Thank you to everyone who joined our Beacon Hill 101 Session! You can find the link to the video below.

You can find the slide deck for the presentation here.

There were a lot of great questions in the chat, and we compiled them and put together answers below (you can find a printable version here):

Do late-filed bills have any better or worse chance of getting passed?

• Given that most bills face long odds, I’m tempted to say that it’s the same regardless, but a late-filed bill lacks a burst of early momentum. However, at the same time, late files may be responding to a particular hot-button issue and gain momentum that way. 

What can we do about the lack of transparency?  Ask the news media to cover this? / I imagine that the lack of transparency has been an ongoing issue – have there been efforts to change that and is there hope?

• The Globe has had an excellent series on this over the past year: https://www.bostonglobe.com/tag/massachusetts-legislature-state-secrets/. 

• In 2016, when the Legislature voted to update the public records law, they created a commission to look into whether the law should reply to the Legislature and Governor. That commission dissolved because the House and Senate couldn’t agree, but the Senate released their own report, recommending several changes that they have adopted in their own rules since. 

• Although this has been a long-standing issue, the latest wave of rules-related progressive advocacy around transparency dates to 2018, when a number of female candidates signed a pledge calling for more transparency. Several of them won their elections. That was followed by advocacy from groups like us at Progressive Mass and others in early 2019 around the rules, where we worked with progressive representatives in the House to get votes on a few rules changes. The votes were not successful, but they raised the profile of the issue. You can read about that in our 2019 archive. (Here is our response to common excuses from legislators.) 

• Act on Mass started soon thereafter, with the founders having worked on State Rep Nika Elugardo’s campaign and having been active in that 2019 push. Act on Mass spearheaded a transparency push (“The People’s House” campaign) in 2021, as well as a transparency pledge during the 2020 election cycle.
  • See our roundup of the House debate from 2021, which was pushed to the summer when legislators freaked out about advocacy early in the session. 
  • Last session, Sen. Jamie Eldridge filed these rules reforms in a bill known as the Sunlight Act, and Sen. Becca Rausch and Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven filed other bills to open up the legislative process. 

• In their opening remarks for the session on January 1, both Speaker Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka spoke about an intent to take up some kind of legislative process reform, with Spilka naming concrete proposals. This was likely a result of the large win for Question 1 (Audit the Legislature) and negative press about the end of the legislative session. Your legislators need to hear from you about support for pro-transparency reforms: https://www.progressivemass.com/jan2025action. Expect to hear more from us on this soon. Legislators often say that the issue doesn’t matter to their constituents, and they need to hear otherwise. 

Do you advise submitting oral testimony also in written form?

• Yes. Not all legislators on a committee attend the hearings, so submitting written testimony increases the likelihood that all members of the committee and their staff would read it. 

Does anyone go through the hearing videos and track who testified? Can you know who submitted written testimony?

• There are no public services that provide that of which I’m aware, although MAPLE is exploring how to track the testifiers from video. 
• There is no public record of written testimony, in contrast to states like Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Arizona, California, Illinois, Kansas, and West Virginia post a list of testifiers but do not link to testimony. 

What if you have a testimony that has to do with slumlords and Horrible housing conditions? 

• If there are things that the city/town could do to enforce better conditions, I would recommend contacting local officials. On the state level, there are various pieces of legislation that could improve this. Currently, testimony is not a public record, but if it was, there would be provisions for confidentiality if you needed that to prevent retaliation. 

I’m thinking of training an AI on MGL to interpret proposed bills. I wonder if anyone else has already done this. 

• MAPLE is working on AI summaries of proposed bills and have been error-checking the quality of the summaries produced. 

“2026?” So if someone presents a bill now nothing happens until next year?

• The February 2026 deadline, written into the Joint Rules by Joint Rule 10, is the deadline for joint committees (with the exception of Health Care Financing, which has a later deadline of March 25) to take action on legislation. Given that nothing inspires action like a deadline, the joint committees often wait until then to decide on bills, but they can report bills out at any time before then. 

