by Massachusetts’s leading medical and public health institutions. It is also popular with voters: polling shows that 70% of Massachusetts voters support H.2554’s passage, with support rising to 72% after respondents considered various arguments for and against the legislation. Support for H.2554 was broadly consistent among voters from various
demographic groups and areas of the state.


Major religious groups agree that immunization is part of society’s moral duty to care for the greater common good. For example, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops disallows religious exemptions in Catholic schools, and released a statement in 2024 affirming its commitment to protecting the health of all children.


With two measles cases already reported in Massachusetts this year, we must act now to prevent its spread. Eliminating non-medical exemptions is the most effective way to prevent outbreaks and ensure strong immunization rates. We respectfully ask that the Committee report H.2554 out favorably.


Thank you for your leadership and your support of this important legislation.


Sincerely,
Katie Blair, JD, Director
Massachusetts Families for Vaccines

Northe Saunders, President
American Families for Vaccines
Patti Wukovits and Alicia Stillman, Co-Executive Directors
American Society for Meningitis Prevention
Azhar Majeed, Director of Government Affairs and Policy
Center for Inquiry
Alicia Stillman, Executive Director
Emily Stillman Foundation
Patti Wukovits, BSN, RN, AMB-BC, Executive Director
Kimberly Coffey Foundation
Chloe Schwartz, MPH, Director of Maternal & Infant Health Initiatives, New England
March of Dimes
Brenda Anders Pring, MD, FAAP, President
Massachusetts Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics
Hemal Sampat, MD & Sunny Kung, MD, Co-Chairs, Health and Public Policy Committee
Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Physicians
Emily Dulong, Vice President, Government Advocacy and Public Policy
Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association
Olivia C. Liao, MD, FACS, President
Massachusetts Medical Society
Oami Amarasingham, JD, Deputy Director
Massachusetts Public Health Alliance
Michael Constantine, MD, President
Massachusetts Society of Clinical Oncologists
Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts