What Passed in the MA House’s Economic Development Bill?

The MA House voted on Wednesday for its economic development bill, a bill that every two years can become a catch-all bill for various policy priorities and earmarks.

The House went through 688 amendments in the non-transparent Consolidated Amendment process. House Leadership grouped these 688 amendments into five categories to create five Consolidated Amendments, but little, if anything, of the content of these most amendments remained. Rather than rejecting amendments (by voice or recorded vote) or having lead sponsors withdraw amendments, the House has increasingly taken to this strategy, which reduces the ability for the public to see what is happening and pushes even more discussion behind closed doors.

Consolidated amendments also erase opportunities for accountability by bundling measures together rather than allowing for clear up or down votes on individual priorities.

One of the amendments that we had supported did, however, make it in: the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), which would allow cities and towns a local option to provide tenants in multi-family buildings the right to match a third-party offer when their homes are being sold.

TOPA passed the Legislature more than five years ago, vetoed by Republican Governor Charlie Baker when the legislative session had run out and there was no time for veto overrides. Two years ago, the House passed it as part of the housing bond bill, but it did not survive final negotiations. Let’s make it the session it finally happens.

The House’s bill also took other steps to address the housing crisis, such as authorizing municipalities to adopt commercial conversion zoning to transform underutilized commercial properties into housing and mixed-use developments through streamlined local approvals and allowing multifamily housing as of right on qualifying land owned by religious institutions, with a requirement that at least 20% of units be affordable.

MA Senate Votes to Rein in Addictive Social Media Design

A couple months ago, the MA House advanced a harmful bill that would ban minors from social media, force social media platforms to enable parental surveillance of teenagers’ online activity, and subject everyone to privacy-invading online ID checks in order to access information or speak out online. We joined groups from across the state in opposing this language.

The Senate’s bill (S.3164), passed 38 to 2 yesterday, takes a smarter approach, targeting addictive design. Republicans Kelly Dooner and Peter Durant were the sole NO votes.

We joined our friends at Fight for the Future in urging senators to support several amendments that would protect privacy, protect youth, and help the bill better accomplish its stated goals. Most of those amendments were adopted:

  • Amendment #2, which closed a loophole in the definition of “user” that would have allowed platforms to continue providing addictive features to minors so long as the minor does not use an account to access the platform
  • Amendment #3, which updated the definition of social media so that it would exclude sites like GitHub and Wikipedia that have valuable educational purposes
  • Amendment #4, which clarified that the attorney general will be regulating interoperability of age signals and not mandating that all operating systems implement age signals
  • Amendment #24, which voided the privacy and security issues that come with obtaining parental consent, while increasing the protections for minors
  • Amendment #25, which clarified that platforms can use interaction data to generate feeds when that data functions to allow users to control the amount and types of content they receive from users they subscribe to
  • Amendment #27, which expanded the ban on tech companies’ ability to use design tactics, such as repeated nudges and grouping of settings controls, to manipulate users into choosing less protective settings
  • Amendment #29, which added important protections to minors’ data by requiring the attorney general to address issues of re-identification that could expose minors’ personal information to the public

However, the Senate rejected Amendment #19, which would have prevented companies from manipulating users into using addictive features and would have changed age verification requirements to opt-out to opt-in.

Read more here.

Progressive Mass Western Norfolk County 2026 Norfolk DA Candidate Questionnaires

There are seven Democrats running for Norfolk County District Attorney for the upcoming Democratic primary on Tuesday, September 1. What do they all stand for? Progressive Mass Western Norfolk County invited all candidates to fill out a candidate questionnaire. Six of the seven responded, and five agreed to have their questionnaires posted. Learn more about all of them below.