Has the organization considered sponsoring a potential constitutional amendment superseding the OML/public records exemptions for the legislature? Would PM endorse and campaign for such an amendment if someone else initiated it?

• There has been chatter about a ballot question around public records reform, and we will keep people posted on that. 

What about when a bill is just passed by the presiding officer even with no one else in the chamber?

• This happens when bills are passed by voice vote, where the presiding officer calls for YEAs and NAYs and then announces the result immediately (so fast that it is suspect that there were even any votes to listen to). The House and Senate can operate in this way under unanimous consent: as long as no one is present to object, they do not need to prove the presence of a quorum to conduct business. As soon as someone objects and calls into question the absence of a quorum, then Legislative Leadership needs to bring people back (although the House has tested the boundaries of that rule). 

• There are many bills for which a voice vote makes sense: for example, a home rule petition to change a Board of Selectmen to a Select Board. But such bills should never even need a vote from the Legislature in the first place–a sign of the need for a reform of the home rule process. 

How do you find the members of a conference committee? Is it on the Legislature’s website?

• The names will be posted on the page of the corresponding bill. See, as an example, the climate bill from last fall: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S2838. You will also likely hear about it via action alerts to contact the Conference Committee / your own legislators. 

Why ‘compromise’ on something that was just passed?

• Conference Committees are appointed to reconcile the differences between what the two chambers pass. If they pass the same exact legislation, then they do not need to appoint a Conference Committee. In larger bills, each chamber might have specific priorities, and the other chamber sometimes chooses to intentionally exclude said priorities to get bargaining power. 

Does each bill get a separate conference committee?

• Yes, every bill that is passed in different forms in each chamber will get a conference committee. However, when the Legislature creates many conference committees at the same time, as happened last summer, the conference committees likely blur into one giant negotiation in an informal way, with provisions traded across bills. 

Spilka and Mariano have been talking about changing the calendar. Is it likely?

• Both of them have started talking about changing the legislative timeline and making reforms to the legislative process, following from the bad press they received for blowing past the July 31 deadline as well as the demand for accountability demonstrated by the 72% public support for Question 1 (Audit the Legislature). One of the main changes proposed by Spilka was an earlier reporting deadline for bills, moving the February deadline to December. That would be a welcome change, but if the committees rely on perpetual extensions, it will not do that much. We would love to see them take steps to accelerate the hearing process, especially fast-tracking hearings for bills already reported out favorably in the last legislative session. Definitely make sure that your legislators hear from you about the need to not push all important work until July of next year (or even later). With the Trump administration coming soon, there is so much urgent work necessary to be done here in Massachusetts to protect our residents, and we should not tolerate such delays. 

If a legislator votes against my preference, is it worth it to call and complain?

• Yes! It is always worthwhile to contact your legislators to express displeasure. They work for you and should hear from you. Constituent pressure can encourage them to vote better–or encourage them to find another job. 

Very thorough explanation of the official process and clear about the outsized power of the leaders. I’m curious about the in-between politics. Clearly reps and sen have to not step on leaders’ toes. But can you say more about the ‘back room’ or unofficial politics and processes? How are deals done? How are compromises built? How do they make effective alliances? Etc.

• Excellent question! Some of this is simply hard to know because of the closed-door nature of the process. However, this interview with Rep. Jay Kaufman was a useful window into what happens, backed by a group of former staffers and advocates.

• During the amendment process on a bill, most of the decisions to adopt or reject amendments are made before the amendments get to the floor, with a Leadership team (Speaker/Senate President, Ways & Means chairs, and a few others) determining which will pass and which won’t. There is frantic internal lobbying from legislators (as well as external lobbying) to try to show support behind their measures and to make their case to Leadership, but those debates rarely make it into the public view. I have heard anecdotes of legislators being told to withdraw amendments or deal with Leadership whipping votes against them. There are few close votes, but whenever any vote gets remotely close without Leadership blessing, that’s an indication of a strong whip operation against its passage behind the scenes to ensure that legislators do not vote for it. An example of this is the Election Day Registration fight in the House in 2022, where the vote was left open for a long time and Leadership allegedly called representatives to ask them to change their votes. Another behind-the-scenes example, but in the Senate, would be the fate of the real estate transfer fee local option from this past session, where I was told by several people that there was a majority support for it but a few high-ranking senators opposed it and blocked it from inclusion. 

