As we head into the last month of the formal legislative session, let’s take stock.
During the 2025-2026 legislative session at the MA State House, 220 bills have been signed into law.
But of those 220….
- 166 are home rule petitions about one city or town
- 23 are administrative matters about sick leave for specific state or county employees
- 12 are budgets or supplemental budgets
- 4 are awareness days
- 3 are routine bonding and financing matters (the timeline for bond issuance; Chapter 90 funding for local transportation projects)
So what about the other twelve?
Three of them will expire by next year, if not sooner:
- Extending hybrid meeting access for public meetings through next June
- Setting the primary date as September 1
- Creating an opt-in, temporary municipal pilot program to extend last call until 3 am for the World Cup
So what are the other nine?
- Strengthening protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care, a critical move in light of federal attacks (August 2025)
- Making car rentals more affordable (November 2025)
- Updating the collection of birth and death statistics (November 2025)
- Protecting transit workers from assault (December 2025)
- Reforming the Cannabis Control Commission (April 2026)
- Updating outdated and offensive language in Massachusetts law related to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (June 2026)
- Creating a statewide framework to help individuals with autism communicate important information to law enforcement officers during traffic stops and other interactions (June 2026)
- Overhauling early literacy instruction (June 2026)
- Creating a public online database and automated notification system tracking code violations related to welding, plasma cutting, and spark-producing construction (June 2026)
Various other policy changes have passed via the budget (e.g., banning tenant-paid broker’s fees, creating an immigrant legal defense fund), but the Legislature has increasingly used large, must-pass vehicles like the budget to pass policy rather than pass standalone bills with clear votes, accountability, and attribution of credit.
And there are many bills in Conference Committees existing or soon to be reformed.
The big takeaway of all of this should be clear: there’s a LOT for them to still do in this final month. And it’s important that our legislators hear from us about it.