• Conference Committee negotiations are harder to understand. The conferees’ own opinions obviously hold outsize influence, as will the Speaker’s and Senate President’s. 

• Ensuring that legislative sponsors organize internally to put pressure on colleagues, conferees, and Leadership, and ensuring that we, as activists, are keeping up a drumbeat of pressure on our legislators, is the best way to attempt to break through such a process. The process can be somewhat hard to follow, but it’s our job to follow every step of it to the best we can and give you the tools you need to take effective action throughout the session. 

Can the House vote on a bill during the 1st year?

• Yes, the Legislature typically passes many more bills in the second year of the legislative session; however, nothing prevents them from passing more legislation in Year 1. Spreading work across the session would help eliminate a bottleneck effect. Indeed, they are a full-time Legislature, unlike most. 

Does the House stay in session during the whole first year?

• For much of the year, they will be in informal session, i.e., legislators are not asked to come in person. However, the last possible date for a formal session (i.e., where legislators are asked to come in person and take votes) this calendar year is December 19. 

Let’s say you have 100 co-sponsors on a House bill and you are past February of the second year.  Can you force a vote on a bill?

• By early February, a committee will have made a decision on whether to report out a bill, vote down a bill, or send a bill to “study” (i.e., tabling it). Having a large number of cosponsors does not mean that a bill will advance out of committee; it could still be voted down or granted an extension. 
• The House does have discharge petitions (i.e., a majority of representatives can sign to bring a bill forward), but this tool is rarely, if ever, used. 

What are ways to influence the House Speaker and Senate president?

• Constituents in their district have an important role to play in influencing them, so organizing in their districts is especially valuable. (This can include phone banking into their districts, canvassing constituents, organizing events, etc.) However, unless they are especially passionate about an issue, the Speaker and Senate President do not advance “controversial” issues without a strong base of support in the Democratic caucus in their respective chamber. As such, pressure on rank-and-file legislators is also important since they will be making asks during caucus meetings, during budget meetings, at other times, and we need them to be using those opportunities to push the issues we care about. 

• Although they are not always responsive to media coverage, both Spilka and Mariano complained about negative media coverage in their opening remarks in the session, an indication that they do, in fact, pay attention to it and that it can have influence. 

Please say something about how citizen lobbyists can compete with business/paid lobbyists on bills.

• This is a matter of numbers and intensity. There are more of us than there are of them (people over money), and this speaks to the need to continue to expand the number of people reaching out to their legislators and showing up to things to put pressure on them. Legislators like to take the “path of least bother,” and constituents have power in shaping what that is for them. 

• To give an example from the past session, we saw the influence of a flood of real estate spending against the local option real estate transfer fee, especially in how they were able to text voters with lies about what the proposal would do. We need to be talking with, mobilizing, and organizing more people to counteract that. 

Does Progressive Mass publish the historical voting patterns of legislators? 

• Yes, we do! Our scorecard website contains the last few legislative sessions; however, the Scorecard page of our general website includes votes all the way back to 2011. 

When are we going to talk about 99% of bills not getting passed, and that those that do are mostly from being redrafted as amendments to the budget and bonding bills?

• There has been an unfortunate tendency in recent years to move toward fewer and larger bills, with bills only advancing as riders (or, in technical terms, “outside section”) of “must-pass” bills like a budget or a bond authorization. This reduces accountability because most of these bills will pass unanimously, but we know that many legislators opposed and/or fought individual pieces within it. 

If there are 6-7000 bills filed and most don’t get passed, why do legislators  file all these bills?

• To put it simply, the best way to ensure a bill never passes is to never file it. More expansively, some bills are filed as discussion starters, some are filed to build momentum across several sessions, and some are filed with the hope of attaching them to a larger bill. You never know when external events will raise the profile of an issue, so having legislation ready for when that happens is critical.

How would you work with legislators who say they are “rethinking” their policy of co-sponsoring; i.e., won’t co-sponsor bills? 

• You should still ask them to co-sponsor bills because by asking them to do so, you are raising the profile of the bill to them. That is helpful if the bill starts to move and Leadership wants to gauge where members are. And don’t let them feel content about doing less! 

Always ask for receipts — receipts for what?

• When you ask your legislators to take an action, make sure to follow up with it to ensure follow through. That could mean a co-sponsorship of a bill, a recorded vote, a signature on a letter, or other steps. It is always good to ask to see evidence of an action since, even if there are the best of intentions, things can fall through the cracks! 

The power that leadership has — and reinforced with their access to the $$ — is a terrible system.  How could it ever change, given that they are unlikely to support anything that reduces their power/$.  Not a very good model if one was designing a democracy, one where each rep/sen has the same power….   Is there any historical precedent for challenging this terrible system?  Any hope?

• The folks at the Committee for Reform Our Legislature and Act on Mass plan to file legislation to reform the stipend system to raise the profile of the issue; however, ultimate change would likely have to occur by ballot initiative. 

Sounds like we need to apply some serious pressure. Think our Dems feel “safe” because of all that’s going on nationally?

• Yes, we do! We understand the urgency on the ground around so many issues, and that urgency will get so much greater under the second Trump administration. The Democrats in the MA Legislature need to understand that it is incumbent upon them to be bolder, both to protect MA residents from the worst of the Trump administration’s policies and to demonstrate how government can make a positive difference in people’s lives and build back public trust. Many of them don’t feel urgency because they are never challenged and become insular to the State House itself, and that means they need to be hearing from constituents much more. 

How do we effectively put pressure on Gov. Healey?

• Calling/emailing the Governor’s office is important, and calls/emails will be tracked. Elected officials are always attuned to intensity levels because that influences their electoral fortunes. The higher an office is, the more important media can be, and that makes events like rallies or efforts like editorials/letters especially important to shape what the Governor views public opinion to be. You can also try to put together a group of people to demand a meeting with a specific cabinet official; they might be harder to reach, but it is still worth trying. 

Does your organization have enough money to achieve its goals? Do you grow or support alternative candidates?

• We have only two-part time staff and are hoping to grow capacity. You can support our work here (thank you!). We strive to have a strong grassroots funding base. 

• We have endorsed primary challengers on many occasions. You can see our history of endorsements at https://www.progressivemass.com/elections/. (We also have candidate questionnaires going back to 2013!). 

• Our chapters have often contributed to candidate recruitment work, and I am always willing to talk with people interested in running for office. Progressive Mass is also on the board of Mass Alliance, which runs excellent candidate trainings. 

I’ve worked on bills where a legislator cosponsors it to get us off of them, then goes to leadership to have him kill the bill in the committee process, so they never have to vote on it.

• Yes, I’ve heard of many stories like that too. That is why it’s so important to treat co-sponsorship as just the first ask to make of legislators. We need them to do more than that! 

Do we have any progressive state cheerleaders? Like Warren at the fed level. 

• Check out our Scorecard to see the top-performing legislators, especially ones that reliably co-sponsor progressive priorities. 

Do committees take minutes? If so, are minutes available by FOIA request?

• Unlike in municipalities, which are bound by open meeting law, neither House, nor Senate, nor Joint (i.e., House/Senate) committees are required to conduct work in person in front of the public. Beyond a hearing, a committee’s work will be behind closed doors. The Legislature is also exempt from the public records law. Legislation to change that, such as the Sunlight Act by Sen. Jamie Eldridge, is being refiled.